Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay (Razor Blades, Pills, & Shotguns)

Sittin' on the dock of the bay,
Watching the sun slip, Simon-says, slide away,
Cheeks blushing flushing from orange ray-guns,
Drinking blush rosé to oil our eyes
For the subtle story the sky shortly will reveal,
For the subtle story the sky shortly will revel.

Grievous judgement to make,
Thinkin' skills possessed to praise,
When but yesterday I easy confessed,
At the Blue Canoe Bar, I did not.

(The clouds were magnificent. No, I cannot write a poem about the cloud colors. Their shape shifting inexhaustible.  Mine eyes high on their creativity.  I'm just not good enough a poet to tamper with that sky.)

If you courage enough to
Call yourself poet, then
It is audacity, not blood,
Warming your extremities,
So foolishly try, always be prepared to fail.

No impulse. We pledged that tonight, ours,
One hour of sunset over Silver Beach.
Brought the wine, forgot the pillows,
So Abraham & Sarah went prepared to sacrifice
All feelings in their butts for the greater glory
Of love and one of nature's great poetic challenges..

The conundrum~miracle of every sunset
O'er bay, lake or ocean, is its special,
Only-In-Nature unique way of customizing
Its descent just for you.

No matter where one observes,
No matter where you worship,
Wherever your temple, mosque or church situé,
Tennessee, Rhode Island, the Philippines,
Germany, Colombia, even in the ole U.K.,
(yes, you, I know it, yes, you!)
The very same setting sun we all see,
Sends a magic dazzle gold orange path invitation
To the exact spot you are voyeuring,
One sun, all destinations equal before human.

How can that be?

Trepidation and tremblingly,
The clouds.

She leans on me, a perfect fit,
My back resting against a pylon,
So we see the clouds
With common exactitude,
But it is a quiet time, silence only shared.
Images stored silently within ourselves,
For we see the formation, man, woman,
Precisely and exactly, totally differently.

The clouds.
An armada moving imperial and imperiously
At a stately speed, saying I am awesome, fear me.
The largest cloud bank is an aircraft carrier,
Miles long, painted horizon blue-grey unsurprisingly.

The small white wisps, fast destroyers, stealthy submarines,
Moving fast to protect the mother ship,
Running random to confuse enemy radar and the
Pathetic, limited, human eye.

The colors.
Here I fail willingly, unashamedly.
So many sunsets, so many hearts,
All different, all the same.
Lacking knowledge, I cannot tender,
I cannot offer you tenderness to love
Enough,
The variety of oranges, gold, varietals interspersed
By the pinks, the cornea, singed,
And mock myself for all my meager brain yields is
Good Humor creamsicle comparison...a delicious irony

You who write after midnight
Of razor blades, pills and shotguns,
And not marked two decades even, on this planet,
You want hard,
Write a poem about a sunset in ways never done before.

You, who are wracked with despair
Speak to the man with no job for months
And mouths to feed and a life insurance policy.
Speak to me.

I want to tell you to get over yourself,
But you reject that old saw. Ok.
Get onto to yourself.

I have walked the hallways of deep despair,
Heard the bells ring between periods that signal only the next
Hell,
And to this day, still do,
But still I try to write external of sunsets and greater glories.

How many lives depend on you? Are you proud of your weakness?
Do you hate me yet for acknowledging out loud,
We are both cowards?

I have five mouths to feed,
Before I parse a morsel.
Two less than two,
What do you have but to
Grow yourself?

Yeah coward.
Too yellow to write about a
Yellow sunset, cause that is hard in a way incomprehensible
Until tried.
Or the passing of your mother who could not speak clearly
But you, thru her eyes knew that she had poems to yet recite.
Run away like I did ashamed with frustrated failure.
Why should I coddle, give you easy soft?**
.
If you come here to share, well and good.
If you come here to find comfort, good.
So gaze upon these words and feel
The love that only experience has earned.

What do you know of heartbreak?
Imprisoned for decades in a loveless life,
I walked by the water nightly,
Yes, the same waters where I CinemaScoped
Yesterday's sunset, and walked away.

You can read about if you look it, look me, look here,
Look up!

So do something hard, something external.
Fail but love yourself more for just having tried.
Then try something else.

The saddest poem ever wrote
Was not yours, where you titillate with daring words
Razors, pills etc.,
The saddest poem ever writ
Was this one, a meager vanity to capture a
Sunset that keeps trying every day to
Surpass
Supersede
Its previous glorious failure,
Like we should too.
Keep trying

Now, I shall rest,
For I know that soon I shall see, feel, think,
Of something new that will make me eager to

Write a new poem.


August 3~5, 2013

you're not going to read this, and why would you?*

it would be either
naive
or
stupid
of me to expect even so much as a text;
as if our separation implies the ******* of a proverbial
Berlin Wall* between us,
where less than a week ago we were the same *country,
our landscapes of rolling hills,
city skylines,
and forests
so overgrown
that only
slices
of sunlight
could parse the ever-greened canopy,
phasing into one another seamlessly.

We may have been our own provinces,
but aside from small street signs declaring
Welcome to Jen
and
Welcome to Kyran...
aside from separate cognitive centers of self-government
between
your shock-blue eyes and fleek eyebrows,
between
my navy-blue irises and grey,
sunken sockets,
we were a willing confederation of persons,
impulses,
                dreams,
                             ambitions,
                                              anxieties,
                                                              lo­ves,
                                                                ­        and betrayals---

In our past, and provisional separations,
it was your betrayal that pushed us both
into the doldrums of love-lost confusions
and self-hatred;
not that there would be much value
in assigning a blame
with hurt still attached,
because the point,
it seems to me,
was that we somehow made it through everything together.

There wasn't a personal adversity we didn't learn to conquer
---until I began to fade away from you--
lanky, thin, often broke, and depressed,
I retreated.

