Poetry Digest: #5

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 #5.



The Escalator's Speech

The careful plucking of strings resonates
Between awful, desperate groans and gasps,
Straining mechanical encumbrance -
All the pride and fury of Beethoven:
Symphony seven, allegretto - two.
Thumping guttural hums and pipsqueak sighs;
An escalator for an orchestra,
Seething underneath to find the right pitch.
My pride peaks as my height rises to time
In swelling triumph with trumpets and flutes.
This raspy, tired...contrivance confounds me:
Moving people without stirring their souls?
I feel the agonies of wonder lost.
I resolve to share its humble thunder:
Wailing without end, in stale baritone --
Let us all thrust our songs into the world!


The Syntax of Things

Order is the absurdity of repetition -
the inability to see, singularly,
in the necessity of the individual moment.

Necessity is the order of the individual -
the inability to see repetition
is in the moment singularly, of absurdity.

The inability to see order is repetition -
the moment of necessity is singularly,
in the absurdity of the individual.


inside-out

brush
the dust
off your coat
fix your collar
redo the buttons
don mismatched gloves
no mirror
applies
here


siphon

blow
your breath
in focus
gazing within
the ephemeral
both in and out
together
either
way

twang
buzzes
underneath
smooth melodies
reverberating
past the effect
unaware
weaving
tones

track
hollow
wobbling
just passing through
empty stereo
between spaces
composing
what is
gone


transfer

use
swagger
expertise
your best bull rush
briefcase bludgeoning
with the stiff arm
swinging by
swarming
hives


Running for My Life

world class expert in banana triage
ripened owner of clementines
steward of much yogurt
dawn champion
I rise

ready
daylight beckons
just before my alarm
I leap into a buzzing burst
underdog of the drowsiness relay

I win one pants leg, and also the next
I have earned the title black belt
defend my crown daily
no atrophy
no ties

but ties
I am training
I surmount obstacles
each routine is my next event
I'll finish first place on the Metro stand


In Statuary Hall, A Proud Hoosier

Oliver Hazard Perry Throck Morton --
I'd commandeer that, commodore!
Oliver P. Morton.
Among Hoosiers,
First-rate

Leader
In civil war,
Staunch ally of Lincoln:
"Perhaps the shrewdest man I know".
Two men from my state who don't hesitate.

"Filled with the most Southerners in the North".
Confederate flag bumper stickers
Common in my hometown
Still testify - -
Too true.

Things change
Yet are the same:
Lead a state to acclaim -
You won't be lampooned in the East -
Which lasts longer...humor, or prejudice?


We're Borg Again in Indiana
*(to the tune of "Back Home Again in Indiana)

We're Borg again, in Indiana -
Where it seems that we can see
The growing of our might
Our crushing might
Burn the sycamores for me
So you will pay
Give us our tribute
Or we will burn down your home
And when we form a hive mind army on the Wabash
All the world will call Indiana home

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!

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.

"Disambiguation": A Poem In Two Parts

Disambiguation, Part One

I’m running. Split into 4 guys remaking Cool Runnings. Like the Epic Rap Battle of History.

I like history jokes. I don’t want to know what happens below your 38th parallel. There is no cease fire. The fire burns white hot.

I heard a TED Talk. As far as talking goes, it’s a fine medium of communication. Not that I would know lately.

Some woman with schizophrenia, mentioned her obsession with wordplay. That reminded me of a poem: I wanted to write yesterday. I’ve wanted to write every day. I’ve wanted every day. I’m overrun with wanting.

It’s why I’m still running. I have so much left to prove. Yet it is mathematically impossible, to divide by zero.

I take the remainder of my wants: the silence divides my wants...but I cannot continue. I cannot produce irrationality.

The answer is not infinite. The answer does not exist. I live without answers, even as I have every answer: a list of possible references and explanations.

I see everything and know nothing. I’m the epitome of my age: too little skill, too much meandering. Overstimulated and underexperienced, underqualified and overwrought.

I forsake knowledge. I forsake friendship. All I have is instant gratification.

Will I never learn? Will I always be this empty?

I am sorry. I am very sorry.

