I Look out the Window at the Snowfall and I remember you. I know it never snowed when we were together, and, no, the white snow does not remind me of your white skin, but I still cannot forget when, on Anderson Hill, I sobbed on your chest, for a good hour or longer, in front of your remorseful tears, enkindled by your racism, even though I now know a three-month romance cannot erase your forty years of white ignorance, even though I now know you were not necessarily a racist. I look back now as the bus moves through Gatineau and crosses to the Ottawa side, and as you fly from Victoria accompanied by a man with whom you have fallen out of love—I realize racism will becloud my relationships with men, white or not, and please do not say sorry, partly because I hate that word, partly because I am not angry at you. Do you still remember the poetry I read you? Are you still in love with me? I do mean it when I tell you that you are my Qur'anic angel perching, there, at McNeil beach, your head not on my shoulder; alone you reminisce about our kisses in the morning, my love for coffee, your love for coffee shops, and our juvenile sex. I still die at the movement of your beautiful lips when you indulge in deep thinking, as though you are printing a kiss on a beloved's face. I find it odd that no man before me had been enamoured of your ethereal hand gestures or effeminate voice. Your love and benevolence I treasure through my insomniac nights. I am almost certain I do not want to date you, and, yes, I think I am in love with you. To a Former Friend An ugly smile; a silent whirlpool. That’s Montreal without you. Grey fountains with no water, not a drop or two; black statues with no meaning, not even the dejected child statue. That’s Montreal without you. Void it is, Leonard Cohen’s singing; bleak they are, the streets besmirched with snow. That’s Montreal without you. Shattered ice on a river; an apathetic memory. I love Montreal without you. 1975, 1997, 2018 |
Alan Berger has two films on Netflix etc that he wrote and directed. He has had over 50 short stories and poem published since 2018 in five different publications, Before the writing and directed he was a feature casting director for Ivan Reitman and Howard Zieff. He also acts in commercials and just did two episodes of,:Baskets". |
EACH AND EVERY
Each and every night is a high fidelity day dream Every hour goes by like a minute
Every thought I think does not leave before I spin it
Eternity will for me never last
Glass half full or half empty or what glass
But a fleeting moment of beauty
Renews a sense of survival duty
A watered lawn should always stay moist
The best decisions I believe is when you have no choice
Do we start the day in search of a cure
Or shop for tiles for a new floor
One step forward
Two steps back
When you go in reverse
There is no need to research
Maybe instead of sun tan lotion
We may be better coated
Swimming to the bottom
Of the nearest ocean
The fish have it right
While we bleed and hold on tight
Saloni Kaul, author and poet, was first published at the age of ten and has stayed in print since on four continents. As critic and columnist Saloni has enjoyed forty one years of being published. Saloni Kaul's first volume, a fifty poem collection was published in the USA in 2009. Subsequent volumes include Universal One and Essentials All. Saloni Kaul is also an accomplished broadcaster, writer-producer-presenter with innumerable documentaries and features to her credit. Most recent Saloni Kaul poetic production has been published in The Horrorzine, Misty Mountain Review, Mad Swirl (contains ongoing Saloni Kaul poetry page), The Penwood Review, The Voices Project, Scarlet Leaf Review, Taj Mahal Review, Verbal Art, Ink Sweat And Tears, Military Experience And The Arts (As You Were: The Military Review), OVI Magazine, Blueline, Indiana Voice Journal, Five 2 One Journal, The City Poetry,The Lake, House Of Horror Glitter & Words, The Whimperbang Journal and The Paragon Journal. Upcoming publication acceptances include those of The Imaginate Zine, Mantis, The Penwood Review, Scarlet Leaf Review and The Paragon Press Journal. |
EXTENT OF MY WORLD
All through the filtered haze of my own writing screen,
A scrawl of words that write themselves on scene--
Magnifically telling talking of the waters--
And in the depths of crowds and on the faces of strangers,
That are soon sucked into the vortex of my words
Shut like Rapunzel in my word tower, undeterred,
As I immeasurable roam freely like a ranger.
