A winter white sheet covers me
As I sit in this chair, unmoving.
My breaths are shallow and I can’t see
Whether to move or stay very still:
I am hung on that decision
Like a meathook.
The longer I wait, the more my weight tears me
To get off is still more painful
But there is no mistaking impalement
On the pike of indecision.
What to do? I don’t know;
I will never know unless I do
Something – anything is better,
But to throw off these veils
Is to see what I am afraid of:
That lonely vista of sunrise
Over faraway mountains from another mountaintop.
No road nor path presents itself
In the gloaming beyond this sheet;
Light-shadows shiver and mold to each other
Unknown consequences and results
Which my feeble calculations
Cannot fathom as I am staked here.
Nobody knows who I am anymore,
But if anyone can it must be me.
Count on a breathless ride for part,
Meandering, enjoyable inner tubing for another,
And yet other unpredictable situations.
These are all definition-grounds,
To file and hone the self-blade
And the mind-sword.
Be born and becoming.
Posts Tagged ‘White’
Becoming
Posted: January 13, 2002 in PoetryTags: Breath, Light, Mountains, Road, Shadow, Sword, White
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.
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.
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.
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.
I Can’t Breathe
Posted: September 15, 1993 in PoetryTags: Candles, Circle, Crickets, Dog, Dream, Echo, Fire, Fireworks, Honesty, Human, Joy, Lightning, Moth, Ocean, Rhyme, Sea, Sky, Smoke, Snake, Stone, White, Woods, World
why can’t I
just be another guy?
but I’m a person
with a snake-sharp tongue
and I’m a ripped flannel…
I shoot my mouth like a shotgun.
riddles and rhyming and rhythm,
not taken seriously enough to stay honest
just another number in the GTE phone list.
I lie and I lie and I lie
to convince you all
that the poet is just another human being;
that I am just another guy.
I thresh through these lines
like a dog wrapped in seaweed,
thrown with stones in the ocean:
I can’t breathe –
there’s all the smoke from the fires I’m lightning,
I’m telling the sheriff that I’m struck by lightning.
when does it all stop echoing ‘round in circles?
I think it’s just another dream.
I’m on a porch with a candle and a carpet;
there’s crickets all around
and I feel wonderful without the world dragging me down.
look, I see you don’t understand with a frown.
I can’t even repeat what I’ve said.
I can’t think of a poem I’ve written,
then read,
and thought that this is it, this is perfect!
I’ve even given up trying to rework it.
I don’t want to write for a living anymore
I feel like the homework that’s always lost to the dog
and I don’t remember whatever
I expected from myself anymore.
these fireworks of joy that I wished to paint the skies with
are nothing more than explosions
of white-winged moths from a log
that I’ve kicked walking alone in the woods.
there are rats in the walls
of every relationship.
they knock about at night
or surprise you scurrying from the trash cans.
the glint of a narrowed eye or a chiselled tooth
or the sounds of skeletons being gnawed,
teeth clicking as they polish to white
the foundations of an unsteady heart.
Foaming at the Mouth about Myself
Posted: June 25, 1993 in PoetryTags: Black, Memories, Song, White
I write poems
that nobody hears [yet]
silent songs
of ink and paper;
meaningful scrawls,
ideas I jot down.
they’re testimonials to me living.
I write these things down
because I don’t have a camera
or anything more high-tech.
I write because
my memory can fail me.
And when I get older,
I will look through these scrapbooks
and make my own pictures
from this black and white.
Back from the House of Bedlam
Posted: January 2, 1993 in PoetryTags: Bedlam, Cloud, lilypad, Mirror, Time, White
I AM STILL HERE
TO WASTE YOUR TIME,
BROADCASTING LIVE FROM THE LILYPAD,
I, APE, THE LITTLE MIRROR-COLLECTING
BOY WITH NO MOUTH,
WHO LIVES IN THE WHITE HOUSE OF BEDLAM.
I was surprised, too, that I still fight.
A room of dank dungeon walls collapsed
leaving me on a pinnacle of cloud height.
everything has fallen away from me
except (maybe) my grip on reality.
