ALL RESPONSES |
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In response to the look of wonder
Of innocence
Of remembering how it was to feel that way
With nothing but future
And the past, something that happened before now
Yesterday
A scuffed knee
The warm red life hidden below the surface
Heavy snow
Gloves again
Building a snowman with big kids
Wet socks
Watching God go to sleep behind clouds in the evening
How he turns to red
And paints purple shadows in snow behind the house
Asking “who is God’s father?”
but quickly grasping infinity
that nothing will end, this will never end
and death is just a word for not being there
everything you feel is part of the world you see
who you are now, is who you will always be
but bigger
wanting to be big
not wanting to sleep
would rather run than walk
not afraid of anything
yet |
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like crescent moons
new
the eyes fresh
all is clear and bright
over an expanse of unblemished
there is almost no name for this
for we are certain to see it change
even as we gaze upon it
ephemeral
perhaps that's the correct word
we know nothing more surely about it |
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Last night i pretended i was
a small slice of your evening;
that for the first time you played
for me the sound of my own voice
and together we danced. |
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She talks about it as if it were an old friend,
someone she knows well enough to put up
with, an uninvited, inconvenient guest.
She says, “But I don’t know if it’s day or night.”
“That’s the medication,” I say.
She nods and then goes on about next
summer when they’ll barbecue
and the air will be scented with rain.
She yearns for those deep
hours from childhood that last forever,
the comfort of birdbaths and blowsy peonies
and the whole act of and weaving crowns from clover,
of baby birds learning well the art of escape,
of being set free in a cloudless sky.
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Buried deep under layer of winter
I am lost.
I offer you my breath, form clouds
and disappear. Want my body
silent as snow, want my tongue
trapped in my mouth, Want
each word I swallow, come
spring, to form petals & bloom.
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Remember, you’re not mine, Outlandish.
I could drive you out into the country
set you free by the side of some old state road.
Run. Git. And forget where I left you quick.
Never been there before, just out dickin' around.
I’d think of you fine out there, somewhere.
Not in a room so cold you could see your breath,
calendar over your bed, ticking days with X’s.
But come back, boy, and shit—you’re all right.
Mine again, like old times. You’d have trouble.
not. gritting. your. teeth. when. we. talk.
Pushing back them spells of anger,
not about our lost time, but your own.
Times you ran to keep up; I’d still be proud.
I’ll admire the limp from how I broke your legs.
It does me good to see my hands on you. |
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search
the child looks up
eyes wide mouth
soft
asking
no words but
asking still
who am I
who are you
how will I find them?
come
we will
combine our search
if the alley is blind
lo another road
punctuated
clearly marked
capital letters and all
arrows point
speed is limited
how far to the Cities?
we search
for what is lost
for what is already found |
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People walk by,
toss you their wishes
without even you asking
Look what
you’ve become:
an
empty
chair |
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The child whirled in the summer rainfall,
Arms raised, face up, squinting, smiling,
Palms up, as if she were the sprinkler
Happy to receive back her droplets.
An umbrella as unthinkable an idea
As cautionary words about staying dry,
As unthinkable as any words at all.
Taking on the tears of the world, graciously.
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He takes two enormous bowls,
begging, empty to overflowing,
to the front of the room and asks,
"Please sir, can I have some more?" |
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harvest my tears
save them until I
fall too grey
drinking them from
your hand – my youth –
cast memories to drift, in open seas |
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for Libby
I hold her with my mother,
her mother, her mother’s mother,
I hold her in ancestral arms:
an ancient Chinese coin
heaven’s circle, human geometry
a shoe, a spot on the earth
a light meter counting hopes
a clock, a cipher
a book waiting to be folded
a tongue with the alphabet it cradles
a rattle moving night
only what is and the vessel it’s in
a violet yes, in navy blue eyes
Yes, yes I do know you
a prayer bead a whistle
the clicking of keys
a trail to be followed
through sapphire linen bluebells
red valerian, magenta camelias
a curled spiral of fiddlehead fern.
We make a beehive for the infant
she is our pool, our well
we listen, gather
her small sounds.
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(There are no real worlds here just talking treebeards).
Your art words kept up to peer
out at Vermeer from below
Sounding with battle your woman's noise
slight crackle through in museum doorways
upon cable TV’s table seen
in Essence
your beutiful picture with hairdresser blower raised
...my wolf's wildeyes
as Grimm's tales made a child as a dish phase.
Compose mother modern arts in this site's Northo companion
chic post-war garden rag
suppressed our surreal neeth
through dark forest yellow Riding Hoods dripping off whitescreens.
