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Jan 2016 · 1.1k
the crickets singing
BB Tyler Jan 2016
"don't follow me."
and she walked solemn from the field
to the forest
tree by tree deeper

I stood still a long time
longer still as she receded
and in my mind I saw her go
again and again
meadow all about my ankles
the wind
brushing my thighs with
the seed-tops of wild grasses
so dead yellow
so slightly green in the recent spring

Above the sky
stars in every direction
saw the whole thing
and said nothing

She and I were not to meet again.

I built my home there from
fallen branches at the meadow-edge,
and though I never knew the deep lush of those woods
my life in some way followed her
thru the tree shadows
and even now
is resting on her shoulder
as she sits by a
sylvan pool
quiet
while I thru
cloud patterns
witness deep space

the crickets singing
Jan 2016 · 264
need
BB Tyler Jan 2016
all of us
details in sequence
no particular part of a pattern
liquid
given in
to each syrup-sticky motion
emotion making a reach
hand no longer fist
and fallen into dust
Jan 2016 · 631
Let Bloom
BB Tyler Jan 2016
When beauty is no longer a goal
every step of the journey
is blooming with
flowers.
Jan 2016 · 221
finding
BB Tyler Jan 2016
in all my crying
i've found tears

in all my speaking
i've found words

in all my violence
i've found blood

in all my eating
i've found ****

in all my loving
i've found people

in all my silence
i've found truth

in all my finding
i've known nothing
Jan 2016 · 539
nomind
BB Tyler Jan 2016
Act as you will,
the Buddha doesn't mind.
Dec 2015 · 629
word painting
BB Tyler Dec 2015
On this limited page
I can make no wide sweep of brush stroke
no blush of color
to show my heart.

No swing of my arm can influence your understanding of this poem.

Where, in a painting, you may see may
anger pouring red with movement
or joyous bubbles blue and yellow
floating here and        there
(from a physical reality manifest)
((the great symbolscape))
in these words are only
logic
and what you have learned
puzzle-pieced and put in this box
for your own construction.

Still,
in these words is all I may ever feel,
and though you may not have the faculty of
direct exploration
into my body-mind thru them,
their depth reaches beyond the containment
of any canvas.
Dec 2015 · 934
Liquid Grip
BB Tyler Dec 2015
Attempting to understand the universe
thru a glass of whiskey.

Falling asleep.

Trying to know God
in a cup of coffee.

Falling asleep.
Dec 2015 · 1.4k
Pragmatic
BB Tyler Dec 2015
Looking out over the forest.
  No mention of God here,
but the trees speak
   so well of themselves
           that I can touch
             and taste them.

In a darkened room
     with my solitude.
                            No talk of spirits,
   but I can almost hear
        my breath
        passing thru the walls.

I am a creature of seeking,
    but no matter how far I go,
     and no matter how well I
      understand the hills around my home,
when I lay down to sleep
    I am forever the dweller
        of a land unknown.
June 14th, 2015
Dec 2015 · 443
shuffle
BB Tyler Dec 2015
He stood on an ocean cliff misted by brine in the breeze.

He stood
poised,
unblinking
even as his tears met the sea spray,
eyes flushed rosy in the grey.

No words or sound of any kind
left his pursed lips,
clenched as they were around the
thought of his own
undoing.

Only the crash of waves far below, only the wind licking up the stone face broke the lengthening silence between the gulls, the clouds and the crying man,
all of them suspended.
Dec 2015 · 3.1k
Homestead Morning
BB Tyler Dec 2015
early morning
enough to catch the sunrise color
on a snag of wool
in a leafless tree
in the wind

seed to the chickens
hay the goats and the sheep
their turds on the frozen ground
like coffee beans
in the early morning
Oct 2015 · 467
There and Back Again
BB Tyler Oct 2015
I left the world.

Out beyond the stars
are no brighter lights,
only what's left
from the beginning.
Further still i went into the black,
the hard lack of heat,
soaring.

No solace,
no sign of any path,
led me here,
to where i am,
unheard and unmade in space.

The drums my heart,
and lungs, the melody maker,
is left with remembering
when all the burnt out bulbs are left deep in the basement.

