Tag: free verse

In shifting mist

If the rain had ceased
so that in the silent streets
where the puddles soaked the
bustle up, and let the world breathe

Perhaps a chance meeting in
a plaza, thought romantic in the sunlight
though no match when the bricks
were bathed in moonlight

Maybe, in shifting we both
wandered into one another
a meeting, in transit
while headed to “more important” things

In my imagination we met, and spent
all of our collective lives together
there is remains
you weren’t there
that night, in the moonlight.

Where puddles lurk and wait

The rain falls desperately, knowing that in California it is long overdue
and the state had been looking to fill the position with other
natural fluids. The feeling is the same, but we waddle, awkward
not remembering where puddles lurk and wait to immerse our sneakers
and lead to a shrill

“Fuck!”

punctuating an otherwise civil morning.

But how could I stay mad at rain, there were many forces working against
my terse annoyance, occasionally shifting to a broad, impotent rage
I needed it more than it needed me. I was clingy, dragged down by my
body, filled with bitchy tissues and cells that wanted water all
the
goddamn
time
and what did water want with me? It was with its own kind in the clouds
swirling in ecstasy before it stopped the party early to grace me with its presence
I was boring, my dancing lurching and silly compared to the single drop before me in its infinite
small fluid rhythms. The rain would never take me up to see its friends and family,
I’d just sit there and with I had worn a more fashionable tie.

Hood up, the umbrella forgotten way back home. Top of the closet, near the gloves that had been until recently equally useless
the rain slips down and finds its friends in low places and glides towards welcoming
storm drains. It wants nothing with me, just a brief kiss on my startled cheek before it flows out to meet its friends in the sea.

Still-wet clay

If there was a better way
a better time, place, mood,
world- I did not know about it.

For what is each new second but
an opportunity to learn of past failures
the river card reveals that you would have won
a poker hand long since folded.

The dike breaks, say,
and all the past flows
takes us all in its current

If all that came before was still-wet clay
to be moulded by our present selves
would we ever stop tinkering?

A masterpiece exists because the painter
stepped back and refused to add
one more brushstroke.

What I could have said
done, differently.

Sometimes
it’s best to let statues stand as they are.

Blood and Kevlar pornography

War now screens in HD
each Tomahawk contrail arching across
a 72 inch LED TV bought during a mad rush
the day after Thanksgiving.
 
Hundreds of channels and a single thing on
should be rated MA for mature audiences –
the blood and Kevlar pornography;
numbers flow- ammo type, fighter speed, 
how many equivalent tons of TNT are getting dropped- 
how many militants died and how many villagers
were stupid enough to get in the way
of their own liberation.
 
When the carnage dies down,
and after a commercial break
to sell crappy beer and cut-rate car insurance
a camera always pans to a roundtable –
five white people, gleaming teeth
and sweatshop-made suits
growing red-faced and indignant
asking “why do they hate us!?”

 

Does not know where it dwells

We whirl, delirious, exhausted
in a gyre ’round the truth
we feel its pull, gravity
yet it is so far away
even keenest sight does
not know where it dwells.
 
Each second of a lifetime is spent adance
each step new, though queerly familiar;
though it is rarely made for two
it is something every soul must perform.
 

 

 

Rust-hued hair

Cold does not see class.

Nor race, religion –

Where you come from,

where you are now

and where you plan to go in the future.

Cold is egalitarian.

Cold is just.

When the trees wake up in a panic

wondering where their rust-hued hair

has gone –

they stand

side by side

with the children, waddling penguins in their parkas

as the school bus is late again.

Someone amidst everyone

Humankind escalates.
It sees the past as
at best, a quaint reminder –
perhaps one to keep in a model town
for the schoolchildren to shuffle through
on a dreary Tuesday morning.

Each day – more intense.
Grown turgid; more people
with more expectations-
dreams, fears, grim realizations
all draped with a chatter as seven
billion and counting try to find
someone amidst everyone

Frost-haired men in high-buckled trousers
sitting at a well-worn diner booth, while the Earth hums
in a note they’ve long since ceased to hear.
The planned obsolescence complete,
they have become living fossils of a time
one can’t be bothered to remember.

Fields long dead

The grass, lilting amidst speckled sun and steady breeze;
Laughs and puts forth its vibrant color for the world to see;
Amidst the knotted trees whiling away their closing years;

Children of the melting snow, knowing only ever-brightening days;
Each blade knows not the history, the joy, the tragedy;
That fields long dead were witness to;
Covered in petals, spring snows, the checkered picnic blanket;
The bare feet of men new to this world;
And the boots of a dying man, laid to rest with his bayonet;

Oaks sag with the weight of history, and;
Gaze upon the young grass that will soon wither;
As a thousand fields have done before their arching branches;

It is best to leave them to their play;

As the sand falls

If I came upon an hourglass;
Where time flowed from what could;
To what is, then to what was once;
And held in my open palm the sand;
Of joy, sadness, loss, and redemption;
Would I want to know what story the grains;
Yet to fall would tell?;
Or would I wait for time to etch;
The story of my life, where each chapter;
Held but mere foreshadowing of the next;
And was the author, the emperor of recluses, preparing for an;
Eleventh-hour twist?