I cocooned myself in studies of the past and the present;
for some reason, despite my overwhelming love for you,
despite the unspoken commitment I had made
to you
in my head
so long after your second infidelity
when I realized I was finally over it
and that I loved you more than I'd ever loved anyone before
--and in ways I never could have foreseen--

I backed-off,
I fell back,
I disengaged,

and

I essentially abandoned you.

After your impulsive infidelities,
when you admitted you hadn't been
nor were you in your
"right mind,"
you promised you'd get better.

You saw councilors, therapists, psychiatrists,
and psychologists... and you did.

You really did get better.

You overcame all that had been pulling you so low and so far into the darker vicissitudes of irrationality.

And yet, when it came to my own faults,
inadequacies, and disengagement,
I lacked your courage.

I didn't even try to overcome them.
In my self-imposed screen-gazed solitude,
I often thought of how much I loved you;
of how I hoped you might just wait out my confused disengagement
like I forgave you for your betrayals which had,
in their times,
hollowed me out emotionally for months on end.

The thing is, you wouldn't have blamed me if I'd left you then.
You would have understood, and let me go,
regardless of the heavy pain in your solar plexus
and the hollow feeling in your heart.

Though it never came to that,
I now have the chance to do for you what you'd have done for me.

I don't blame you for leaving.

I understand,
and regardless of this heavy pain in my solar plexus
and the perceptive hollowing of my heart,
I will watch you as you go,
        I will wave,
I will live with the weight of regret and memory,
and remember what you wrote in a poem once
when we parted ways after your first infidelity.

Sitting in the university library, reading on Moses,
what went thru your head was

"closure feels more like i can go on without you, i’m glad i met you, however an emptiness drenched in self-regret will always remain."

I sit in the sun room, I am shaded for the sun
is only newly risen, low slung, just above the horizon,
behind me, over my shoulder, early morn warm

Slivers of sun rays yellow highlight the wild green lawn,
freshly nourished by torrential rains of the prior eve

The wind gusts are residuals, memoirs of the hurricane
that came for a peripheral visit, your unwanted cousin Earl,
in town for the day, too bad your schedule
is fully booked, but he keeps raining on you,
staying on the phone for so long, that the goodbye,
go away, hang up relief is palpable

The oak trees are top heavy with leaves frothy like a new cappuccino,
the leaves resist the sun slivers, guarding the grass
from browning out, by knocking the rookie rays to and fro,
just for now, just for a few minutes more,
it is advantage trees, for they stand taller in the sky
than the youthful teenage yellow ball

I sit in the sun room buffered from nature's battles external,
by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization,

and my thoughts drift to suicide.

I have sat in the sun room of my mind, unprotected.
with front row seats, first hand witness to a battle unceasing

Such that my investigations, my travails along the boundary line
between internal madness and infernal relief from mental pain
so crippling, is such that you recall begging for cancer or Aids

Such that my investigations, my travails along the sanity boundary
are substantive, modestly put, not inconsiderable

Point your finger at me, demanding like every
needy neurotic moderne, reassurance total,
proof negative in this instance, of relevant expertise!

Tell us you bona fides, what is your knowing in these matters?

Show us the wrist scars, evidential,
prove to us your "hands on" experiential!

True, true, I am without demonstrable proofs
of the first hand, my resume is absent of
razors and pills, poisons and daredevil spills,
guns, knives, utensils purposed for taking lives

Here are my truths, here are my sums

If the numerator is the minutes spent resisting the promised relief
of the East River currents from the crushing loneliness that
consumed my every waking second of every night of my years of despair
                           divided by
a denominator that is my unitary, solitary name,
then my fraction, my remainder, is greater than one,
the one step away from supposed salvation...

Yet, here I am sitting in the sun room buffered from
nature's battles by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization

I am a survivor of mine own World War III,
carnaged battlefields, where white lace curtains,
were not buffers but dividers tween mis en scenes,
variegated veins of colored nightmares, reenactments of
death heroics worthy of Shakespeare

Did I lack for courage?
Was my fear/despair ratio insufficient?

These are questions for which the answers matter only to me,
tho the questions are fair ones, my unsolicited ******,
they are not the ones for which I herein write,
for they no longer have relevance, meaning or validity,
for yours truly

I write poetry by command, by request, good or bad,
this one is a bequest to myself, and also a sidecar for an old friend,
who asked in passing to write what I know of suicide,
unaware that the damage of hurricanes is not always
visible to the naked heart

These hands, that type these words are the resume of a life
resumed,
life line remains scarred, but after an inter-mission, after an inter-diction, an inter-re-invention
in a play where I was an actor who could not speak
but knew every line, I am now the approving audience too...

But I speak now and I say this:

There are natural toxins in us all,
if you wish to understand the whys, the reasons,
of the nearness of taking/giving away what belongs to you,
do your own sums, admit your own truths
query not the lives of others, approach the mirror...

If you want to understand suicide,
no need to phone a friend, ask the expert,
ask yourself, parse the curtains of the
sun room and admit, that you do understand,
that you once swung one leg over the roof,
gauged the currents speed and direction,
went deep sea fishing without rod or reel
and you recall it all too well, for you did the math
and here I am, tho the tug ne'er fully disappears,
here I am, here I am writing to you,
as I sit in the sun room.

