"telescopes" poems
it's 3:23 in the morning
and I'm awake
because my great great grandchildren
won't let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?
surely you did something
when the seasons started failing?
as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?
did you fill the streets with protest
when democracy was stolen?
what did you do
once
you
knew?
I'm riding home on the Colma train
I've got the voice of the milky way in my dreams
I have teams of scientists
feeding me data daily
and pleading I immediately
turn it into poetry
I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech
I am the desirous earth
equidistant to the underworld
and the flesh of the stars
I am everything already lost
the moment the universe turns transparent
and all the light shoots through the cosmos
I use words to instigate silence
I'm a hieroglyphic stairway
in a buried Mayan city
suddenly exposed by a hurricane
a satellite circling earth
finding dinosaur bones
in the Gobi desert
I am telescopes that see back in time
I am the precession of the equinoxes,
the magnetism of the spiraling sea
I'm riding home on the Colma train
with the voice of the milky way in my dreams
I am myths where violets blossom from blood
like dying and rising gods
I'm the boundary of time
soul encountering soul
and tongues of fire
it's 3:23 in the morning
and I can't sleep
because my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the earth was unraveling?
I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech
©2003
Aug 25, 2015
Aug 25, 2015 at 6:51 PM UTC
let it not be confused
let no one else's name
ring throughout these sentences
let this be a hatchet
let me put this to rest
this is not a test
i don't want to think
about shipwrecks anymore
i am tired of folding apologies
into origami birds
and placing them
at the headstones to your tantrums
this is not is not geology class
these are promises
written on razorblades
*& if you are getting choked up
then maybe you should be*
maybe we should be buried
with our telescopes face down
my mouth is full of sorry
all for being honest
we are falling out of orbit
we are burning bystanders
so cast away your callous condolences
because no one is clapping
in this waist deep water
this is not a baptism
so do not tell strangers
that this was a chance to drown
any differently
i am not a catalogue
of constellations you cannot name
this is not mythology
so stop believing your horoscope
i am not a wishing well
i am just a wall for you
to paint post nuclear fallout & antonyms for catharsis on
we destroy the things
that are not ours-
the wanton ways
we embody wrecking *****
and then cry over the rubble
this is not a heap or a mosaic
this is leaping
off a thousand story building
with no one to catch you
at the bottom & maybe
that's why some quiet moments
are so fragile, maybe that's why butterflies have mimicry
your words are black powder
and poetry is your musketry
i guess that makes me your blindfold
Apr 29, 2014
Apr 29, 2014 at 11:21 PM UTC
i've moved past my belief
in the Christian trinity...
for me...
the meditation stands
on the pivot of
the following translation
the hexagon,
start of david -
which translates
as the Holy Ghost -
which denotes
a congregation...
the pentagon?
of the befitting analogy
to the five senses...
the "son of man" -
or simply...
the myopia of man
having to excavate
the sixth sense
using telescopes,
microscopes, the like...
and, finally?
on a hand of five extensions,
there are four...
the square...
Y H
⠁⠑ read clockwise
like English traffic
H W on a roundabout.
which? denotes the father...
if the Hebrews "think" they
can hide their vowels?
the Latin answer is...
to interpolate Braille into
their language...
and Emperor Nero would have
appreciated it...
whether with, or without
the Byzantine propaganda machinery
of the nevus testamentum...
and it wasn't a propagandist
piece?
how much longer did the eastern
Empire, outlive the Western
empire, when the onslaught
by the Ottoman's reached
Constantinople?!
the Greek were craving
a cultural revival!
they believed the Romans
to have origins in Troy!
they plaid the weakest cultural
card of Judaism,
revamping it into Christianity...
hell... that's what i believe...
and i'm not about to meet
a Jehovah's Witness propagandist,
or some aged Pakistani
citing the Quran on a park
bench...
or some Scientologist
on Oxford St. with his wacky
machine...
or some pseudo Hare Krishna
monk with a book about
some guru, pushing it like
marijuana...
to change my mind on what
i'm digesting!
plus?
⠽ ⠓
Æ ( read anti-clockwise)
⠓ ⠺
fits in perfectly into the Adam
and Eve narrative -
as with all mythology -
given the extent of time...
nuance, metaphor...
abbreviation...
ars poetica!
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 8:32 PM UTC
433
Knows how to forget!
But could It teach it?
