ALL RESPONSES |
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Another source of light
Crawls across the grid,
Breaks though the silk
And begins to live.
A world, a mind, a space,
With yearning to return
To the unknown place
Where it was born,
Surrounded by others in stages
Of growth and dissolution,
A tide of time and matter, it is
The rock, the spark, the fire.
When darkness gives life to light,
It begins to pull it back
Into the warming deep
And always brings it home. |
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Proton and Neutron do their pasa doble nanoday after nanoday, twirling , their quarks ebbing and flowing, radiating their photonic smiles of delight. Electron courses around them, jealousy and lust trailing in static blue wake. He knows he’ll always finish second to Proton. Second and nothing more. Three’s a crowd and Electron tips the atomic balance. Shedding not a drop of heavy water, Electron spins and whirls, never growing close to partake in a dance with beautiful Neutron. Some nanodays he wishes he could break them up, an electric passionate collision. He never does, never will. Electron stills himself nanoseconds at a time and wonders about his cousin electron in a relationship scant nanometers away, the Hydrogen atom. His fellow electron is shy, never knowing what to do or say to impress that lovely molecule. Electron, in this Deuterium triangle, envies his airy Hydrogen kin.
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The word sings: blue. The rarest, most mysterious color
in nature. You pout, pronouncing it—form a kiss as if
blowing out the candles on a birthday cake.
Color of the shadow side: of desire, of knowledge, tint
of the marvelous and inexplicable. The blue movie,
raw meat, rare steak.
Brimstone burns blue: and a blue candle flame
is said to presage the presence of ghosts. The more
finely its pigment is ground, the whiter the blue becomes.
Hues and variations: Dutch Boy, Blue Boy, Pacific Pool
Supplies Blue. Fugitive, all painters know. It fades
more quickly than any other color.
O: there are so many negative things about blue!
French forensic doctors refer to hanging victims as
"pendus bleus." Hangin' Blues. Pour moi-même,
I'll take a blue note, and a dance of the
Northern Lights.
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(for: Crossing the Line)
I picture her nude,
my thumb nail digging
into my styrofoam coffee
cup I hold tighter while
picturing her nude;
i stop so as not
to cause a leak.
Others look at me
looking at her,
so i scratch the itch
on my scalp;
anything to keep
my hands busy.
I look to the east
wall: a reprint of the poker
picture of all the dogs;
the grandfather clock
behind them reads 1:10;
the bulldog’s paw is under
the table holding the Ace
of Clubs and again i scratch
the itch on my scalp.
Upon closer inspection
I can tell she lives her life
through the long brunette
strands of her hair;
her history hangs
on the cigarette smell
of her white blouse;
after finally making out
her name tag reads Susan,
I now fully understand
why I hate Christmas
shopping on weekends. |
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More than a few
men and women I know
are dying.
Businesses I frequent are throwing in the towel
as those who run them age:
Gary, who cut
my hair for thirty-five years.
His life now will be the vacations –
Mexico, etc. – that he’s talked of
as he snipped, for years.
What am I to do about my hair?
And my spirit,
which thrives on the printed word.
What will it do without the smell of ink,
without paper’s pleasing feel
to fingers searching out words?
Is my love affair with the book,
the magazine, the newspaper
coming to an end?
What will I do to replace
the thrill of seeing the latest issue
peeking out of the mailbox.
I am not enamored, though I check them out,
of online words and lines that disappear
with one click or two,
words that find a black hole when the lights go out.
So I make new friends, younger,
while doing what I can to count and keep the old.
Shop around for someone with scissors and comb
who will learn quickly my head and hair,
who will not plaster it down with mousse.
I will argue too for less costly paper stock
and will point out that I cannot get the sun to shine
on my computer screen
as it does on a book.
So I onward move and upward
while holding fast to the ancient good that stays couth,
Often wondering if I am staying
abreast of truth.
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The snow has come with its promise
of everlasting white
Humans often substitute its frequency
for the long-lasting mythology of tall tales
Like a storm, I haven’t had time to think
about you as I should, but when I do
it’s with a longing for someone I wish
to know forever
A thought that lends itself to melting
as much as a dying man hallucinates
he is never alone |
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If I can not muster the courage, you must go on with it.
Go on with the lights that you follow in the sky.
The North star, that’s the one you’ll always look for.
Like balls of yarn we are tossed back and forth, gradually losing
our strings to the throws. If I cannot sweep your trust under the rug,
like every little thing I find here we won’t care
when the black hammered metal of our fears comes crashing down on us.
If I cannot be romanced by the images of constellations hanging us
by the neck and you as a child, you must go on;
because we will always weary with the sight of each other’s ghosts.
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I have a new computer. It’s still a stranger to me.
But yesterday when it was on, and I away from the desk,
it was active, on its own, showing its cyber self,
like northern lights, like underwater coral and pink
octopi and jade things I’ve never seen and will never
understand but am so happy to catch a glimpse of.
Cool. These images swam over a darkened screen.
