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!

Poetry Digest: #2

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 #2.


This collection of my poems is a group of six pantoums. I've written each of them in the last few hours, actually. These six pantoums are listed here in the order I wrote them. I hope someone else enjoys my pantoums, and if by chance you're reading this, please don't hesitate to share your reactions.


Famous Charles

Scotch is not very hard,
One sip at a time.
All that burns, stops.
The smell lingers.

The spell lingers,
Even after the taste disappears
One day at a time.
I'll thirst again.

I'll quench my thirst:
My glass is half full,
Even after the scotch disappears.
Can't let my spirits down.

Can't let my spirits drown.
All that stops, burns.
My glass is half empty:
Scotch is not hard enough!


Lost Words

These aren't the words I'm looking for.
That phrase fled to another state:
An incomprehensible place,
Beyond all measures.

Behind all measures,
There is a standard convention.
That phase fled to another state:
There is only flux.

There is sometimes flux -
Please don't take my word for it.
There is a stranded convention,
Awaiting your breath of discovery.

Wading in your breath of discovery -
An inconceivable place -
Please take my words from me:
Those aren't the words I'm looking for.


Authorial Discontent

I'm breaking the fourth wall,
In sets of four lines.
Give me rules -
I'll break them all.

I'll fake them all -
Every hyperbolic word.
These sets of four lies
Deceive you now.

Receive me now!
You have no choice.
My hyperbolic world
Is your delight.

My delight is
Rules I give.
I have a voice,
When I'm breaking the fourth wall.


Against The Sun

I closed the blinds,
To glimpse Edward Hopper's sunset.
The idol and the heretic:
Conspiring until dawn.

Conspiring until drawn,
I bitterly resist sleep
To mock Edward Hopper's sunset
By a constant light I keep.

By a constant slight, I keep
Hemorrhaging darkness.
I bitterly insist sleep
Observe another time.

Preserve another time!
The idle heretic
Hemorrhages darkness,
And blinds the closed.


Education

I am not a form.
I am not a principle.
I have no end.
I am only a beginning.

I am only a beginner.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
I have no principles,
Unless you tell me.

The less you tell me,
The more I'll learn on my own.
You have no idea what I've done.
Would you like to know?

Wouldn't you like to know?
You have no end,
The more you learn on your own.
That's how we form.


On Vine Dating

I have a profile.
Far too long.
Far too strange.
Still too hollow.

In the hollow,
There is a root:
For too long,
Growing in solitude.

As solitude grows,
Nourishing silence
Is a route there,
Away from trampled paths.

A way to trample paths
For two strange,
Silent, flourishing
Profiles.