Cleaning house
to become again like
open air,
twisting free,
the smoke.

Brought into body,
mind work wrought of
so light a plastic bending
truth.
Feel, fell out again.

Made of making.
Fireplace breaking spills light
out over the burn.
Floor is ash, Earth
for growing more building beams
to dance on.

Over again, great wheels eating
SUNS! I look and am blinded.

Sipping nights through my teeth,
speaking to a screen,
recording my dreams well after waking,
made solid sinking base-layer bedrock.

sting citrus sing to me
sweet ******* salt
something in the wind sour
mouth an open book

I'm here, after all this emptying,
not hollow but larger than where I am sitting in this chair,
in the kitchen,
in my drink, my eyes, thinking bigger than
the room, the house, the hill
and away on mountains,
not topped,
I am a foundation for this
spring over the thirsty *****
and yellowing trees.
I breathe
and am released.

Autumn,
birth in the center
dying, the seed
in the wind.

I will continue to gold the slopes
from the apex ****** to open spreading valley
soil budding miracle flowers, months to come.

Now,
I am aging, follow my father
into time.
A river stops,
not at the sea.

Mother, let us comfort
each other.
For the part of you is me seeks healing,
leaking self in the dust,
mixing mud to shape a new face,
a new arm, a hand uncut and able
to give all that is a human.

Am I able?
Yes, I've known the way vines are living upward,
and my seed has again and again
hit the Earth bleeding,
but all I want is a silent cave to watch the birds.

No children spring from me.
No eating, no holding hands like I have done.
I've made no mistakes but one.
To live is a great doubt,
bring my head above water.

Banished, fear in moving any way.
Strange in our doing, we keep up the rhythm,
drive the beasts away until
we're hungry again.

Plant the breakfast,
I'm just now out of bed and in the mood to wait.

Coffee vein lexicon.
Too much
need
percolating
up in my
throat.

Go into money!
there you will find
light,
blinding you to sleep.

Go into death.
There find rest.

Go
away,
away and find nothing
but the going
and the goings on
outside.

Stay with me and love the dawn
breaking so that we may mend it again.
Oct 2015 · 450
Trimurti
BB Tyler Oct 2015
Blesst are those who move in and out of rooms.
Who make way in the night for sunrise hours to grace them sleeping.
They are the ones to whom this world spinning of people is trusted.

and those who sit outside the spinning,
outside and wetting with the dew every inch of skin
and cloth that they claim their own,
sitting in no throne,
hold no claim over any world or room,
they too are blesst.
They make the Earth to be spun,
to be whole under every star,
breathing and keeping nothing but that dark warm,
forgiving all trespassers, as they are this land,
these trees,
the waters still swirling and sinking into their skin.

All others watch in awe the fire making one moment out of the last, making that past into the next seeing thing shining eyed being.
Oct 2015 · 1.8k
the Rum Down
BB Tyler Oct 2015
*** gave me some loose words that i could spill over into your head-place
see that? dripping down the wall, the leftover space we didn't want but couldn't waste
no haste needed for the telling of time
no truth seeded as i'm bleedin my rhyme
i'm free and i'm mine
says the *** to my head
nothing left open but the door to the bed
Sep 2015 · 828
Autumn
BB Tyler Sep 2015
Ripe Harvest Moon,
all the weeds gone to seed,
the pups weaned
at a new home now
in the next valley.

In the waxing follows full,
in the full, the waning.
Fruit in the fallow fields.
Sweet of apple,
wealth of pumpkin,
golden corn.

How blessed are we around this fire to share it?
To howl the umbra,
Earth, the Moon,
flow the blood
round the year,
leaves to roots,
to the ground.

not a sound

The eclipse red dark,
a full month spins
waiting for the light to return,
wraithed in drum-beat heart.

Ripe Harvest Moon,
all the weeds gone to seed,
the pups weaned
at a new home now
in the next valley.
Sep 2015 · 1.1k
In my Eye
BB Tyler Sep 2015
squinting at the Sun,
rainbows in my eyelash
Sep 2015 · 743
Add-Diction
BB Tyler Sep 2015
Addiction

noun:

a state in which one feels the need to have the last word...
Sep 2015 · 1.7k
camera obscura
BB Tyler Sep 2015
The crystallization of thought
leaves behind tiny granules,
like diamonds, reflective and
geometric to fit together.

