As soon as I try to infuse a line
With meter and rhyme,
I’ve murdered it.
As soon as I try to gain
Through knowledge what I already
Instinctively know,
I’ve lost it.
Soon I’ll give up everything
For this poetry,
It’ll drive me to ruin
And I would gladly accept it
With my hand out, waiting
For the next line.
Month: June 2019
Crow Drinks
Midday sun breaks
Crow drinks from
Street puddle.
IS IT FRIENDLY
Suddenly I heard myself saying: it’s someone else’s preconceived notion of who a person is based on what they like. It’s a stereotype. And we don’t base Our Lives on other people’s stereotypes.
The neighborhood cat asks, is it friendly? just above my head the hummingbird chirps.
Forest Nymph
You don’t have to know some Mystical Secret or have a Divine Character to attract nature. All you have to do is take an interest and soon you’ll have birds at your window, squirrels at your back porch, flowers in your garden and fruit on the vine. Suddenly you’re a modern day Pan, you’re a Forest Nymph all because you took an interest.
Tincture
We are all but a tincture within the alchemy of consciousness.
A Tincture is the essence of some thing. An infusion from the other side, the unknown, the formless. Basho dedicated his life to the tincture of poetry. Einstein to the sciences. What about you? The essence is something that predates you, or me, and it is you and me. Art; poetry, painting, acting, music, hell even the salesman, the sciences, usually it brings joy, which is why we follow it, but it can also bring hell. What about emotions? Those are innate as well and you could certainly say that an emotion is the form that an essence takes. Part of the process is the discovery of what it is that takes you away. Then the other part is accepting it. Giving yourself up to it. I’ve spent so much time carving out these places of self, these self identifiers, laying down markers with material things. Though all of these things can only, eventually, bring me to a place of selflessness. When we are dedicated and focused, where do we go? Do we become infused with the thing we are dedicated to? In death does consciousness turn back into the essence which we’ve spent the most time investing in?
In truth I am not any one thing,
I encompass all things
Some are remembered from Aeons ago
Others forgotten entirely
Crushed under the weight of my ego.
I have the capacity to turn like the wind
To change course, in the split of a hair.
With my head in the clouds
And my feet off the ground
I look upon the blue convex horizon
And find that all the gods of old are dead.
But the daisies still pierce the ground in May
Junco
I’ve heard this bird song outside my window for a while now, but have not been able to put a face to the song. In the afternoon it sort of resembles a phone ringing. In the early morning hours before the sun it sounds like a bird snoring, if birds snored. Yesterday I finally saw her sitting at the tip of a fir branch singing her hazy melody.
When the junco sings,
She sings with her whole body.
Barn Swallow
O to come back as the barn swallow
To light up the mid-morning streets
With flashes of white as i dive and glide
To stop on a dime in mid-air, swoop and cheep
To skim the waters top, to nest and be nested
And not once think about who or why
Out Back
The other day I learned about anger with compassion. There’s less passionate intensity, and more understanding. It’s easier when you’re having a conversation, than when something just happens to you, like getting hurt. But it’s to the benefit of everyone to learn the skill.
Out back
Strawberries have taken over
And not a single flower
Halter Top
There’s the girl in a halter top
Everybody gathered ’round
Everybody stop
She got all their attention
The biker chick
That might have a dick
She nods her head
Laughs at what was said
Everybody gathered ’round
The girl in the halter top
Everybody stop
Everybody listen
The metro boy
Who look like her toy
Stands by her shoulder
Smiles and admires her
Everybody gathered ’round
Everybody listen
To what she got to say
No you don’ wanna stray ay ay
She gotta angel wing tattoo
Between her shoulder blades
Sunglasses on top her head
She got somethin’ to say
The girl in the halter top
E’erybody stop
Everybody gather ’round
Everybody listen
That girl in the halter top
Make everybody stop
Asking the Hemlock
Hemlock towering
Spire in the clouds
while you stand
Babbling questions
Nosed turned up
Ears wide open
She answers back
by way of birdsong
