March 2012
37 posts
2 tags
Ambitions
in my room I kept a book hard bound and very old inside it each yellowed page bore a title of its own The Spanish Bowline Cat’s Paw Carrick Bend Dead Eye Cutter Double Strop Rolling Hitch Sheepshank Sheet Bend Flemish Eye Marling Spike Hitch Turk’s Head Clove Hitch Spirit Sail Sheet Studding Sail Halyard all things I would need to know before I went to sea
February 2012
29 posts
2 tags
A Warning
parents our sons and daughters are in danger there is a scourge upon the earth a playground of Satan himself I’m not talking about video arcades shopping malls and pool halls it’s not about the back seats of cars and dark lovers lanes late at night no I’m talking about danger so vile so insidious so abhorrent you should be shaking in your shoes at the mere mention of it I’m...
2 tags
In The Beginning
I stood for the first time and staggered out of a primordial sea looked around at a landscape of cooling lava and young mountains considered going back but didn’t the sun exhausting its fuel fissioning hydrogen into helium drove Ra’s chariot across a sky that belonged to Kepler and Copernicus because Galileo was under house arrest high priests gathered in a room lit by smokey oil lamps...
2 tags
The Proper Address Of Trees
trees should be addressed by their proper titles according to their places in arboreal society poplar ash and birch should be treated as familiar along with the pines and firs “mister” and “miss” are appropriate to their station
among the fruit trees apples and pears are “sir” cherries and peaches are “madam” (I’m at a loss to explain this difference) the maples and elms we address with a shallow...
2 tags
The Old Bridge
the old trestle bridge rattled and groaned like an old man who lay slowly dying under the weight of Pontiacs Chevrolets and Buicks that passed over its oil soaked wooden road bed a superstructure of iron that bolted together it looked like a bizarre Eiffel tower that having grown tired of standing tall in Paris lay down to rest across a broad black river we spent idle days in the coolness of its...
2 tags
Two Men Of China And A Miniature Elephant
(a poem from Jane’s china cabinet)
two men of old China with their afternoon tea on the right it is Chin on the left it is Lee a green porcelain elephant wanders in from the fog and Chin says to Lee “did you get a new dog?” “never saw it before” answered old Lee “but I think it’s an elephant come looking for tea” “too small for an elephant” Chin said into his beard “so it must be a dog...
1 tag
Plagiarism
(I did not write this poem. I copied and pasted the last line from the last 15 pieces featured in the Tumblr poetry tag - not necessarily in order)
where time cannot defeat desire there we are whole again without putting up a fight and I will never stop loving you your empty eyes smiling as somehow they comfort me still that never ends and the guide to carry me home as I walked alone to join...
2 tags
Separated Things
ice wind face burning walking on silvered shore tiny bits of day assembled into bitter beach morning fresh fresh February light never seen this way before sea birds hover over white waves breaking screams lost to ears too full with surf sounds lost as a pair of separated things that never touch
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Queen Anne's Lace
Queen Anne’s lace lends her elegance to this field abandoned first by the lumbermen who cleared it then by the farmer who once grew a family here the foundation of the house is still visible under a heritage of lilac and forsythia things a farm wife would want outside her back door everyone has gone jet planes overhead write that story in white vapor trails crossing bright autumn skies two for...
2 tags
Cave Painters
cathedral of stone that breathes lit by flickering flame torchlight too faint to disturb the restless dreams of leather-winged bats who call it home migrations of bison across a wall herds of horses in free flight outlined in charcoal to be filled in with pigments of metal oxides lapis crushed berries and chalk transfers from mind to hand to rock first artist drawn to create magic no different...
2 tags
Lullaby For A Philosopher
your miracles of thought need to sleep and dream existential dreams of purpose too abstract and remote from experience you have your angst despair and the other to out-reason and the absurdity of life to put in its place on the library shelf next to Simone de Beauvoir objectively existing subjectivity beware the look of the other who needs not exist for you feel your shame so sleep young...
2 tags
Apples Stolen From Richard Brautigan
along highway 22 a cafe called Breakfast Nook in the window a cardboard sign “Closed For The Season” my hopes of eating before spring dashed - I continue south
between Arcadia and Onekama a roadside market at the edge of an orchard trees loaded with unpicked apples limbs bowed piles of pumpkins and squash on elegant harvest tables I stop a man in the tin-roofed shed asks “what can we get for...
