world of silence

many languages
exceptional silence
hotel lift

hourglass beach

she grabs her slippers
adjusts her navel
says i am a jeweled toy
hungry for despair
we - as is her wish -
do not talk about it
there is little
in that brittle manicure world
that is up for discussion

i am the dog of old wrinkles
my loose flesh
seems to shiver in the sun
the light hides the truth
the cicadas sing
the agean sea crashes softly
a horsefly bites my ankle

the litany of time
is quietly chanted
over cards and beer
by picnic table swimsuit old couple
at the shore
of the narrow measure of sand

arf

trick dogs of the past
dance to new music

get up and move to it
someone wants to slowly sway to it -
sway away into vengance and despair

tears are always waiting
bursting forth from edges and corners we turn
when light blinds us
or darkness lies about its comfort

we sway to subtle hums of hips -
pleasure to pretend against pain -
pleasure that gnaws bone when flesh is gone

clap your hands and slowly spin
we are the skinny trick dogs of the past

initials

show me the night sky
where darkness is your rib cage
and echoing within
is the pounding of your heart

i know that thump
pushing that blue liquid
carrying things jumbled together
like love hope pain
and that gathering ball
of strands of distrust
anxiously tying themselves
to your youthful thoughts
dragged kicking and screaming
into that silence and darkness

i know in that deep dark
you could show me
your heart
and i could see those letters
carved in it
as if florescent
and so i show you yours on mine

Party

love was dead
it made me sick too
pug shrug ugly
past tense dreams
i didn’t have any chance
selecting

where was hope
i hadn’t seen it
a long time
lonely me
my dice time again tonight
i found you

we watched eyes
but we found your belt
stars twinkled
breathlessly
putting my hand racing time
we both gasped

secret now
secret forever
this was our
only chance
this was our only real hope
still got caught

painful

the wound sits sullenly
seeming never to scar over

in my white jacket with
mirror on my forehead
i take out my pen

to look for its history
a deep pocket of hurt –
imbedded alternate reality –
in a shallow layer of skin

scratching my case notes
on oversensitive paper
like a photo of a sigh

beauty maybe is skin deep
but ugly is a cosmos

blade blood

all this anger drifts skyward as a flaming ball over the darkness of the city night
down below, just above the skyscrapers, sits this dense cloud of raining sorrow
the French horns of screams add a hollow solemness around the buildings
that ephiphinizes nature’s calm acceptance
of right and wrong as existences of equal entitlement -
a place for everything with wrong at the head

oh i am sorry i cannot make this better
i am, after all, just another stupid human
stupider than most because i see what is wrong
and can do nothing

what, i wonder, does it mean to be human, to live in this mess,
behave like trash, and treat each other accordingly
yes i foul myself because i am a course man
forgive me, find in what i say some hope i cannot see

find us a way forward
find something that is not a logical extension of me
find it in your heart to forgive me for writing about it instead of being there

Darkest daylight

Even in the daylight, you see, I’m haunted by shadows.
They follow me, remind me, tell me another dark secret
just as a hot body promises with perfume to be a flower.
I stumble under this weight, even at noon with the sun on my bald spot like a crown,
trying to disguise things by making them shiny.
Trying to make this foolish person laugh when there’s nothing really funny.
Trying to make sounds that will echo in the dark and, at that time
I will know them alone by their real names.

Dark fingers can be seen at the corner of things holding on, waiting,
dreaming of the sadness and surprise day will know,
will know soon enough, will stager unable to cope with.
These are the dark fingers we feel inside when, on a hot day we suddenly go cold.
This is the darkness we know as inevitable as that parallel universe
when death closes our eyes and the only light, albeit bright,
will come from dreams as the light we have wrapped as a package
in this profoundly dark and impenetrable paper
is the only light that can be seen,
can be found anywhere in that permanently dark room.

There are no corners in that room, no walls and I wonder if the day
with it’s shapes and turns and rooms and windows
has any idea of what seamlessness the dark contains.
The dark contains the noisy, shiny day as keys clatter in my pocket –
can the day contain the dark
or is the universe grown too large to tolerate such a travesty?

you

you are always who i wanted
you of the long stair
thousand houses of a thousand cities
teaching chameleons disposition

teaching me not to blink
but I must
and in that moment you are gone
leaving hurting eyes that are red and dry

i must climb the stairs
or return to the street
and so i climb
praying

that je ne sais quoi trace of perfume
that empty air still following you across a lifetime of a thousand rooms

city

the door that was the doctor
opened on the stars
the neon above the entrance
was hotter than a five course meal
her eyes like wine to wash the night away
and everything was exactly an answer -
no questions allowed –
don’t even think about it –
just say yes
and stumble on the bluish shadows
raised on the crumbling sidewalk
cracks and chunks
that lead to everywhere
like a roadmap for a modern pirate
rolling dice for her life
because that’s all that’s left
just this map
these informative shadows
just this night with its neon black holes
and darker yet my desire
burning holes
in solid hearts
so lonely and strangely still

bird

hope hop tune
claws along the sidewalk
last chance bargain -
give me something
or give me death
passionate question
indifferent answer
good this time
a senior not a cat

need finds need
get in to jail free card
when life outside
has not been good -
place to go

home needed a song
good name – lucky


This little experimental sonnet is a 55 word poem, an idea coined by the inventive mind of English August. I still enjoy the form. The story is a true one I read about on a post called encounters (22 June 07) about a walk around Seattle a short while ago. I read it on her blog at: http://owlrainfeathers.blogspot.com/ .