Memorial Day, 2011

You asked me how I am doing
and I said “Good”
You asked me to be honest
and I said “I’m fine”
You told me to expand.
I replied,
"I'm not good at all.
And I want that to be simple enough.
I'm not being exaggerative
or selfish
or birthing drama for drama's sake.
It's just that I am here.
Here on silly earth,
And I feel alone at crossroads in my life.
I am under no illusion
of my incredibly blessed
or undeserving existence.
But that's just the problem.
LIFE is starting now.
And for the first time,
I have had to make choices
choices on my own
choices
that
(according to mother)
will shape who I fundamentally
become as a human.
So that's a bit distracting.
‘You need to remember not to let people down.’
‘You should consider how you love someone, not just when to.’
‘You ought to be more assertive or it'll all come crashing down.’
She reminds me of my
uncontrollable imperfection
on a daily basis
Not necessarily through her words
I doubt she wants to inflict this on me.
But the way way she stares at me sometimes
from across the room.
Silently.
Like she’s trying to admire a painting
that secretly
no one quite appreciates
or understands
but everyone seems to find profound meaning in it
so you go along
with the show.
Which I wouldn't have a problem with
if I could wake up refreshed in the
morning.
And not tired
like I am.
All the time.
I’m tired of being fifteen.
Because inside,
I don’t feel fifteen.
My mind turns on fifty year old gears
churning up one hundred year old
philosophies.
But
The age in which I currently must suffer through
is misunderstood
and incorrectly represented.
Teenager is a word parents
shudder to hear.
A word elders instantly accuse.
A word authorities doubt without reasonable basis.
The drum pumping my soul
is in fact a solo ensemble.
But
I am naturally clumped in with the lot
of marching bands
that clash and crash,
stomp and slam their drums
as they parade the flag
of fickle rebellion
into the air they barely know.
Don’t get me wrong,
the stereotypes of my age and time
are drawn up
from some truth,
but one truth shouldn’t result
in one outlook.
You don’t roll dice with
only threes on the faces
or only ones.
So it is hard to watch as
everywhere I go,
titles and labels
are being stuck into me
like toothpicks in a fruit salad.
And first of all,
just because society cuts me up
and breaks me down like a pineapple
you can buy with leftover quarters
doesn’t mean that I’m up for grabs.
And secondly,
No one should be branded
simply because
it is easier to ignore them
than to know them.
Don’t hear this as a “oh she’s a teenage girl” moment
hear this as a “she’s a human and wants to be heard without your filter over her words” moment
So, I’m having a hard time with that.
Not to mention the rest.”

“The rest?” You asked.

“You know,”
I said,
“How I have to decide what school
I am going to commit to
which is slightly like choosing
between your two parents.
You can’t pick one happily
and freely
without knowing what could’ve been
if you lived with dad instead.
It’s tricky to wake up in the morning.
It’s tricky to get out of bed
because I know that sooner than later
I will either be moving
that bed into the basement
or into a dorm
which won’t be on the campus I really desire
because God knows I didn’t
save enough pennies for that.
My whole future is before me.
Almost literally
considering the number of pamphlets stapled
over the dreams I carved so meticulously
out of my ‘mind wood’
with my ‘What do you want to be when you grow up’ knife.
So that’s intimidating.
And all those “it’ll work itself out” speeches
that surround me
don’t make the choices
suddenly blare across the radio
or start blinking from neon signs
telling me what to do
what to chose
what to be.
In the end,
all those “don’t worry about it”
and “you’ll figure it out”
do nothing but put a knot in my gut
that no amount of research
or interviews
or Friday night pig outs
can untie.
Because this stuff,
these moments as I build my foundation
for my single LIFE with little slippery Lego blocks
are not made with cheery hand-outs
or inspiring quotes.
LIFE is formed by me
choosing which Lego brick color
choosing which Lego brick shape
and of course
choosing which people will
help me to construct it.
It’s tricky
It’s messy
It’s loud
and it makes other things
hard to focus on.”

“Other things?”
You said.

“Other things.”
I reply.
“You know,
those books I have to read
those graphs I have to draw
those tests I have to study for
those miles I have to run
those words I have to memorize
those labs I have to finish
those annotations I have to complete
those poems I have to parse.
Just THOSE.
Don’t get me wrong.
I don’t mind school
Unlike the kids who complain
that they are forced to educate themselves.
I have no problem learning.
In fact, I want to
long to.
TEACH ME, WORLD!
TEACH ME HOW TO UNDERSTAND YOU IN EVERY LANGUAGE I CAN!
It’s not the books
or the deadlines.
It’s the people.
Bleh.
The people.
The cowardly childish people
with their smug clothes
and horrendous attitudes
that you can smell just over
the stink of their pomp.
Truthfully,
I feel for them
because they don’t feel for themselves.
and because there is little way to prove to these kids
that they can be them
not doctored them
or decorated them
the “them” they thrive to be
not the “them” they try to be.
So I’m surrounded by people
icky people
whose glares and stares
and whispers like cold ghosts
leave me too feeling torn between
being myself
(whatever that even means)
and being accepted.
I want to be free
to try new things,
but new things are poison here at school
new things are demeaning
because they’re demanding.
So,
I have moments where I say
‘Be you. What does it matter?’
But then when I am alone
at the table
at the only open table
with the last chair
the one that squeaks if you
rock to the left
when I am
listening to the music no one knows
and reading the book no one chose
thinking about the movie even no theater shows
that’s when moments of guilt ridden
loneliness bring me to say
‘Put yourself away for now.
Put in a pin in it.
Come back to what you want
after you’re done being what
society thinks you need.’
Because
it is hard to be loved
by one sided people
it is hard to be loved
when the world wants you to say
what it wants to hear.
Us teenagers think we wear invincibility cloaks
So we never have to see those under the invisibility cloaks
‘Don’t question it!’
seems to be the motto of most I meet here.
Because who wants to learn,
who wants to try
if it makes them question their comfort?
And of course that all just touches the surface
of that other thing.
The thing I don’t want to really talk about.”

You pushed me to tell you.

