subtext

My Poetry and Commentary on Life

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Dream Into Myself

by

dream, identity formation, language, life, poetry, sonnets

Out of breath, I arrive through words:

The train, the tracks, the station.

I step forth into a language

I don’t understand; the simplest

Request skitters across the room

Like kittens: meaningless, chaotic.

When I speak from dream, the words

Stretch and pull like carnival taffy;

Thick clots burden the gelatinous air

With distorted incomprehension,

Bending them back into my mouth,

Choking me with my fears. Yet,

somehow I manage to arrive,

to dream myself here again.

(April 25,2017)

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Quiet Life

by

abstract, poetry, silence, sonnets

Silence sounds my shallows;

The surface depth is all.

Not even a remnant to fathom

Beyond what lies in front of me.

I hold my head in my hands

To keep it from fragmenting,

And floating away, like dust motes’

Lackadaisical swim in sunlight.

Silence bends against my fear:

To say nothing, or to speak,

to break silence, to mean nothing;

Intent’s imbued, then ignored, in all.

In desperate quandary to live my part,

I quietly inscribe silence to my heart.

(April 20, 2017)

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Resignation’s Not Enough

by

aging, chance, courage, dissatisfaction, fear, poetry, resolve, sonnets, worn

Like an old ox under yoke who pulls

Again, and again, until he cannot

Pull any longer; then stops, and waits

as if waiting were an art to be

savored, instead of endured like pain,

I’m frayed, worn thin from being;

From what I’ve been; from who I am.

I wait caught in quandary’s eddy,

Without knowing what I wait upon.

I linger over every trivial decision,

As if all time stood still and waited

For permission to take the tatters,

And transform into someone new.

I must move; yet I wait, afraid to move.

(April 16, 2017)

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Fluid dynamics

by

abstract, liminal, other, poetry, social construction, sonnets

Always an other, even

When oneself, aware

Of oneself as one self—

Divisions and elisions

In simile, motion’s

Viscous moments;

Coiled currents curl

Into a helix’s wisp:

You are there, as I—

You not I, as

I not you, as well—

All collapse equally

Into a difference

Of syntactical revision

(April 14, 2017)

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Shhh

by

communication, poetry

It’s easy to keep a secret

One never hears—lost

In misunderstanding’s maze

Whispers slip into echo’s

Misdirection and disperse

Like the surprise of rose

Petals scattered on a path.

Without context, the hints

And coy flirtations fall

Into a soft silence unsure

If the conversation’s at an end.

(April 14, 2017)

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Transcendence in Transition

by

abstract, change, liminal, poetry, transition

A moment

Caught in anxiety—

A wasp’s anger

In amber’s eternity,

His breath left in exhale

Like a lover’s secret

Whisper as she leaves

Before dawn

(April 13, 2017)

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Secret Cults of Conversation’s Silence

by

assignment, attention, change, conversation, exercise, interrelationships, mythic, poetics, poetry, response, social construction, ways of knowing

I exist in the telling:

A story to puzzle

Out, a shadowed

Charade—inarticulate

And vague. Limits

Mask, lines form—

Like walls a room;

An emptiness becomes,

From nothing, more.

Hold this here, a crux

To hang a cloth upon,

A transubstantiation

Of me into you.

(April 12, 2017)

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Puzzled

by

definition, life, metaphor, poetry, process, ways of knowing, words, writing

“Words turn on the mischief of their telling”

–Ann Lauterbach

As a child, as still now,

I played with tanagrams

Arranging, then changing

The blocks as arrayed.

From such simple set shapes,

More complex could evolve

While holding anew their

Simplicity; as if,

What one can express

Can also be said so,

With as little effort

As several small words

Arrayed upon a page.

I’m the shape of my words,

Reshaped then, then again.

(April 10, 2017)

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A Comfortable Death Waits Here On Death

by

aging, change, dissatisfaction, life, poetry, sonnets, transition, worn

It’s easy enough to plod along

The path I’ve plodded along now

For years and years and years

It’s a comfortable road clear

Of brush slow graded curves

Not too steep anywhere

But not much new to see which

I haven’t seen before today

Or before the before of today

The flowers are lovely this year

As they always are in spring

Yet such pleasures aren’t enough

I no longer care to walk here

It’s too easy to die here

(April 7, 2017)

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Another Day Broken

by

broken, erato, life, poetry, sonnets, tired

Along the edge of the cup,

Like several of our cups

And glasses, there’s a chip

Caused by the benign chaos

Of the house: overloaded

Dishwasher, dishes piled

Near the sink waiting

Like many things wait

For attention, for care

I don’t know what to say,

What to do anymore now

Than anytime before

I hold the cup, feel its warmth

Take a sip, and think of you

(April 6, 2017)

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What’s Not Spoken

by

assignment, fear, mythic, poetry, silence, sonnets

the silence’s thick

and uncomfortable

one’s aware without

reason without belief

of the beast

within a cave

coughing blood

into the bowl

offered to you

and you’re afraid

someone’s

noticed

and it’s you

unable to speak

(April 5, 2017)

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Pleasure of the Text

by

control, metaphor, poetry, sonnets, words, writing

It’s a matter of control: the reader

The writer, and the text. All must submit

To the desires of the other’s meaning,

And the bonds of our understandings.

Such are the clichés of the written word.

One simply has to provide a few hooks

To tie the readers to a narrative,

And then drive them along beneath its whip.

In this poem, you are a trope to be used—

I lay you on the page aware I’m wrong

To take you in such a way, yet I do

Knowing only here do I have control.

We give ourselves up to the word’s power,

And willingly lock the chains at our feet.

(April 5, 2017)

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Peine Forte Et Dure

by

control, erasure, paradigms, poetry, resistance, social construction, sonnets

“Nietzsche has observed that ‘truth’ is only the solidification of old metaphors”

–Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

I read Emerson said words

Were fossil poems—a sediment

Of language, calcified meaning.

Here we build what we know

Upon metaphor’s understandings,

And interpretation’s violence;

Until our truth solidifies

Walls to define us, and crush,

With its gravitas, those who oppose.

I resist my own clichés

Even as embracing the warmth

Of their epistemological ease.

All the while the rock pile grows

Crushing my heretical heart.

(April 4, 2017)

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Ripples

by

change, poetry, worn

I must come to a truce

With myself, surrender,

And let it be changed.

(April 3, 2017)

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Improvisation on a Common Theme

by

creativity, fate, irony, loss, mythic, poetry, ritual, vision

Bourbon becomes the answer

These days; so much

So, I have forgotten

The question.

Should I be

Worried?

—and thus

The heckling Nag crows—

“Let me sip the succulent eye.

You may forsake one—

For a greater sight.”

Certainly no parallax

Need be sought,

When secure inside

Such a truculent vision.

(April 1, 2017)

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