They let their hair down most enticed to browse
Through stress unstress quite uncommanded in silence,
Imbibe the music of the consonants and sibilants,
And air the vowels in assonance declaimed like vows.
And like exiguous starved for fame parasites
On gradual exuded fame and fortune fed,
By slow degrees they revel in a town infinite painted red
And clear express all their opinions as in large plebiscites.
ARCANUM
To gain harmonious constants consistently
You level up all equability
Confabulating like love's all coy constancy
Briskly rubbing off with unstinted purpose
On scheme's two lovers in faithfulness twined,
Like heat slides always instantly freely
From planes warm-warmer-warmest to cooler
In manner most disciplinary
O ever equalising prettily
Taut unpretentiously in swift effect
Like liquids levelling from wide-mouthed flask
And buoyantly-tipped cylindrical beaker
To Boyle's slick slimmest tube and apparatuses.
A presentation different, volume exactly as it was !
Hence warmest lengths all cool given the time,
Those coolest stretches all quite soon heat up,
Each chasing like extravagance in language
That smoothest common temperature factor
Like trading stacks of cards all honestly
That hasty give and take of those prize cards
In absolutely closely-guarded winning hand,
As though each is somehow quite utterly unable
To then sustain its own high-brow extreme
And ever so anxious to seal its fate
And one smart way or other the entire deal,
Declare , whether genteel soft or bombastic loud,
Declare a win pep preferably !
A thermal equilibrium status
Fidelity-high, minimum distortion,
Is keenly sought unsparingly!
Heat's transferred, motion is increased
Tactfully as an immediate result.
That's exegetically speaking so
As clear exemplified in free translations.
In the exceptional excessive heat
Of this profoundly stifling atmosphere
As though bothered intensely by scruples severe,
That stray twinge of responding conscience,
Today even acutely sensing shadows all
Immoderately sizzle expounding modestly
Their own scholarly well-woven logical rationale.
From this respectable and unembroiled distance
I watch them cooler, suddenly protected.
VERBUM SAT SAPIENTI (Word To The Wise!)
Stretch wired in drastic eternal taut extendibles,
Think upon Chemistry where most reactions are reversible.
SALIENCE
Deliberations delicately explosive
A torrent of semiquaver-like arguments
We fluidly abandon pat a set of words
And settle for rhyming eqivalents.
Delineate !
Rhyming dilemma decaying decumbent?
Recite a most mellifluous mantra
Capricious, utterly superfluous
For the Dharamsala Dalai Lama
Who for all those Tibetan medicine
Wonders couldn't even cure his own self.
Cicatrize!
Physician heal thyself, frailly they say!
Combat vituperatives violent
Unleashed bull-dozer like on the common
Breeds all on leashes so uncommon rare
Earn erudite early explanations
Eradicate intimidating rudeness
Those rude-toned brutal detonations fortissimo
First.
Sound pattern flock-familiarity
Pitter-patter nugget-like the namedrops
Who do you know out there that I do not
Name clicking sound click-clocking family tree
Quite irrespective of bold attributes.
Collect!
Out of respect swirling swishing spectacular
And no less out of disrespect deserved
Pay pay a tribute as Antony or Brutus
Pay pasquinading palest lip service
Pale all the wavering horizon length
With your words.
Yield ! Remunerate!
Decrepit dripping tributaries all
Oppositive overrunning extremities
While say recordedly the river all runs dry
Away away from the old rustic river
The riotously roaring yet reliable
Relic-like rippling effect
Create!
Bold breed in bulk like savage spawn
Augur articulate that all goes well
(Swell and down the whimsical well)
Like ding-dong ding-dong brindled bell
Hand-held hard-hammered gleaming glockenspiel
If you dislike intrinsically that feline species
As some wholeheartedly do.
Bon-bon bonanza!
What kinds of back-drop bells
Does each new name breathlessly ring?
