ALL RESPONSES |
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It. The thing, -wait- what’s a thing?
Let’s start again.
Something…no, that’s a thing, too.
An object. A word. Two letters.
I + T = IT. But, what does IT mean?
What does “mean” mean?
Am I being mean?
Wait! I is in IT,
Therefore….
I am IT, With a T.
But what is T?
Is it me? |
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something happened to my knees
on the climb up here, i can't remember --
blood pooled in the cuffs
of my secondhand socks: warm, wet,
red rainwater mirage. in desert drought
nothing falls from the sky
but birds and light. stretching my tongue
to drink my flooded shins --
the salt and iron pull me back. i spit
down the fire escape,
down fauxdobe,
down tawny stucco and broken glass,
down three vacant stories of pale, discarded skin. |
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I read a poem last night
written three centuries ago
by a Japanese poet
It concerned soft rain falling
quietly from a grey sky
in thick silence
I wonder if it is pure
coincidence or simply chance
that it is raining now in the thick
silence of southeastern Minnesota
and the pure beauty of it inside
me is such that it now inspires me
to compose a poem about rain |
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my body
seems to think
I am being too hard on it.
coffee and phillip morris’s best
served medium rare just isn’t cuttin’ it,
the occasional pain below my ribs
is just an aside,
while spring loaded
my mouth is still moist
my mind
seems to think
winter has come early.
a womb where wasps lay
their stinging eggs
devouring the flowers
gently fallen and rotting
it wonders if I could be nettle blooming in tea,
digested slowly then reborn as a new son. |
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(Joyce called it that)
Because the wind excites (water)
the stone
Because the mountain pierces (air)
the light
Because the dew longs for (chipmunk)
the footprint
Blue defines the rocky outcrop
The hummingbird colliope
is a tremor in the fireweed
The stone steps in Canterbury
became waves under pilgrims’ knees
None of them blends, but digraphs
quick solidities at the heart of things |
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Try The Thinker's pose.
Comfortable?
I'll bet not!
So what was he up to,
one Auguste Rodin?
What was he trying to say?
I think he had a pain,
a twist somewhere amid his
thoracic vertebrae.
This guy looks like I feel
when I have turned around
just a bit too far in the
drivers seat to look behind
and then try,
always with fail,
to twist back the other way
thinking I'll relieve the snap I heard.
Poor son-of-a-bitch,
caught forever in bronze
with that permanent backache!
e
090710
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The rain stopped right at the edge
of the cloud that covered us
like a blanket. It fell like sheets,
hanging, heavy with days of waiting
patiently for their time. It showered
the Sitka spruces, bringing news
of the end of one more summer day.
It was salmon time but the salmon
never came (neither did you)
as if somehow lost by the exhausting task
of chasing water upstream.
All that emptiness and the rain
filling the silent spaces, like the smells
you left in my skin, those delicately quiet
memories of you.
The sun carried no warmth that day
though the rays filtered through
occasionally, like a teasing child
peaking behind a cloth.
As I sat there, the thunder of the falls
dropping water drops by the millions
was still less powerful than my love for you.
But that too went unsaid, tied up in knots
with the softest thread, like so many things,
left hanging along the way.
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My hands and feet have grown large
to meet the rising trend of labor that bleeds
into night. A sun whose last hour is heavy,
and stretched to its limits.
How poetic thought becomes
when one suffers his life situations, or one
sits alone—finally, alone—at night,
outside, contemplating how he
arrived here in the first place,
whether he would have it any other way.
It’s too much to admit that I
think I require some time alone, and a bit of
space. The stars may be shooting
doves out of the sky tonight. I won’t see it.
Once the gears in this head begin to grind
even the sculptor disappears. |
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Once when I was young, I saw him in Paris,
fist in his chin, left palm on his knee,
head down. To see into his eyes I had
to bend down a bit and look up. Oh!
his tortured face. I jumped back from it.
Thought. Is it so difficult in its struggle?
Murderous? His, having nothing to do
with remembrance, rather adding up
and subtracting human experience,
desire to see clearly what has passed
and what lies ahead. For him, lost in
thought, cast in stone, dreams turned
to marble. No wonder his expression
is terrible. What will his work do in the end?
