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My Poetry and Commentary on Life

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To Whose Robes We Cling

by

hubris, life, mythic, poetry, sonnets

“Our interpreted world”

–Rainer Maria Rilke

They do move among us

Through us around us

Sometimes even are us

A putting on of clothes

We have an insight

A flash of light

Then fall away

An emptied face

Snagged on grace’s

Brief flame

An ember’s pause

Before lost to smoke

We are our angels

Lost to our world

(May 12, 2017)

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Small Talk

by

abstract, communication, control, conversation, poetry, power, words

With words as walls to define,

Where we stand’s unstable;

Language’s grappling hooks

Lift us to destroy.

I’m no more than a tale

Told to reinforce a whole.

In silence, and because of silence,

Fragments foster resentment

Like flowers tossed on the floor.

Small talk’s leathery skin

Slips around us like a sheath,

Protecting against discourses’

Dangers: the traps, the unlacings,

Coy revelations, and truth’s

Sudden inexplicable violence.

(May 17, 2017)

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Creation

by

definition, god, poetics, poetry

Briefly, in the beginning

You can see—

A metaphor thickens:

Galactic dust, along

A horizon,

Momentarily coalesces.

Yet, the gravity

Of the event

Fails you;

And what was imagined

Vanishes like breath

Into the breathless air.

(May 17, 2017)

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To Live’s to Fear

by

borders, change, control, fear, metaphor, poetry, sonnets

Aware, to an extent,

How the air extends

Like follicles sense

A metaphor’s thickening,

He rescinds permission

To dream himself,

Then retracts, like a hermit

Crab refuses a shell.

He likes his old walls.

His skin’s tight confines

Help to hold him in.

Secure in a cell’s comfort,

He’s safe in his belief:

the chains make him free.

(May 4, 2017)

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Tesserae

by

assignment, desire, erato, eros, half sonnets, love, poetry

He placed bits before her

Broken thoughts fragments of love

An offering for her to puzzle

Together in increments overtime

In hopes that these tokens

These talismans would suffice

To form a larger picture

Of all he could never say

Yet his patterns remained

Abstract if not obtuse

His intentions blurred behind

Shattered and pixilated bone

No frame work no mortar

To hold his heart together

(May 2, 2017)

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The Anarchy of Need

by

abstract, change, creativity, life, liminal, poetics, poetry

He wrote into a breach,

A way through to some

Other not himself;

Like water through rock,

He slipped through fissures,

Ached along the cracks.

There were slow moments

When his old skin rasped

Roughly on the wall,

Leaving trails of blood

Like blotches of ink

Splashed across the floor;

Moments when his breath

Caught hard in his throat,

Unable to speak.

(April 30, 2107)

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Unconsummated

by

erato, eros, poetry

“my mouth is wet with your life”

–H. D.

He held you

There: loose, free,

Out of control.

As if one could,

In any form ,

Control your you.

You sensed the net

He threw, then sloughed

Your skin, and fled.

(April 30, 2017)

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At an End

by

change, fate, liminal, poetry

Only this remains,

A story yet to tell.

Rubble’s rebuilt anew.

(April 27, 2017)

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Prayer

by

chant, poetry, prayer, skeltonics, sonnets

Day’s blare

Sharp glare

Despair

Not here

Nor there

Elsewhere

Clear air

Mind bare

Sincere

Beware

Compare

Take care

Forbear

And share

(April 27, 2017)

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No Echo

by

communication, erato, obsessions, poetry, traces

I’ve whispered secrets

To you for years,

Without response.

Who’s deaf? Me,

You? Is silence

A response?

In a winter’s vault,

I am a ghost;

You, a projection,

A bat’s lyric cry

Without a wall

To reflect definition.

(April 26, 2017)

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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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