     Sand to glass
        for a window or
          fun-house mirror.

Brain grains made of waiting,
                                 of watching.
Recognition of patterns recorded.
                Faces in old photographs,
                     "Look! That's me!"
  The big picture, stitched individual pixels,
                             light thru the film
                                     projected on a wall,
                                 fuzz of dust on the vinyl.

          Motes of knowing
                       floating
                                            but tough under pressure,
                                  and in the liquid of pure,
                                                           ­            transparent
                                                                ­       experience,

                                                    ­                     soluble.
December 2014
Sep 2015 · 4.6k
Pachamama
BB Tyler Sep 2015
Earth
greatest, grandest Mother

no metaphor here
but ten-thousand teats
feeding
all children
Jun 2015 · 22.7k
Cicada Waves
BB Tyler Jun 2015
Rising

Falling

Cicada Waves

Teach me to Breathe

in the Depths of Breathlessness
May 2015 · 799
Liquid Definition
BB Tyler May 2015
In this is a poem,
flowing thru and over the stones of language,
a bed for a restless body.

Somewhere here is a poem,
behind and beneath the walls,
impounded as so much sound unspoken.

The glass before you
holds a poem,
both transparent,
one delicate when presented
the floor.

The poem is rushing,
brimming, tidal in its own surface tension,
held smooth and blue until the tipping point of pressure,
when it slips over the stones,
the walls,
the glass broken
and spills downhill
over the homes,
the fields
and farms,
white spray
finding shape in the valley
where you stand on the shore,
where you bend down to drink.

The river,
the dam,
the cup
is not
the water.
May 2015 · 2.3k
Saved
BB Tyler May 2015
no self
no sacrifice
Zen Christ
in each of us
keeping quiet
May 2015 · 990
skin-shed
BB Tyler May 2015
fresh threshed of habit
pragmatic in a gasp
cast black magic
trashed
to the last
time waking up

far flung
thrown
but there is no away

the grain
planted to be these moments
stays Earthed
even after greening

in teeming
hill after hill of
step measured progression
these green beings
long before we set out
had daily met the sun
with praise

let us do the same
May 2015 · 387
a stone in river sinking
BB Tyler May 2015
bronze model of my truth
worn golden from so many touching attempts at holding
never cupped in heavy hands
just brushed

a stone in river sinking

fills me warm in sunrise spectrum to know it go
standing publicly cemented
to the city center

always

forests encroach in slow motion
take me as I leave
up from the roots
that statue overgrown
none too soon
to be the base
of vining blooms
and shining worn back to brass
discovery
May 2015 · 318
Forever Fading
BB Tyler May 2015
Where do we go to?
Is that the question?
What do I ask
to open the flowers in front of us?
What answer is the acceptance of this moment?

Now! a glaring shadow in the periphery
of the past & the future within it.
Now! the ever remembering self
& the forgetfulness within it.

Only.. even in knowing
I find myself opaque
when I reach into the flames.

In the sun,
scintillating snow dust whirling
in the wind.
BB Tyler May 2015
and then
from over and under a blunder
came Captain Beefheart frolicking along
with his magical band
shining and smiling
like Prometheus or Pan
and the procession of satyrs
fiery eyed
pronouncing truth in tongues of humor to the moon
in the mask of the fool
sacred clown rockin' out
shouting "Hey you! Ella Guru!"
I think I saw my mother
and grandfather
dancing and holding hands too
BB Tyler May 2015
Yes.
I have come here to learn.
Your grace is the prism thru which
I have witnessed the broken light
of beauty.

Allow me to look
that I may learn
to reflect the spectrum unedited
and act always from a place of compassion.
May 2015 · 586
Magicicada (Brood IV)
BB Tyler May 2015
Under patient birds and sun ray,
the cicadas,
drunk from seventeen years sleep,
woke slow today.