In and out. Flexing. Here and away. In waves.
I wondered then what I’d hooked up in my room, thinking
a new computer but perhaps this is heaven,
dark and light and moving all at once,
and I wondered what exactly that meant
about what I’d become--maybe flamboyant,
multi-colored, alone, separate but intertwining
with another strange world, as every day as cyber,
its underwater stories visibly stretching, reaching,
dancing. I’m not sure.
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Night falls early.
Light the lamps, kindle
wood, and before
you go to sleep
under the feathers of geese,
set off a few flares
of fire, a festival
of light we'll call
the solstice,
Christmas, Hannukah,
New Year's, how we comfort
ourselves in the darkness.
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semen seeks
ovum wants
avum lilies
aves, angels
afterward, my anchor
if once love hailed me
it does still
love is like light
we know it afterwards
from the changes it leaves
on paper
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Lately, I noticed my nails growing
faster on my right than on my left.
I trim the right side once a week,
but the left only needs it once a month.
My left eye is twitching.
There has been a sharp pain
above my left elbow for several weeks.
The knocking of the pipes in my house
grows louder each time the water runs.
The red and brown squirrels have left.
Now there are only black ones.
Even the moon looks lopsided,
and has turned an odd shade of blue,
casting purplish shadows on the snow.
In the night sky, a meteorite shoots upwards.
After reading the front page of the newspaper,
I put it down, and my tom cat lays down on it.
He smiles. |
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They sit on the edge of the bed,
with the dictionary,
its spine tender from age,
balanced carefully across their thighs.
He flips to a page
with his right hand
and with his left,
runs a finger along the small of her back.
Neither of them say a thing, yet
they both know, every word
they’ll ever need
is here, between them.
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Night falls,
summer night
when the last red streaks leave the sky
Gaia opens to ether
what she cannot hold
You and I, summer sprites
stroke the sea, skim the sky,
like twin tides in twirl
unbounded,
These sweet summer nights
And at autumn's eve
you take my hand
mortal again
Every season ends.
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Creased and faded petals
held in a clenched hand
Locked, without a cage,
blow away into the night
as snow tenderly sweeps
across this morose wilderness,
covering the rose
long gone to grey
Rainbows always die
And what of it? |
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There were too many light spirals.
Her neck got stiff, too many signs.
She drank blue and it dried in her.
Only stone goes well with water.
She became sculpture, eyes always open
in the grey cloister garden.
She breathed crows, in small doses.
Her voice became gravel,
too much crow darkness.
Meanwhile the agitated light slips
through fingers into every fold of sky.
Meanwhile from her marble anchor
she acts as if it were still possible
to speak her air minded bird sense
from one town to the next.
Meanwhile a raspberry colored wind
shears the sky, splitting air
with a long mauve-silver tress
a necklace of oyster shells left
on her untamed neck.
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Buddha preaches the world
will blink when we do,
will disappear when we do
i think at least these will
survive: blue vinegar pines,
resin caked black nails
of quick squirrels and one
fallen tree, upon which I carved
our initials to stay through either
a din or bright eternity |
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I do not remember your voice
only the sounds your words make
as they trip across the surface
of my pale skin.
Some days a deluge, they baptize me.
Some days a squall that magnifies each sin.
Today you are a watery sun,
here to remind me
That there is only loss and longing, only
ragged nights and fraying days until you
kiss each pause and every dropped ending,
into the palm of my hand.
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They leave for the end
shards of blue and brown
beach glass rubbed smooth
with longing
by the ash of driftwood
burned the night they fell
with grace into their own future.
Afterwards, she counts each beat
of his heart, feels the song of him
as it sings through her veins.
Traces each memory
onto skin; on her shoulder
each of his regrets. His laugh
she tucks into the crook of her arm.
Sins, she nestles between her ribs,
until he is ready
to nibble her hipbone &
taste redemption once again.
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I wrote your name on my arm last year
with a pocket knife. Now it’s a poem,
recorded for life as a jagged scar.
I draw your silhouette on the kitchen wall
with a flashlight. My eyes burn each time
you turn to look at me and smile.
I watch you carve skaldic incantations
beneath the ice with a candle
held tightly in the pale vellum of your hand.
I walk away, your voice frozen in the air.
The colors all run together
whether I paint them here or there.
I’ve never cared about the difference
between now and yesterday.
The words will still be there tomorrow. |
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the future, they said
would look like this.
blinking white
pragmatic lights
strung like garland
like beads
like edible confetti
they didn’t tell
us that long fingered
monkeys will
still pry at the
invisible screws--
newscasters
continue their ceaseless
chatter,
oblivious to the
screaming fighters
tracing words
on the tired back
of the sky
that final message
slowly peeling apart
l e t t e r
b y
l e t t e r |
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seems the closer i get
the more i lose myself
today i’m
trying to remember
who i am
that indefinable thing
who’s created
this spirit
this soul
she’s pulling me
inside again
i feel misunderstood
it’s like walking in time
with rock & roll
while your heart sings
a ballad with pavarotti
i’ve tried to define it
with a million words
and a thousand tears
but my heart screams
hear me...