Easiest of Arts, they say
When one learn how
Dull Hearts have died
In the Acquisition
Sacrificed for Science
Is common, though, now—
I went to School
But was not wiser
Globe did not teach it
Nor Logarithm Show
“How to forget”!
Say—some—Philosopher!
Ah, to be erudite
Enough to know!
Is it in a Book?
So, I could buy it—
Is it like a Planet?
Telescopes would know—
If it be invention
It must have a Patent.
Rabbi of the Wise Book
Don’t you know?
4.6k
the long day
has given itself into evening
she and i lay in eachother's arms
beneath the traces of stars
watching the lights of passing ships in the sea
listen to the waves rock our skiff
taste the salt air in our every sense
and slowly the rest of the worlds fades from view
to just us
as our soft talking drifts through the hours
she caresses my arm and laughs
i breath her hair and all the scents of her womanhood
and i feel like i could break with all the love i feel inside of me for her
like a window to all the hopes and dreams i ever had
telescopes into one moment
any moment she and her hippie girlfriends are gonna
roll in with sandwich's and green tea
for the hungry masses
and smiling they will pass the time talking
and laughin with young voices
and my neighbor catches them in watercolor
a bright flowing device and masterpiece
his old fingers dart over the canvas
and you can feel the sunlight in his images
you can hear the sweet laughter
we wander long the back street
with the open air market
they are callin out in happy voices
in the strong trade winds
and don't cha know that its so easy to forget all your troubles
and leave the whole world behind
here in the ocean breeze
here under a tropical moon
they all end up sleeping in a pile on the bed
i slept there too
one hippie chick is living on a carnival ride with lifetime
supply of cotton candy
a couple of hippie chicks
is nothing short of
well....everything you could have ever wanted
rolled up on your bed a tangle of dreadlocks arms and legs
Sep 28, 2013
Sep 28, 2013 at 4:41 PM UTC
if you look up, you will see
the bright-eyed and
the wide-mouthed—
the interesting, the casual, the adored
glistening in the warm night
peered at through microscopes and
telescopes and stethoscopes
far and far away
we are so desperate to be close
close and close and
close enough to see the blemishes
the scarring and the peeling
effaced by obvious and biased inner-commentary
they’re just not as red or sore as mine
perhaps they were formed under
a different kind of sun
what does the unfamiliar heart say?
does it sound at all like mine?
will i ever escape the sloppy grasp of dullness?
will the world swallow me whole?
if i count the days on both hands
on toes, on eyelashes—
if i only eat green things and
read tattered books and
pretend that i don’t mind—will i ever
break the mirror?
will i find seven years of good luck
between the jagged edges?
to exist as a reflection
is to not exist at all
there are lonely, dark purple heavens
waiting for you to sever your longing gaze
to stop lying to yourself
to hop onto the back of the cow
and begin living somewhere beyond the moon—
to realize, with closed eyes
you belong to the sky
Aug 28, 2018
Aug 28, 2018 at 4:36 PM UTC
you know what I think,
it ain't about doing things your way. See i got this part of my being, stuck in my gut, hole in my heart feeling, that you want less than that.
That I'll be entertained by your muscles of ******* or silent when i watch from dreams and...
forget it.
Let me turn the other way, watch babylon pray, its just another day.
People so small we make telescopes large and look for our creator, but see its apart of me.
I think, when i look at trees they look like faces, the ocean's breath awakens things. I forgot long ago.
And atoms are just empty spaces, so what do you think holds it all?
Nothing? or are we just nothing...
Oh but let me tell you I feel today! Like Artemis hunting her prey, tell me, is it nothing or am I a cosmic puppet? Blast it, I loose myself in the meaning;
Oh right, you don't-know-me.
and it is a veil that separates our fates, to clouds that wait, for my soul.
Or a stranger that you'll never know.
Oct 30, 2012
Oct 30, 2012 at 4:12 PM UTC
the barker in charge
is sniffing markers
& the dog's the one
in the shock collar.
good god.
I'll come back
tomorrow.
galapagos, I'm sorry.
rocketship jalopy
wrote a handbook on
banana boat cutthroat
reconnaissance exotica,
abominable
beast of tropic atrophy
broke folk casualty engulfed
in telescopes & TV shows
being monitored thru a monocle
the theatrical apathy & topical misanthropy
can anybody understand me?
