I am hungry for a firm bosom
On which to lay my head, close my eyes
And hear that everything’s gonna be alright.
Careening towards conclusion
And new beginning: new days,
New nights of excess by my lonesome.,
All populated by my skewered imagination,
Made real by isolation,
Made flesh by selecting
Sentiment on vinyl slabs,
Made fleeting by drunken stupor,
Yet creating all that for a moment.
A split second where I am bitten
Drained, refilled, refueled;
Reminded of my latent power,
Envied by those hopeless dead
Beyond these walls of vapor.
Posts Tagged ‘Imagination’
Firm
Posted: September 2, 2002 in PoetryTags: Add new tag, Dead, Drunk, Eye, Flesh, Imagination, Night, Power, Vinyl
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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.
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.
Treaty
Posted: August 23, 1994 in PoetryTags: Ape, Believe, Black, Blue, Death, Dream, Eye, Flowers, Hate, Heart, Human, Imagination, Laugh, Life, Light, Love, Magic, Man, Mind, Mirror, Sea, Space, White, Wink
I’ve hated myself for so long
for other people
other opinions, other lives:
here goes my hair —
look in the mirror,
watch your steely blue eyes wink:
lighthouses to steer ships by.
Bring them home.
Home is the sailor,
home from the sea,
and the hunter,
home from the hill.
home to your heart.
Quit renting the space from yourself:
laugh and languish
with the rest of the apes called human beings.
Life is a dualism;
you are understanding
dum-dum balancing act of whatever.
Equilibrium is so nice.
So is the shift of the teeter-totter but
gain control,
remain under control;
O Captain, my Captain,
you are not yet cold and dead.
Breathe in and out,
live until the end.
It comes not from your hand;
it is not believed in your heart:
the sides of life and death
are one shot kamikaze missions:
one, then the other.
Enlighten the lighthouse.
Strengthen the beams of your winks.
Find meaning in living
to bank hard against the 100% house of death.
The Love comes:
a white ship,
a black frigate,
the swarthy faces of dream-lands sailors
set foot on the dry land
of your once-fertile imagination,
bearing gifts of gems and spices,
flowers silks and brocaded tapestries
unique to your mind and your magic —
so you trade them to the rest of the world.
These gifts are your giftedness;
these waves are your talents,
and when your life is lost,
you will trade no more in this heady marketplace.
Learn to be a good merchant of your wares,
a good businessperson,
a good man;
everyone barters and sings praise and stabs.
Be better: be the best
that your will and imagination can conceive,
then focus your lighthouse lantern
to illuminate,
to enlighten,
and to greater things to believe in.
there’s a tension between us
and I’m just wary of it.
you take things too seriously sometimes
or too personally
or
no you don’t it’s me
or my imagination.
so sometimes I
don’t want to say anything
and even that is a statement.
funny how you can’t get around that.
agnostics go to hell, too, y’know.
A Private Poem for Me
Posted: November 17, 1993 in PoetryTags: Beautiful, D&D, Eye, Fears, Froggacuda, Imagination, lilypad, Lovecraft, Memory, Soul, Swamp, Tears, Teeth, Trees
Sometimes it’s hard to find myself,
camouflaged and hunting fears by
hiding underneath the lilypads.
Like fear is going to to assassinate the Froggacuda?
But the memory is that if that is what it is:
a feeling lost and sunk in the swamp it was born in;
a beautiful first and last of its kind,
bred from books and desires and pirate gold,
from lost helium balloons and forts under acacia trees.
The Froggacuda is nothing without
one poet of keen eyes and quick hands,
a child catching frogs in the bog alone near dark
with a flashlight and an overactive imagination
full of Dungeons and Dragons books and Lovecraft stories.
Nothing is the Froggacuda without the puppeteer
who makes the teeth snap shut
and the eyes roll,
the ears perk up and the lungs breathe.
But nothing is the puppet-master without
those teeth, eyes, ears, and lungs
beating, breathing
in his self-esteem, his soul.
Santa Claus
Posted: November 10, 1993 in PoetryTags: Alcohol, Child, Devil, Dreams, Imagination, Knife, Magic, Night, Promise, Road, Santa Claus, Sleep, Song, Wine, Women
Between the Devil and the deep blue sea
there is me and a bottle of Smirnoff™ Vodka
destined to drown me in Davy Jones’ Locker.
The pursuit of happiness, wine, women, and song
goes on like the road that never ends, so long
that it sends itself laughing away ‘till you’re lost
lonely and livid at the stupid kid
that let himself grow up into this;
I learned to eat, sleep, work hard, and miss
being young, strong, and full of inspiration,
dreams, songs, and wise magickal imaginations.
My thoughts were real, my dreams weren’t fantastic.
They were attainable goals – feats of magick.
People had done it and I was going to do it,
going under, ‘round, over, or right through it.
