Poem: Cliff

 

Cliff

 

weary basalt

hangs plump over the sea,

cubic honeycomb,

geological snakeskin

shedding shedding

but it takes millennia

to cry in relief.

 

not agile or bright

as ocean or sun

like prometheus pummeled

while water and heat look on

not at all awed

by the patience of a battered martyr.

 

humans

hike climb nibble swarm

take film, photos and selfies 

we make our chirr-word sounds

gone as quick as we generate

mere specks in the gale

of the erosion of the cliff’s dreams.

 

it cries for us

insular in empathy,

each teardrop a foamy splash,

tons and tons in our lifetimes,

but the sadness itself remains,

duly unremittent,

invincible.

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Entities with empathy on this planet are often surrounded by lack of empathy.

Poem: War Plea (And also a tribute to Kenny Cole)

 

War Plea

 

don’t bark at me with your

black tongues or spit your red. 

don’t carve my name

with bullets into marble.

i was only walking by,

a little angry to find your tank

in my garden,

a bit distressed at becoming a flea

under the fury of your gaze.

 

let me hop away.  i’ll eat

sand and drink stones. 

i’ll pretend my grandfather

didn’t plant fruit trees

near your craters. 

 

i’ll set up shop

in the smallest grave

of shadow, whittle

spoons with parched

old hands, and pray

in ways you’ll never notice

that the hearts of my children

remain sweet as pomegranates.

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This poem was part of the greatest moment in my poetry career, when the incredible, nationally known artist Kenny Cole asked me to collaborate with him.  And so my poems, as part of his utterly unique vision, ended up in the Zillman Gallery of the University of Maine Museum of Art. 

The name of Mr. Cole's presentation is Parabellum.  The latest review of it appears in the September/October Edition 2024 of Art New England.  As you can see, Parabellum is still potent:

https://artnewengland.com/ed_review/kenny-cole-parabellum-prepare-for-war/  

Mr Cole is an absolute genius across multispatial mental and physical dimensions.  Art within art within art involving hidden secrets and stories.  (see the review above to get a slight idea)

Far and away, the greatest moment I ever received as a poet was due to Mr. Cole asking me to participate.  I have never properly thanked him.  In part, I am notorious for being a hermit; and, also, the whole 'adventure'--which is how I see it--was so stunningly different from the rest of my life that it was like being touched by some higher force of brilliant spirit.  There's no way I could express to Mr. Cole how he tattooed my life.  Maybe he'll find this comment someday, a sweet admirer of his, someone whose soul he forever galvanized.  Thank you, Kenny--but thank you most of all for your ceaseless efforts to combine aesthetics and ethics.  I believe this is essential for the highest, most sublime--and world-saving--artworks.    

Love

 I feel this sense of doom.  Panic-attacky stuff, not so brute but intransigent and lingering.  Remember me for this:

https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2020/12/poem-love-poem.html

Poem: Montecito Hike

 

Montecito Hike

 

camphor of oleander

musky greenish-blue 

astride freshly cut dust

which cakes the wild leaves

of lupine and radish.

 

osprey-gull birds

figure-eight over acres

of deadlocked pale husks,

tresses straw blonde

on the skulls of clods,

fields and fields and fields of clods;

of tilled dirt so disturbed it shines.

 

a khaki man with runt epaulettes

orders tractors about.

he tosses a braggadocio

of mean sun and cruel earth

from which he shall render heaven.

 

above his head, in ascent 

on slopes sanitized and shrubbed,

many, many shingles of fine-kilned clay

roof the broken hills with a godliness 

of haciendas.

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9/14/24 eds

Regarding the Poems

 Thank you for reading the poems!

I've gone back and edited the poems on this blog all the way through 2021.  It was an exhausting cerebral task that took up most of my summer.  However, I'm glad to have done it, for now the poems are much better.  I'm going to start chipping away at 2020, but the fall is a busier time with two classes to teach.

I'd like to believe some of my poems have approached excellence.  I've been at it since I was 16 years old.  And yet I've learned that I cannot be the judge.  Very often I think a poem is 'great' and yet when I come back to it later, my opinion radically shifts.  I live in a constant storm of editing, doubt and, as well, passionate engagement with my muses.  I can only hope my constant work and fervor, embroiled in the chaos of uncertainty and randomness, has some hidden, laudable approach.

As it stands, I will never know.  I may start submitting poems to journals once more, but then again maybe not.  The need for recognition isn't as important or even desperate for me as it was before.  Who knows why.  I perhaps live for my muses now, who I see as greater than me and perhaps as beings beyond me entirely.  Maybe I'm just tired and misanthropic; and see humans, including myself, with too much honesty to stomach public rituals beyond what I already must.

Owl    

PS:

Regarding the political situation, the world hangs on what happens in the US election in November.

"If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher" -- Abraham Lincoln

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