A backlog of eight (8) new poems
A World Built in Sepia
The world appears in sepia,
Memories I never had flying in the air,
Hovering where I can barely see them.
Look what we have turned into!-
Bathed in the distant and irretrievable,
Existing only in negatives
Packed into forgotten envelopes.
The sun vacillates between shining glory
And obscure meditation,
Viewed through ancient stereoscopic lenses.
These parts of machines improbably fit together,
Creating a metal elixir to heal the wounded and lame.
They will walk again with aid of postmodern potions,
Never forgetting the solar force
That will someday lift them up into infinity.
You Do So Much For Me (pt. 2… all these years later)
(for Dad)
Yellowed pages’ scent wafts from the bookshelf;
Oratorio of rock music blasts from the speakers;
Unanimous sentiment towards the patriarch sees
Dishes of noodles and beans cooked in a wok
Over a fire that stirs deep in the soul.
Since conception, since babyhood,
Opposing forces challenged familial propriety;
Maternal and paternal fields and meadows
Undulating beneath the crimson sun setting,
Cracking open an egg of maturity that
Had awaited in vain much riper times.
For all time shall you live in my heart,
Over and under the waves of vexation,
Reminding me of the simplest truths,
Manifested in things seen the way they really are
Evermore with the purest and kindest love.
A New Epoch
I must accept that logic eventually breaks down:
Sentences are torn apart,
Rioters destroy numbers.
I have tested the machine and it sputtered and boiled,
Counters and meters exploding,
Releasing toxic radiation into the air
For miles upon miles.
I must create a new set of syntactic rules,
Verbs governing cases with nightsticks,
Nouns declining (an invitation to tea).
Women dress up for plain clad men to ogle,
Black clothing flowing around their bodies,
Destroying stylistic borders
In the name of the nocturnal sun.
I must record every story in newspapers
Whose copies are tossed on the front porches
Of millionaires who will never read them.
Repetition of mantras that sustained the ancients
Now sustains me too,
Nirvana in hand as I traverse the continent.
The conclusion of life as we know it is here,
The consequences of the great flood,
The beginning of a new, lonely epoch.
Sword Glory
Five years of plenty have been followed
By five years of famine,
But the silos are all destroyed
By kamikaze airmen,
Leaving no corn for the serfs.
Everyone is getting married to pass the time,
Lazily falling into jobs and careers,
Forgetting the indelible excitement
Of life lived spontaneously and joyously.
The sabre appears out of the mist!
It duels with the bow and arrow
In the house of elders.
I have decimated and rebuilt my ego,
But the spirit forever remains.
The power of the sword and shield
Sees the artwork on the hills
Interpreted by academics.
I must break free from these chains of normalcy
And find satisfaction in the wild tundra,
Orchestra playing the ballad of champions.
Kitten in Ecstasy
You put the nectar to my lips
But I cannot drink.
The intimacy of daydreams and laughter
Tolls from the bells of deepest desire,
A constant muse hidden behind a chain link fence.
I swore I would never be like the improprietous trio
Who once preyed upon my innocence.
Like a kitten in ecstasy,
Chasing butterflies to pass the long lazy day,
The garçon fatale does not yet know.
I am perilously close to the glass pane
Separating reality from irreality.
Everything repeats itself over and over again
And so the wanted becomes the wanter,
The people wearing masks as veils
To cover their destroyed faces.
Mothers still love their sons
Even when they are horrifically guilty
Of the most heinous crimes.
I refuse to join the Russian dolls,
Fitting perfectly inside one another,
Duplicating and echoing the misdeeds
Whose cycle will never, ever end.
House
I. From the Heavens
The sky wanders barefoot into its cabinet,
Stars dance primal and sexual ballets,
Angels clumsily make their way through corridors
That lead to contraband banquets.
From here shall a boy be born,
Features and disposition inherited
From anger and strife and love.
Not by stork nor original canal is he delivered,
But by the wonders of surgical magic,
Handed over to his father
Who cradles him like a robin’s egg,
Tiny and precious and beautiful
But with all the fragility of a snowflake.
Indeed, he flutters down from the heavens,
Seeing all the buildings and the ant cars and people
Until he drops on the cold ground,
Melting like a candle dying in its holder.
Then, shepherded by loving arms,
He regains form in the house
Where a precarious beginning must take place.
II. The Procession of Clocks
Pieces of mail never to be opened
Arrive at the address of the suburban home.