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 8:47 PM UTC
JOY ... weaving two violet petals for a coat lapel ... painting on a slab of night sky a Christ face ... slipping new brass keys into rusty iron locks and shouldering till at last the door gives and we are in a new room ... forever and ever violet petals, slabs, the Christ face, brass keys and new rooms.
are we near or far?... is there anything else?... who comes back?... and why does love ask nothing and give all? and why is love rare as a tailed comet shaking guesses out of men at telescopes ten feet long? why does the mystery sit with its chin on the lean forearm of women in gray eyes and women in hazel eyes?
are any of these less proud, less important, than a cross-examining lawyer? are any of these less perfect than the front page of a morning newspaper?
the answers are not computed and attested in the back of an arithmetic for the verifications of the lazy
there is no authority in the phone book for us to call and ask the why, the wherefore, and the howbeit it's ... a riddle ... by God.
3.9k
I love you
like an eternally expanding universe
seen with the clarity
of a thousand Hubble telescopes
your swirling galaxies
artful nebula
tranquil skies
your solid core
I love you
in molten tongues
calling from the void
two nuclear souls
colliding
every atom undone
fused together
to make one
I love you
until the thread is cut
my free-falling light
so high on your atmosphere
reshaped by your gravity
a meteorite wish
sweet ashes
to your dust
Jun 30, 2016
Jun 30, 2016 at 10:25 AM UTC
your eyes hot like a bullet
mine engulfed by the equinox &
the silences I walked away from
we are two or more
two people who shout at each other letters
that have never touched any alphabet
who throw beautiful ideas to be caught by twilight
the hour is always unknown
as if we watch each other's destiny
what comes next only the oracle of Delphi knows
or the roots of entropy maybe
I keep some thoughts in the straitjacket
we guard bridges, ancient castles in the sky
we guard the world not to turn into a casket without music
who invented this question mark
that we owe each other happiness
I wonder if the trees have unspoken meanings
do they turn overnight into telescopes to quest
the loneliness of stars, as we do
I might turn into a shadow
blinded by darkness
we draw uncanny shapes,
everything a circle can endure
with our mouths full of pebbles
Feb 17, 2023
Feb 17, 2023 at 9:45 AM UTC
In that moment I was in my chair yet out of my body
somewhere in the sky’s gentle hair
in strands thick and stretching out past Neptune
I was gone
I was made of flesh yet not at all
my pores had pride pouring out
I sneezed out envy, coughed up anxiety
sadness left with a tear
anger was brushed off my beard
happiness followed the next breath away
and I was left with a soul in the shape of a poem
so it looked like…?
Nothing I could explain but I remained in a place of spiritual terrain
had telescopes where eyes should have been
I made my heart rise and the sun beat
I took a step into a step-less reason
stayed afloat for the next eight seasons
and came back slowly
descending into a cadaver that took its veins for granted
and resurrected a black body that was made as a result of gods needing a hobby
I was meditating.
And the world above awaits you too
if you seek it.
Apr 19, 2019
Apr 19, 2019 at 4:53 PM UTC
stargazing and telescopes, i don't need those
i need only to look at you
for in your eyes
the whole universe resides
Oct 25, 2015
Oct 25, 2015 at 11:20 AM UTC
Others promised
to fill your eyes
with stars. Only stars.
But I will populate
your mind with galaxies,
complete the space
with swirling clouds
of asteroids and
black holes to swallow
your sadness. After all,
stars are obviously bright
and beautiful, but alone.
I will help to discover
somewhere within yourself
the need to create
constellations of us,
where our myths
and morals intertwine.
You and I and our
moments, syzygy.
Gravity only exists,
so we can fall together
but still weightless
to see that our mass
doesn’t affect our matter.
How stars collapse
under their own weight,
fading out, is so unlike
the way we expand
amongst the cosmos,
heavenly bodies of ours
joining the rest in the halo,
interstellar where I will
cascade over you, a pulsar
radiating waves of energy.
These shockwaves form
a singularity of us,
with no time or direction
but we know what we are;
a meteor shower for those
still simply Earth bound.
Gazing into the sun, they
promised stars, blinded.
Blinding, our explosion
of formation from nothing.
Let there be planets
where beings flourish
and evolve, and I will
gift you their moons,
the craters filled with
dust of my words hidden
where no winds can
ever disturb them.
They promised you
stars, so you can become
a satellite and orbit
and worship their light.
I will give myself,
a supernova, and you
will learn to craft galaxies
so I can explore them
within you, and revel at
the beauty of the unknown.
Our universe won’t fit
in their telescopes.
