Poem: Seeking the Good

 

Seeking the Good

 

what if there isn’t anything beyond,

only the end and the beginning of this purgatory?

 

the tests go on and on,

hoops for the heart, no ultimate finish line,

always the latest monsters,

visionaries, prophets,

 

caught in some race.

 

you try to shoulder the load,

walking on steppingstones of hidden levers,

trying not to lose balance,

or fall into cycles so addictive you bleed.

 

maybe there never was any reward,

no god who anoints victory,

heaven itself a crumbling staircase,

which exists only for a desperate climb.

 

no reason, no purpose,

everything stripped away, even hope.

only then, even if you are doomed,

can you challenge the darkness,

 

make your statement.

 

 

 

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1/29/24 ... mods ... 

Inspired by the words of Elie Wiesel:

 

Behind me, I heard the same man asking:

“Where is God now?”

And I heard a voice within me answer him:

“Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows. . . .”

 

Poem: Night Valley

 

Night Valley

 

in these sunken switchbacks,

a sandsoil of ghostflesh,

graveyard of prolific roots,

a corpse sheds rigor mortis

more easily than it seeks justice;

and my headlamp stutters,

much smaller than the obscurant stars,

the warmth of its meek bulb

so much less than their leastest heat.

i tilt beneath a horned moon,

ghost of an auroch,

who lists where her last flesh

tangled in wolves of clouds--

vultured now by oak branches,

groped.

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4/6/ 24 ... more edits

1/29/24

1/4/24 ... lots of mods for streamlining, general improvement in the magic

10/5 ... added a verb for clarity ... added a stanza break

abused as a child

Poem: Closed

 

Closed

 

drainpipe ears pour a runoff of words

down the wall of a shaking head 

onto feet that just walk off.

folded arms construct a bridge impassable to questions.

the slightest shrug of a bulkwark of shoulder 

chews on a pretty wing.

a single twitch of cheek taunts flutters of hope.

maybe there is some emotion here, some reaction to pollinate?

but no.

small as nerve cells, stronger than any logic, 

years of architecture, so much hunger behind it,

hollows out the ability to think.

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Poem: Balance

 

Balance

 

to lie in the half-damp grass

was to both die and resurrect;

to feel the lissome blades 

as they burst into a funeral pyre of stars.

 

i would go up into heaven

and my dreams could stay forever;

and yet time always latched on again, always,

furious as a circling moth.

 

so many rhythmic ecstasies,

choirs of crickets, cowled by night;

but the world was changing,

coin by coin, wire by wire.

 

it was the only vision that came to me,

and i knew i had to go back with it, into the city,

to serve as witness and fool

among those who would not care.

 

i would a need a tragic yet open heart, i feared,

to dwell in the midst of so much suffering--

the blind, the sacrificed, the sadists--

and remember how to balance.

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9/24 ... quite a few mods

Poem: Brain In a Vat

 

Brain In a Vat

cauliflower

frost- and gnarl-ridden.

 

no thoughts grace

its extirpated maze.

 

could it be a philosopher’s stone

flung too far and lodged in pitch?

 

whatever genie swam its sulci and gyri

has long fled,

 

leaving an empty jug,

unstoppered and decantered,

 

nothing but cirrhotic symptoms,

buoyant in alkalis,

 

immune, as well,

to fever, fear, doubt, worry, sex,

 

a cursed adonis,

tranformed beyond frog,

 

implacable, apathetic

dome.

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"philosopher's stone" is a reference to the philosophyer Renee Descartes, who famously discussed 'brain in a vat'-style theories.  These theories argue that each of us can't really be sure that other people exist.   Maybe everyone else is just an element of a dream you are having.  Or maybe you are only a brain in a vat somewhere, experiencing an unreal setting, including non-real persons, similar to the movie, The Matrix.

9/16 flow mods an hour after original post (e.g. "flung" replaces "that flew") 

So tired of being crippled, six months off and on.  At least more poems go up, out of desperation to have any meaning in my life.

Poem: Flip Side

 

Flip Side

 

a sacred plant, moonflower, 

ignored in sand under a freeway.

on the flip side, a dozen cars a second,

coursing castle-thick ramparts of concrete.

 

down below, a stream.

with horseshoe-embroidered U's among its trickles. 

a hummingbird lazes,

so fast it seems to waddle in the air,

grazing, as it does, the droop of a castor-bean.

 

up above, calamitous steel

hurtles, rumbles and clatters by. 

but even the huge semi-trucks can’t yank

the flip side’s lack of chains.

 

cave swallows

loop prim through the gnatty air,

their clay nests nestled in the underbelly of the ramparts.

a lizard tilts its head up, out of its lack-of-yoke,

and skirts away.

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1/30/24 ... mods

9/22 "plant" replaces "flower"

9/14  fixed typo

This poem is inspired by a freeway overpass and what's below it, off Foothill Blvd in Lake View Terrace, CA

Poem: Tunnel

 

Tunnel

 

in the wet-almost near night,

the scuttle of cars turned slick and elytrous. 

people within the thoraxes gaped from glassy maws,

soon to become morsels,

transported down.

 

i could feel the misting

on my almost-moist palms,

a smog of grease, money and sweat,

only a smidge of rain

to tantalize the global-warming drought;

to make staunch farmers

bow under the sky’s falsely soft underbelly

and plead.

 

so much rage behind the scenes,

the rage of entrepreneurs and enterprise;

of the pied-pipers of production,

who drew sale-hungry shoppers

as if herding rats, all of them headed

into the tunnel to reach a shopping mall

that suffered from a plague of little demons

called ‘electric sockets,’

 

so many more sockets than stars,

so many watts, much brighter than all of them;

 

and maybe that was the pith of problem,

how everyone could believe in the city,

embrace a bling that outclassed the constellations,

those specks so bland in the cosmic blasé.

yes, the shopping mall, its factory-sized stores,

filled by the labor of sweatshop workers,

that’s what gleamed relevant,

that’s what burned so bright,

down down down through the tunnel.

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10/3  .. "drew" replaces "draw"  (getting old, tired... dumber)

9/22 ... "draw" replaces "drew"  

9/10  Fixed typos, changed a preposition

Poem: Birch Leaves

 

Birch Leaves

 

hearts slip

buttery as they lilt,

braiding the breeze.

 

yesterday they fluttered,

and yet now ants 

spelunk their crinkles,

 

homesteads curled inward,

hugging for comfort,

nestled in web.

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