January 2012
30 posts
2 tags
Snowflakes
I challenge the notion that no two snowflakes have ever been alike
oh yes I get the physics the complexity of water molecules that the chance of an exactly repeated pattern of ten to the eighteenth atoms approaches zero
but approaching zero is not zero and the Zen tells me if something can happen something will happen or it already has or both it is a thing for us never to know
A Poem for a Poet
shespeaksyvon:
He sought the stars in the language of a thousand years and played with the idea of tickling Pluto just to hear the orb laugh for a minute. He saw the seconds that shaped the vase that held precious moments in the fragility of the past. Time is not his burden, for he holds the weight of possibility like the pedals of the softest rose.
-for David (lookingforwisdom)
Such...
December 2011
34 posts
2 tags
New Year
fine old New Years with his snowy hair ruddy face and all the other colors found in the rounded sloping drifts that pile up from a year of living
a season that seems to mean well but one that can fool you with his tricks of time that flow in dark rivers where misspent hours bob like ducks
choirs of hopeful human faces sing supernatural songs at that magic hour of midnight to a fickle old man New...
2 tags
Watercolor Seascape
cerulean wash wet in wet with a Japanese bamboo hake sky bleeds into water bluer than any eyes with just a touch of Prussian clouds dabbed out with crumpled tissues sea birds just an “m” or a “w” in India ink with an old crow quill pen beach grass dry brushed with a nylon fan driftwood textured by natural sponge finishing touches with a rigger of finest Kolinsky sable
2 tags
St. Augustine
The best thing about growing up Christian: Sex will always seem dirty to me. Thank you St. Augustine. Thank you.
3 tags
Ghazal Of Looking For Wisdom
bits of night assembled into wisdom winds which can never be doubted speak wisdom the well-traveled birds of the ocean know things things that we never find out about wisdom taking the rain out for a walk on Sunday sound of water drops on umbrellas wisdom bread loaves cool slowly like volcanic islands spread the warm smells of an old mother’s wisdom knowing things before we can ever know...
2 tags
Poetry Perhaps
on a cold and rainy winter afternoon it simmers in a pot on the back of the stove some potatoes carrots garlic half an onion and a handful of diamonds my hope is it will thicken into something substantial poetry perhaps
2 tags
Dust Bowl
it’s the coming of the long dry the once clear horizon dark with dust driven by unforgiving wind
it starts as a tingling sense a foreboding an itch scratching will not cure a smell that fills flared nostrils leaves a taste at the tongue’s tip bitter metallic like verdigris copper
it roils and boils fills the sky with a panic as black as any moonless midnight it coats every surface blown through...
2 tags
Wooden Boat
I found adrift a wooden boat water-logged among thickest weeds bow submerged and stern afloat abandoned without locks or oars its paint once green is faded now chipped and gouged where wear is found broken seats with rotting boards almost nothing of it sound I wondered who had given up on this old and weathered hulk how they’d decided on which day this mournful thing be cast away
2 tags
Chatter
indulge in listening to the chatter of dry leaves as they tumble across the street to escape their deaths so near the end their long-range plans seem as unimportant as our own
2 tags
Review
so okay little song sparrow I read your poem and I will tell you what I think of it you have your way with broken heart poetry don’t you little one I don’t get the imagery of stars moon and veins bleeding ink though I really don’t what do any of those things have to do with you or anybody else for that matter you tell of how darkness fills your soul but is there no light that...
3 tags
The Absurdist Man
This a poem redacted from my friend Echo’s paper on Existentialism and Absurdity. The words are hers. I just removed what was unessential to the poem.
“The Absurdist Man”
declare existence absurd meaning never fixed vague guidlines of contradiction state of jejunity assertion of meaning accept the nothingness in a meaningless world meaning will fail hoping for something better...
2 tags
Madame de Fleur
that’s Madame de Fleur just off the midway between the corn dog stand and the tilt-a-whirl for a very small fee she’ll read you cold tell you about how you’ve been unlucky in love and why you should stay away from airplanes at least for a little while your lucky numbers are 6 and 23 she’ll ask you why you were crying not long ago and tell you it’ll be alright soon not...
2 tags
Progress
I once lived by gnawing the bones of the carcass of a zebra left by a pride of lions in paleolithic Africa later I signed my painting of hunting elk by placing my hand on a cave wall and blowing pigment on the rock I piled up stones into tombs from Egypt to Ireland and beyond made up stories that explained the random scattering of the stars now I live by sucking the last marrow from dead ideas...
3 tags
Paradox
I walked into the bathroom where I interrupted a conversation between a centipede and a spider on Schopenhauer’s conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled. The centipede was arguing from the Schopenhauer side. The spider claimed Schopenhauer was wrong. She offered as proof her assertion that both her hunger and sexual desires were completely fulfilled...