V. K.
Jul 16, 2015
Jul 16, 2015 at 3:27 AM UTC
got so drunk at their little, ahem, initiation ceremony: drank a bottle of whiskey when i heard we were going clubbing wearing lycra shorts... the man with the biggest bulge and the biggest stick... never understood male group psychology... or any group psychology for that matter... it isn't exactly a throng of noblemen following Henry VIII.
i joined the lacrosse university team
for a bit,
left it when the time came to buy the
equipment - i didn't think getting
smacked by the defenders' longer sticks
was worth it, to be a striker with the shortest
stick - too physical - i thought i'd seek
some other physicality,
got stuck-up on rock climbing, and mountaineering
for a while, nothing serious,
a bit of easy bouldering on the edinbrugh crag,
the one lining the skyline at holyrood park,
the salisbury crag, just west of arthur's seat -
i'm not going to lie about clinging off the
matterhorn or something -
but i did an expedition with the mountaineering
club near Ben Nevis once...
Glen Coe / Coire nan Lochan...
and i figured, with all this talk of light pollution,
well, "pollution", to think that a bunch of
street lamps can blind away the stars of what
former poets spoke of: about the illumination
of the heavens for the blind eye to see...
we camped outside one bothy (basic shelter)
set off fireworks, drank whiskey, played music,
burnt a fire in the bothy...
but to be honest... i was not amused by this whole
theory of light pollution...
i looked up at the sky, and the number of stars
was no greater than the number seen in a bright
lit city... i know they say all those telescopes
amplify the chance of peering into the heavens
at night and see more stars...
but why cite light pollution, when, in a remote
highland hideout the number of stars didn't
increase in number... i've heard a girl from
australia cite that, in the outback she said
more stars could be seen... even without a telescope...
so the scottish highlands are unlike the australian
outback? is it just me... or is it simply ********
this whole light pollution argument?
it was dark out there like in an **** after black coffee
and charcoal tablets.
Apr 8, 2016
Apr 8, 2016 at 6:45 PM UTC
sometimes i wish we could all realize how **** insignificant we are.
we have ancient star-matter in our bones, our veins, but
you will never be your zodiac, ruling the sky— cancer, pisces –
i'll never be antares, or even the very sun we revolve around
but still, aren't we marvelous;
with our star-bones, and their burning marrow cores,
with these nebula-veins, spanning the space of
the universe of our bodies.
aren't we marvelous, with our eyes full of galaxies
that nasa would **** to see through their telescopes.
do me a favour, you starchild,
leave a supernova of a legacy
that will burn bright for all to see
for eons to come.
Jan 23, 2013
Jan 23, 2013 at 7:54 PM UTC
Your eyes aren’t eyes.
They’re bees.
I can find no cure for their sting.
Your eyes aren't eyes
They're telescopes
The deepest layer of my heart I cannot hide
Your eyes aren't eyes
They're knives
I cry when it pierces my heart open
Your eyes aren't eyes
They are bows and arrows
I can be an archer's fan in archery sport
Your eyes aren't eyes
They're home
I can see how wonderful my life in there
Your eyes aren't eyes
They are magic potion
I melt I die upon a gaze of your eyes..
Jun 4, 2013
Jun 4, 2013 at 12:41 PM UTC
Above our Earth so high
The Hubble telescope now hangs
Beyond our vault-like sky:
An all embracing eye;
Now showing us the universe
In all her glory.
Those swirling galaxies give way to seemingly endless
Tracts of quasars, dust and gas.
Through Hubble we look back through time,
At remnants of the Big Bang:
The Birth, they tell us, of Creation,
That might be repeated,
Over and over again.
Yet, before this satellite was launched,
Or telescopes invented,
Just what did humans know?
What did the Aztecs know of England,
Or fourteenth century English folk know of America?
As technological advances have
Been swift, so our state of ignorance
Has been revealed for all to see.
For no-one knows The Purpose of Life.
Why?
Oh Why!
Do We Live
To Die
Why?
For we will Die
Not Knowing Why.
Ask Christ they say,
He’ll show The Way.
Ask God and He will too.
Ask Allah, Buddha,
Anyone you like;
And Me, I’ll tell you just to Hope,
For Love will see us through.
Jan 22, 2011
Jan 22, 2011 at 5:17 AM UTC
Summer sky nebulae
magenta blue kaleidoscope
interstellar clouds through telescopes
Jun 23, 2012
Jun 23, 2012 at 9:41 AM UTC
a salutation, a benediction, a good wish
yet one so troubling, not from a lacking,
of sincerity
but from opacity
opacity~ the quality or state of a body that makes it impervious to the rays of light; the condition of lacking transparency or translucence; opaqueness
"Because space is a vacuum,
these good wish waves
can travel unimpeded and at
a constant speed through empty space,
eventually interacting with objects like
planets and telescopes upon arrival"
but I am not a vacuum, a void, and
do not exist within one,
here in my surroundings,
is much interface interference,
the light you send, has
bounced around endlessly
forever, till it may have hit
its intended target,
me
within, without,
and surely has picked up
some tagalong
amoeba, bacteria,
outside contradictories
that may have changed its very nature,
its purity disturbed,
"Pure light" contains a single wavelength or frequency
and cannot be broken down into other colors
but my confusion is indeed a spectrum of Joseph's many colors,
clashing and thrashing with each other,
cohering but not of necessity,
cohering, this a metaphor,
you so lightly send my way,
let us redirect its warm sensibility sensitivity,
let us take an /our inner glow; diffuse
if one cannot send light across the cosmos,
maybe across the Interpet, but just verbally,
send to me
please, absolutely,
tagged "for immediate delivery"
and I will store
all of it,
in my glass jar,
next to my heart,
and just
glow from within
to the with out
Sep 30, 2025
Sep 30, 2025 at 5:04 PM UTC
I am bored, but the view
of the city at night
is beautiful, still
too hot to sleep or count
the skyscrapers, the stacks
of illuminated windows
My hand waves goodnight
Would anyone be looking at me?
I squint my eyes
to peeping telescopes
then I cast them down again
to read a little, insights
I already had, but can not rhyme
right now, with the world
that keeps me awake
If only I could sleep, dream
of light towers in the desert
without being there myself
Nov 30, 2018
Nov 30, 2018 at 3:38 AM UTC
you are a fractal
in a sea of branches
you are the air between
the dust that spirals in the sun streams
the decimal point in the equation
the dividing line between oblivion and infinity
you are a loose end
fraying
made of left over dry skin
you are the chemical
you poison my drinking water
you are
the secret ingredient
the last place they'd ever look
you are
the dark matter
the imaginary number I can't wrap my head around
you cure my melancholy
we are
alveoli
we breathe fire
seen through telescopes
we believe we are alone
we'll believe anything they tell us
they won't love you
they can't see you
you are too much
they'd never understand
you don't give
what you don't receive
you give life
as you breathe through me
I see you when my eyes close
I trace your shape on frosted windows
you spark the fire that hijacks my biology
you draw upon my skin with ***** fingernails
your handwriting is embedded in my DNA
your name echoes still
unfamiliar voices without faces
your secret's safe with me
hidden in massive outer space places
untraceable
mastermind configuration
takes ages just to give up out of frustration
Mar 30, 2013
Mar 30, 2013 at 2:53 AM UTC
The silence speaks for itself.
Drunk and numb.
Can't you see that I'm breaking....
down?
There is no one to love, there is no one around.
There is a wine bottle -
drown, drown, drown.
I'm the closest to hell and a moment from heaven.
Despair and desperation kick in and cause
a whole new scene.
Anger is at the bar turning green.
Money turns humans into demon beings.
My eyes are telescopes mapping the correlations
of my constellations.
What do you see?
Starry-eyed girl devoid of galaxies.
Apr 4, 2013
Apr 4, 2013 at 12:55 AM UTC
I imagine you cradled inside
the wing of your rocket ship, vacuum
sealed, sheltered from the noise of solar wind.
Remembering our goodbye at the launch-pad
Creases the aging skin around your eyes.
Tears, weightless and buoyant,
Collide with the sputtering, decrepit
valves and cogs
tracking your orbit
through Saturn’s dust.
You bottle them in mason jars, capture each one on fading
fingertips like paper white snowflakes,
Sealing them inside with aluminum twist caps.
You fill each one and let them clutter the windows
like drunken periscopes.
If I could shine a flashlight through these memory
telescopes, black and white 1920s movies would reel
cracked turtle shells on the highway,
Four rabbits, their intestines spoiling on mowed grass,
Synonyms for “stupid” piercing into heart with arrowhead.
You curl tighter into the spacecraft,
Breathing uncontrollably, painfully.
Canines cut into tongue to suppress sobs.
Folding over naval, knees to forehead,
The gravity of surrounding, misplaced moons
pulls you to collision with an asteroid.
Nov 5, 2015
Nov 5, 2015 at 6:22 PM UTC