All seems to be silent,
Except for the sound of the timepiece
Sending a tick tock pounding into his brain.
It won’t relent.
His lifetime must span geological epochs
Because as the world flies by before his eyes
He mysteriously remains a child.
The song of the rain patters on the roof
While the relentless rotation of the earth
Finally comes to a halt.
The house remains standing for now.
III. Sorrow and Love
The fission of the nucleus does not lead to ultimate power,
But rather brackish tears and slammed doors
As a house divides into two.
He discovers anguish and devotion
Far earlier than Yahweh had ever intended,
The grief and misery of senescent separation,
The affection and yearning of youthful infatuation.
The two grand muses stand clad in garlands,
Cothurns and crowns of cypress.
The object of desire is just a mime,
Trapped in its own little world
And never to be reached or touched.
And so he walks down roads that lead nowhere,
Lampposts repeating themselves ad infinitum
And shining on pavement that will never come to a halt.
IV. A Dark Night
To unlock the black box is a rite of passage,
Turning the rusty key and heaving open the door.
The room is as black as its container.
Magazines have foreshadowed a coming together
For those who are aligned with darkness,
For those who have discovered the secret direction
On the ancient compass rose.
And now it is time.
He casually falls into a vodka and Kahlúa night
With other birds who would or could not
Follow their flock in migration
As they flew together to a new continent.
He can now enter the door of any house,
Knowing the encyclopedia of code words
That will allow access.
V. Ink on Feathers
On his face and down his back
He possesses a poet’s semaphore,
A physical shibboleth from the land of words,
A peculiar language that few can truly understand.
A letter can save a life debased
When the world is covered in lava,
Precariously leaning like the Tower of Pisa.
So he sends letters to every human on the globe
In the hope that they may be spared
From the stick of dynamite
Whose fuse threatens to ignite any second.
To write is to bleed,
And his blood hemorrhages through the house,
Filling sinks and bathtubs,
Staining walls and ceilings.
Truly his words must change the world,
Five lonely seconds at a time.
VI. Machinations
The best laid travel plans
See humans taking airplanes into the inferno,
Musculature disintegrating with the heat.
To survive the day is implausible
While the injustices of the world emaciate this house
Until it collapses of frailty,
Invisible torture leaving no physical marks.
In the upstairs room he counts his pennies,
Beard unshaven and scraggly.
Mother and father are now foreign concepts.
How shabby he has become,
Clothing all worn out,
Shoes falling apart with no cobbler to repair them.
This story is near its end,
And he is ready for the book to turn back
To its very first page,
But this time with completely new words.
VII. Into the Heavens
After all the checks are signed
And all the money transferred,
After the sick are comforted
And the dead buried,
His soul transmigrates
Flying away like a dream from a brain.
Who can remember life when it is so far in the past?
The new realm is so beautiful,
Clouds becoming pillows for the freed soul
That no longer toils in the mines.
His spirit dances far above the skylight,
But if you look very, very hard,
You can make out a faint glow over the rainbow.
Then you will detect the crumbs of being
Falling from the tray of existence,
Somewhere within this great, celestial house
That we dare to call our home.
An Insignificant Riot
Tiny mistakes haunt me,
Errors on the typewriter
Which correction fluid can never cover.
All electrical activity hints at the collapse of society.
If funds can be reallocated from tank engines
To the happy building of communities,
The vertical might be realigned into the horizontal
And tomorrow can begin.
The Existential Office
How much must one suffer?
The least amount of productivity
Can still convince cosmic superiors
That useless knowledge can dwindle the days away.
Useful ignorance is even better,
Allowing for a kind of forgetting of loneliness.
If the end of sadness means being stuck in this lame body,
I will miss the days of romping around in my head like a tiger.
Every sentence must repeat itself for all eternity
Until the jaw can finally comprehend it.
The spirit is exhausted.
Offices are filled with monkeys answering phones,
Attempting so hard to speak
As they wait for their scant days of freedom
Before a quiet death.
Boredom is lucrative,
Dollar bills falling like confetti
Upon those who sit in front of computers
Answering phone calls from beyond this realm.
Timesheets measure chunks of soul
Torn out of the heart by society,
But for two glorious days every seven
One may attempt to heal oneself.
Outside of this solar system
The clicking and clacking of keyboards
Sends signals to the black holes
That wait with maws dripping,
Ready to swallow us up once and for all.