So I did.
“I’m afraid
of God.
I’m afraid
of Death.
I can’t go off of blind faith
like I did when I was young.
I can’t accept ‘Jesus loves you
this I know’
because this I don’t know.
And no one
Not my parent
Not my mentor
Not even my Bible
can give me enough hope in this regard
to bring me to accept not knowing.
This amount of stress is me
Sits as a damp frog
Pestering me to choose
Croaking up unformed opinions
in the form of tar
that I get trapped in.
How can I believe in something
How can I devote my life to something
How can I pray to someone
that I am not even convinced has cared
for a thousand years?
I want to think God knows my name
that he is above me as
those shiny, divine painting portray.
But they’re lies.
And people expect me to believe
that he is smiling down on me like
a new daddy over a crib.
He isn’t a father to me.
So, I feel lost
and confused
and scared that I’m wrong
and even more terrified that I am right.
I’m scared of
God.
And I’m scared
to die.
I don’t quite think I even know
how to live yet.”

“Oh,”
You said.

“Yeah,”
I whispered.
“I know.”

We both paused.
Remember?
My arms rested
at my sides.
Heavy.
Yours swung across
your chest.
Nervous.

“So you’re doing great then?”
You managed to slide through a smile.
“That’s good to hear.”

Is it my priestly duty
to be denied?
love—time and all else, at all cost!
while he went home alone to watch a movie?

Another victim  
sacrificed
having squandered all my pieces in his game?
Trudging home
along the river
slow, in snow
I parse my losses

At the outskirts of a homeless camp
I pause below a viaduct
hauling passion by a leash
warming hands
avoiding hovel-eyes
Flames flicker on our faces
receiving absolution over embers
of a burning embrace

There trace
in glowing holocaust of skids
in human bleatings and crumblings
our smoke rises— pure   obscure
Appease with *****-blur
the icy, stinging God of winter stars...

G’nights inaudible as blessing

Am I derelict enough to be worthy?
Fallen far enough?
from the porches of prosperity?
to escape it all?
That wedding white
the newborn’s head
that numbing denial of decay?

Am I depraved enough to make it?
to the pages of your tragedy— minus poetry?

But the angel said
“The poetry’s more!”

Than leaving me—beyond you

...in the shambles of my words

A Woman's Reflection on Her Reflection (Valence and Value)

one poem, written by two authors


~~~

Ever the analyst,
A mirror functions as surface to
Parse the fleeting constant
Of youth's beauty.

From genetic gift
Of symmetry and bone,
To technological tampering,
Until the equation is solved,
As experience and character
Models and maps the result.

The answer, a reflection,
Of individual valence and value

(written by S.D., a woman)

~~~

(written by N.L., a man)

unbidden and unannounced, a
"not fully formed poem,
but a simple reflection"
inbound missile arrives inbox,
armed with silent power,
the lethality of the
Holy Unexpected

the man reflects
on her mirror-on-the-wall's
fulsome reply,
parsing the words of a
woman's reflection,
while gazing on her own

every human's momentary glass notation,
but an instance of summation,
a human poem, whose editing,
unceasing

a comma here,
a period inserted,
an eye shadowed, an eyebrow tweezed,
a eye dark circle line added,
to tree-mark time's authorship

all  these
but a person's
excerpted extraction,
notarized,
then auto-erased and revised,
as out of date,  
instantaneously compromised

but,

it is upon  the conceptual,
valence and value,
more that the man reflects perpetual,
less on transitory morphing changes of
exterior mortality

while overlooking her
glassine realization from behind,
he concludes:

every reflection,
no matter how oft the snapshot,
the unfleeting constancy
of the combining of the

princes of principles,
valence and value

that he witnesses,
in the calming pool
of her eyes,
(those borrowed windows into her soul's well,)
so well reflect
her unchanging greater finery,

her character

this reflection,
metamorphosis transformed.
into a planetary permanency poem,
high placed in his the firmament
of their conjoined sky

i loved you, right

a love unreturned,

unrequited

but alas, still

stoked by little miners with

hearts of brass their

iron faces grimacing at the task,

little beads of lots of sweat

dripping down their

taut frowns.

so what i meant to say is that

i love you, right,

and it’s a love that still

burns, bright, enough

to bring the boys home but

let’s be honest

it wouldn’t best the sun, but

****, it’s a terrible light,

it throws everything into a soft relief

where pretty, soft voiced sheep say

pretty, soft voiced things like

‘it’s okay to feel this way’

‘i want you to be happy’

‘she sounds amazing’

and other things that normal people

tell me mean that either

i don’t love you

or i’m moving on.

they don’t understand though,

i mean,

i love you, right,

though all that sheep **** makes it

sound as if

i’m waving you off,

smashing the celebratory champagne on your bow,

waving you off into the distance with a lacy hanky,

joyful tears cascading down my powdered cheekbones,

i’m greedy

maybe even,

needy,

a disgusting word and

even if i make pacts with myself

to the order of

‘he can do so much better’

‘i am damaged goods’

and other associated half truths

i’d be a liar if i said that

i would kick you out of bed

or even rebuke the slightest of

advances, no i’d take my chances

and i cannot bear it, really

i’d touch you and whatever wholeness

whatever someone else would

parse as clean or pure or holy

wouldn’t disintegrate, no

wouldn’t tarnish, no

would most probably just implode

under the combined pressure

of emotionally-mentally-******-in-the-head-doe

(where the **** do you think the miners got all that coal)

so, yes… wait. no?

i love you, right

but just ignore it

enjoy the lights

please remember them

tell your friends and

cherish them until

they are taken by

death, drink, dementia

but i’m sure your mum,

teacher,

or television

long ago informed you that

bright lights are detrimental to vision

so think of your future and

forget now

if you’re tempted by how i look at you

remember how

sunburn seems innocuous

until you see your skin

and sunscreen pretty useless

‘til you learn the sun will win

and the best way to avoid

dainty melanoma

is

to

go

inside

and

lock

your

door

and act like you don’t know her.

Those girls will find out my secret,
Probably sooner than I wish;
If I should die suddenly,
(By then it matters little)
They'll read what became of me.