Blow broad a baldric bugle bell
Bellow believingly a bright ballad
Belch sturdily a bloodcurdler on the one blade
Blarney stone be kind of kissed
Before you blithesome back-spin belt opaque
And blast a blustering blaspheme booster
For the back-seated and beleaguered lot.
Belittle all of them fortuitously
Persistent as oldest of campanile
Mediaeval bell chimes all careening,
Occasionally cantankerous all,
Hammered away the loud entire group.
When that old bellman is belligerent
He rings clangorously combat improvident.
The totally tactlessly impatient town is all at war.
Our carillons, predominantly all
Melodic, fine-tuned stationary bells
All keyboard hammered opalescently.
As you see conciliative; tone placates
And reunites like oldfashioned whip
In party politics once mandatory.
So swing, swing all the bells, let clapper ring,
A circle of vibrations at bell rim,
The sound bow all but slow-straining itself,
All almost as tricky as the casting
The tuning of the old old bell itself
Prolonged resounding like proverbial bell tone
Resourcefully in rising or slowly waning partials,
Strongest of strikes, then hums dissolute diminishing,
And long drawn-out lingering overtones.
All overlapping in resultant resonance.
Concave conch-like concordant concoctions
For this conciliatory conclusive one
Contender opulently concretised for that prime place !
Concatenation ! Topple the one there,
Concomitantly in concentric circles o
Oust the Mister unceremoniously.
If totally installed, rigorously uninstal.
All to augment, outstretch prosperity
After all.
Brendon Booth-Jones is the co-editor of Writer’s Block Magazine in Amsterdam. Brendon’s photographs, poems and prose have appeared in the Peeking Cat Anthology 2018, Anti-Heroin Chic, Amaryllis, Botsotso, Neologism, Odd Magazine, Verdancies, Zigzag and elsewhere. Follow Brendon on Facebook @brendonboothjoneswriter. |
Toothbrush
I found your blue toothbrush,
crusted with greyish,
vaguely minty-smelling toothpaste,
and with a thick black pubic hair--
like a quiet bolt of black lightning--
caught in the worn and splayed bristles.
First I felt an old pain heave and roll
inside me like a dead tree in a river,
and then I felt a stale hate
brushed suddenly Colgate-fresh,
that all those months of scrubbing
had apparently not erased,
but merely washed down
to the blotched and forgotten
toiletry-bag-bottom of memory.
And for one sharp minute you were here again,
with the bed sheet creases
imprinted on your morning face,
your faint smell of nameless flowers,
and a frothy white grin as you brushed your teeth
and told me of your day’s goals,
stacked precariously with ambition.
But then the fridge hiccupped; the image shattered
as easily as an iPhone screen;
the silence closed round me again like mist;
and I flung that poison arrow straight in the trash.
But we all know plastic lasts forever
I Don’t Give a Fuck about Bach
and decided to put on some celebratory Bach--
Italian Concerto in F Major--
and let the mesmeric stream of lucid music
wash over me for a minute.
When I opened my eyes I saw the bottle
of Jack Daniels on the bookshelf
alongside the minor poets,
and decided to have a swig to celebrate the new apartment
and soften the sharp echoes of the empty walls.
I took a big gulp and only then,
as the unexpectedly sweet fire touched my tongue
and throat and belly,
did I notice the two fat dead flies
drifting near the bottom of the bottle
like dead planets drowned in amber poison
or like a colon preceding the thought: pay more attention
and then I heard a knock,
and my new neighbor, burly and blonde,
all jaw, pectoral and faux-tribal tattoo--
like a muscle-wrapped package of masculine insecurity
delivered to my door—with chlorine blue eyes,
told me, Turn that shit off I’m trying to sleep.
What, that music? I croaked,
throat suddenly dry as a week-old McNugget,
But that’s Bach!
And he blinked once, as if I’d addressed him in Swahili,
and then he pointed a finger the colour
of uncooked sausage at my face and said,
I don’t give a fuck about buck.
Daisy
in Daisy’s garage on Saturday nights,
feeling like suburban teenage soothsayers.
