Poetry Digest: #4

From time to time, I hope to publish a collection of a few of my recent poems. I will refer to this series of posts as my "Poetry Digest". This is Poetry Digest #4.



No Apology

there's something to say
to credit Winslow Homer
or Edward Hopper

for longing for clouds
Socrates drank his hemlock
no more Socrates

yet, you know better:
the clouds are, in fact, still there,
Aristophanes

even more than books
even more than life itself
I prefer the clouds

artists may capture
a brief moment of rapture --
that is all there is


The Fog Cycle

before rain arrives
my breath joins the clouds above
we are fog machines

slip into the night
filter your own outpouring
water the cycle

condensation drips
and travels through all of us
so I relinquish

the trees fill my lungs
their shadows overcome doubt
sustaining my life

I pine for a hush
that will return my silence
better than I found


advance

sprint
forward
do not stop
nor halt progress
keep running apace
if you sputter
company
will bring
you


exile

last
winter
gaping wounds
exposed my fears
I walked silently
no companion
averted
trials
fought


rationale

sleep
is not
an excuse
it is my foil
to suspend my doubts
moving deadlines
encourage
undue
haste


paradox

change
I am
change itself
to be the change
I remain the change
that is no change
I must change
the same
change


Into The Void

if I am not long for the world of dreams
I can consider anything
all possibilities
stir together
endless

formless
yet to take shape
a place where time ceases
between everywhere and nowhere
I am on the shoals of consciousness

tell me which direction I am heading
my only guarantee is fear
I must wait until dawn
when I wake up
to know

before
I can relax
I will pay my respects
to the memory of each day
to a story with a life of its own


Rush

I could be the Vice President,
Since I'm great at undoing ties.
I am careful how I present.
As each one of my fingers flies,
Why do I have all these buttons?
Clocks race, adrenaline heightens:
Who is that stranger in the suit?
I forget during the pursuit.
Zipping alongside the platform,
I look for the right car to catch -
Or wait, sit down, and start to kvetch.
As a queue begins to reform,
I find a window -- look within --
To find the place where I come in.


Reference Point

I'm not the one to strike boldly.
Look elsewhere for the first to stride.
I would rather detach coldly;
Stress needs a place and time to bide.
I will change nothing, and needing
Nothing changed, I will do nothing.
Frequent madness is my advice,
But few exist to pay that price.
Above all, do not be passive.
Supply a beginning, and end -
Join them together as you bend
Timing, enormous and massive.
I warn all those who dare ignore:
There is no such thing as before.


In the Year of the Lighthouse

When I'm drifting and I'm falling,
I don't even know where to start.
I keep swimming, I keep searching -
I reach for something in my heart,
Catch that beacon, and I follow:
Not to let my love lie fallow.
I turn those pages, flip a switch --
My light and signal, perfect pitch.
Here's my harbor, here's my guidance.
Raging waters aren't what I seek,
But without waves there is no peak:
I cry out for deliverance!
Watching you, I unleash my sails,
Now I'm fearless - come tide or gales.

Poetry Digest: #3

From time to time, I hope to publish a collection of a few of my recent poems. I will refer to this series of posts as my "Poetry Digest". This is Poetry Digest #3.



Delays in Both Directions

If you inhale the spirit through the ribs
Supporting a city's circulation,
Then you feel the breath exit as I feel
With the heaving masses, a crushing weight

Lifting its own chest within these tunnels -
Gasping for air among the Metro stench.
Why we wait so long to repair ourselves -
To ascend, to escalate our greatness --

That's the mystery of Gallery Place.
I am the blood animating the limbs -
A nerve protruding under this body -
A lonely note rising from the wind pipes:

Orchestrating an unknown symphony -
An unpaid musician beneath the streets -
I earn tips from single track siren songs
Passersby play on their way to stardom,

Strutting across a lowly makeshift stage,
Seizing the proper moment and platform.
There is artistry even in one gasp:
Not in the air, but from where it travels.


Upon This Rock

If you are not the story, tell me why
I am listening. I hear boom and bust,
Cataclysm and the great extinctions
Carve our instant in geologic time.

Rising, falling ecosystem empires
Stagger past catastrophic disasters.
Survival is the next imperfection.
I am the latest in this same series.

Know my checkered, fragmented history;
The vulnerability in all life.
I am not an inch in a continent.
I am made in the image of chaos.

Fighting order to avenge indifferent
Does not make our world a product for us.
Listen to scriptures in the sediment:
Our myths are footnotes for another tale.


Cognitive Dissident

I seek shelter from illusions of thought:
Protection from harsh gusts of reflection,
As doubts soaking the ground to germinate
Creep up as intellectual kudzu

Mounting the walls of ideology
Seizing the fortress of my correctness.
No one shall challenge my exactitude!
Therefore, I flee and take up asylum:

Before I ask experts or - how quaint - books,
Today I declare my independence -
I protest empirical observance.
I don't need to know anything at all.

Since reality is a passing fad,
I will triumph in my own history.
What happens is always irrelevant -
What counts is that I'm in control of it.


Nightlights

Against the walls shrouded in silhouettes,
I peer into blue, electric dimness.
A siren square bears the violent angles
Caroming at each other in the dark.

In the urban forest of high black beams,
An army witnesses against the night:
Marching in place, wielding its faint banners -
I sway with the waving shadow trumpets.

This glow is a baton between my hands,
In my imagination's concert hall:
After the stars have stacked their music stands,
Let blackness unpack its song, and play on.


Poets

poets never sleep
our dreams are wakefulness
our lives are dreams
we recycle

we recycle
pain beyond words
our dreams are wakefulness
there is pleasure in seeing

there is pleasure in seeing
even in anguish
pain beyond words
yet words are redemption

yet words are redemption
our lives are dreams
even in anguish
poets never sleep


Money for Obama

I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message
do you have any money?
(I ask again)
do you have any money?

do you have any money?
Mitt Romney shouldn't be President
do you have any money?
(words Mitt Romney never says)

(words Mitt Romney never says)
besides
Mitt Romney shouldn't be President
put your country above your money

put your country above your money
(I ask again)
besides
I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message


Afterwords

after
words
only
pauses

pauses
carry
words
together

together
pasts
carry
presents

presents
only
pasts
after


Keep the Customer Awake

Not sure if philosophy is a meme
Or a profession. I enjoy labels,
So I'll coin a name for my condition:
The one where I cannot stop listening

When I'm tired, when Simon & Garfunkel
Are keeping this customer satisfied
And the lyric is in the description
As the cure is inside the malady

And I'm trapped inside this syllable count
I'm too afraid to write what comes to mind
To spend my time this way before I fret
Searching for an abundance of nothing

My pulse the key of possibility
My words warble although I am tone deaf
Gee but it's great to rely on meter
And sarcasm so I can say nothing

I'm one stead ahead of plagiarism
Two steps behind getting the sleep I need
I'm not even sure why I'm writing this:
I act in ambivalent defiance!