They rose from below the loam,
from homes chosen
so,
so
many insect years ago.

Red eyed crawling of beautiful song,
is to love
what you've learned
in waiting so long?
What a lucky time to be in Kansas
May 2015 · 285
Vision Journey
BB Tyler May 2015
I AM

~~~

obsessed with the purple sky at night!
The between sun hours enchanting
draw me into a lull.
I drink long of the moon and its mesmur,
finding in the slow'd spectrum
solace, that I may be forever breath,
even as sleep seeks to keep me.

~~~

Illusory unity
nor
separation
bar the gate!
Neither lock
or key
or form
only the body of thought
in motion may pass
only in telling
are words
made
known
.

~~~

(still)
Art
is (only) a book mark
in the pages spun 'round a circular spine.

I've seen it spinning in the sky at night,
in the purple clouds,
turning
blue with the next letter.
May 2015 · 480
FINN.
BB Tyler May 2015
Here is the melancholy
       of my own open bleedings into
    the World!
  My lost "once was"
gone for a gap of cool confusion.

Stupor'd and infused with
the repetitive
eat/sleep/
imagine random flash pictures
of pleasure and pain.
Stick/carrot psychology of the
free world media,
saturated color stain so sweet,

as unavoidable as death.
May 2015 · 494
Prayer of the Visionary
BB Tyler May 2015
May my art be
the gates of the Underworld,
and the guiding lights of the
return journey.
May 2015 · 280
Long Distance
BB Tyler May 2015
In the midst of speaking,
   of making plans,
                       of taking orders,
        small and long winded.
                                   Talk wafting to bounce off
   the walls, here between them a bubble of
  warm and meeting,
and I can't find a ground to
walk on.  So I'll keep on dropping eaves.

   The need so painfully sweet for an us
or we to keep dear and meaningful.
   A bond mind-made, heart-shaped kept
floating somewhere beyond the moon.
   I continue to find myself
looking up at it in the hope to hear you
     looking up at it too.

    Cavernous Heart! in you there is no distance.
My touch of love is here,
her soft and smell like
squeezing together breaths.
    Here in my chest is our laughing at the little silliness
  of fingers and eyelash drifting.
           So hot inside as to burn to steam
                       the tears before falling.

In the midst of speaking, of need,
     in the very hallow of heart
       I see the same Moon as you.
May 2015 · 466
GLYPH ~ WYRD
BB Tyler May 2015
(THIS is the symbol)

To become efficient enough
to reduce meaning into a single symbol,
a sign within a sign
(meta-symbolism).

Making words into movement
intuited further
as just breathing
and know what is
being represented.

Seamless meaning/thing connection.
May 2015 · 303
Wave Propogation
BB Tyler May 2015
Flavor paved the way for taste.

We're making sights of light
and pattern.

Out of waves
comes crashing matter.

Nothing saved,
none gone to waste.

Ripple back to still.
Feb 2015 · 994
Melting
BB Tyler Feb 2015
they fell slowly into snow drifts
as she flushed the bitter, stinging cold
from his lips with a kiss lasting
long enough to light a warmth
within them that turned to eyelash droplets the snow as it lit dizzy
on their brow
Feb 2015 · 458
Sun rose
BB Tyler Feb 2015
The sun
rose
then yellow then white,
sun rose
then out of sight.

The sun is rose,
time a morning glory
in the moonlight
and again reawakening.  

Winter roots,
snow over seed,
stars in the dark.
Bright, burning,
patient days in the making.

The sun rose,
ever blooming,
always fading,
never waiting.
Feb 2015 · 468
quote**
BB Tyler Feb 2015
“As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth . . . the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and the wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.”
― Gary Snyder
Jan 2015 · 637
Winter City Morning
BB Tyler Jan 2015
Sunday in the city,
in the grey and golden morning,
it's still enough to hear the birds
clamor in their rosy waking.

The pillowed bands of cloud,
moved by sunlight,
glow and slide across the sky,
lighted blue.

To wake early in the city,
to be lonely,
everything becomes eerie
and beautiful.

The folks on the bus
staring out
at the passing
abandoned buildings boarded up.

Quiet but for the bus
and the birds chirping
somewhere unseen
in the lattice of leafless trees.
Jan 2015 · 606
Stand
BB Tyler Jan 2015
Our woodlands have shared a similar hillside.
Together we have seen many seasons turn to the next.
We will surely see many more turn the same.

May our growing together always bear the sweetest fruit of peace
and love.
May the seeds of those fruits be scattered
on every ***** of our mountain,
and whisked by the river to distant meadows.
May we as family watch them sprout and bud,
and may the future forests be scented by their flowers,
falling in the autumn and swept to the sea.
Jan 2015 · 651
December 2014 Haiku pt. II
BB Tyler Jan 2015
in the steady stream
          the felled leaves
resting        away