Grooving to Hendrix and raging to Cobain,
then laying back,
the space between
each thought
stretching out
like melting toffee
and looking through
the dust-addicted cobwebs,
ragged and abandoned
in the rafters
to the luminous,
smiling future
that was pinned
like a pink satin rose to the breast of the world.
But I grew up and fled that two-stroke town,
lost touch with that boy and that vision
of a world without injustice.
And now I wonder, where is Daisy?
I asked around, tried to find a contact number
or Facebook account.
But all I found was another memory, emerging
from that long-ago cloud of purple haze
like a messenger pigeon, small and precise,
of his voice saying,
Since my mom died
I feel nothing, man. . .
And I was too busy
reaching for the bright lights
behind my eyes
to see his hands shaking.
Autumn in Amsterdam
--For M.
we lie drowsing in the park at dusk.
Your feet curl up behind you
and to the sole of one shoe is stuck
a grey plug of chewing-gum
jeweled with a crumb of glass,
dust and hair,
as if the world was trying
to tie you down,
to stop you floating away
into the dolphin-blue late-September air
from this lush carpet of grass that deepens
the green of your eyes.
I kiss each island
in the atoll of freckles on your arm.
Autumn is laden with wasted days.
Another summer of mistakes is scattered
in the spindrift of golden leaves.
The evening air is perfumed with dew
and distant church bells;
this scene will soon be drained of colour
so come closer
and let’s push the end of the poem back
a little further.
Michael Maul lives in Bradenton, Florida. His poems have previously appeared in numerous literary publications and anthologies in the U.S. as well as in Ireland, Scotland, and Australia. He is the author of Dancing Naked in Front of Dogs, a full-length collection of poetry, which later became recommended reading for college students in the former Soviet Union nation of Azerbaijan. Maul has also twice been longlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize (Ireland), and a past winner of the Mercantile Library Prize for Fiction. |
Birds Who Eat French Fries
bellies distended,
living like bums performing
for tossed scraps
and Tatter Tots
in fast food parking lots.
They were made for better things:
to float on waves,
to search for schools off shore,
or perch above the Earth
to scan for signs of prey
they once enjoyed in former days.
But junk food birds have since learned
to open crumpled bags,
and with beak and claw
to dine on human throwaways.
Pizza crusts or Taco Bell,
Mickey D’s, or KFC skin and bones
locked inside of Styrofoam,
these are the tastes of sophisticated birds
who took a gigantic leap ahead.
After evolving from dinosaurs
becoming us instead.
Wild Pigs
like the album cover of Abbey Road,
then disappear back in time
to their lives outside of lines.
Egg Water
of a man that
lived to be one hundred
and two.
He made news
in a birthday interview,
by crediting his daily regimen
of eating hard eggs then
drinking the calcium-rich water
they boiled in.
I recall the smells
that his farm house brewed
the odor of eggs
boiled and steeped in living waters,
which somehow protected him,
teeth and bones, to the end.
Until the flickering began:
lame of foot,
loss of words
blind to light,
and finally one night
gone.
After that, there was little left to claim.
Three chrome kitchen chairs,
pots and pans, a metal bed.
And twelve old cardboard fans he’d saved,
with logos of different funeral homes,
that buried a dozen of his friends.
All who died long ago
and drank not a drop of the egg water
that everyday wound grandpa’s clock.
On My Brother’s Blindness
just in contrast to what they’re not.
I’m on my porch
in a straight back chair
on a starless night
looking forward
to my brother’s house
down the street
waiting for news,
the kind that travels at its own speed,
but in no time at all
will amble up my steps.
Its variety will be the opposite of good,
and it will be
about the opposite of see,
that has attached itself
to my brother’s eyes.
Turning light to dark
when filtered through
the crash of ruined retinal screens.
But there is hope:
some light when snuffed can stay,
drifting awhile behind the eyes
like an extinguished candle flame.