Sex we are racing
as Marilyn Monroe's red checkered vinyl stockings saved
fashions rage womens right
in cloth wrapping sounds binding
surrounds buildings like the Hague
and Earthworks legss
real bombs stripped anything of the real
steel work in what are sculptures today made?
What was the best thing you found
TO BE
as made in New York City
Installations
Maybe Warhol's soup lined cans painting of painting
of green stamp labels
could be sirens
Green message is today's energy stamps depression.
Former Pres. Tricky Dick Nixon World still ticks
White is now Black to some other Reagan era hick
Cathy van Eck
before leaving to further learning
how will you
make it new
World real
in London university hunger studios?
As you have by myth of siren calling
sent here in the Northographs April bon fires
Finish off our men's shapes with homegrown bridges
keeping early chromatic man's green fire color lighted.
CoalFuel burns still the rage
under this table hides early Parisan revenge
with a cold plate stare flanked in art's postmodern
Standards of arts for art’s sake.
Do we run for any helter shelters from your yellow siren?
Blonde bomb paintings have made
For bombs-away in Daddy Warbucks WWIIHell's kitchen's flame
fire this million pound cake
takes Chinamerica storm skelter made
aimed at your critic's complex use
of his forest machinery
severing my own crazy eyes and lost tariffs’ lost
from idle paper mills innocent hypocricy
Detroit Ford Michigan steel dies with me.
Minnesotans draw lines near with your greygoose siren
duck has tired from mourning’s light
elite class boring - wanted -advent guard music festival rites
yet classic or romantic sounds as well as can be nice.
You've seen how Van Eck or Vermeer girl reads in kitchen letters
but not as real as your girlstrees fallen fastenedleaves
Earlier Greece forms sculpting translucent nudity
because arts vanguard or avant guard virtues here
in creeps facebook friendship near
To be
morals of lust, love, Apolo's lost behind Whitewalls wings
to side step or lose goose duck goose
only missing is whats your move of broken fisted twigs
runningboards wolves without fear
of arts suspicious language
threading teleosposts the same
help with English grammer freetranslation primer
in History's myth as our English outstretched it
yet my German ancestor's awesome forth Reich steers.
..........................................................................
sound links below
http://www.cathyvaneck.net/groeneRuis.html
http://www.cathyvaneck.net/oefening.html
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For Cathy van Eck's sound art
widescreen precession of the dream
postmodern audience listening
to some other picture
not reality
just disassociated signs without truth
in my moments present intent.
The Complexity of her noise establishes fragility
that makes the sound acted upon move like sculptural form expanding
contracting speaking to the idea of remembering the moment
composed work
ofhow things are connected in learning art and music.
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It was never more
beautiful
than when the snow
was falling this morning
you were out there
among the cloud boughs
and the singing
I heard you leave
What was it? only one or two
hours ago
Why is it no one writes poetry
about the older children?
Today, you are
fifteen and it may never snow
again |
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I read this at an oyster roast on Skidaway Island, near Savannah, GA, for my brother, William Fleming, and his bride-to-be, Jennifer Bunger.
He’s a half-brother
From a different mother
Plus – he’s half my age
And not really half a brother
But a brother, who never was a bother.
So here’s to young Will
And Jennifer, soon a Fleming as well.
Now- considering our company
We don’t want to say anything too ribald
So with greatest respect to ya’ll
I conjured up a composition
In honor of those entering into a deal
Now- this is real-
not only do they make lots of big promises
To be faithful, and take care of one another
But to do so until they die.
Well, from my experience, that’s quite a task,
Having failed on the first time around.
It took years for me to get my feet on the ground,
Thanks to Peg, who’s standing right there,
With her wonderful, thick brown hair.
Now- I would warn you, go easy on the whiskey,
But if you should find yourself tipsy,
And become a little frisky, please remember
The pretty lass you married, the one who drives you home
When you stumble with a big grin from the bar.
It’s up to you. I speak from experience,
For right or for wrong, of the ways we
Might treat a loved one, and the expectation
Of how we should be treated in return.
At any rate, if all goes well, the bills get paid
And little Flemings populate the town,
Their mouths chattering nonsense
With increasing fluency, until they
Reach adulthood, and are allowed to utter inanities
As I do now, with license and a captive crowd,
In the company of family and friends,
Without having once kissed the Blarney Stone,
But still having that unique vowel movement of the brain—
To speak whatever comes to mind again. |
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i like the way
the kid's face is set into racing stripes
by my lcd monitor
i love the way
that there is no sex. no heart. only a rainbow.
and the way that i
can ignore the necessity
that some insist on
that a home is needed
a father and mother and family
all of mazlows bullshit
all of my fears are missing--like knowing
that this picture is from
1973, and he/she remains nameless
to this day, to this day, to...
you get the point
there is no food between the teeth and gums
in fact, teeth has been cut down to
two incisors and a molar
and somehow these stayed
when the house disappeared, the car ran out
of gas forever and was towed during
the aftermath of a snow storm
and the kid found a home
finally, no more alone
than the empty skull frontal lobe imagery
of a begged cigarette speaking
lettering in smoke,
and stale bread
found in the basement of a hardware store
stolen, stuck
inside the left coat pocket of
this used jacket
the stale bread means a
huge carbo-load day of 500 calories
until tomorrow, and the scrap of cardboard
from behind a grocery store, and a marker
plead for help you dumb cuss
bear with your situation because
you do not belong
you should have driven to florida for the winter
but you stayed here
cuddling in an alleyway behind a dumpster
singing in a dry voice where your chords do not fit
could you please just go away
and let me not bum your jonesin' ass cigarettes
in downtown minneapolis, then
in uptown, down lake street all the way to the bridge
spanning the biggest river anywhere
at least to you
as you slip from sitting on the guardrail
and crush, halfway through the ice
sliding under, into the current
of the river that you have finally been accepted into
a corpse of humanity. |
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Your eyes look up at me
Knowing truth
Knowing me
Seeing through my walls
My games my lies
How old are you
Really?
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Moooommmmm? Can I have some more Fruit Loops Please? Thank you...
Moooooommm? Is my belly button an inny or an outty? You have an outty and Dad has an inny.. I dunno what mine is.. maybe it's an inbetweeny.. Moooommm? Guess what I dreamed last night.. I dreamed my friend Daisy.. you know.. the one you can't see... flew out of the sky on a big white unicorn and PICKED ME UP! It was GREAT! We flew ALL OVER THE WORLD!!! We do that a lot! What do we do? We help people. Last night, we helped somebody climb Mount Everest! Where is it? Moooommm it's in INDIA! Everybody knows that Mom.. How old am I? Mom, I'm 6. You were there when I was born.. Remember... I remember when you were 6 and I was the mom.. That was fun.. You are doin an okay job for bein a mom I guess.. Your eyeballs are open.. That's good.. |
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I grew up in the valley,
known as a suburb
of a really big city,
smaller, however,
than what my eyes could see.
I grew, up in the favelas
isolated by sea,
surrounded by thousands of lively bodies
like mine, piled up on the hills
creating the wealth of hope,
ignoring daily outcomes and annual statistics
but instead
looking forward
with the benefit of not really knowing
what forward meant |
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What do your eyes see?
Wide as camera lenses,
Aperture open.
Dear Writers,
Thank you for this opportunity for growth.
This is my first response here and my first haiku ever.
Sandy |
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is this how one begins to search to find to accumulate the necessary functional consciousness the ideas one is not born with?
is this the look of one blank slate open to new chalk fresh out of the box to new works scratched onto its surface?
and later to the cloud of dust from the smear of words once readable to the eraser one tries to clean a life with? |
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Unca Gehwee...
When will spring come?
Soon, Tiff
Soon |
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Now come thee hence, Fernleaf, sing a little fairy song to soothe me fast to sleep. With wide eyes of innocence the sprite as bid. She did bring an acorn cup to the brim filled with nectar of cowslip, smiling. She hops as light as a bit of thistledown.
So spoke the queen with a frown, Thou now make me warmly covered with flowers woven
here within my bower. So now a lullaby dost softly waft and swirl around the Fairy Queen. Closely curled, the sprite, Fernleaf sings her best to send her queen to gentle rest.
All noisesome things were bid away, and then banned before
the coming of the day. Against he noxious things, did the elves and sprites now guard.
Then were they shooed--- away to duties as bidden as now all was well and good. So did they go hand in hand into the darkened wood with fairy grace. They were here and there as the hours kept apace.
They would return with the first breaking of the coming day. With sweet nectar would they slake their thirst. Just one was left to watch and ware. It was Fernleaf, the one who did so care.
Then did pass the night before the coming of the light. They came creeping near to where the queen was sleeping with quiet shadow steps The sprites and elves who had been sent to duties throughout the darkened hours. They began softly, a song to rouse their queen with gentle loving care.
Not ever seen were they , just the work they did as they were bid. Little Fernleaf did sing with love as the day was breaking, gently was the Fairy Queen awaking.
Silently all fade within the morning mist as day breaks into light and chases the night away. |
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