No embrace can shake or move him. |
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the one green army man got away
from the battle. all of his body
tried to find a support role
in what was the hereafter. but his plastic
self rode a stone nowhere, always wondering
where his brothers had gotten off to.
years after the end of others’ demise
he continued to cast quiet eyes
downward. he made us all wonder
that war bred such poets. he sat
until worn full away, and met
only questions without any answers. |
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He yearns to unlock
the butterfly of his heart,
to quiver with delight,
to soar over
the muddy bog
of his tangled thoughts. |
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The sculptor
stops
working
when
he wonders how
a sculptor
furrows
his brow
when
he wonders how
a sculptor
furrows
his brow
when he stops
working.
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I will bend
to your cursive, old Poet.
I will cloud
your face with my
remoteness.
I will grab
your palm with each page
Hard cover bard
Still able syllable,
Your poems
are the vase
a face
lives in
like a dried rose
behind my
own.
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I cannot tell how this poem should
start: maybe with a sort of music or
body and shape
I know how it should end: without
darkness, without music or without
body and shape
a new poet I have never met; only
the older ones who write with words
leaving us feeling alone at night
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Watching shadows of trees on a moving freight train
I count back the days, turn in my mind, my mother’s hands
over. Find in her cupped palm, the pink of a berry.
Find at her wrist the fragrant memory of our days
spent in fields of clover, chasing grasshoppers,
trailing shadows. What is she now, but a silhouette
dancing behind closed eyelids. What I am now
but the keeper of memories, supple as skin.
The color of knowing is steely gray.
The color of sadness; what it mirrors.
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maple branches
bend in the wind
a lemon wedge moon
peaks through clouds
the weather man
says “no rain”
the signs tell me
different
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listen.. love
live life
simply..
tell a story..
write a letter..
sing a song..
never start
with the
beginning..
never finish
with the
end..
always be
within the
moment
through
the days
ahead..
may the gift
of time
be yours
to cherish
and to
keep..
lend a
helping hand
today..
give
and you'll
receive..
joy comes
in the
morning..
and through
the darkest
night..
light a
candle in
your heart..
make it
come
alive |
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I've been sitting here for ages.
As I grow older,
my joints stiffen (you thought
I was stiff to begin with?);
I make more noise when I move
(at night, when you're not here).
My thoughts, too, though
they're supposed to be my life's work,
have become meandering pools like tar pits,
swallowing any kernel of wisdom.
Auguste had no idea I'd be so very viscous
in my movements, but that he'd be so very
oblivious
is a bit of a shock -
he made my body curve
and fold so very well,
so sinously,
so sensually.
It's really a pity
I'm a poet, a thinker,
not a doer.
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As Told To
The solemn wisdom of the wise
For all its pomp, may not be true,
So take with skeptical surmise
What's told to me, what's told to you.
The universe, of boundless size
Extends to near infinity,
Not to celestial paradise
As told to you, as told to me.
Those who get the Nobel Prize
Say, thought is electricity,
And dead men surely can not rise
As told to you, as told to me.
By now we ought to realize
Humanity will muddle through
Without the need to fantasize,
As told to me, as told to you. |
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| On the day after, you will disappear. No one will think of you, at least not enough to relocate your thoughts. You will be safe from the sun, but the implements of your trade are now undone. We will forget. We will truss your memory with stones and toss you off into a riverbed. The water, so uncertain like your birth, so enduring like the need for you to stay, so unfulfilled, and then, again, you go. Your spirit is that of the unknown. Your trials as quiet as the full-failed home. |
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He thought of himself
as a thinker. She
thought of him
as inactive. It wasn’t
like that when they
first got married.
He was playful then,
and brave
and thinner
than he is now.
He thought marriage
had settled him,
reminding him what’s
important in life.
He never would
have guessed that
he’d be a man who
sees around things
like beauty and
wealth. Or maybe
he couldn’t see
around them still.
Maybe wealth,
maybe beauty,
maybe they just
meant something
different to him now.
He felt rich.
She felt cheated.
He thought
she was beautiful.
She hated a man
who could look at
her cellulite and not
be repulsed by it.
They weren’t even
like minded anymore.
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I wish I could sit still as you do.
Naked and uncaring of the wind,
the rain, the sun.
Unbothered by the noises of the street,
the curious glances,
the happiness, and the complains...
Not bothered by questions,
not needing to give answers.
Judge or judge not the actions around you,
the fights, the love sprouting
and the one withering.
To enjoy the nights of stars,
even the ones of snow drifting,
depositing,
over your dark, polished skin.
“A penny for your thought!”
But do you bother to do such a thing, to think?
Looking down at us,
the place from which you sit
as if able to decide,
to think what mankind needs,
I ask myself how it would be like
to have as you do,
a heart of stone.
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