For the first time him and me
will begin to see
the world we live in differently,
based on shapes and shades,
and getting a feel for other ways,
while everyday we search to find
a side door in
to the opposite of blind.
Amish Girl
she throws
suspend for a moment
in the air behind her,
before parachuting down
to the sidewalk where she’s paused.
I stop to watch her cross the street,
then turn around to look at me.
Yes, I saw what you performed.
And also see who you’ll be,
lovely wild Amish child
standing strong in front of me.
Table
In a small square room with only one place to go.
The legs that not too long ago left my toe to bleed are now bending down on themselves,
Buckling, and shifting, it slowly comes alive.
A mouth forms from the slit in the mahogany.
The platform is now arching as it starts moving to the hall
I baby-step as I try to escape this nightmare.
Faster, and faster, it's clear that it is not going to stop,
Even with me standing in the way of where ever it wants to go.
I scream and reach for the light switch as I feel as if something is pushing me back.
I click the lights and see it, not as it just was,
But as a table that hasn’t moved one inch.
Maybe it was the nighttime making me see things, or maybe I didn't just imagine everything.
Vintage
The beautiful chirping of the birds
Outside. But realize
It was counting down to the end of our love.
Each chirp, was a memory
Gone bad throughout time.
The rise of our fate
Is now more at stake when I realize
I was replaced. I look everywhere
For the girl that now is who I once was.
To you, I was a vintage,
Old and needed changing, but to me
I am vintage, something you hold true to your heart.
I had a love, that would never die
But would grow, it surrounds people with affection.
You have a love that surrounds people
With pain and sorrow of who they once were.
He isn't innocent
And praise his heart-throbbing deeds
For his tenderness
And innocence ....
But,
He isn't innocent
Or, his act a small kid's caressing sight ...
He made people realize
The ' price' of life..!
By his efforts to instill life
In a bird he accidentally run over,
The kid upheld value of life
In a world of apathy and strife ...
Kudos to the Mizoram child
For his message of love
That has become almost extinct
In a society selfish with discontentment ....
Mizoram boy tries to save chicken's life,picture goes viral,https://arynews.tv/en/little-boy-goes-viral-for-trying-to-save-a...
Reality and fantasy
When you don't know about identity ...
Society attributes race, caste, religion
And relationship
When you are unaware of all these nuanced differences ....
Society controls your thoughts and mannerisms
When you are yet to form an opinion on philosophy
But society can't control your flights of imagination or dreams
From infancy to your mortality
Society shows you reality
But none can control your personality
And dreams of fantasy
Thorns behind roses
Roses are beautiful !
Tender and attractive...
But,
Never forget thorns
That can prick
If carelessly handled ...
Life is like roses
Spreading fragrance and splendor
But beneath it lurks sorrow
Piercing like thorns
Which can cause devastation
If carelessly handled
He did not vote
People disappearances are common as migrating birds,
Torture is common as scorching heat in summer,
Plunder of forest wealth is common as cat drinking milk,
.......there he lives like a lifeless corpse .....
And yet he voted
In the hope of a new government
For the people
Reduced to a voting machine,
Strapped to its iron body ,
His desires and aspirations smothered in pressing electronic buttons,
All his hopes crushed
Into mutilated
VVPAT papers
He realized his identity
Passed into Nothingness
In a vicious world ...
He did not vote ....
This time
(In India's elections, Kashmir went to polls but turnout was very low )
History repeats ....again and again
Jesus faced crucifixion
The Buddha renounced Royal mansion
Thomas More didn't fear execution
Prophet Mohammad faced suppression
Guru Nanak bore humiliation ....
To uphold human rights
Martin Luther King braved assassination
Chalsea Manning courageously suffered incarceration
Snowdden didn't fear threats from rulers and their exploitation ...
And Julian Assange relentlessly exposed war crimes through WikiLeaks documentation ..
Opposing barbarism, cruelty, injustice,
Many persons rise to the occasion
History repeats again and again !!!
Resistance
Tribes people resist !
To save deterioration of climate
Environmentalists resist!