2 tags
Private Room
if I am to live on the earth I at least want a private room where I can learn to write poems that won’t disturb the silence from which they came
4 tags
Persönliche Zeitspielraumvorrichtung
lookingforwisdom:
I’m not at the end of my life by any means but that time is now within sight. It comes into view sometime in your late 50s as you start realizing all the things you won’t do or won’t do anymore. It made me think about things I will have missed out on because of when I was born. A big one for me is that I was born too early to have traveled through time. All my life I’ve...
2 tags
Suspicion
I suspect no one thinks of me as often as I think of them
1 tag
Amo Le Sue Ossa: A Goodbye - lookingforwisdom 3rd... →
clover91:
I went to visit Charles in the hospital we had once known each other well I’d heard he was dying he knew he was I didn’t tell him that I did too it was too difficult he switched off the game he was watching and looked into my face he said, “you know, don’t you”? I told him that I did we had some pleasant reminiscences
2 tags
Minimalist Poem
the sound of duct tape being pulled off the roll
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Cattle
cows dream technicolor dreams of pastures that they never leave fence-less green with shading trees that spread their arms forever crystal cool running streams fields of alfalfa in rolling seas that stretch as far as eyes can see where bovine pleasures never end how much we are so like the cow in wishing lives that never know pain or fear or sweating brows we would-be lotus eaters
2 tags
Lost Things
everything I own I keep in the last place I would look for it
2 tags
Junk Yard
November is the year’s junk yard piles of broken bodies of rusted oak leaves blow into unused corners of city lots like frayed pillow cases pile up in the back of the linen closet thin tree branches clatter in the wind like the bones of dry skeletons or the rattle of rusting gates with thick dry hinges the more we listen to them the more we are alone pale light of short days disappears from the...
2 tags
Quiet Feet
she stepped on quiet feet into my life on wisps of half dreamt dreams her name was Euterpe and she told me she’d been cast adrift in time she played music on a double flute songs in minor keys songs with lyrics like ripened grapes that hung from ancient vines words she sang made rhymes that I could only hear when my eyes were closed to the dawn she smeared across the eastern sky sometimes her...
2 tags
Today It Rained
today it rained and no poet declared angel’s tears falling in grief no claim was made the drops were ink from some sad writer’s pen it rained today and it meant no more than wet umbrellas and dampened feet shallow puddles in the street reflected no ones soul today the rain was no more than rain
2 tags
Switch Yard
twenty-two tank cars painted white loaded with calcium chloride from a chemical plant roll slowly through the worst parts of town behind a soot blackened locomotive graffiti painted in colors never seen before speak in an unfamiliar hieroglyphic language as the train picks up speed the cars flash between two buildings like an animated cartoon about the death of everything
2 tags
Sylvia
Sylvia get your head out of the oven you are not a baking powder biscuit nor a pie dripping the aromatic juices of fresh summer fruit what will all the sad-eyed young girls do without you when you are gone to whom will they cry into their pillows at night while they dream about those bad tattooed boys with dirty hair the ones who refuse them or abuse them we gathered in winter rain under a...
2 tags
Lola
I was in love with a woman named Lola Albright I was ten she was twenty-four she was the star of a television show it didn’t work out
to this day I still feel Lola is the most mysterious and sensuous woman’s name
2 tags
Connected
we are connected the two of us no matter who or when you were connected by earth on which you stepped that now covers the soles of my feet connected by water in which you once bathed that now pours from my kitchen faucet connected by air into which you once spoke that I now breathe connected by thoughts I once wrote down that you now read
3 tags
Fire-Fly Nights: A Villanelle
those were our fire-fly nights endless summers running free free of noise and city lights the kind of free the sun ignites us up in our climbing tree those were our fire-fly nights climbing to the highest heights of pirate ship masts upon the sea free of noise and city lights slaying dragons as heroic knights a forever friendship you and me those were our fire-fly nights sacred oaths and secret...
3 tags
Coffee House Sonnet
I will not linger here too long perhaps until the rain has gone I may sit and think awhile contemplating ceiling tiles
reflected headlights hurry by bouncing off the low gray sky when puddled small town streets are wet they seem more like a movie set
this coffee house invites me stay and write a few more lines today at last the rain has finally stopped or dwindled down to just a drop it’s time...
3 tags
The King
In the tiny village of Spring Lived a smithy who thought he was king. He rode through the town Wearing a crown Made from twigs that he’d tied in a ring. The steed that he rode was a pig. Dirty faced but not very big. Though she was porcine She was also his queen A Pig that was wearing a wig. The town’s people gathered and jeered Believing the smithy was weird. They laughed ‘til they cried, A few...
2 tags
Ending Couplets
Then came a time of winter rain She feels a darkness of wuthering pain.
She looks vulnerable with sad doe eyes. He stares at the distance, shrugs and sighs.
He flies his guilt on a silver sail, Leaving safe harbor into a gale.
Another round of “let’s try some more” But both know the truth to their secret core.
Footfalls of endings on silent stairs, Endings they drape over empty chairs.
“Deye mon, gen mon.”
– “Beyond the mountains, more mountains.”
Haitian Creole proverb: