Belated Words

Write On!

Category: Poems

  • Maybe, it’s just me, but…

    My mind can not comprehend a meaning.

    Surely, you merely, poke fun;

    content to tease less agile minds

    ……………..sliding words along,

    a string of pearls nicely strung,

    glossed with an aura of interrelated-import,

    advancing only themselves across the page.

    The meter, the sound, the flow is sweet

    but what do you…. so delightfully…… decline to say?

    Do you at night giggling safely in your bed,

    berate yourself for naughtiness,

    or…..crying, fear your efforts wanting?

    Listen…there!…. Listen.  Are you repeating what you hear?

  • The Mower

    Still…I feel the spongy dead-stop of my swing

    of blade against the harden broom-sedge tuft.

    Higher, I reasoned, taking another swipe

    with a sling-blade taller than my six years.

    Golden grass flowed with the blow yielding only

    dry flotsam with straw scented disappointment.

    •

    So strange….memories lingering half-centuries;

    others just a day, a moment, or never really made.

    My first remembered ambition: to lay low

    that field, expansive then, for no particular reason

    other than to see it felled…..to smell accomplishment.

    Stubborn grasses or allergies brought tears

    and abandonment of blade and pride; both

    flung down hard…..then dreams for years self-thwarted.

    •

    Now….walking aware, overstepping briars,

    through fields of desiccated, swishing grasses;

    hand, palm down flat, I caress resilient sedge tops.

    My blade, bright with sharpen glints, shouldered.

    I’m ready to swing with practiced ease but

    only for purpose and with reverence for grasses.

  • To the mirror

    Listen! I’m talking to you, he said to the mirror.

    Help me decipher these fragmented thoughts:

    From the very beginning…..we are locked

    in isolated minds…..simmering hot

    fibrous solutions arcing sparks like a

    grinding wheel dumb of its rotating self

    throwing holograms of tricky, bland light

    for billions of pied elucidations

    by flawed, chemical collusions painted

    by chances’ whims of perception, fated

    to pursue that umbilical link …that

    elusive oneness to the flow of life

    from which I was lovingly, sadly torn.

    And we all know it exist….doesn’t it?

    It’s so simple: allow me nirvana,

    that whispered agreement, “Yes, yes, I know!”

    from some entity divine or simple

    as skin touch, hand clap or burning leaves smell.

    Place your fingers on your temples: it’s all

    just biology.  Did you feel it?  There,

    that repulsive hairy rodent bumping

    burrowing stifling muddle-headedness

    that dead fullness……is it a corruption

    in the spasmodic spark shower itself?

    Are capillaries constricted, neurons

    lacking sufficient flint to strike words……thoughts?

    I do know ideas are snagged in transit,

    wedged in dead-end deformities, bouncing

    off walls, flinging echoes of frustration.

    Those random un-sensed possibilities

    struggling to permeate my consciousness;

    who knows what brilliance never surfaces?

    Is our hard hunger only the seeking

    of what’s trapped below; god or peace only

    those stifled sparks sending S.O.S. calls?

    A logical progression of thought was

    just chopped, (I felt the dull blade; my throat aches)

    severed just behind the tongue an instant

    before a flash of fluency rose up.

    Listen I’m talking to you!  he said to the mirror.

  • Memorial

    Separation is the state of final

    acknowledgement of the absolute.

    Existing in relation to all, you cannot

    complete yourself but we will be here,

    remembering your name, speaking humbly,

    offering colorful ribbons and tears.

    •

    Sacrifice is the act, the act that ends.

    Who made the choice is not the point to argue;

    you were chosen or made the choice yourself.

    Whether the cause was just or not or moot,

    something was required and you were loss.

    Now, you  have that knowing that eludes us.

    •

    Placated, soothed by ritualistic words,

    we read hollow text and embarrassed by

    uncouth grief and the shriek of loss we pray,

    speaking of the Ultimate Sacrifice;

    we whisper the name of that demigod.

    Here….we will never have that knowing.

    •

    Guilt is the word, the word that tells,

    leaving no room for elaboration.

    We wrap and place your bones with no dreams in

    The Cave of the Devoured Prolifics.

    On occasion, we hear their soft clacking;

    lighting short candles, we appease with chants.

  • dusk

    Coming at twilight…..

    unprotected by incandescent glare,

    techno drone or numbing, sitcom silly,

    caught outside by unfinished task,

    imminent darkness compacts still air

    with golden, thick light…light so thick,

    you can twirl it with your finger.