~~~~~

noticing the cold
                       dead fire

~~~~~

opening a shut room
shadows jump!
     candle shivers

~~~~~

firework concussions
sound overhead

~~~~~

the edge of the ocean
looking out at the fog

~~~~~

thru the beer glass
hand gestures   magnified

~~~~~

Grandfather
patting the baby's back
                                   burps

~~~~

singing saw cuts the silence

~~~~~

white Lion's Mane mushroom
tendrils on the knife

~~~~~

flowers in a vase;
reconcile death
Dec 2014 · 714
Thru the Midst to You
BB Tyler Dec 2014
In the midst
of happenings,
poetry flowing
thru the feint vein
of my far-away loving you;

Always;

Life-line to the time
we've twined together;
at night i find the words
and write the weather;

Spinning system storm-front,
the seconds endless passing;

Forever is ever beginning
in your arms,
in my mind;
I'm singing
in the hope
you can hear
me from here.
Dec 2014 · 473
Beauty
BB Tyler Dec 2014
her face
wreathed in
rainbows

thru this portal
seeing beauty
in the world

thru the prism
in the window
broken sunlight
Dec 2014 · 737
Atman
BB Tyler Dec 2014
There is no spirit in spirit,
   as there are no drops in the
                                                   ocean,
                                             one body.

     Only in the turbulence do we see
          the ghosts, phantom shapes
             of separation.
              (Kami sparks from the Fae fire)
    In those shadows cast from the
  splash, (wave of the I, the Id swimming)
are them born of a name.

     Here, I find myself in form,
              in a constant change and decay,
              a flame mapped shade
               on the mirror walls of consciousness,
        in the fade, eternal emptiness
               of the endless breath i'll never catch..

                      and again inhaling.
written Winter Solstice 2014
Dec 2014 · 439
Circle Journey
BB Tyler Dec 2014
waking up

the sojourn
is a return to who we truly are

if the universe is a love song
let us go on singing

if the universe is a story
may we listen, laugh and cry
and at the end
may we all
go to sleep
Dec 2014 · 446
Haunt
BB Tyler Dec 2014
No flowers
in the December
cement cracks,
but still the multicolored tatters
of plastic reflect the sun.

No usual haunts
in the city
of my grandfather.
Alone with so
many faces
of those I will
likely never know.
Dec 2014 · 274
Smoke & Mirrors
BB Tyler Dec 2014
Mind a Light; Brain aFlame
Dec 2014 · 435
need
BB Tyler Dec 2014
In a slow motion haze I look out over the grey Philadelphia in a fog bank. The tops of the buildings obscured. Floor after floor continuing into space for all I know. Sitting here watching the faint movement of the odd tree, leafless in December. Opening to a world with which I am yet familiar, the window. Outside cars in a constant stream. Always the places-to-be calling louder than any horn or crash of impact, louder than any amount of glass shatter. People on the freeway, on the city streets, and in between in the alleys and narrowed roads going (they say) no where. Somehow we all find time to extract some value from this moment. Some sort of consolation for being. As if love weren’t enough that we had to go around printing in on paper and digging it out of the ground in gleaming golden handfuls. Then again, perhaps it’s not. Or perhaps there’s some sort of figuring out we’ve left to do. Some more Earth to be moved aside to find the treasures there. Dig deep enough and it’s all molten. All a liquid swishing heat. Why do we put such pressure on ourselves? From where comes this burning desire to have in our hands and to know without a doubt what it is we are made of? Have we not seen that death is inevitable? Still the reaching continues, down and out into the dregs. Soon we’ll find it. Soon. The gem must be there beneath this last scrap of **** and ripped bits of newspaper. Beneath these stones overgrown in moss. Still further beneath the metals collecting and pooling in toxic natural vats of too much nutrient. Into the solid iron core of the Earth under pressure. There we’ll find another absence. Another outer space waiting for the claiming. Yet in all our grasping we will never hold a fistful of love. True love, true happiness. Serotonin wash water over the coils is never enough to cool the white flame of need. Even if artificial and limping on the last prosthetic legs made from the long dead detritus plastics, the flame rages. It will not be sated by the material and forever the eating will continue. Finding silence in the storm is the true gem. The hollow in your heart is what beats your blood thru your body, what walks your legs and chews your food. To find respect for a lack of satisfaction is what will save us if ever we need it. Sated with hunger, patient with pain. "What is to give light must endure burning."
quote: Viktor Frankl
BB Tyler Dec 2014
the way she holds me in her eye
I can feel it from here
and the messages she sends me
make my flesh jump
and swell ready  