Twenty-two and going under in a different way;
the ocean is grey and the Devil is calling –
bastard chased me through nightmares
every night of my life and the knives
that I cut with shine bright like a promise
that I have chosen unwisely; I’m falling.
Surprising? Dreams don’t come true
and you can trace the cause back to
when you stopped believing in Santa Claus.
Wading Through the Cattails
Posted: November 6, 1993 in PoetryTags: Car, Cat, Child, Dark, Dream, Frog, Girl, Gold, Happy, Imagination, lilypad, Love, Memories, Money, Moon, Night, Platinum, Sex, White, Wife
I went to find my childhood
buried in the morass of my memory;
discarded in a moment of adolescence
trying to be an adult
before I knew what that was about.
So me and a shovel and a dream
go wading through the cattails and the frogs,
looking under lilypads and scouring the undersides of logs;
hopes waxing and waning with the flux of a dark moon
laying with my arms behind my head
in a dark room.
There was a little gold-gilded crown
once made of paper. . .
I thought I had drowned my youth
in a premature effort to be a man,
coated with cars, money, girls, sex, and truth,
white picket fences and two and one half kids,
a loving wife and instant happiness.
Ah, but so many can’t and so many others won’t
dig up the countryside grave of their little one,
content to weep and dream with a withered imagination,
or they chase ghosts of happiness in platinum nightdresses
taped to the part of the elephant they can still feel.
Searching Still 4 Childhood
Posted: January 26, 1993 in PoetryTags: Boy, Child, Frog, Imagination, Monster, Spider, Story, Trees
a boy with a stick
thinks it’s a fishing pole
and can catch fish in a puddle.
this same boy
wields that stick
as a keen cutlass
fighting his monsters.
in childhood, a boy
finds a swing as a jet plane,
a few trees as a forest,
a soccer ball as a championship game,
a jungle gym as a spaceship,
a frog or a spider a best friend,
a good story as a previous lifetime.
my imagination
used to make what I had
into treasures,
and now my treasures are memories of my imagination,
and all I have.
Bear at the Back of my Closet
Posted: October 6, 1992 in PoetryTags: Bear, Closet, Flesh, Grasshopper, Imagination, Light, Man, Night, Star
I am the bear at the back of my closet,
warm and furry.
but nobody knows it.
I am the star cut in the flesh on the back of my hand.
you, however, are a fig-ment
of my imagination, subject to my rules.
and you are whatever I choose to make of you.
you are a grasshopper, or a shiny penny,
or a bunch of balloons third graders let go
with notes attatched to the ribbons.
you are roadkill, or a lonely sock in the trash.
I am the wildest man with this imagination;
the most dangerous with this pen.
I am, most of all, the bear at the back of the closet
whose winking eye has been mistaken for a star
that you use as a night-light.
Cat Hide
Posted: September 7, 1992 in PoetryTags: Cat, Closet, Dark, Eye, Father, Imagination, Moon, Mother, Night, Sleep, Tree
I am the prickle
which makes your mother start
and cover your eyes
as if you, being young
don’t know the fear of the closet.
I am the voice that whispers
through the crack;
all that’s left when
the door is shut tight,
caressing you with words
from a green foot-long tongue,
slithering out from the darker dark.
I am the clothes that hang
from all the hangers,
swaying in the imaginary breeze
of a hanging tree in the moonlight,
the one they told you about at camp.
I am the nightmare
created by frustrated imaginations
living in the people
who inhabit your house.
I frighten your strong father
and terrify your poor mother
– this alone scares you.
I am the noise
so slightly out of place,
that each of you lies awake,
debating whether to see what it was
or go back to an uneasy sleep.
I leave your closet doors
open just a little
for you to find in the morning.
Derivations of Sylvia Plath: The Snowman on the Moor
Posted: May 14, 1991 in PoetryTags: Crow, Imagination, Snow
Derivation One
mighty snowmen tower tall
hulk as somber snowflakes fall
stand as frozen testimony
that I should be in bed with tea.
Derivation Two
grim phantoms rise through wind-blown snow
summoned by cries of a solitary crow,
black-winged among the hanging sheets of grey;
its lonesome call does dim the day.
trees stand burnt by the wintry blasts
and skeletal shadows their limbs outcast.
pushing quickly through the moor’s deep snow
my thoughts are homeward bent; I go
hurrying, for imagination has me chased
by coal grinned spectres. my tracks, erased.
You Really Should
Posted: May 9, 1991 in PoetryTags: Bones, Dreams, Eat, Imagination, Kiss, Lightning, Naked, Time
I am here to waste your time.
come: step into my world of castles,
Legos, action figures, Transformers, things
only found in active imaginations
caged in flesh, hair, and bone.
come. follow me through idle dreams.
I am here to waste your time.
I am here to slap you with lightning.
a candy bar you know you want to eat.
never let yourself never let your S-E-L-F.
