I wish that I was mute
So that I could learn to listen.
Then my eyes could fill
With the tears of untold secrets,
And my pen could carve
These feminine curves of poetry
Into Goddesses like you.
Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category
1
Poetry: Read it Passionately
Posted: November 2, 1995 in PoetryTags: Confetti, Frog, Passion, ribbit
See me babble furious words broken
In chaotic places, call it
Poetry; read it passionately
Although somewhere in there
He’s chokin’ on it.
Hypocrisy – he has no rules
To follow slavishly yet
He curses free verses caustically
If it isn’t good,
Then it isn’t
Poetry (read it passionately)
What is it? How can you tell?
It is personal preference,
Not popular deference; so
Froggies ribbited to your chairs
The moral to this fable:
Share your wits like confetti –
Poetry read it passionately.
The Key to the Monk in Monkey
Posted: October 19, 1995 in PoetryTags: Drunk, Egg, Goat, Imagination, Kung Fu, Mantis, Mountains, Spirit
A chaotic path steps the manic mind
Hill and valley; summit – abyss
Mountain goat leaping skills,
Green eggs and ham from
Point to possible point
Attempt before justification attempt
To find the insight first
The new the unconditional the flexibility
Of constant movement
Adjustment, refinement
Creation of perfection through spirit
Of inventive investigation.
Nothing is quite good enough –
There is always something better:
What else can I do with this?
Enough to stay a defensive blur of feet, fists
Flying kung fu ideas and actions
Drunken praying mantis style
The key to the monk in every monkey
Is an overactive innovation:
Imagination.
Realized
Posted: October 18, 1995 in PoetryTags: Bones, Dreams, Earth, Eye, Fire, Flowers, Genie, Horse, Imagination, Magic, Mirror, Naked, Night, Power, Sleep, Snow, Story, Water
Three nights I have lain awake
Storming through half-sleep dreams
And possibilities, thoughts,
Mental magical carpets,
Half real, half realized;
Doors half opened and swinging
Smooth computers peripherally
Analyzing and verifying
Believing yet incredulous
Of the panoramic impossibility.
The stark lightning of imagination
Energized and rampantly naked;
Leaping obstacles with merry, nimble feet
Barely touching – gracing – the earth.
A sweeping wave of everything
Reconditioning, revitalized
Colorization by raw power
Of a reality as credible as anything,
Dreams of genie lamps opening
Construction paper flowers blooming
Water falling, cities lit by their own fires,
Shadows mocking their creators.
Stories so rich in texture
That you live them overnight,
Morning comes when it comes
With the snap of the blind
And a sense of weariness bone deep.
Aches from riding warhorses,
Twinges from old wounds,
Bruises and abrasions that quietly throb,
That you don’t remember receiving.
Nights pass in a variety of times
Lying awake, or so I think,
Chasing reflections in mirrors,
Tuning in to the colored snow
Falling inside my eyelids.
The Hard Edges of the Night
Posted: October 5, 1995 in PoetryTags: Ass, Cat, Dog, Man, Music, Night, Ocean Beach, Scream, Seagull, Wings, Woman
A lot of nights,
Laying awake in the middle
Of Ocean Beach,
I hear screams or yelling
And then nothing.
Sometimes it is two men
Or just one with
No one answering.
A man and a woman,
The sound of a slap
Then flats smacking the ground
Staccato, quickly, then fading.
Harleys and their riders,
Unmistakable bad assedness.
Cars starting suddenly
In the hotel parking lot;
Catfights, dogs barking.
Once in a while,
The thudding of a helicopter.
House, rave, bass, latin music,
Five seconds in passing
A blatant musical statement
Like a commercial you are in.
A can rattles.
The buzz of the tattoo place
Across the parking lot.
Sometimes an out of place
Seagull’s complaint –
I imagine its sharp wings.
But mostly I enjoy
The relative silence,
A sheet thrown over
The furniture of OB
For the night,
A hush like the volume turned down;
Something more reflective,
To get buried in –
It’s soft.
Seagulls
Posted: September 12, 1995 in PoetryTags: Bicycle, Cry, Dark, Echo, Fly, Night, Sea, Seagull, Sing, Wish
Sometimes the surf sings
Be a seagull and fly!
Along the crests of the waves
That lap at the land.
It is late at night
And the mist of the sea
Slips on to the streets,
An extended arm of tide.
My bicycle spokes churn
Through the streetlamps’ gaze
Until the darkness under the pier
Brings me to a halt.