2 tags
Lover's Leap
we stood at the edge of the world she and I arguing about who would go first neither fully trusting the other would follow we finally gave up wandering off in different directions it was forty years ago and I have several times made the leap I sometimes wonder if she ever did
2 tags
Mad Scientists
I once fell for the daughter of a mad scientist it seems all mad scientists have a daughter a beautiful daughter with no mother mad scientists always seem to lose their wives that may explain how they came to be mad if the daughters are beautiful the mothers were probably beautiful too no one knows for sure because nobody has ever seen one
2 tags
Ear To The Darkness
put an ear to the darkness what do you hear barking of a dog train crawling across the map rattle of reeds in wordless wind what do you smell mustiness of melting snow diesel exhaust from the highway wood smoke from far away what can you see white birches against dark forest Venus rising the edge of the world what do you taste sweet sap of a maple sticky pine pitch a touch of bitter frost what do...
2 tags
Not Long
the edge of the pond cracks like china shrinking heaps of snow are black marble puddles reflect a world of warped things red buds appear on bare branches winter coughs it’s first death rattle it won’t be long now won’t be long
2 tags
Phone Book
I became the age that I am by a kind of time travel that steadily accelerates the first twenty years were an eternity twenty more passed in half that time twenty more in a third of that no sign that anything is slowing down the earth spins faster and faster and will continue this way until it spins me off into space for now I still have an address on earth it’s in the phone book but who even uses...
2 tags
Ice
when you slip on a patch of ice there is that moment when gravity and flight are equal and you are weightless the universe slips out of existence and in that instant of disbelief you ask yourself one final question is that all there is
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When Matter And Antimatter Met
there was a time when there was no time no you no me nor we when the past present and future all nested together wrapped in a cozy blanket of dark never before dark was defined then nothing blew up into everything right in our faces before we had faces super-heated plasmatic star stuff cooled and the non-empty spaces became places now here we are looking back through telescopes and the deeper we...
2 tags
Matinee Infamy
on Saturday there was the matinee double featured dark and humid cartoons cowboys and alien creatures from outer space with heads like large green light-bulbs that emitted ESP rays which explained why their lips didn’t move in the lobby two large mirrors faced each other from opposite walls and I was convinced that if you were exactly the right height you would be able to see infinite...
2 tags
What Then
how small are the spaces between days and if we could stand in them would there be no time it would be like standing at the edge of fog that has a river in it the river moves and we know it moves but we would not be moving with it and when our lives had passed by what then
2 tags
Doors
when I was young enough to be curious about simple things I took apart a mirror so I could look through it from the other side peeking through a small hole where I had scraped away the silver film is how I discovered that mirrors can see us later I wondered at the fact that the side of a door that opens against the wall can ever know what’s on its other side and how an open door is not a...
2 tags
The Cup
it’s only a modest stoneware cup a homely looking little object glazed the color of ruddy moss
it spends most of its time on a glass shelf among prettier machine made mugs and cups looking somewhat sad and small
I crave the feel of it in my hands and my connection to the unknown artisan who made it I picture it on the on the potter’s wheel spinning between clay coated hands
I love...
Thirst
I have drunk clear cool water from a spring where it bubbled from out of the ground on the hottest day of the year
water directly from the earth just beginning its long journey to the Atlantic Ocean I lay on my belly face to the ground parched lips puckered warm fragrance of forest floor filling all of my senses no water since has tasted as sweet or has so completely quenched my thirst
2 tags
Shit
a slick politician named Mitt felt disdain for the poor just a bit he caught them you bet in a big safety net and treated them like they were shit
2 tags
Death By Poison Words
sing a song of the apocalypse that starts with a pocketful of rye thrown upon some crescent on some fertile ground it grew into a city with walls that crumble now the king who should be fixing them is busy in his counting house the wise men have been thinking they claim they’ve found the truth but all that they’ve concluded is that each of them is right the granaries are bulging the...
2 tags
Last Waltz
it begins slowly with music that gets us on our feet movements clumsy and stiff gradually improve with practice there are two steps and foxtrots to learn jitterbugs and quicksteps mambos and tangos cha chas and sambas we dance them all we dance them all and if there is time with legs grown tired and aching feet there may be one last waltz before the music ends
2 tags
Aurora
I was listening to rain on the radio it’s what plays between the other stations it seems to be raining always there a million drumsticks pounding endlessly on a metal roof a monsoon of sound some call white noise but I hear the greens and blues of an audio aurora when I close my eyes
2 tags
Rosey Posey
Meaghan often did her studying between her college classes and work in a small coffee house on the avenue. It was quiet in the afternoon. Only a handful of customers, folk music streaming. She sat with her notebooks and laptop, shoes off, feet tucked comfortably underneath her. On a blustering Wednesday she sat working on a creative writing assignment when cold wind coming in through the open...