To stop perennial exploitation
And discrimination
Activists and feminists resist!
To save workers from bondage
Proletariat resist!
To stop onslaught of capitalism
Progressive masses resist!
To save humanity from extinction
Humanity resist!!!
Progress......!?
It boosts manufacturers profits and capital
From microchips to machine guns
And domestic equipments to drone
Industry is the strong backbone
For a nation's index indication
We call this progress...!
But
Agricultural sector's growth is dismal
Plagued with farmers' suicide and crop failure
Leaving scores of families indebted
And their sufferings left unaddressed ...
Is this progress???
In future, if food scarcity arises
And any one, with hunger dies,
Show the progress through computers and smartphones
Food and water problems swept under rising technological typhoons ....!
Case of Truth
Prison walls too had no worth
She was pounded with flurry of cases
All concocted and false accusations..
But her determination was stern
For, she had committed crimes none!
She lived with tribes in forests
Mingled with them : celebrated their fests
Learning their languages and culture
She led them against plundering vultures
This created fear in the mind of State
Her stature grew as she preached Love instead of Hate
157 cases and almost 12 years of prison
Couldn't hide the power of Truth and it's irrefutable reason
(Framed in 157 cases, woman acquitted in all, released after 12 years in chhattisgarh prison,www.newsbits.in)
Venkatlakshmi alias Nirmalakka was imprisoned on July 5 2007)
Joy with difference
Looking at their new- born child
They provided all amenities
So that the child grew healthy without any complications
A poor couple too were delighted
To find their new born though looked frail and malnourished
They couldn't provide many facilities
The child had to adjust to meagre comforts
Royal child depended on others services
And was sensitive to face challenges in any adversities
Poor child developed courage and grit
To face any obstacle and solve problem with tact
Ellen lives in Thailand and enjoys going on solitary walks in woodlands and along beaches where Nature's treasure trove impels her to document her findings and impressions using the language of poetry. Her works have been published in The Ekphrastic Review, NatureWriting, The Honest Ulsterman, Zingara Poetry Review and The Tiger Moth Review. |
Eye Slow Down
Bid it slow down -
Slow to dismiss,
Slow to throw a mere glance.
But see like you're
Peering past the sea's surface -
Past its raging white noise
And undulating dance.
Use your eye fingers
To pull back this sea curtain,
Past its stage of threatrics and
Past this membrane of
Your familiar universe
To this other stupendous
Web of a gallery teeming with
The ingenuities of life.
Be prepared to be diminished,
To see just how mote-sized you're
Face to face with bulk-sized wonders;
See how your weight is tied to theirs
And theirs to yours.
Sunflower Party
To the sun,
The bees hasten
To accept our invitations,
Creating the much needed buzz
For this summer's party.
Alighting on the reception pads,
The bees are served their drinks -
Free flow on the house
Which they dip thirstily
With their long tongues,
All the while humming,
"You're the bee's knees!
You're the bee's knees!"
A mutual intoxication -
We by their flattery
And they by our
Signature concoction.
To keep the party rolling,
Our sugary larders
Labour unflaggingly
To fulfill the demand
And ties of goodwill,
Adhering to the maxim:
A satisfied customer
Is a returning customer.
However much we may relish
Our share of dazzle in the sun,
All fanfare culminates with this:
The bees in their guzzling ecstasies
From pad to pad have graciously
Accomodated the hitchhikers -
Our masculine specks arriving
At their destinies safe and snug,
Sealing next season's bright prospects.
In no time, these reception pads
Would have to make way
For nursery needs;
Hundreds of thousands
Minuscule chambers each cradling
A kernel of hope
And the bees,
They too would have
Turned in lavish accounts
Of field performances
At their respective headquarters.
Not that we like to boast -
If only the human economy
Operates more often with our kind
Of sensibilities.
The Peepal Tree (Ficus Religiosa)
At your feet
But hearts aplenty -
A carpet of them if you care
To sit and contemplate.
