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My Poetry and Commentary on Life

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my words to you

by

clarity, communication, erato, love, poetry, sonnets

Truth’s matter lies

hidden enough

to claim my truth’s

better unsaid.

Intention’s and

implication’s

dulled silences

fester their truths,

as in still pots

some liquor steeps

into starker

authentic brew.

My words to you:

I love you true.

(October 11, 2014)

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Texas Early October

by

beauty, borders, poetry, process, time

Woke up early: 630;

sun rose into clouds and cool rain.

The long heat ends.

(October 11, 2014)

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stuck

by

acceptance, fate, life, poetry

mired in regret

I slog through

the rueful day

like the wet clay

soil of my birth

winter was worst

the cold clay clotted

about our shoes

the harvested hay’s

remnants binding

mud like bricks

to our feet

the ground

indistinguishable

as now yet
returning home

I scrape life

from my soul

in clots

like blood

until only

memory

of bone

remains

as a hint

toward

what I was

(October 10, 2014)

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Disenchanted Doggerel

by

erato, hope, life, obsessions, paradigm shifts, poetry, process, silly, silly stuff

Tell me why it always seems

Hope remains just a dream:

all he held in high esteem

refused quietly to be redeemed.

There is no need for alarm

he never held her in his arms;

in the end all of her charms

did him very little harm.

His mind’s ceaseless clatter

left him bruised and battered;

knowing nothing mattered,

he spent his days in sordid matters.

All the things he once ignored

became the things he abhorred;

while all he truly once adored

became such a bloody bore.

(October 9, 2014)

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Passive Violence

by

communication, life, poetry, ways of knowing

Throughout the house,

unvoiced expectations

lie dormant.

Like the dust

of fallow fields,

they wait to rise

with the slightest breath

into a storm

of resentment, and ire;

until we all are crushed,

suffocating

beneath

generations

of silent

sedimentation.

(October 8, 2014)

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disconnections

by

breach, identity formation, lost, poetry, sonnets

too often now

another breach opens

a wall between

one moment and

another between

one thought and

the concrete force

resonate in the poem

I don’t know

where I am

too much

empty space

fills the gaps

in my tattered map

(October 8, 2014)

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eclipsed

by

acceptance, change, life, poetry, ritual, tension

the moon bleeds tonight

beneath the weight my back aches

another month gone

(October 8, 2014)

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dispersion

by

change, fate, poetry, process

some lost

what was left

of their soul

some laughter

some their tears

others sighed

away hope

after years

and years

until even

the dust

of their shadows

had disappeared

(October 7, 2014)

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Augeries

by

audacity, belief, control, erato, hope, hubris, obsessions, poetry, traces

What do these things mean,

he asks: black birds fly

north in a newly cleared

sky; a bear’s blood-splattered

scat forms a pattern in the snow;

and again today he thought of her.

Where desire seeks causation

any falling leaf will do to tease

the meaning he wants to create.

He knows any connection is only

his own, yet; he fingers each link,

as if it were a shattered saint’s

reliquary, with enough mediation

to bring her back again into his life.

(October 5, 2014)

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Awaken Into Poetry

by

belief, clarity, hope, metaphor, poetry, traces, ways of knowing

Life’s bitterness

melts on my tongue,

like the tasteless wafer

placed by a priest,

full of false promise,

and a redemption

to come:

the next day,

the next minute,

always a later

waits with hope,

like a bouquet of roses,

until there is not

another next.

We are compelled

to believe

in something other;

some translation,

without metaphor,

into a clarity

we can understand.

(October 3, 2014)

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Leavings the Dead Stutter

by

change, fate, poetry, ritual, sonnets

As ritual replaces love,

ravens circle the field;

their black eyes survey

the ground’s cold wreckage.

Beneath fluttering wings

and caws, today’s blurred

light bathes my vision

with a new absolution.

Steam rises with the sun.

Morning dew mixed with blood

dampens all with a cold dead

sheen. The ravens land as one.

Turning my eye skyward,

I moan once, then lie still.

(October 3, 2014)

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Daphne Translates

by

borders, control, identity formation, metaphor, poetry, ways of knowing

I search for some wisdom:

some tickle in the lines of bark

surrounding these carved runes

like a scar healing memory

into my common sight.

It seems real enough,

this occluded vision:

a humming bird plays

along my periphery,

destitute of any metaphor.

I am myself the maker

of meaning I mislaid

within this whirring bird’s

divine dance, between what

I thought I was and am:

to accept the image into myself,

and seal it there, transforms

what I think I once saw,

and what I came to know;

and to reject it, does the same.

(October 1, 2014)

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Spiral Orbit

by

definition, desire, lost, love, poetry

what we search for most

of our lives is to be

accepted by ourselves

here not on a horizon

some other place later

which never arrives

yet distracts well enough

beyond current horrors

the want breeds motion

away from our skin

away from our kin

until foreign to ourselves

blinded to love

desire turns us home

(September 29, 2014)

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Love or Fear

by

control, fate, fear, happiness, love, poetry, sonnets

“Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody”

-Bob Dylan

love and worry obsess the same

both beyond our simple reins

the reason why we bow to both

dwells in their common mastery

no chains or ropes to unbind

for none are needed to hold

our simple obsequiousness

when we do just as we’re told

we worry the power outside

knocking through our walls

and fall prostrate on the floor

to love’s unrelenting flow

which choice we decide to make

creates the difference in our fate

(September 28, 2014)

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Love’s Dance

by

chance, erato, love, poetry, relationships, romance, sonnets

Clifton Chenier’s accordion pulls us

onto the dance floor in a slow

shuffle of pulse and delight like

the calm comfort of love’s embrace

soft flesh and time’s decisions

forgive more inside the day

today than any acquiescence

to obsequious control provides

at our table near the bandstand

we hold hands halfway attuned

so lost in our love’s vague rhythms

and the sloppish beat’s adherence

no answer echoes our heart to explain

the dance is the dance is the dance

(September 26, 2014)

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