Summer

With his own hands
He fitted the wood
Sanding, shaping, carving
But there’s much he cannot touch
The day cannot be carried in his hands
He cannot pick up love
He may hold the thing he created
But he cannot touch the beauty of it

With my ears, eyes, skin and mind
I have written this poem
It is like a box to carry beauty
I cannot own that beauty
I can only admire it
I cannot even give it away

So while there is some sun yet
Let us go into evening’s gentle breezes
Let life caress us with summer’s gentle mood
And when the night comes
Like that graceful dark cat
We’ll let it snuggle between our bellies
And purr contentedly

painting

he was afraid that you would know
he had always been himself
like a secret
that he had seen darkness
as it brooded across his mind
yes he was afraid of being
the wrong kind of human
some something –
too much of another view
of what was wrong

although he could understand why
he was perplexed
this so rested on him

every rebuff hurt so
he had to build an island
of color to hide in
waiting to be discovered
as having gone
to somewhere only
his rules applied

sleepless

charge the day with harboring a fugitive
noise sits- quietly hidden by silence
if your chair offends you call it a throne
gain a gift for naming- create reality

noise sits- quietly hidden by silence
worship power you don’t create
gain a gift for naming- create reality
i put my hand up waiting for God to call on me

worship power you don’t create
who is dawn’s mistress
i put my hand up waiting for God to call on me
did she just come or just leave

who is dawn’s mistress
perfume, cologne, satin and silk
did she just come or just leave
spider’s web of smell and touch

perfume, cologne, satin and silk
hope floats to perjure fate
spider’s web of smell and touch
we argue delicately into the night

ecclesiastes

true swing
slow debate -
when wow
is slower than an hour
and the pigs are home
before you know it
smelling of truffles
and sounding of small talk

let and live, pigs say -
when asked about physics
an answer today
is a question tomorrow
so why worry

who

the dog is a nose
not one like a cat
or monkey - not long
like a horse - though
longer seems to be
a specialty
and cold and wet too

mouse says
that makes you wonder
about a lot of things
like why does chicken
taste like everything
and a hearse is always
spread before you
like a shadow
with only death
sticking far enough
above the ground
to create it

how do you know me
only by this shadow
that creeps across
this page - this ink
these startled ramblings
woken from their
murky sleep
and driven by
someone pretending
to be their shepherd
hoping to be their helper
praying they will save me
from being myself
from being something
we both know
in darkness as
precisely an alias

Poetry Readings by the authors!

If you like Avant Garde and contemporary poetry, here is the address for Pennsound: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound you'll want to load your MP3 up with some fine readings. This is a Wow!

war

there a dark corner spread
and became persuasive
a quiet history
nobody could deny

over it the muscle
of day flexed
and marched around proudly
an army celebrating
while the enemy sneaked up
hiding under bushes
beneath trees around corners
taking victims little by little
till so diminished
the day begins to flee
with darkness sprinting after
shouting coward

ambition

my mattress only moans and sighs
it is not the proper place
for a man like me
lying on thoughtful nails
rather than rest

a question rather than answer
if i were to write the story of a life
could i say how
i climbed a tower of hours
to the room at the top

how i could have counted tedious steps
how many of my graves are spread below

how i light the dark window again
with my moon encrusted sleepless face

teacher learns

the days in spring start to sing
they find me always busy
spider web work is their logic
the evenings are often just the same

summer shines relentlessly
an air conditioner in my office
grinds me to a gooey mass
nights test a solitary sweaty wrestler

winter in caps of sheep’s curls
fur lined waterproof boots
home and tired - how to spend the evening
cold covers and pillow are dark whispers waiting

you swam through waves of solitary tea cups
you showed me what the night was all about

rock star

the light was hiding behind
dark espresso
adjective clouds

it was the rougher form
of tag we were playing –
evening exercises
for overactive thoughts

confident doubts
of a calm mirage
floating nervously –
hovering over couches and chairs
knowing the electric moment was coming

cat tail
under the rocker

spring

green grow the tree tops
parts and spaces away
from killing shadow
smelling good is
dead or alive

dreams are the darkness you don’t see
when you close your eyes
smelling is good
whether fresh leaf
or broken branch

green is a color with a hole in it
that’s filled when light
is eaten
with delicate bud like teeth

music for katy

that the sky was light
was an illusion
bent armed and bedraggled
behind the veil
where there are only confidants
and just a few of them
after all

secrets are told there
but secrets are hard to keep
he wears a smile
to hide his passion
it trickles through
disguised as a good natured jest
he wears a frown
hard as a soda can
rattling empty

the sky looms
an invisible spider web
in which we are trapped
it is the disfigurement of day
built of secret tons
of crumble and rust
the grand skyscraper of our civilization
over which the wet dark
giant wave of night
pours like a flood
and introspection starts too late

huge cup of night

I am the husband of the dusk
I am the pimp of Peter Pan illusions
(because they remain childish forever)
forty days and forty nights
we sailed the dark ocean
we drank the huge cup of night
and only the dregs were bitter
sometimes you just must
drink deeply the blackness
the hours are like stars
shining on the surface
of the huge cup of night
you see what you cannot
when you stare into your drink
of the huge cup of night
you smell and feel
like a blind gardener
when you drink deeply -
I feel you as if you were a breath of mine

prison

I can’t see my prison
of a young atom bomb child
but I am looking for the bars
and walls that float around me –
flowers and trees that strangle
to hide the things that bind me
grabbing poems like bars to shake with rage
I must slip free of the balls without chains
and learn how to take them apart –
find a tunnel under solitary confinement
peek through a peephole in the glass wall
that floats around me
to the door that also floats
that opens onto a dream of freedom