The world appears in sepia,
Memories I never had flying in the air,
Hovering where I can barely see them.
Look what we have turned into!-
Bathed in the distant and irretrievable,
Existing only in negatives
Packed into forgotten envelopes.
The sun vacillates between shining glory
And obscure meditation,
Viewed through ancient stereoscopic lenses.
These parts of machines improbably fit together,
Creating a metal elixir to heal the wounded and lame.
They will walk again with aid of postmodern potions,
Never forgetting the solar force
That will someday lift them up into infinity.
You Do So Much For Me (pt. 2… all these years later)
(for Dad)
Yellowed pages’ scent wafts from the bookshelf;
Oratorio of rock music blasts from the speakers;
Unanimous sentiment towards the patriarch sees
Dishes of noodles and beans cooked in a wok
Over a fire that stirs deep in the soul.
Since conception, since babyhood,
Opposing forces challenged familial propriety;
Maternal and paternal fields and meadows
Undulating beneath the crimson sun setting,
Cracking open an egg of maturity that
Had awaited in vain much riper times.
For all time shall you live in my heart,
Over and under the waves of vexation,
Reminding me of the simplest truths,
Manifested in things seen the way they really are
Evermore with the purest and kindest love.
A New Epoch
I must accept that logic eventually breaks down:
Sentences are torn apart,
Rioters destroy numbers.
I have tested the machine and it sputtered and boiled,
Counters and meters exploding,
Releasing toxic radiation into the air
For miles upon miles.
I must create a new set of syntactic rules,
Verbs governing cases with nightsticks,
Nouns declining (an invitation to tea).
Women dress up for plain clad men to ogle,
Black clothing flowing around their bodies,
Destroying stylistic borders
In the name of the nocturnal sun.
I must record every story in newspapers
Whose copies are tossed on the front porches
Of millionaires who will never read them.
Repetition of mantras that sustained the ancients
Now sustains me too,
Nirvana in hand as I traverse the continent.
The conclusion of life as we know it is here,
The consequences of the great flood,
The beginning of a new, lonely epoch.
Sword Glory
Five years of plenty have been followed
By five years of famine,
But the silos are all destroyed
By kamikaze airmen,
Leaving no corn for the serfs.
Everyone is getting married to pass the time,
Lazily falling into jobs and careers,
Forgetting the indelible excitement
Of life lived spontaneously and joyously.
The sabre appears out of the mist!
It duels with the bow and arrow
In the house of elders.
I have decimated and rebuilt my ego,
But the spirit forever remains.
The power of the sword and shield
Sees the artwork on the hills
Interpreted by academics.
I must break free from these chains of normalcy
And find satisfaction in the wild tundra,
Orchestra playing the ballad of champions.
Kitten in Ecstasy
You put the nectar to my lips
But I cannot drink.
The intimacy of daydreams and laughter
Tolls from the bells of deepest desire,
A constant muse hidden behind a chain link fence.
I swore I would never be like the improprietous trio
Who once preyed upon my innocence.
Like a kitten in ecstasy,
Chasing butterflies to pass the long lazy day,
The garçon fatale does not yet know.
I am perilously close to the glass pane
Separating reality from irreality.
Everything repeats itself over and over again
And so the wanted becomes the wanter,
The people wearing masks as veils
To cover their destroyed faces.
Mothers still love their sons
Even when they are horrifically guilty
Of the most heinous crimes.
I refuse to join the Russian dolls,
Fitting perfectly inside one another,
Duplicating and echoing the misdeeds
Whose cycle will never, ever end.
House
I. From the Heavens
The sky wanders barefoot into its cabinet,
Stars dance primal and sexual ballets,
Angels clumsily make their way through corridors
That lead to contraband banquets.
From here shall a boy be born,
Features and disposition inherited
From anger and strife and love.
Not by stork nor original canal is he delivered,
But by the wonders of surgical magic,
Handed over to his father
Who cradles him like a robin’s egg,
Tiny and precious and beautiful
But with all the fragility of a snowflake.
Indeed, he flutters down from the heavens,
Seeing all the buildings and the ant cars and people
Until he drops on the cold ground,
Melting like a candle dying in its holder.
Then, shepherded by loving arms,
He regains form in the house
Where a precarious beginning must take place.
II. The Procession of Clocks
Pieces of mail never to be opened
Arrive at the address of the suburban home.