Untitled Poem #139 and 1/2
Posted: December 24, 1992 in PoetryTags: Love, Monster, Purple, Untitled, White
I am jealous of what you think:
all your monsters seem terribly attractive,
something to devour me right –
I mean, correctly.
you’re untouchable and yet
I know
that I’ve striped you
like being disembowelled with a Katana;
one white stripe, or a purple one
for you to look at
because I love you.
Water falls as the hair and voices
Of nymphs at La Cascada.
Removing my shirt and glasses,
I place my eyes and nose
Through the surface of the pool
To be bathed by hands of water,
Falls like silver tinsel
Or ribbons of moonshine
And moss-maiden hair
Perpetually combed
By the white fingers of
La Cascada.
Her touch upon troubled features
Is like a lover smoothing covers,
Leaving pearls upon your eyelashes
for the morning.
Imitations of Bunya no Asayasu
Posted: May 5, 1992 in PoetryTags: Breakfast, Divinyls, Touch, White
I
in a gust of wind the white man
on the autumn grass
lies still with a broken neck.
II
in the dust of mind the sight crew
on the bottom glass
matters like a token breakfast.
III
I don’t want
anybody else
when I think about you
I touch myself.
-Sample Courtesy of the Divynls
Imitations of Sakanoe
Posted: April 28, 1992 in PoetryTags: Anger, Dark, Love, Smile, Volcano, White
I
do not scowl to yourself
like a volcano
erupting orange saliva.
people will know you are angry.
II
do not smile to yourself
like a child who has
thought of something naughty.
people will catch you.
III
do not smile to yourself
because you are pleased
with all your talents.
it is not allowed.
IV
do not smile to yourself
like a white wall
splashed with dark paint.
people might notice you are in love
One from the House of Bedlam
Posted: March 4, 1992 in PoetryTags: Boy, Cage, Clock, Crickets, Ezra Pound, Mad, Rock, Spider, White, Wind
this is the box that the spider came in.
here is the molt
of the mad spider
who came in this box.
this is the rock
from the cage where I kept
the spider, who was mad
and wouldn’t bark
after he left the white box that he came in.
these are the pictures I took of the box
that the batty spider came in
before I found that it was not him
who barked.
I am the boy who also came in the box
with such a grizzly spider,
put was not put in a cage
with a grey rock and a clock.
this is what happens to the crickets
that my spider hunts around the rock
by the light of that ridiculous clock.
this is Ezra Pound; a sailor, a spider,
who winds the clock in the closet of crickets.
here is the ward
where the mad spider and I are,
full of wind and white sheets and flat paper hats
and a rock.
here is the boy that bought the box
and found the rock for Ezra Pound,
that mad grizzly spider who wore a paper hat,
who gave it to me for the molt
that lies in the House of Bedlam.
this is the box,
the House of Bedlam,
where the spider molted even though he
was supposed to be hunting by the light of the clock
that Ezra wound.
I am the clock that tells the time
that the closet crickets die in the white box
– the cage in the House of Bedlam.
these are the legs of the mad molted spider
who ran around the rock in the white windy ward
of the house of the box with a paper hat.
this is the picture of grizzly me,
the boy Ezra and that deadly spider
who still wouldn’t bark after returning
to the House of Bedlam.
here is the box that is all that is left
of the boy, the spider,
Ezra and me.
[based on a poem by Elizabeth Bishop]
The Sun at the Edge of the World
Posted: March 1, 1992 in PoetryTags: Clouds, Eye, Flowers, Sun, Tree, White, Window
in the photograph,
taped at the corners,
we were caught falling
into the river with smiles
and half-closed eyes;
flowers were falling
on the glossy surface
in the middle of the white album page,
shifting the reflection of the sun.
outside the open oak-framed window,
shining over the tall broad-leafed trees,
and the clouds spiraling away
falling over the edge of the world.
seven large pillars stood alone
surrounded by heaps of moldy bone.
your skulls are marked with waterstains
but flesh in your poetry remains.
climbing slowly around the piles
holding, examining your whitened smiles,
wondering what of my poetry
when I have become as thee.
poetry comes as the shadow of a cloud
across my paper, staining the white,
and I only remember how much I was
in love with you for that moment.
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