Sad half sonnet

could’ve been your major
a question asked by scholars

could have been
the day you missed class

could have been
your Mona Lisa smile

loved not is half a couplet

My Bio for Plus Ultra

He was born in California, grew up in West Los Angeles, and moved to Tucson, Arizona in 1964. He attended the University of Arizona where he was a student poet. After the university he entered the food industry, first working as a retail meat cutter and later as a chef. He moved to Almaty, Kazakhstan in 1992 to work as an executive chef for a hotel. He started teaching English in 2003. He opened his blog Yuckelbel’s Canon in 2004. He has published his poetry in numerous magazines, bi-annuals, quarterly’s and journals. He has acted in theater, movies, commercials, on television, and sung in musicals. Currently he is a full time Lecturer in the Language Center of the Kazakhstan Institute of Economics, Management and Strategic Research.

Dance

It was a mess
I didn’t make
sounds on the stair –
dog barking

it was a day
beyond lies
but less, far less
than truth

name me an ugly
dance, naked with
the heart-shot
falling bear

I am the anguish
that answers the door

Blacksmith

The night is huge and powerful,
a dark muscle, massive and bulging,
changing as a hammer hits
hot steel the color of sunset
and sizzling stars shoot
into the blackness of forge smoke.
There is no reason to face this,
she says, and a ship sinks below the surface
of convolutions and ripples.
He takes the bottle with the ship in it
and pours out an ocean around him
drowning till the clouds part
and in the full moon light
the faces of the bobbing, bloated crew
shine with grins.

The diamond of the day had a flaw
and through that crack came the brutal black –
the bulging blacksmith pounding, pounding,
telling all you wanted secret,
heralding in the ample night.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!

The poem Mime is for all of you. I love you very much!

Mime

I have caressed this
rapturous book of silence
with which to tell you my mind.
Laced throughout are
obscene gestures,
genuinely obsequious,
ultimately polite,
which have prevented us
from touching,
from tracing eternity
along starlit paths of skin
strategically slippery,
here a pearl of spit,
there diamonds of eye light.

Immortality

What is this stuff called time?
Do rare birds fly near our windows
With a beak full of it,
snatched from the sky,
to stand in our yards
in the afternoon sun
and partake of it,
even in winter when
there is precious else
to chew on?

Who is it
that so has her belly
full of it that she
has long ago
forgotten how to die?

Or worse yet
who has had so much of it
they have grown so bored
that, in mid air,
they fold their wings,
expire,
and plummet to the Earth
a small sarcophagus
of disinterested flesh
given up wondering?

Has a little bird,
head the size of the body,
said I can’t bare to start
so long a journey,
folding those yet
vestigial wings?

Do we breed
every billion years
and regret it
forever?

Only a question of time

For Luis Benitez


Do you realize who I am?
That is not possible.
I am less me today
than I was yesterday,
I am unraveling like
a badly thought out story.
I am now that piece of
sadistic humor -
the joke time
has told my birth.

Friday night came and went.
Nobody noticed poets;
they sang, they danced,
they romanced ten pinters;
nobody will see
yesterday without
some burden of regret –
fewer still
will understand
what was missed.

If I am different today
is that better or worse?
Is this more of who I am
or less?
Why does pain
and the chance for
happiness have
an inverse relationship?

What can my aging mom -
captain of the ghost ship
full of friends and relatives
only she remembers -
hope for with
tomorrow’s dawn?

Hope

Fat half of the moon -
crows fly with Spring at daybreak,
caws fold day's bedclothes

Papers

Drink the darkness
but don’t stir,
the glass of night
is a long, black silk sheet.

Tired eyes
dart to shadows
but fear the abyss found there.

Sheets of white
remain bright
but the edge of the room
is frosted with moon.

Still teaching after class.
The itch is scratched
with a red pen.

Wrong circle

In our next moment of wearing clothes,
we will be unstoppable in our nakedness.
Every answer will be a lie
and will mean everything to us
like the darts in your dress,
the soft rub of your jeans.
I cannot tell you the truth
and that no longer hurts.
True was a lie that we shared
before your small hand shattered
my big one with a squeeze.
I look to the light in your eyes
for this world has grown dark.
You are apple and I am orange.
I cringe at beauty because
the glint of a hair has entranced me.
I revolve around your lips
like a forlorn moon.
I pray for gravity and descent.
Destroy my orbit.

poetry 2

a week without spilling out the words
is the burning cross
with my insides boiling

busy week
distracted week
only rhyming preffixes

syllabus students
working the vending machine
in drop/add anarchy

nights echoing
day’s folly
foulness at rest

a dance
without any music

PICTURES ARE COMING

Experiencing technical difficulties!

Dear students, thanks for the wonderful pictures which I will post soon. I am very busy, at the momment and Blogger has changed. Over the week-end I should be able to have the time to sort it all out, so check back later.

See you in class!

OOPS!

Oops, got tagged…..

by Katy


The rule of this tag is to tell five unknown factoids about yourself.