Pictures that I've kept
With a ribbon round the faded letters
To tie up my regret.
You'll parse them with your sisters,
And discover, I, with my final stroke,
Wrote her name with my last breath.

You'll understand why I kept them long,
You'll read the name of our favorite song;
A verse I wrote, a note to my only love,
And wonder how things went so wrong.

The rule of cause and effect holds true;
For if I'm gone, there's no effect on you;
Nothing can give rise to something,
Your reaction will prove my assumption.
You'll find me in those letters too,
Where I confessed.

cold,

I will my eyes to focus
reprimand my dark surroundings
and the many failing lights that sit
just a few yards away
blurry, blue dots
that jut out from the soil
of my neighbors yard
some decoration, I suppose

wet,

I hear the past, present and future collide with a crash
with a few strong voices
who bargain for nothing more than an insight
into each others inevitability

cold,

light flickers back on behind me
and I could kiss it hello
potent and poignant,
I'm so glad you are breathing
maybe that's a little forward, but it's more than power
I still struggle to focus my sight
maybe my ears, however
quiet still could not fall if it had untied shoes

wet, and so cold it's become dull

the ground is malleable, mud and muck sloshing around my pathway
my feet toss the puddles of winter water up and around my ankles
it soaks into my socks
sends a chill that stalks the length of my spine

wet and cold

I meander through the murk, biding it away
I jump onto the sleek black surface, staving off the frigid pains
and lay my head down to hide from sight

my vision is full of black holes

it's lovely, the rain
but not when its best accompaniment is the long silhouette of the house you'd escaped
who would I tell
a few foggy figures latch onto my regard

cells collapse in on their own

my face grows warm and I feel my features contort
a sad scowl appropriate for the situation at hand
tears roar past the dam I'd crafted
but it was dark, no one would see
I was hiding under nightfall
which might sound cool if I didn't mean I was laying on top of an old car crying at 5 in the morning

reborn starving and unconsoled

I still hear a few voices, then a few footsteps that quicken
a pace, a parse, a prying for more
and then a collective quiet
I stiffen, stifle my woes

the bite and the cry as it corrodes the hull

numb creeps in around my skin
especially my feet, the extent of the cold finally settling in
but I wasn't ready

the bigger the bang, the brighter the star

I have a conversation with myself in my head
and not to come off loony
but there are a few things that shouldn't have been said by either parties involved
if you catch my drift

theory tugs at the strings in my heart

a soft gust of January wind strokes the bare skin of my legs
I wonder
I wonder if I could stop if I were to start
and so I wonder and wonder
but it seems the answer isn't quite so mysterious

paradigms practice their weight in the void

I bet an imaginary amount of some imaginary currency
to myself, of course
that if I wasn't able to before, I definitely won't be able to sleep now

the dance of matter and its taunting toy

I hear my name called, footsteps shuffling, offering their warn
a somewhat concerned voice from beyond the beyond
the front door, I mean
out of sight, I freeze, my mouth stuffed full of cotton
half hoping they'll forget I exist for a few
so I can try to compose myself

with the space around it as it threatens tall

however well I could compose myself at this point, anyway
I know I'll be found
I don't want to speak, I'm not sure if I could
when these things happened, my mouth tended to malfunction as much as my spine
so I'd bite my tongue and stand shrinking
my muscles curling into a shaken stir

saturn sleeps, its uninhabitable crawl

a warm blanket, I don't remember the color
I'm brought inside and laid down
and I avoid the hot remnants of some loud, leering summer
the air is thick with it

its air stings my skin, and I hear a song
  ‍    ‍

Sittin' on the dock of the bay,
Watching the sun slip, Simon-says, slide away,
Cheeks blushing flushing from orange ray-guns,
Drinking blush rosé to oil our eyes
For the subtle story the sky shortly will reveal,
For the subtle story the sky shortly will revel.

Grievous judgement to make,
Thinkin' skills possessed to praise,
When but yesterday I easy confessed,
When at the Blue Canoe (another poem),
I did not.

(The clouds were magnificent. No, I cannot write a poem about the cloud colors. Their shape shifting inexhaustible.  Mine eyes high on their creativity.  I'm just not good enough a poet to tamper with that sky.)

If you courage enough to
Call yourself poet, then
It is audacity, not blood,
Warming your extremities,
So foolishly try, always be prepared to fail.

No impulse. We pledged that tonight, ours,
One hour of sunset over Silver Beach.
Brought the wine, forgot the pillows,
So Abraham & Isaaca went prepared to sacrifice
All feelings in their butts for the greater glory
Of love and one of nature's great poetic challenges..

The conundrum~miracle of every sunset
O'er bay, lake or ocean, is its special,
Only-In-Nature unique way of customizing
Its descent just for you.

No matter where one observes,
No matter where you worship,
Wherever your temple, mosque or church situé,
Tennessee, Rhode Island, the Philippines,
Germany, Colombia, even in the ole U.K.,
(yes, you, know it, yes you)
The very same setting sun we all see,
Sends a magic dazzle gold orange path invitation
To the exact spot you are voyeuring,
One sun, all destinations equal before human.

How can that be?

Trepidation and tremblingly,
The clouds.

She leans on me, a perfect fit,
My back resting against a pylon,
So we see the clouds
With common exactitude,
But it is a quiet time, silence only shared.
Images stored silently within ourselves,
For we see the formation, man, woman,
Precisely and exactly, totally differently.

The clouds.
An armada moving imperial and imperiously
At a stately speed, saying I am awesome, fear me.
The largest cloud bank is an aircraft carrier,
Miles long, painted horizon blue-grey unsurprisingly.

The small white wisps, fast destroyers, stealthy submarines,
Moving fast to protect the mother ship,
Running random to confuse enemy radar and the
Pathetic, limited, human eye.

