Poem: Air

 

Air

seamless sensitive ease

dissolves in wind-ravelled breaths.

a disapora of infinitesimal cellos,

bowed by a susurrus,

such quietudes of music

strummed by soft wings

which opalesce adn sometimes cricket-trill.

 

day and night, 

zonda or pampero,

chill or sweat,

the azure butterflies of air 

fidget to unfold a lightning-bliss,

sundered from cocoon,

 

joyful in their pinnacles of cumulus

yet to guide the same tears 

which salved dinosaurs and lost volcanoes.

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8/16/25 

3/29/24 ... lots of mods.. ugly poem, trying ... 

2/5/24  ... mods..

5/3 cosmetic mods

5/2 ... lots of modifications

Still on crutches, going on a second month.  Brutal psychologal-spiritual gamut.  Depression.  Who knows if I'll ever walk again.

I have nothing to offer the world, as it see it, a crippled old man.  I also  love my job teaching as an adjunct.   These are the only ways I can be beautiful anymore.  And my few friends.

Poem: Don't Look Up

 

Don’t Look Up

 

scars

we callously refer to as craters.

 

we see green cheese,

or a wispy goddess-nymph,

 

but never a face beaten black and blue,

a cosmic timeline of knuckles. 

 

we don’t see punch marks,

someone broken, a person ignored,

 

someone who has yet to attain

their moment in the sky.

no.

we prefer sparkles silvering on the sea.

we lift our gaze to proclaim 

echelons of angels,

 

and smile.

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8/30/25 ...

3/28/24 ... mods

Title comes from a movie on a similar topic of denialism.

Poem: Net

 

Net

 

cutsey screens tickle and whine,

devious with unseen needles.

 

they nudge ego, spark envy,

sneaky to spur groins,

 

 electric delilahs, romeos and vampires

 

keen to nibble fingers and wrists,

nip ears and tilted necks,

 

never any peace

from these catty trickster machines,

 

the faster the wires, the more delicious,

and un-human and alone.

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7/17 fixed typo

Over a month on crutches, sprained ankle or something, really wearing me down

Poem: Invisible Man

 

Invisible Man

 

the perpetual noneness

is what hurts,

static eroding

stones by the sea.

 

except they are my

feelings, desperately

clutched, elbows crossed

till a pharoah becomes

a wasp nest.

 

who looks? who sleuths?

was i murdered even though

i still breathe?  am i

 

the postage stamp on unsent hopes;

and why do i break apart

when i run from this cemetery,

 

my skin all aflutter, mothy,

before i get out?

 

if only god

would track me down,

aim for my vague

adam’s apple.

many times i’ve been

the mist in his breath.

 

i wish he would find out.

i wish he would care.

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8/10/25 ... changed a word and a phrase... left masculine pronoun in, for christian ref

4/24 ... patriarchal 'he' ... captures the speaker's upbringing (?) 

10/23   "wasp nest" replaces "wasps' nest"

This is from my chapbook, Gordian Butterflies, which is probably still on the web somewhere.

It is dedicated to my brother Gudger Crittenden.

Poem: Speck In the Rush

 

Speck in the Rush

 

bounced off a chitinous face

with officious eyes

and a practical proboscis,

 

i fell sideways along the sidewalk,

smacked by elbow bumpers, and steered

by assaults of busy stride.

 

the citizens of the city

had become sheep with insect faces,

their cars cocoons

that never gave birth to any rest.

 

i would always be too slippery,

a speck in the semipermeable rituals,

mocked, jostled, spun, tripped,

 

in the rush.

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4/22  "rituals" replaces "stress"

Poem: Cold Campfire

 

Cold Campfire

 

amber magic, fleet as liquid,

smokes in rain-drenched wood.

 

this forest of unvarnished dark,

 

who wouldn’t give everything

for even a figleaf of shadow?

 

orgies of brief genies

wrestle the moisture in the kindling

 

but the damp is hostile

and the spell bareboned.

 

half-thawed fingers savor every twig,

such puny gifts of heat,

 

even as the spine suffers

miles of needy cold.

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7/19/25 ... Took out a word ... In a pitchblack forest, seeing a shadow means your campfire is at least going.

4/20 "unvarnished" replaces "unvanquished"... "spell" replaces "spells"

4/18 "such" replaces "the"

Poem: Hunted Lion

 

Hunted Lion

slow as tsetse sickness,

brassy fur wan,

 

a fugitive pants

under a cortege of vines,

 

no longer alert

for ibex or carabao,

 

or even the belch

of a poacher’s truck.

 

resinous eyes

once fierce to drive herds,

 

drift in a tide of glaze,

dim as they go,

 

congealing in the sights

of a rifle.

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Poem: Princess Escapes

 

Princess Escapes

 

she gouged out a dove-

shaped hole with a scepter,

and realized then

she was up near the sky:  an outlook

 

over what the walls below were not,

even though they pretended to be protective,

a pretty shell.

 

there had been, once,

some windows

and an un-

locked front door.

jack-o’-lanterns,

christmas lights,

turkey feasts.

 

someone, maybe her,

had never wanted

the genie of those times

to escape.

 

even so,

 

the wishes had floated off.

the magic just couldn’t be sealed away.

 

gone now,

 

gone

 

somewhere warm,

beyond this tomb.

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Thought for the day

 Gaslighting is a form of might-makes right.  An attempt to stave off reality with the bludgeon of falsehood.

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4/8 "stave off" replaces "deny"

4/7 .. lots of edits today and yesterday to the original post

Poem: Always

 

Always

 

a static of engines

tramples the air,

grumbles of cubisms near condos.

 

endless at noon, violent at 3am,

never to die, always fail--

fail to exile the oxide

of the asphalt constrictor.

 

in sloughs of smog,

above a parched half acre,

flaxen of weedy field,

a single kestrel 

dodges clockwork fangs

to evade intestines of cement

bloated on oily cars.  

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11/29/23  ... lots more mods 

4/9 ... cosmetic mods

4/8 ... cosmetic mods

4/7 more mods to end of poem ... 

4/6 ... more mods ...lots of mods to the last few stanzas... three separate edits today

"sloughs of smog" replaces "smoggy sloughs"