1. I wrote my first play at the age of 11.
2. I rode a custom Triumph motorcycle for 15 years.
3. I have been in three movies.
4. I was a surfer in the early 60’s.
5. I moved to San Francisco and became a hippie in the late 60’s.



I tag Queen Neetee, Pat Paulk, Jaded Prima Donna, Gautami Tripathy, Sue Hardy Dawson.

Lover

The snow writes a poem
to the earth about silence
the wreck of the moon
breaks again in a pond
as it freezes
looking a little
like the sparkle
in a lover’s eyes.

I stroke the face
of the lover
with my words
the lover is old
sleeping quietly
peace crosses her face
in the pale light
as we succumb
to the old dream
of winter.

Sunlight

Amsterdam afternoon
bright crisp graceful air
tinkling piano keys

Road Show

Planes and airports
the next two days -
that travel has grown discomfort
like the skin of a giant snake,
that my students are waiting,
soon from my office there
I'll sit at the computer
and answer comments
after the snake has shed.

Arizona Sunset

The painting leans against the sky
Borrowing colors, light bleeds in.
I sit at the computer tapping keys –
The riot of my feelings
Revolts against a sad history of words.
They together tell of the crack in time
Where the torturer slides in like a shadow
Between what I wanted
And what I have done.
The only thing to do
Is to turn my back on
Guesses and approximations.
The crowd pleaser must die and
I must do alone that evening liturgy.

After a siesta

Hot air dreams on a cloud
Soaring red tailed hawk
Hungry over a winter desert
My daughter’s lips move
Ending heartache with a swoop

We have much to do
Hand in hand over shopping malls
Grocery stores
Big as a desert sky
Reflected in each other’s eyes

We must laugh and play
Improve the lies of night and day

We must tell them to each other
Uselessly as surrendered soldiers

Stained Glass Window

My experience shapes my poetry
I want to shape my experience
By living how and where -
I want to write those poems

It must be said the mind
Shapes all experience
But sometimes you must
Be crazy to see what you want
I put my bookmark on my pillow
And get up to pen the dawn

There is a street we all live on
All ordinary experience is had there

I cross the street nearly alone
And find my bookmark

River Pebble

The rock has known the hollow harmony of water,
The limbless rock has learned the joy of dance,
On the bottom of the river it learns to measure love that passes,
And dry in the sun it learns thirst and to sing a lament.
It has always been whole, complete,
Only by being caressed it learns
The limitation of solid.

Lamentations for Medusa

When can one moment bring you love?
Conversations for one in the hall of whispers,
Among statues of the hated and the loved.
When can one day see a moment of
Rock star ranting into a sea of shiny faces
All looking up for the second
When eyes will link in adoration received.

Pausing before the statue of a beloved maid
Where tears have stained the feet,
Shifting the unimaginable gown
Of an eternity of misunderstandings
Having to pass through an endless gallery
Of sculpted hate, so many, so many,
How could they have never understood me?

Having to measure time with endless disappointment
Having to watch all days progress
From more to less while new names define
The ancient wine as all becomes
A passing truck of two buck chuck
As grandeur disintegrates before the eyes
In epiphanies to minds much less than wise.

All these are tears if you wish to cry.
Dismembered faces of frequent company
Are always to be seen in the same old light
Focused on the physical and the need to
Not see me as I am – hear my song –
The passage of my mind from sword and spear
To kind act performed unseen to those obsessed with fear.

Rubbing the Lava Lamp

I always feel as if I’m desperate.
Life goes so slowly,
It never seems to do
Something valuable.

I guess its incompatible;
It goes on so it has
Continuity but nothing
Ever seems to go together.

Elliot tells us of his insubstantial
Days of chores and mindless tasks;
We hope to see some change
But all we have is familiarity.

Life undulates through my hands sensuously
But never seems to escape the lamp.

Walking dreams

(For Luis Benitez)

In the dark morning of ritual,
in the mirror of the unacceptable,
is an imperfection
of the imagination
which must be cut and bled,
must be the elaborate object of sacrifice.

Mirrors must be foggy, steamy,
a universal mystery lives there.
Wash the corpse, bathe it with fragrance,
prepare it for the life to come,
meeting with other corpses
in the pretend world,
a world not to be entered simply,
a world opened only by ritual
and entered only by those who
have begun to dream a dead sleep.

Mending the dead is solitary work,
all flaws must be imagined in new ways –
cut, trim. Sharp objects, soaps, tools
of rubber and chrome must be ready
before the cadaver can be
surveyed dispassionately,
bending close to the mirror,
with the feel of cold ceramics
against bare thighs.

The transformation comes in
slow, sure strokes,
dull skin begins to shine,
untidy patches no longer
are a part of the living.
Water, lots of water rinses away
all signs of life, imperfection.

Imagining a world
where this corpse
walks with other such dead
doesn’t prepare us for
the chance meeting
with the living and dying –
the shock of broken things assaults us,
leaving staring bodies
with blank eyes
marring ritual perfection.

Khadisha and I stop for a picture at a rare moment when the Language Center isn't packed with students.