The colors.
Here I fail willingly, unashamedly.
So many sunsets, so many hearts,
All different, all the same.
Lacking knowledge, I cannot tender,
I cannot offer you tenderness to love
Enough,
The variety of oranges, gold, varietals interspersed
With pinks singeing the cornea,
And mock myself for all my meager brain yields is
Good Humor creamsicle...a delicious irony

You who write after midnight
Of razor blades, pills and shotguns,
And not marked two decades even, on this planet,
You want hard,
Write a poem about a sunset in ways never done before.

You, who are wracked with despair
Speak to the man with no job for months
And mouths to feed and a life insurance policy.
Speak to me.

I want to tell you to get over yourself,
But you reject that old saw.
Ok.
Get onto to yourself.

I have walked the hallways of deep despair,
Heard the bells ring between periods that signal only the next
Hell,
And to this day, still do,
But still I try to write external of sunsets and greater glories.

How many lives depend on you? Are you proud of your weakness?
Do you hate me yet for acknowledging out loud,
We are both cowards?

I have five mouths to feed,
Before I parse a morsel.
One less than two times three,
What do you have but to
Grow yourself?

Yeah coward.
Too yellow to write about a
Yellow sunset, cause that is hard in a way incomprehensible
Until tried.
Or the passing of your mother who could not speak clearly
But you, thru her eyes knew that she had poems to yet recite.
Run away like I did ashamed with frustrated failure.
Why should I coddle, give you easy soft?
.
If you come here to share, well and good.
If you come here to find comfort, good.
So gaze upon these words and feel
The love that only experience has earned.

What do you know of heartbreak?
Imprisoned for decades in a loveless life,
I walked by the water nightly, so tempted
To stay, to not pass by but pass on,
Yes, the same waters where I CinemaScoped
Yesterday's sunset, and walked away.

You can read about it if you look,
Look me up, look here, the story is in my poems, but always,
Look up!

So do something hard, something external.
Fail but love yourself more for just having tried.
Then try something else.

The saddest poem ever wrote
Was not yours, where you titillate with daring words
Razors, pills etc.,
The saddest poem ever writ
Was this one, a meager vanity to capture a
Sunset that keeps trying every day to
Surpass
Supersede
Its previous glorious failure,
Like we should too.
Keep trying

Now, I shall rest,
For I know that soon I shall see, feel, think,
Of something new that will make me eager to
Write a new poem.


August 3~5, 2013
Written and posted here one year ago today. Strangely, it fits my mood exactly, again, today, 2014. Edited for clarity here and there...

*If you courage enough to
Call yourself poet, then
It is audacity, not blood,
Warming your extremities,
So foolishly try, always be prepared to fail.

I remember:

you, in black lace ******* and
little else, crushed close
by gravity,
weak winter afternoon sunlight
streaming in and out of your car,
HD Netflix in your backseat.
my fingers drumming insistently
upon your collar bone,
my mouth pressed against your shoulder
as I sing so softly in your ear,
a concert for one.
((only you're invited))
your hair all over your bare
back and black
lace wedged up tight against your
muscle. your lips are
cold against my skin and our feet
are ******* freezing and the heater is
all the way up but not nearly enough.
I let my fingers parse through your
vertebrae, Dr. Lecter planning
a meal; slice here,
cleave there, remove viscera, season and
cook: magnifique.
time and history are
mercury in my clenched fist;
my nails are biting into my skin, and
liquid silver moments gone by are
flowing freely from my slackened grip.

What I Mean When I Say Chinook Salmon

By Geffrey Davis

My father held the unspoken version of this story
along the bridge of his shoulders: This is how
we face and cast to the river — at angles.
This is how we court uncertainty. Here, he taught
patience before violence — to hold, and then
to strike. My fingers carry the stiff

memory of knots we tied to keep a 40-lb. King
from panicking into the deep current
of the stream. Back home, kneeling
at the edge of the tub with our kills, he showed
the way to fillet a King: slice into the soft
alabaster of the pectoral, study the pink-rose notes

from the Pacific, parse waste and bone from flesh. Then,
half asleep, he’d put us to bed, sometimes with kisses.

The paper drips with red blood from my soul
There’s no ink left in my pen
The clock has used up all its hours
The music of the spheres has ended.

I set out to build a village in a place
Not hard to find without a map
Proudly I used local lumber
Made sure the walls were square and true.

Sadly no one wants to live there
No one stops to hear my song
(Just one clear voice and not an opera )
People look and listen briefly then move on
     ≈
Wandering through the others’ harvests
I see words stacked in random order
Piled like fancy autumn haystacks
Held in place with azure ribbons

Mumbled voices raised in solos
Whose words I cannot parse or learn
Where verses run from one to twenty
And the applause is deafening

What seems real is evanescent
Fleeting as the winking of an owl
Impossible to braid with just two strands
And painted over with graffiti.
   ≈
How am I to fly when it appears
That I can barely walk and yet
I thought that I knew how to dance.
I guess I never found the beat.

I can’t but keep on building sturdy
Little one theme dwellings
It’s the only thing I know
And I’ll live there all by myself

And hope a visitor or two
Will stop by now and then
To say hello and how are you
And share a cup of my brand’s tea.
ljm

parse and praise the phrase,
checkerboard fraction,
appréhendé immédiatement,
a poem title!
put aside to marinate,
stamped "will not expire,"
doing the research legwork,
**** it is a real thing!

toujours,
where the best words and titles come from,
if one listens well
romantic notions swell the chest,
all the love affairs over so many decades,
all checkerboard games
with Kings a-crowning and Queens a-moaning,
poet, no way, never planned ahead,
always lost by a fractious split,
more than a fractional loss,
losing
most triumphantly!

each lover took and left a fraction behind,
a numerator, a denominator, never a whole number,
for then there would be no poetry need

you want,
have need for
une idée fixe
whom I should be, but i could be a
multiple choice answer
a three scoop ice cream treat,
or perhaps, a mix of forty favorered flavors
a new one,
chaque coup,
why not?

our first disagreement
both of us wish to nominate the other to be the nominator

the denominator is a definition of what is the whole
because i am gracious,
foolish and less than whole
already
I concede cause I am in already in retreat,
conceding comes supernaturally nowadays,
so move me forward on the checkerboard
and triple jump me, and any way
I am pas de nom
we close today with an American
yay...