in my dark
before sleeping moments
i can feel her
and smell the fragrance she makes
longing all the way to California
Dec 2014 · 427
No Job Today
BB Tyler Dec 2014
No job today. Sitting alone in the living room I sip a beer bought with my dwindling supply of cash. I guess I’m not trying hard enough. Rain comes down in wispping sheets outside. The peaks of the tallest buildings downtown are cloaked in grey. There’s a crawling sense of urgency deep within me but it stirs little. It’s overlaid with a knowing of my self that secures me, a certainty that none of this time is being wasted. I've always known who I am in an other than obvious sort of way. I was born and continue to be a watcher, a passive observer of the drifting seconds. As the rain falls in a steady stream of droplets my beer glass is slowly emptied. Thoughts, like the seconds, float by, like flies landing and then buzzing off to a more succulent  morsel. I like it this way. Unattached, solitary. It’s a freedom no hero can grant you. It’s a way of looking at the world like the weather. Rain today, not tomorrow. Sun tomorrow, the next day may be snow. Although I do get hungry from time to time (for relationships and food). Sitting and waiting for my baby girl to fly out to meet me in Philly. How I miss her skin! Maybe a job wouldn't be such a bad idea after all. It would pass the time at least and give me another vantage point from which to conduct my observations of this fading world. Maybe pay for my sweet potatoes. I finish my beer and step into the grey.
Philly, Christmas Eve 2014
Dec 2014 · 722
December 2014 Haiku pt. 1
BB Tyler Dec 2014
pulling the weeds
the layman, cursing
the heat

~

the monk, wiping
his brow
says a prayer

~

the master
pulling the weeds

~

together
in a field
under the sun

~

piece of paper
written on, crumpled up
poems in my shoe

~

sun in the soil
reflective face
quartz in the bank

~

shaking hands
church-goers
step into the street

~

Philadelphia
birds on a stoop
brothers

~

in the library
every sound echoing

~

low orange clouds
city at night

~

noticing my mind
tripping off the curb

~

stale taste
spliff
gone from where I left it

~

my Grandfather's friends
explaining absinthe
as I drink it

~

broken tea cup
how I love to look at it!
Dec 2014 · 544
Sculpture Garden
BB Tyler Dec 2014
Thru the Sculpture Garden
growing
the abstractions of mind.
The eternalized figures of history
"in the adamant of time"
in snow and summers
unfeeling.

Above,
grey cloud movement,
sun struck stratum peeking,
blue still further
turn black in the spinning.

Still stand the immortals,
material collective remembrance
in public parks,
in museums
kept clean from
ever eventual rust
to prove and give substance
our conquest of space
and time.

Still,
slow creeping the dust
ever settles  
back to soil
& flame
while in light path-finding
vines cloak the bronze,
the stones in growth.

'round the patient legs
of war heroes frozen,
the vines
still fighting.
@ Philadelphia Museum of Art,
The Anne d’Harnoncourt Sculpture Garden
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