A centenarian many times over,
Stoical witness to the
Vainglorious exploits
Of kingdoms and their
Sharp vicissitudes;
Tangled roots serpentine,
Cradle in them
Bygone ruins and relics:
Here a mutilated sacred
Sandstone head sculpture
And there a bathtub-sized
Dynasty remnant of a fortress's
Brick wall.
More than arboreal,
A hands-on historian -
Forget-you-not it murmurs.
Roots gripping roots
Lest we lose our way. Again.
Coastal
His cyclical wanderlusts,
Returning only at dusk.
Meanwhile, she basks topless;
Her slick brown-grey skin
Breathing with ease
Under the unfiltered sunlight.
She savors the scent of vacation
While armies of pale
Phantom-like crabs ooze
From her pores -
The tiny scavengers scuttling off
At the arrival of the
Black-winged stilts;
Waders by the hundreds
Strutting in hot pink
Chopstick leggings -
The evidential value
Of her desirability imprinted
With their delicate trails.
Striving for nothing other than
To be herself,
She swells with pride;
This hostess of a monumental
Table of feasts and shelter,
Her place in the cosmic scheme of things
Affirmed.
In his absence,
She admires the unobscured
Handiwork by the townfolks -
This wall of oyster-crusted
Bamboo stakes
She wears like a necklace
Across her broad neck -
An amulet of sorts
On the town's behalf,
Warding off his voracious appetites
When he returns in
Undulating high spirits
To the unremitting business
Of landscape reshaping.
In solidarity with the bamboo stakes,
The mangrove colony upholds
The town's concern;
Its sprawling network of
Aerial roots pamper
Like massage over her scalp:
All's well.
Circulation's at its optimum.
An exchange of sisterly confidences
Ensues on this languid afternoon....
The Eternal Return
The idea that everything,
Including your life
Exactly as you have lived it,
Will recur innumerably many times.
Joys,
Terrors,
Terrors,
Joys,
Joys,
Terrors,
Sorrows,
Endurance.
There is beauty in that which is necessary.
The future that beckons us
With uncountably many lines of symmetry.
Nietzsche and Woolf Walk into a Bar
and Nietzsche and Woolf were to meet,
they would dance.
What more could a philosopher want
than to be a good dancer?
An Ideal, as well as an art.
Profound knowledge
Dancing, shaking,
All alive, but controlled.
If only God had learned it better.
General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics
a world of gently curved spacetime
a seamlessly woven fabric
warped by the massive objects
that set our spiral galaxy in motion
its articulation is legato
its purview, the large, the stately, the sublime
Quantum mechanics
a world of discrete,
jumpy,
jagged events
a discontinuous world of Heraclitean Becoming
rather than Aristotelian Being
its strings are plucked rather than bowed
its purview, the very small—the nano, the pico
General relativity’s language is geometry
it rules over its four-dimensional spacetime manifold
with absolute authority
it is a game of skill.
Quantum theory is a game of chance
Its players, irresolute and unpredictable
Outcomes, undecidable
Whereas general relativity uses mathematics
to describe a world beyond its equations
the quantum universe is nothing more than equations
its inhabitants,
matrices
probability amplitudes
imaginary numbers
DRIFT HEART
From the sun and back again,
What can compare
To the heat,
Stars carve smiles against
The moon's mad mouth
Paint golden light on
The frozen street,
Where gazes stop, but
Heartbeat's race
Like outlaws
Toward their guns,
Blood red eyes
Might meet the mind
Before the curtains
Finally slip down.
And what is there to press
Like a petal against the cheek,
Leave skin to rose
In the field of surrender?
Watch how we shake
Like aching leaves,
Just waiting
For the fall.
What is there of madness
When reasons are defined
By the tremble, by the treble
By the ache within the line;
So spin the web and leave it to catch
The frost within our breath,
Until we collapse
Into the last
And dawn reveals
All that has collapsed.
All that has risen
Like wings above
The turning of
The orb;
And there expressed
In stymied breath
The very things
No words confess.
