Poem: Midnight Trek

 

Midnight Trek

 

snow sprawls austere,

intractable as a martian glacier

or an ascetic tutor fixated on death.

 

we tromp it like a fragile bridge between green valleys, 

between blue lakes and other 'what ifs,'

which are somehow still there.

it makes me wonder if the amused, cold stars

are perhaps not so cruel after all;

all those light years

maybe not so heavy that they crush us,

 or so dark that we die.

some heat trickles down, perhaps,  

from those many distant, much-worse voids,

and maybe it is winter's gift 

to remind us.

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1/30 ... mods

9/28 ... fixed typo

Poem: Betrayal

 

Betrayal

 

a tree whose spine was stubborn not strong,

i felt the casual chop.

 

it didn’t kill, the wound,

but the disaster was greater because the axe was you.

 

years of blessings scattered in wind,

crucifying themselves on a fence of excuses.

 

who might dare to pass, ever again,

to collect the tender figs, fallen and bursting?

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Poem: On a Sea Cliff

 

On a Sea Cliff

 

wind sieves through the whirls of a cypress,

arms and elbows which branch to rawboned fingertips,

fugues of whisper and moan, 

sounds crooked and yet greedless,

glancing off the smooth, salt-sprayed flute of wood.

the cypress lifts its many moon-pale knotholes,

nude yet gowned with sorcery, proud

over a romp of snake-mad roots 

wheeling in earth.

 

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10/25/25

1/30 mods

9/6  ... "dramaturge" replaces "orchestrator"

8/28 "through rawboned fingers" repalces "into rawboned fingers" ... much better sound flow.  

8/24 ...mods several hours after posting .. wild energy, hard to bring out of the unconscious without ruining the magic.  might have. 

source of poem:  barkless old tree on cliff over beach in Santa Barbara (1980's)

Can't believe my country might go to civil war over Donald Trump... This could be the end of human civilization, due to all the nuclear weapons in the USA. (BOOM) ... do I blame the universe or blame humans?  I mean, the universe made life desirable, cruel, and needy all at the same time, sowing the world with struggle.  born into it.  on the other hand, humans can progress--or be ignorant, hateful fools.

'Why cast blame at all?' you ask.   (answer:  We can't progress and overcome, if we don't learn how to embrace blame"  (? idk)    

Poem: Leaves

 Leaves

 

supple yet wizened,

calm yet gleeful, rococco, 

and wild,

 

pigments 

of a fantastical astrolabe

which the wind espies

to track a flutter or a cloud.

 

they dapple puddles,

vermilion and amber to flare

with inextinguishable bliss.

 

rain enprisms them

while orgies of nymphs

drink from their contrary cups.

rustled, half-syllabled, 

yet perfect of phrase,

as if semblances of poems,

the leaves 

conjure a midnight kiss

and savor the sway

of a curvaceous universe--

 

until questions fall away,

answers no more to long,

satisified and serene,

below a foliage of stars.

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10/5/25 mods

1/30/24 .. mods .. 

8/21 ... mods for sound flow 

Poem: Couched

 

Couched

 

thrilled hullaballoo,

dramatic and perilous,

rampages in a luminous fish bowl.

it's kill or be killed,

while the beautiful kiss,

villains without conscience,

intermittent with hawkers

in 1am advertisements.

 

on the nearby couch,

the one sentient zombie moves slow,

even when the plot

slaughters toward climax.

 

the zombie's lips lounge with the aplomb of worms,

pupils agape in utter daze

at the procession of mindless,

prostituted myths.

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8/16  "bowl" replaces "tank"

Grading lots of summer papers and prepping for Fall ... very little time to write poems

Poem: Advice

 Advice

 

streets are tongues, tarred in place,

otherwise they’d whip up

and flap like destiny:

 

‘why erect hives

of greedy cubicles, are you

such horny parasites?’

 

pigeons are omens,

but you shouldn't wig out

on the prophecies of nature.

 

liquor stores

are plentiful and fine.

 

avoid wrappers

or you might get the evil eye

from a cow turned cheeseburger.

 

keep your wingtips cruising,

don't speak to derelicts or ghosts!

 

it takes a lot of stress

to keep all the gagged injustice

down.

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Poem: In A Few Years

 

Within A Few Years

 

i blink into a river of fire,

so lovely an hour ago

 

and green

 

and i see a billowing city

taking its poodles and slums and envies

up high into a red sky.

 

before this,

 

warnings had happened

so many times in the movies,

countless tubs of popcorn

below bloody fusions of romance-action-armageddon drama.

 

we went on and did it for real,

 

loving our children yet to vote for a man

who would push a button

and kill every child. 

 

i see the clear, clean eyes of an infant

turn into dirty neutrons.

 

i see those i love

pull teeth out of their mouths;

and clumps of flesh and hair 

off their soot-plastered heads.

 

blood dribbles off

speechless gums,

worthless ears,

destroyed breasts,

 

just before it all goes blind.

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Poem: Late March

 

Late March

 

pips of snow

wane from sepals long fizzled russet.

the sky stretches almost as white,

cerulean at the edge,

faint in a skirt of pearl.

 

such a dramatic march of wind,

alders and tamaracks professing to gusts.

chickadees chatter to waylay a grouse.

and spruce-squawky ravens goad a rabbit

back into its castle of thorns.

 

all day, it goes on,

the hullabaloo, advent and consequence,

clouds rooking and horsing each other,

even as they ruffle the surly bay.

 

a single fledgling looks out,

eyes as bold as they are fresh,

as piquant as lucid,

as if nature had just been born,

beautiful and clear.

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I submitted this poem to the Eastport Arts Center Poetry Prize competition, and not surprisingly didn't win or place.  For one thing, it was a paid prize ($300 1st place), which draws huge amounts of submissions.  Secondly, it's pretty much the nature of things that there is going to be tons of rejection when submitting poems to various journals, prizes, etc.  I've been rejected so many times.  However, I also have published over a 1000 poems, due to perseverance, and despite the fact that many of my poems are bad, even a good number of the accepted ones.

The above poem, though, "Late March," I feel is one of my better efforts.  The inspiration is a forest near a bay in Down East, Maine.

Poem: Accelerant

 

Accelerant

 

it was the birth of art.

ways to excel

magicked from sticks and stones. 

 

god-animals

appeared on cave walls,

hunted and stabbed,

an accelerant of death.

 

it was a new kind of thrill,

orgies of humans

in diasporas that owned the stage.

 

it was the same old dramaturgy of ants,

and yet expropriated and rewritten:

new and better battles and hierarchies,

superior hives.

 

it was the beginning

of the final, greatest decision of all,

evil and good

in a one-way race.

 

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10/14/24 mods

8/6  "owning" replaces "owned"