by
“There are always flowers for those who want to see them.”
—-Henri Matisse
we called them
by different names
the wrong names
confusing one
for some other
as if language
changed them
from what they are—
fields of flowers:
blue bonnets butter cups
primrose mexican hats
from early spring
into summer
nameless not unknown
(April 8, 2025)
Finished the RFB book for this upcoming Sunday’s meeting. A fairly long (161 pages, seemed longer) rant from the point of view of a working class bloke (oppressed like Caliban in The Tempest by powers greater than him). Each chapter focuses on another aspect of his oppression.The main take away is the old adage: the more things change the more they stay the same. The powers that be (church, military, education, government, labor unions, etc) all contribute, if not conspire, to exploit, control, and oppress the working class. Much of what he shrieked about is pretty much still in play in our contemporary politics. So, it was not that I disagree with most of what he screams about, i simply found the writing to be over-wrought and turgid. The book cover claims it is a rediscovered classic. I am not sure a book can be called a classic if it had to be rediscovered. Isn’t a classic— a book that people have continued to read over the years? Not one, forgotten and unread, that some editor found in a book stall, then reprinted. But I quibble.
In that moment, she danced,
as in a snow globe:
the late afternoon sun dazzled
the air in raindrops
still slowly falling from the walk way
overhangs of the ornate railings
on the buildings in the French Quarter
near the St. Louis Cathedral
where the wet streets reflected
the now unrelenting blue sky.
(April 7, 2025)
by
Despite the despots,
despite the collapse
of oceans’ currents,
despite the anger
flowing through the streets,
the iris push up
though the garden mulch,
and roses burst into bloom.
(April 6, 2025)
“What shall I say, because talk I must?”
-William Carlos Williams
Perhaps if I gnaw
off my tongue,
I could drown
in unvoiced blood.
I have no insight,
no words as balm
beyond my silence.
It’s easier, safer,
to be polite
to watch the end
and say nothing.
I am dumb-founded,
when I should scream
against all decorum.
(April 5, 2025)
by
I wake. The puppy needs to go outside.
The older dog comes along as well
hoping to roust a nervous rabbit.
It’s close enough to six by this time
to feed them, and take my daily meds.
I am tired, and worried about the world.
They finish their ration of kibble
and head happily back up the stairs.
I turn off the light, and follow along.
In the hazy half-minute it takes
for me to crawl under the sheets,
they’ve both tightly curled in bed.
I lay there unable to return to sleep,
and listen to the dogs’ soft snores.
(April 4, 2025)
by
At which closed door
does it no longer matter
if it remains a closed door?
Does a story I’ve never heard,
because never told, become
more than my own
through implied genetic hints
and stale romantic longings?
Hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of years, and miles of oceans between
allow one to co-opt, create, and project
a nameless European hero (with a face like mine?)
to pillage and fuck their way into a future
through the tangled heath and ruins of time.
(April 3, 2025)
by
Our two dogs scuffle loudly at my feet.
Curtains flutter in the window near me.
The afternoon has suddenly grown late.
I do not like the book I am reading,
I put it down and pick up another.
It is one I’ve read before: poetry,
so it’s like I’ve never read it at all.
“the mind and the poem are all apiece”
A few weeks later than they did last year,
the roses have begun to bloom again.
Though, perhaps not, my memory follows
its own soft path through the rooms of the house.
The dogs with their play tussle forgotten
curl in the corner upon each other.
(April 1, 2025)
tells a story
to entertain
to make belief
an allowance
to comfort
and hide
from whatever
needs be
feared
(March 31, 2025)
Over the last week I re-read Roger Zelazny’s The First Chronicles of Amber: (Nine Princes in Amber, The Guns of Avalon, Sign of the Unicorn, The Hand of Oberon, and The Courts of Chaos). I first read this series in the mid to late 1970’s. I was in my mid-teens, when I pretty much only read Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels. I think the Amber series was probably my first real exposure to multiple reality, and the idea that we control and can change the reality we are born into. This time through I noticed ideas of ontological basis to reality versus epistemological understandings. Here is a bit from near the end: “Yes. You see, we are hatched and we drift on the surface of events. Sometimes, we feel that we actually influence things, and this gives rise to striving. This is a big mistake, because it creates desires and builds up a false ego when just being should be enough. That leads to more desires and more striving and there you are, trapped.” I don’t really remember any of this when I read it the first time 50 years ago. I am sure I absorbed it somehow, just not consciously. For the most part, I enjoyed it well enough this last week; I mean I obviously finished it again. On the whole it is still a fun fantasy novel filled with sword fights and family intrigue and back stabbing, accompanied by quick insertions of Platonism without being too pedantic about it all. There are another five books in the series; I will not seek them out.
always the desire
to be ten years ago
when life was easier
as now ten years hence
(March 29, 2025)
by
The grass is dead; heat
and lack of water condemned
it to a fiery death.
The sun sets the sky
on fire; the air vanishes
with the last ember.
The dark cannot grant
reprieve from the constant heat;
our sweat turns to ash.
There is no relief.
Our father has failed us all
The sun chars the dark.
God smells of stale death in ice;
A silent corpse’s last breath.
(March 24, 2025)
caught in the pulse
throb and gurgle
of our body’s
contained sloppishness
we find ourselves
always too late
as if a vast wave
loomed behind us
knowing the next second
so intently our ignorance
of where we are
consumes any awareness
thus cursed with inability
to be still, we breathe
(March 21, 2025)
It is not safe. Bears ramble
through the valley, eating
fruit and honey. Berries
stain the forest floor
in blackish red swathes
like ink poured accidentally
across a policeman’s ledger.
They have crossed the road
which runs along the edge
of the park. The dam moves
with purpose, followed close
by her rapacious cubs,
their long tongues loll
wetly from their mouths
like loose rubber pendulums.
Make no mistake, this time
it is more than mere hunger
which curls her black lips
into a sharpened smile,
more than resurgent spring,
more than the fate of time
at history’s end,
but revenge.
(March 21, 2025
subtext 