All seems to be silent,
Except for the sound of the timepiece
Sending a tick tock pounding into his brain.
It won’t relent.
His lifetime must span geological epochs
Because as the world flies by before his eyes
He mysteriously remains a child.
The song of the rain patters on the roof
While the relentless rotation of the earth
Finally comes to a halt.
The house remains standing for now.
III. Sorrow and Love
The fission of the nucleus does not lead to ultimate power,
But rather brackish tears and slammed doors
As a house divides into two.
He discovers anguish and devotion
Far earlier than Yahweh had ever intended,
The grief and misery of senescent separation,
The affection and yearning of youthful infatuation.
The two grand muses stand clad in garlands,
Cothurns and crowns of cypress.
The object of desire is just a mime,
Trapped in its own little world
And never to be reached or touched.
And so he walks down roads that lead nowhere,
Lampposts repeating themselves ad infinitum
And shining on pavement that will never come to a halt.
IV. A Dark Night
To unlock the black box is a rite of passage,
Turning the rusty key and heaving open the door.
The room is as black as its container.
Magazines have foreshadowed a coming together
For those who are aligned with darkness,
For those who have discovered the secret direction
On the ancient compass rose.
And now it is time.
He casually falls into a vodka and Kahlúa night
With other birds who would or could not
Follow their flock in migration
As they flew together to a new continent.
He can now enter the door of any house,
Knowing the encyclopedia of code words
That will allow access.
V. Ink on Feathers
On his face and down his back
He possesses a poet’s semaphore,
A physical shibboleth from the land of words,
A peculiar language that few can truly understand.
A letter can save a life debased
When the world is covered in lava,
Precariously leaning like the Tower of Pisa.
So he sends letters to every human on the globe
In the hope that they may be spared
From the stick of dynamite
Whose fuse threatens to ignite any second.
To write is to bleed,
And his blood hemorrhages through the house,
Filling sinks and bathtubs,
Staining walls and ceilings.
Truly his words must change the world,
Five lonely seconds at a time.
VI. Machinations
The best laid travel plans
See humans taking airplanes into the inferno,
Musculature disintegrating with the heat.
To survive the day is implausible
While the injustices of the world emaciate this house
Until it collapses of frailty,
Invisible torture leaving no physical marks.
In the upstairs room he counts his pennies,
Beard unshaven and scraggly.
Mother and father are now foreign concepts.
How shabby he has become,
Clothing all worn out,
Shoes falling apart with no cobbler to repair them.
This story is near its end,
And he is ready for the book to turn back
To its very first page,
But this time with completely new words.
VII. Into the Heavens
After all the checks are signed
And all the money transferred,
After the sick are comforted
And the dead buried,
His soul transmigrates
Flying away like a dream from a brain.
Who can remember life when it is so far in the past?
The new realm is so beautiful,
Clouds becoming pillows for the freed soul
That no longer toils in the mines.
His spirit dances far above the skylight,
But if you look very, very hard,
You can make out a faint glow over the rainbow.
Then you will detect the crumbs of being
Falling from the tray of existence,
Somewhere within this great, celestial house
That we dare to call our home.
An Insignificant Riot
Tiny mistakes haunt me,
Errors on the typewriter
Which correction fluid can never cover.
All electrical activity hints at the collapse of society.
If funds can be reallocated from tank engines
To the happy building of communities,
The vertical might be realigned into the horizontal
And tomorrow can begin.
The Existential Office
How much must one suffer?
The least amount of productivity
Can still convince cosmic superiors
That useless knowledge can dwindle the days away.
Useful ignorance is even better,
Allowing for a kind of forgetting of loneliness.
If the end of sadness means being stuck in this lame body,
I will miss the days of romping around in my head like a tiger.
Every sentence must repeat itself for all eternity
Until the jaw can finally comprehend it.
The spirit is exhausted.
Offices are filled with monkeys answering phones,
Attempting so hard to speak
As they wait for their scant days of freedom
Before a quiet death.
Boredom is lucrative,
Dollar bills falling like confetti
Upon those who sit in front of computers
Answering phone calls from beyond this realm.
Timesheets measure chunks of soul
Torn out of the heart by society,
But for two glorious days every seven
One may attempt to heal oneself.
Outside of this solar system
The clicking and clacking of keyboards
Sends signals to the black holes
That wait with maws dripping,
Ready to swallow us up once and for all.