I am here to tell you what I see.
I dream. I feel. I want to tell you:
waste your time; it’s yours to waste.
come,
I am here to waste your time.
startled, surprised: it’s fun!
it’s good, so sharp, like biting your tongue.
get drunk on it, spin it around,
waste your time or don’t then.
listen to it with the volume way up.
relax. I am here to let you play my Nintendo.
yes you can. you deserve it.
you can do what you want; run naked.
make a mess. run me over with a lawnmower.
give me a big kiss. eat all of those cookies.
I am here to help you
waste your time.
Derivation of Philip Larkin
Posted: May 7, 1991 in PoetryTags: Earth, Grass, Imagination, Philip Larkin
my imagination has nailed my hands
to the earth and
will not allow me to pass.
the grass
presses into the shape of me
and the earth forgives, crumbles away.
I writhe on my stakes,
arch my back and strain to tear them free
my hands. poor blistered and chafed.
I live.
Hopes and Dreams
Posted: December 11, 1990 in PoetryTags: Boy, Dream, Dreams, Gold, Heart, Hope, Imagination, Joy, Love, Magic, Michael, Purple, Time, Trees
There once was a little boy
Who had dreams which danced behind his eyes
Of magic golden cities,
People merry under purple skies;
The trees and hills behind his house
Where the young boy used to play
Would welcome him joyously
Into their arms most every day.
The boy would lay for hours
Watching people living and dying
Delighted in the magic spent
To dream without even trying
But as the boy got older
His imagination began to soften
And out to the hills and trees
He wouldn’t come as often.
Plastic guns and army soldiers,
Matchbox Cars and other toys
Stole the love and keen attention
From the helpless little boy.
The sun set silent one day
Over the lonesome trees and hills
The happy boughs and glades
Wept and sadly stood still.
No one heard their hearts break,
No one knows how they cried,
But some dreams were lost somewhere in time
When the child in Michael died.
Sleep
Posted: March 16, 1987 in PoetryTags: Beauty, Cat, Dreams, Elf, Flowers, Friend, Frog, Grass, Imagination, Knight, Maiden, Prince, Princess, Rainbow, Sea, Sleep, Tom Sawyer, Unicorn, Witch
Sleep
Dreams
White picket fences
Knights of the Round Table
Picturesque cottages
By a blooming pasture
With a lake some distance away
Away over a patchwork quilt
Of grass and poppies
And lilies and daffodils
And snapdragons and
Dandylions and petunias
And myriads of colored flowers
Like a living rainbow.
A silver-maned unicorn
Prances through the colorful sea
With an Elf princess on her back
Wading towards an unknown goal.
Shall she stoop to kiss a frog?
At the edge of the sparkling lake,
Unicorn as guardian, companion, friend
An entire land
Filled with knights and maidens
And emerald cities and Cheshire cats
And evil witches and giant beanstalks
Nottingham castles, Tom Sawyer’s clubhouse,
Sleeping beauties and handsome princes
A land whose boundaries are imagination
And not worldly restrictions and rules
Every land is different
Unique to that person
And this is what
Dreams
Are made of
Seadreamer
Posted: March 11, 1987 in PoetryTags: Captain, Child, Dream, Green, Hero, Imagination, Lightning, Love, Maiden, Ocean, Sea, Ship, Sky, Tears, Water
A little kid sits in a corner with a dunce cap on his head
He’s being punished for something someone else has done and said.
A single tear runs down his cheek, yet he still shows no emotion
For his mind has carried him away to a deep blue boundless ocean.
A captain and his trusty ship, he sails with imagination
Outside the world is stark and harsh as compared with his creation.
By wondrous people in wondrous ports, he’s beckoned to the shore
But landing his ship realizes a goal, and his fantasy will be no more.
So he sails along, taunted by faces that he has never seen
Past vibrant cities, rural towns, and verdant hills of green.
Impassive at the prow, wind in his hair, and sea salt on his tongue
His is the story of a Seadreamer, a tale of a hero unsung.
Stoicly standing, resisting temptation present in every stream
The captain knows the fragile state of his precious dream.
Also in this world is a pretty maid who can never touch the sea.
A similar fate as the captain has vice versa curses she.
Gleaming water, teasing depths, voices within the surf.
But as the captain, the maid is strong, and strives to show her worth.
The Seadreamer sailed across the sea until it met the sky
And there on lonely island was the young maid, rather shy.
Yet Cupid’s arrows impaled them both and turned their hearts to love
Blind inspiration struck each one like lightning from above.
The captain turned his ship to shore and the maid ran down to meet him
In their haste they each forgot they’d end each others dreams.
But love overcomes all obstacles, for now and ever more
The maiden’s foot touched the ocean as the captain’s hit the shore.
Though their dreams were disrupted, it came to no great harm,
For the captain sitting in the corner awoke with the maiden in his arms.
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