It is there where the echoes
Of the surf on the pilings
Reminds me of the seagulls’ cries
And my age-old wish to fly.
Used to have a bunch of questions;
Now I accept no answers
Except my own generalizations
And assumptions.
People only answer why
From children who ask
And then they lie.
They don’t know themselves.
Growing up and becoming an adult
Is learning the art of fast talk.
It is the difference between fooling
And being fooled.
I used to wonder what it was like
Until I found myself answering more questions
Than I asked.
I should listen to the sea
‘Cause I’m never turning back
I’m not who I used to be
And I’m never going home.
I’m so hard upon myself
I cannot seem to learn.
At the bottom of the well,
I sit and shiver in my bones.
I really don’t know who I am;
I’m busy being someone else.
Trying on my different masks,
I lose my sense of what is real.
So I sit and hold my head
What I’ve done can haunt me still
Remember wishing you were dead?
Now how do you feel?
Hang On to the Rope
Posted: June 26, 1995 in PoetryTags: Bones, Car, Dance, Eye, Fire, Hammer, Home, Ivy, Mind, Muscle, Rock, Sing, Steel
I wish I could string and sell
These beads of sweat;
They keep dripping in my eyes
And leaping
From the tip of my nose.
I can’t stop pulling on this rope –
The mine car can’t slip any further
Down those tracks.
I don’t know why I took this job
But it’s a challenge
And I hurt in every bone.
I’ve found muscles I never knew I had.
They’re singing so they must be helping.
I know I am never going home again.
This firelight and the ring of the hammers
On steel bars punching through the rock,
They dance in the furrows of my limbs;
I’m drenched because my mind
Hasn’t grown into this wiry body.
Veins like gnarled ivy,
Tendons like Brazilian peppers’ roots,
Fingers and arms like acacia limbs.
This is Not an Option
Posted: June 5, 1995 in PoetryTags: Believe, Child, Dream, Heart, Hope, Mind, Truth, Wing
Go now and learn;
The process never ends.
Go now and teach;
This is not an option.
You are the realization
Of the hopes and dreams of your parents
As they were theirs.
This is the way it has always been;
This is the way it shall be again.
To the children you will be perfect,
And you shall fall from grace.
You will be crucified for believing in yourself.
You will be denounced for telling the truth.
You will be taken to the temple
And tempted, seduced, and pressured.
Let your minds be your own,
Let your hearts be winged;
Lead your lives,
Don’t let your lives be led.
Oh how I wish I still had my voice
Full of fire and frogs and falcons,
Wisdom, water, and wedding songs.
Something is quenched within me now,
No time for me to find out how,
To prevent this erosion of my character.
Once upon a time I thought I’d never stop
I wrote until my hand would drop off
And the sun rose once again.
I am scared, I am frightened;
I am losing track of me
But I guess, since I have never been here
That at twenty three,
It’s called maturity.
Demons stroke my face
There, there now – that’s not so bad
As I lay here, shaking
Pushing all the stuffed animals
Onto the bed, in a pile
To somehow try to compensate
For the lack of you on the futon,
Because you’re not here
You could be anywhere
But the demons are,
Those old familiar fears
That you always smell first.
Isn’t it tragic to be so wise
And profess to know the answers,
Yet I help myself to my most delicious lies
And avoid mirrors like they were cancer.
Can’t get it right – I am still hollow
Inflated, life like sleight of hand,
No deserters; the blind still follow
This blind man across the sand.
Big Olaf
Posted: April 23, 1995 in PoetryTags: Beer, Blue, Boy, Monte Carlo, Ocean, Sand, Sunset Cliffs, Wind
Once, while sitting
On a tide-surrounded
Piece of Sunset Cliffs,
I smelled boyhood,
A summer scent:
Warm sand, blue cool ocean,
Seaweed, shells, swells, surf wax;
Coconut tanning oil
SPF 15.
The silence of waves before they break,
Bodyboard rash and sunburns,
The sharp asphault places in the parking lots,
Kicking sand on the backs of your calves
When wearing flip flops.
Bonfires and beer drinking,
Big Olaf’s waffle cones;
Smoke and fireworks and Frisbees,
Barbeques, volleyball leather, and Cokes.
The wet, towel-covered vinyl seats
In the Monte Carlo,
All in one accurate slap
Of a wave and the wind
Gracing my face.