Poor sailors and poor students parse the past
Between the paper covers of poor Penguins
Poor crumbling pages and crumbling civilizations
Held together with rubber bands and Scotch tape

And when in middle age The City of God
At last succumbs to the barbarians of time
A fresh one is built up in Oxford blue
By Vivian Ridler, who saved for us the words

And yet - the arguments of several Romes
Were somehow fresher at $3.75

Take your Seven Deadly Sins,
And butcher them with punctuation.

Capitalize on floods, famines and fires.

Express sickness, war and homelessness.

Parse politics.

Syllabicate and spell out for all to read
The horror of homelessness and apathy.

There.
Nothing's too real we can't fictionalize... marginalize,
Again, and again, and again.

I would write a poem
That would change your world.
But, first you have to want
Your world to be changed.
I would write you a poem
That would find you true love
But that would change your world
And the result would be the same.

I’d write a rhymed sonnet
Worthy of Will Shakespeare
Talking about the strength
That love can give to you.
I could parse it in pentameter
And lilting phrases of pictographia
If I thought that word work
And if I thought that would do.

I’d speak of clearing your mind
And setting your spirit inner free
To caress your soul into harmony
Both within you and without you.
I’d urge you to practice yoga
And other exotic disciplines
If that would help you understand
What wonders your mind can do.

But in that poem, I would need
To practice some kind of magic
To make you set your toys aside
And focus on what is important.
I would need to show clearly
In the simplest of phrases,
That living life honestly can charm
If you remove all that is discordant.

I would write you such a poem
That repeating it out loud would
Let you be happy with being you
And let you give up being proud
Or lazy or arrogant or angry
And clear your horizons away
Of any roadblocks or envy
And remove every dark cloud.

i.

the bones of your face
are long and defined.
i parse you
into geometry:
the firm lean lines of your
nose, your jaw
as a child's drawing,
as a cubist's dream.

ii.

you linger in my mind.
the way your hands
peel apart a question
as an artichoke falls open
barbed layer by layer until
you bare its redolent heart
which is also the answer.
Yes.

iii.

lulling, your words are calm
drops falling into the ocean
of our mutual silence. i feel
only contentment, only
contentment.

i.

a message from a boy i don’t know
that begins with, “i’m J’s cousin, i’m trying to locate her, can you....”
i don’t know how to deal with those
who promise death,
so i don’t finish reading it,
bile mixed with guilt building in my throat.

last night J told me her body was falling apart.
i didn’t know how to respond.
i know bodies without bones too well
but i don’t know how to talk about them.
i don’t know how to parse away
the skin from the bone of a pig
when i’m standing in the middle of a cold barn,
more naked than i was when i was born.

ii.

i am naked with boys who i don’t know,
but who fold me in half anyway, then fold me apart,
then spit me out like i am
the bitter taste of a dead dog.

iii.

keeseville, ny is upstate is a place
for stained dresses & burnt milk & spoiled prayers,
where i spent every summer in a body
made for somebody smaller.

i’m realizing now that i’m not small,
everyday i’m the opposite of small,
but these boys still look at me
with frightening scrutiny like i’m a goat who belongs in a bed
& if i’m not pet, not fed, i will give out.

iv.

sun hangs across the sky
like blood across my underwear.
yours or mine?
from which part of the body?

Pusillanimous polecats
Practicing perfidy
Plan parties and
Parse probabilities proudly
Partially putting past
The paltry populace
Pornographic postulations
And potboilers
Pointing poisonous
Proclamations publically
Pitting proper people
To pathetic programs
Promising the penurious
More poverty.
Often posthumously.

Pitiful people plead
Putting need over posture
Putting parents out to pasture
Promising, but passing on
Proper placement of
Propriety and parity
Planting nothing for posterity,
Prizing prosperity
Politicizing with polemics
Post-mortems on politeness
Placing pandering
Higher in practice
By perpetrating
Practical party politics.

Facebook's faces, sometimes as strong as words on the wall,
or in Xanga's blogs, or in now-old email messages,
serve as evocateurs
that summon more than one could think was stored
in tangled strands beneath the cortex.

That vault, in fact, proves not to be protected space
or cerecloth meant to hold or hide some hallowed hopes
that I had thought were now impervious,
reserved apart from further, subtle, deeper text,
not subject here to parse or vivisect.

From vantage point of age, perchance
one sees that those faces smiling over progeny,
or cyber-lighted eyes peering out in brightness,
mask sober-tinged realities
expressed ever so casually in the orderly syntax
displayed on my wall or my blog or my mail.

(sonnet #MMMMMCCCLXXVII)


I'm not asleep.  But wakened, tiptoe thence
Through every minute like to dare exhale
Is not allowed, as if to breathe would hail
The end of visions roused to caper whence
No concrete line shall say, whileas suspense
Knows Janry shows our breath in sheer betrayl
As snow feels that chinook's touch, waxing pale
Though I still walk upon its face tward sense.
And hear a distant blue jay's cry bestir
Young Saturday's thin silence like he knew
What I maunt parse out 'til what aye? as twere.
Oh yes, the sparrows' playful calls heard too
Whilst carving out the eggs, and thought in poor
Excuse I'll be half good, erm, just for you.

09Jan16b

We live in a world
that is at least
half darkness.
So shouldn't half of our poems
be dark?
Or perhaps half of every poem?

Or half of that?

How do we parse the darkness
of this world -
of our lives -
and still live?