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The hour when the coffee shop kids wake,
books open across chests,
spray paint stained fingers,
tripping over bike tires,
the hallways are empty and smell of old smoke.
Love, soft and sleeping beside them.
The hour with few tracks in the snow,
the newspaper man’s virgin prints
cross yards at strange angles,
and handprints appear
clear on the sidewalk without explanation,
undestroyed, separate, delicate and haunting.
At this hour, it could be any time,
anyone could happen down this vacant street,
but no one does.
Libraries in other countries,
hidden between stacks;
or on trails toward given-up destinations;
just moments after a devastating loss;
or passing a man with a “will work for food sign”
in the worst of winter.
You have been this alone before.
The Christmas lights blink like they could
forever.
Where should the odd memory reside,
in the same corner as hope or it’s opposite?
Tobacco and gas station cocoa lace the air
over the empty scent of winter
and we have all been here,
waiting,
before.
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I saw your name scratched into wet stones,
Neatly stacked in the crotches of trees.
Your footprints immortalized for a day
in the leaf strewn mud,
leads me towards the river.
I saw your deeply creased palms
Turned up to catch the rain.
When you blink, I disappear. |
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While Joseph Cotton walks the black
and white streets of Vienna,
Orson Welles prepares
to string colored lights
across the background.
Film noir has met its match. |
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I can see microwaves,
Radiowaves and
The spray from my wireless router
I can see gamma, delta and xrays and
I can see your thoughts spiraling away from your head,
Titling and tipping and losing integrity, falling to the floor.
Is there anywhere I can go where I do not have to watch your
Cellphone signal
PDA array
GPS positioning fingers?
I am going to go stand in the emanations of the Magnetic Rock, and
Enveloped in their forceful strands,
I will await the next aurora.
(The Magnetic Rock Trail is located outside of Grand Marais, up the Gunflint Trail. It leads to a monstrously large glacial erratic, so powerfully magnetic that it interferes with compasses.)
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Saturday warmed above freezing
Snow I had postponed removing yesterday from my front walk
turned to slush
early morning prior to the postal delivery
Footprints up the steps
Noticed them that evening
stepping out to open the box
Retrieving mail, I chastised my procrastination
But hey, I was busy
Sunday came with a forewarned temperature plunge mid afternoon
followed by a couple inches of "accumulation"
Duties called
I returned in the evening feeling the neighborly guilt on my shoulders
Grabbed the cold shovel by the steps
Breath hanging clouds in subzero reality
Commenced sidewalk clearing
Shovels edge doing the familiar dancing
Smooth strokes interrupted
by blobbing patterns left behind in warmer times
Footsteps of a messenger
frozen in place
too cold to strip away just now...
Perhaps it is best to let some patterns just melt
I stepped back
removing too-thin gloves
My right hand rubbed smooth
smoosh marks glinting in streetlights
Bent frame casting long shadows against the lawn
Asking
What marks have I left others to feel? |
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Fluorescent pearls
some secret sea
lure prey to their demise . . .
Raised to the surface
admired
in the hands of the treasure hunter
become
faded stones around his neck. |
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The rhythm and the tapping
of the tips of my fingers
to the soft sounds of rain
sends soft shudders
up my placid arm.
On the radio, Billy Collins
reads about taking off
the clothes of Emily Dickinson,
all the clips and clasps and straps.
Now I know it’s impossible to own
either a moment or a person,
but as Billy reads about Emily’s puddle
of clothes at her feet,
I envision the two of us together
and the tips of my fingers tapping
in rhythm across the torso
of your aching beauty.
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Some light
is mechanic -
illumination
without emotion
as is
some love.
Some people are the Rose of Sharon;
their adoration ever biblical.
Some
subsist on
the milk of winter. |
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did you know we criss cross over infinite junctions of time-space?
well hell, it’s true as anything else!
reach your hand up
i dare you
tickle the world you waddle through
Shout!
Dance!
Stop!
are you sweating yet?
no, I don’t suppose so
don’t be so supine
Get up! Get up!
look up and around…see how the
comet evolves to dust
felled by a wish
armed by the arrow you fired under duress
don’t’ stand up in the boat you fool!
starchild will see, then punish us by
evaporating into cool mist seas |
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i)
If there were a God
and he had a voice
to call me, I would
walk around a bit;
I would wait a while
before inquiring
about signs, the colors
I have noticed lately:
the reddish boulder
under stream running
over green or how fish
leave white water
when darkness falls.
I would ask him who will
teach me why stones sleep
or where does a bird’s cry
go in the dark?
I would hold perfectly still.
I would wait for answers.
ii)
My father is dying.
People offer me sympathy
like glasses of cold water.
Yet, father is still dying.
And I can’t ask him why. |
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Late afternoon
Golden glow through the trees
And the fading blue above
Mirrors the gray below
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