Pine Tree
Posted: April 3, 1995 in PoetryTags: Ant, Boy, Cat, Child, Clouds, Crow, Fly, Life, Monkey, Mother, Sky, Storm, Tree, Wind
I climbed up as far as my courage
And strength would take me
One day in the life of a monkey-boy;
Those branches were spaced
With a long-armed youth in mind –
A kind encouragement
Beckoning boys to the heavens,
That grandfather pine tree still stood
As of the date of this writing,
And it still looks as tall.
Things change as I grow older –
Hey, I thought it might have grown smaller
Like my free time, but
I’ll bet the wind still waves
The top of that tree back and forth
Enough to make a mother faint.
It seemed like yards, side to side,
The crow’s nest on a stormy ship
Clinging to the sparse branches,
Inadvertently gluing myself to the trunk
With pine sap and a boy’s luck,
Feeling the tickle of the ever-curious ants
That make freeways in the channels
Of such an old tree’s bark.
I think climbing tall things
Is conquering the world to a child.
I remember my parent’s roof,
Paved with pink pumice,
Once all stones,
Then weather beaten gravel,
Looking like a picnic blanket –
Something you could almost fall into
And just sink in,
Like a cat for a headrest.
From that altitude, the clouds were nearby:
I was pretty much one with the sky.
I wondered if I believed enough
On the way down,
Could I fly?
The Pier
Posted: April 2, 1995 in PoetryTags: Beach, Beast, Bed, Breast, Clouds, Fish, Pier, Seagull, Sleep, Water, White, Wind
The pier is flung out past the surf
Into the deep water
Like a sleeper’s unconscious arm
Idly hanging over the edge of the bed.
Sunlight scuba dives for the flickers
Of schools of little fish
And warms the top of the waters –
Where the seaweed loosely hangs
Like bead curtains or piles of laundry. –
Frosting on the cake of the beach.
And the seagulls! Clouds wheeling,
Settling, screeching insults at each other
In the dingy parking lot
At the foot of the pier,
Lone white-breasted panhandlers
Eyeing the people fishing from the deck
From a safe distance.
The swirl of wind-borne sand
By the land-bound pilings,
The whorls of water around its sea legs,
Troughs of wave swells
On their way to the board-straddling surfers
Flash the wealth of sea life
Clinging to the stilled beast.
I leapt off the pier once,
Disobeying one of two white-stenciled laws
That decorate the fading grey-green railings:
One: no jumping or diving;
Two: no overhead casting.
I lost all my air on impact;
Between the shock of wallop and water,
It was all I could do to swim in.
The pier teaches endurance in many ways.
Good to know that I can
Still move the pen about
On the paper with some semblance
Of poetry – I think it’s gone
Or going the hopeless boat
I’m rowing is taking on water
At the stern and I can’t look
Forwards because it’s a rowboat
You face to the rear
Lend me your ear
I can’t tell where I’m going!
Brooding Lies
Posted: March 22, 1995 in PoetryTags: Alligator, Ass, Cat, Frog, lilypad, Seed, Swamp, Time, Water
Tonight the Frogg lies brooding
Pulling his lilypad up to his chin
Trying to suppress his inverted grin
From wrinkling his forehead into furrows
Deep enough to plant the weeds
That spring from pressure seeds.
That water which is like time
Still flows through the swamp
He’s caught cat-napping without his bilge pump
Up to his ass in alligators,
I will see you later.
I wish I had a million books,
Not a million bucks
Or bionic looks,
Just books and Bibles
And bundles of paper
And the time to read
And loan them out
To my neighbors.
Recommending and reading
Between covers I’d tarry
And give copies away
Like a hippie’s library.
Pass them around
And get lost for an hour.
But if wishes were water,
I’d never have to shower.
The joy of writing
With a well-inked pen
Is enough to make me
Write again.
Now that I’ve found one
To lie by my bedside
On the open white page
I’ll have the tool to try.
I used to write a lot
When I didn’t write
For a living, but life is
Surprisingly forgiving.
And maybe, just maybe,
Someday something crazy
Will emit from my pen tip
Stunning and startling;
A poetry-trimmed drawing
Of an Archeopterix
One which takes off and
Flies away, makes itself free
Making me content to be me.
Forgive Yourself for Evolving
Posted: March 16, 1995 in PoetryTags: Adam, Animal, Belief, Dream, Dwarf, Elf, Eve, Faerie, Fruit, God, Home, Imagination, Life, Love, Magic, Man, Power, Satan, Story
Perhaps my only true loves
Are those that are inanimate,
Or are animated soley by my
Magical imagination.