How do we tip-toe on the edge
of eternity
the grave
And smile?

You figure it out.
It's a mystery.

(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 3, 2016)

O Jackie O,
I never once loved you so.
So skeletal in voice and dress,
Too stiff and ironically glamourless.

But I wonder today if you might
Have guidance to state on this fight
Between burlesque yacht-yellers
And gold-plated chief fellers.

Just yesterday my girl endorsed my girl*
Throwing another flag into the whorl.
Would endorsing be a thing you would do
Like so many diplomatic kangaroo?

How can we parse your demure brevities
As one of the pseudo celebrities?
Is it all just the new and the old
Auctioning the righteous and the sold?

Is it all just the shiny
For the brute and the whiny?
The answer lies not in your pillbox hats
Or from infinitely sermonizing acrobats.

A gun is always cocked at the ballot gate
To defend abstractions under the breastplate.
O bookish frau, the parade quickly becomes fraught,
Kennedus patiens, covered in blood and covered in thought.

I once read that
there is a wrinkle in time and
ever since I've sought to
parse out the clock's seconds and
feel every whisper of wind on
my skin and
sneak glances at sunrises through
blinds and
taste snowflakes and rainstorms and
wrinkle my nose at
good and bad smells in
Time's wrinkle and
gaze at moonlight twinkle.

to the tune of guitars, mandolins,
bagpipes, cheap coke & hairspray
Freighters crest the punk-washed waves
the sun shines out
unaware and uncaring
Our tiny animal foibles
behemoth sub-audible
military choppers
chop the air
The air, no offense, much better
on it's own
sans commentary or guitar-fueled breaks
the promise of returning surf
silent acceptance by rock and sand
Again and again, we return
and it returns to greet anew the day
again the sun and
more importantly, the moon

And here, right here I am
phone calls and photographs be ******
to live, to breathe, and be free
this is the gift we share
the covenant we acquiesce to
life's contract:
Be here now
and then be gone
Good work done
and done again

to acknowledge human order
to rever and accept
to create, not destroy
despite what might have come before
or will come again after
Be ****** or choose not to
This is our secret
our secret treasure
kept right here
within earshot of the bored gods
spread out like bleached wood
our foibles, our suspicions,
our struggles
our gallant moments
in sunlight or in shade
we persevere and
look **** good doing it

Oh, the momentary glory
The ecstasy of our
reciting invincibility to one another
like religion or science
we accept it and trust it
and, therefore, it is true
if only for a moment

the laughter subsides
and what does it leave us?
the exhalation of waves
on shores unnamed

Things we hold so close, so near
clenched with inescapable fear
that this might suddenly end
lights out, curtain down
a dejected sigh, a knowing frown

This great place, this great land
Oh, the metal in my days
and in my hands
There was a time when
I would worry, I would fret
and wonder at what
each gesture meant
But now so much more I know
of the secret songs of our beloved coast

to think that somehow
we can digest all this
parse everything that befalls
such a joke, it is to laugh
in the shade of the cove
far from the mast
It is no joke, but more
to laugh, not to cry,
nor cower back

OOF! WHOO!
sunning & living & loving
just so
It is our way and all that we know
amid handclaps & footfalls
among cliff faces & sheer falls
we shine so solitary
& bright among the world
and its fashions

The thrill of standing so tall
against inhuman scale
its momentary humor
our highlights & travails

So much meat to manipulate
against surf & sail
from the privilege of the cove
friendship against the rocks
winds and darkness
Huddle, you beloved masses, huddle

The schooners schooning
the bay accepting
lucky our lives absorbing
the glory, yes
the glory, I said it
THE GLORY
of living today
like a grown-up
with a robot with its
hand up

Oh, the exertion
of simply being human!
Constructs of strobe lights
& nonesuch!
We claw, we dance,
we construct the armature
of the ridiculous!
We strive, we fall, we climb
imagined walls
What excellent detritus!

And now the chill descends
the shade the cove knows
only as a friend

I sit alone
construct these lines
wishing for lost loves
amid shade, sand & brine
sunken mermaids in my mind

I love the threat
they present
For me, ironically,
it's all in words
I share the secrets
that the tide keeps
in surf & loam

I look at technology
& I look away
that's how I know
I'm human
how I know
I'm not completely lost
not completely
without animal

All we can hope for
a pumpkin at sunset
& not being pathetic
with people that love us

Yes, it's a lot
good weather and foul
beacon of human remembrance
It's all we can ask for & should

(Oh, Dan Langton
how much you've simply
taught me
thru words, sure
but just as much through
sly looks & laughs

Portland you're all
houses and woods
and there's always ****
to do: so tender
to women "Beat me!
Oh Bob, beat me!")

& Motorhead prevails
on the Golden Gate coast
away from the campground
our shared & secret cove

I like to spend my summertime
Making cheerful summer rhymes
I take a clever word and double it.
Then, that’s the start of a couplet.
I do my best at language bending
Looking for cohesive endings
For every line that crosses my mind.
That is why works the best, I find.
I just roll right on with the beat
I depend the result will be sweet.
I find if I think about it too hard
I will miss the rhythm by a yard.

My hope is the spoken word
Will make you feel what you heard
As if it were a voice in your head
That speaks for you in its stead
And moves to you to higher plane;
Makes you feel a bit more sane.
I have been rescued just that way
By understanding words that say
The things my heart truly needed
When my own voice never heeded.
I now trust that loving behavior
I know words can be a savior.

I like to parse in cold times too.
It’s such a warming thing to do
And I get to place myself inside;
I grant myself permission to hide
In my room where it’s warm
And poeticize any awful storms
Turning sentence parts to sounds
And let the harmonics surround
My head that thinks in four-four time
Writing every season’s cozy rhymes.
Then, in hopes I help more than myself
I send the poems off to everyone else.