***

Disambiguation, Part Two

I shaved today. I saved face. I shaved my face. I cut myself, and my chin wouldn't stop bleeding.

If it bleeds, it leads. That's what my dad always said. That's what I told my friend Michael yesterday.

Yesterday I had not yet shaved. I saved that for today. Every day the blade of time grinds against the face of humanity.

The blade is a decade. If only I could get each decade spayed, the moments of my life could have stayed.

Judgment cannot be stayed. Justice is blind, but it must be paid. There is no karma, or if there is, it's delayed.

Delayed like the Metro and the bus. An omnibus. Everything slows. Distance only grows. Perhaps those are inextricably linked.

I've got to hit the links, but I can't play golf. I can't save Rolfe. I just watched The Sound of Music. How can you watch a sound?

Time is already at the pound, that's why it's spayed. Time's never made a sound. Therefore sound does not exist, yet somehow sound persists.

I saved time and sound today. I saved spacetime by shaving. Is this the expression I'm craving? Is this incoherent raving?

I'm caving in. Like Plato's Allegory of the Cave. What's shadow and what's real? What do I hide and what do I conceal? The answers refuse to congeal. The wound on my chin refuses to heal.

There's too much depth, I cannot feel. Too much death, but it's a wheel. I'm taking life for a spin, I'm finally caving in, but I'm short a tail-fin. Fin. As in, the end. What is my end? What is my design? What is my teleology? Perhaps my questions are a matter of psychology. I do not question that psychology matters, but I'd like to thank the woman from the TED Talk for an educating me phenomenally.

Poetry Digest: #1

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 #1.


half court scheme


real life has no rhyme scheme
it's not a sport or a team
there's no buzzer at the end
just space-time to bend
flying towards the rim
there's no box score to skim
no assist to parents for creating me
no rebound to friends for sympathy
everyone fouls out
nowadays the game is about
a bit more long
the players are a bit more strong
I don't need a post game report
if I send a prayer from half court
even if no one will watch such
pithiness in the clutch
I still have a double-double in infinity
even while alone in serendipity
I don't regret losing my innocence
let my questions be incense
a desperate heave as the clock winds down
let words and feelings be my crown

lifting off


My glasses escape the pull of my face
I stare into a blur of fuzzy flashes
There are swirls of darkness
There are smudges of light

There is no one left to race
These solitary dashes
Atone for my lateness
Which is a blight

A disgrace
Each delay clashes
With the precision of greatness
And the countdown of a mind in flight

I'm leaving space
If everything crashes
While I'm weightless
I won't regret this sight

I will singe this place
With the signature of my ashes
A trail of fiery brightness
Breaking the barrier of the night

Sabotage


I'm pulling apart the strings
Where my thoughts attach
I hear my recollections ring:
It's the final dispatch

I'm tearing all the wires
I've buried in the ground
Then I'm setting fires
To burn records of the sound

I'm prying up the track
I'd rather travel another way
I'll trade the pieces I crack
For the strength of another day

I will never charge a fare
No passengers will pay a fee
Because no one needs to go there
Least of all, me

not even trying


anything can be a poem
even this
somebody hates it? blow 'em
I persist

poets self-indulge
no one wants to read verse
that makes the pride of a writer bulge
and the apathetic reader curse

writing about writing
should be banned
there is nothing less exciting -
even I know it's canned

I'm tired of being a smartass
(and self-referential) -
I wish my poems were as good as
their potential

21st and Winter 


give me paper and a pen
I can write as well as any citizen
remember when I said that our bus intersection
(and transportation selection)
reminds me of a Simon & Garfunkel song?
so let's once again amble along
to tales of 21st and Winter

"when I left to visit her
I had to catch a train
and a bus - John Coltrane
and Paul Simon:
who would I rather lead me on
to the city of brotherly love?"

"the one clue I'm thinking of
informs my knowledge of deduction
BBC series have excellent production
but I don't have to be Sherlock
to write something silly you can mock
while we're sitting on the bus"

"when it was the two of us
standing on a street corner
at 21st and Winter
I told you I would write this song
aren't you glad you brought me along
to the corner of 21st and Winter?"