They love me like a god –
I give them life, they give me
Love without strings attached.
They could attach their strings
If they ate from that forbidden fruit
That Adam and Eve partook of.
But that is the difference
Between mankind and animals,
Plants, minerals, Elves, Dwarves, and Faeries.
We know we do wrong – we still do it.
Some barrier was broken and we keep on breaking,
We made god to subtly blame for our position.
(We call him Satan)
We told him to forgive us because
It wasn’t in our own power
To forgive ourselves for evolving.
We are now the chosen species of the planet
And, collectively, we all want to go home.
So these inanimate things I animate,
Infusing them with imagination and belief.
I can believe in them because it was I
Who made them real in the first place.
God didn’t make me; I made him
Just like I make a dream a reality,
A story my existence, and item alive
And bounding to and fro with innocent excitement.
Rioting Raindrops
Posted: March 12, 1995 in PoetryTags: Ants, Banshee, Books, Clouds, Demon, Fire, Grey, Hail, Lightning, Mardi Gras, Night, Ocean, Rain, Siver, Soldiers, Storm, Streets, Thunder, Weather, Wind, World
The rain came down
Like cartoon anvils,
Spending itself on the cement
In an assault on the town.
The parachute-less troops
Gathered in the low-lying spots
And took over the streets
In order to regroup.
Rioting raindrops,
Seething and churning,
Swallowing curbs and sidewalks
And the floors of a few shops.
En masse, they moved
Like a swarm of fluid ants,
Chewing up the asphault,
Around, under, and through.
They occupied the intersection
Several steps from my domicile;
A congregation of soldiers
Moshing in misdirection.
The storm drain was debris overrun
By the midnight attack,
Mouth buried in what was handy,
Gagged by the silver-headed ones.
They celebrated down the gutters,
Their comrades swept down from the hills,
Retreating, they left for the ocean
Until their cries became gutters.
Discontent and garbled threats
Of heavy grey clouds yet to come,
Of their shock troops, the hail.
Big drops, little drops; they’re all wet.
Promises of thunder, their drummer boys
Their standards of lightning
And the wind-demons who bear them;
This I hear in the storm’s noise.
I stood in the lee of my apartment
Water draining from my hat and jacket
I watched the fury of the rain banshees
With a certain amount of excitement.
I love the rain and the wind; all weather
Which drives people inside to read books.
They boil kettles and build fires –
An opportunity to be together.
But I like to be outside in the dark
Of wildness and wetness and the glory
When the streets are reclaimed by the Mardi Gras rain
And the world’s turned into an amusement park.
I sold out to the rat race:
My time is spent trivially
Pursuing carrots and cash-ews
Running around like a chicken
With its common sense head cut off.
Important criteria have shifted,
Tabbed into the margins of
My papers.
I’m so busy taking notes
There’s no body, no bulk,
No substance, no spirit,
And the price gets paid in years.
Oh, the price gets paid
In years
From now until then
I make myself miserable
By working to make myself
Happy to write poetry
To the bone I go
To the cancerous lip and lung
To my tattered
Standard
Of living.
A Prayer for Dreams
Posted: March 2, 1995 in PoetryTags: Coin, Damn, Dreams, Hypnos, Memory, Muse, Pen, Vampire
Arise, comic and tragic,
Lustful, passionate, and fluorescent,
Cartoon and video footage,
Scripted and ad lib,
Fanciful, grotesque, and beautiful.
The colorful vampires
Of the dreamlands:
Come hither unto me.
Let me collect you like so many coins
And seal you into prisons
Of memory, typeset, and ink.
Inspire me, muses of Hypnos,
Pour enchantments through
The cylinder of my pen,
Through the netting of my synapses.
Damn me in return
To the folly of being a dreamer,
Of waking ecstatic through empty-handed,
Yet drowning in enigmatic
Gifts from angels.
Remember This in Time
Posted: March 2, 1995 in PoetryTags: Antelope, Blood, Cloud, Faith, Fire, Journal, Yellow
I promise that someday
I will be faithful
To my journal again.
Another sacrifice
To the fires of my economy.
The poet-sap has dried,
Hardened to a cloudy yellow
But I guess beneath
This bark I’ve grown,
The blood still boils
And the words still run
Like antelopes or
Like a persistant brook.
Froggacuda's Weblog 