WITHOUT END
Yet you did not know the meaning;
And then, in the hour of the dawning departure
You whispered: "You are the shadow of the heart."
I nodded, numbly, knowing well, the meaning of sacrifice.
That is my story, as it always was, perhaps
As it always will be. I tell you now,
There are truths in simple measure
Which must be twisted, to fit the tale's meaning.
If it should mean, your own life is preserved
Above my own, I will wear the mask of the criminal,
I tell you now, if you hold your own innocence,
I can bear life's crime.
There is no place these passages meet,
I gather the dust, from each dead end street,
I have no fear of the way the eyes must etch,
Between stone of memory, blood, and breath.
I hold no hope, of any hour's return,
As others light candles, I watch bridges burn,
When you carved my heart out as God,
I climbed down from heaven's path,
My own heart knows all seasons: Kindness, bitterness, and wrath;
I do not expect perfection, from the turning of the world,
I have seen too many endings, too many veins unfurled,
Messages written in blood, and messages written in stars,
Know the deepest dark,
Know the golden heart.
Like so many things, I wish you well,
Passing the pages, burning like hell,
I have no fear of the above, nor of the below;
I've tasted their wine, their fire, their cold;
What else can be offered, of damnation, salvation,
In this empty echo of each soul's plantation?
I lay down all thoughts, like corpses to sleep,
Leaving them in every angels, every devil's keep.
I hold no hope against the hour, against
Every twist of fate;
Faith is just another dish
Served from an empty plate;
I accept each hour as it comes,
Each truth as it bends,
You know not what you say
When you say love does not end.
(I lay these words down, in every
Angels, every devil's keep;
Like every heart comes,
I leave these words to sleep.)
I SIT TO SLEEP
Dreaming softer dreams of love,
Where all dust has settled, fine,
Where all transgressions are absolved.
Like a flicker of a flame, or light,
The eyes might open wide,
The rains might fall to quench the thirst
That comes with the fire's tide.
What might pass through lips of truth,
When all the shadows sway to part,
And all words glow like stars,
Pressed against even the darkest heart?
Call each vision: wish or prayer,
That even angels, or devils won't dare,
But the heart must be brave before all,
Whether it comes to rise or fall;
So let life bless or condemn,
With jagged mirror's view;
But let it leave the heart to speak
The rhythm of its truth.
THE DECEMBER NIGHT
Pressed against your lips,
Melting, like burning bridges
Caught in every kiss,
We passed some sweet perfection
Bleeding down the street,
They say that ships pass in the night
But they never meet.
We can paint out all the reasons,
Tattoos on our brows,
Etch our stories of longing
Until the house falls down,
Ashes from flesh and bone
Mired in regrets,
If we place the heart of life
On a single bet.
But it's best not to wait
On that breaking edge,
Even in the dream of dreams,
No matter what is said,
We could paint our prism perfection,
Or scratch out the howl,
But even the pain of desire
Is a scar against the soul.
Draw out your beauty of white,
Paint your pain in red,
Deny nothing of your being,
No matter what might be said;
Carry on, into your heart,
Slip it across the world,
Like the fingers around your heart,
That you slowly unfold.
I leave your heart its passage,
Slipping into the light,
Like the final heat in the kiss
On that cold December night.
YOU, WHO SPEAK LOVE
Come not to me
With the knots and nooses;
Your ideas leave no room
For discovery.
How would you walk
Through the labryinth of
Another being
With all you have fashioned?
You speak divinity
And pale it with your tongue.
You want no troubles?
And what would you learn?
You who speak of love as
As a grail, holy,
What do you know
Of the heart that aches
Beyond boundaries,
How the ache
Becomes strength,
How the strength becomes
A fever
To drive you beyond
Your own limits?
Speak not to me of all
That you have idolized,
Stapled in papered fashion
To the wall of your heart;
Speak to me of the hunger
That burns you internal,
That burns away your reasons,
Your innards,
Leaving only one path
Through the flames,
And deeper into
The fire of your being.
Speak to me of that,
And nothing else.
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