    Only an owl dare perturb about,

    —who-who–whoo…..who-who-whoo—

    such an amorphous loneliness.

    Dusk envelopes and gently whacks

    me, gently but firmly…whack!

    and I, compressed to a singularity,

    wonder at my condition of choice;

    my solitude, my isolation worn boldly;

    amulet or albatross?

  • My bones

    Let my bones be better traveled after flesh has attended

    and hindered.

    Let them rattle on a string around the neck of creatures,

    bold and roaming,

    with beast hair, polished stones and a herbaceous plait;

    charms healing.

    Let my ribs protrude at a jaunty angle from plains, barren

    and desiccated;

    let them, though broken and hollowed, pick sonatas from hot

    meandering winds

    and with stealth and over-the-shoulder looks let the locals

    gather to listen.

    Let my femur be a gnaw bone for a she-wolf full bellied

    and contented;

    let her trot her bouncing-rear gait, muzzle lowered, wary

    eyes intent,

    to her suckling pups to share; accepting yelp-thanks with

    long tongue caresses.

    Let my skull be a prop held and caressed by sweaty hands

    by those possessed;

    let them hold my diminished, polished visage and declare,

    “Alas, poor poet..”

    and recite true the words of those aiming to discern order

    from disorder.

    Let a part of my bones be cast to burn and given to those

    that love me;

    let them with a final sigh of assent puff the dust leeward from

    cupped palms

    onto a receding tide to a current returning with no haste

    to tropical shores.

    Let me push my body bones up from this chair, away from

    this screen;

    let me walk across the room to the window and the scene

    passing unaware,

    and pressing against sun warmed panes leave hand prints;

    flesh intact.

    February 2002

  • Benediction in the doctor’s office

    They climbed the steps one behind the other:

    the mother in front clutching the rail,

    daughter behind watching her mother’s feet;

    easing each wary step by simple will.

    Similar print dresses passed the knees hid

    partially, overly muscular legs,

    but the plainness of their faces needed

    no paint; from pores and creases slandered as

     unsightly or crude, benevolence glowed,

     turning heads, almost in deference, drawn

    to look and nod….even the rude and vain.

    As the daughter signed her in, the mother

    with a glance choose me to sit beside.  Blessed;

    I followed her lead.   We talked of children

    and having cared for our mothers in need.

    Battered hand’s skin still tough, cracked, told of toil,

    perhaps by choice, likely by circumstance,

    but not one complaint against her life passed

    full, unadorned lips, only sweetness and

    praise of goodness and kindness of others.

    Her name was called and with daughters’ help she

    rose smiling, touching my hand in farewell.

    I had glimpsed in her full moon face answers

    for questions I could never even ask.

  • For Malala

    It seems they revel in being reviled;

    those who want to be hated will always

    relish the atrocious, seek our disgust.

    That is why they provoke us to attack;

    our outrage caresses their ecstasy.

    Some call them animals but the only

    creatures demeaned is the wolf and the fowl.

  • place

    Context can not exist without place
    but even an airless nothing is place
    humm…you would be dead in such a place.

    But you are still there, your remains, right?
    You can tell I don’t do philosophy
    my head’s not in the right place.

    When my wife berates a spider or fly
    for being in the same room as herself
    I proffer an ill-considered smirk

    “Everybody has got to be someplace”.
    She eyes me as the fool I am coolly
    commanding I kill the poor thing.

    Forced to choose between one or the other
    insecticide or disobedience
    puts me between a rock and a hard place.

    This is not going the way I had planned
    I had foreseen a gloriously drawn
    depiction of the natural world and

    of the need of awareness of man’s place
    in the flow of things toward perfection.
    (whether created by the roll of dice

    or by a divine is irrelevant)
    but no my muse has put me in my place.
    Perhaps another day another place.

  • The hummers are gone

    The hummers are gone; they left by moonlight.

    There was no need to sneak away; lodgings,

    food was free into perpetuity.

    Perhaps the anticipation was way

    too much for tiny drumming hearts to bare.

    Maybe, they could not sleep like us, as kids,

    wide-eyed with thoughts of sunny surf and sand.

    I would like to think they darted passed our

    window as they were going, peeping at

    our dreams as we re-imagined our own

    migrations; our reasoning’s back and forth,

    battered between the same locales, misgivings

    and some forgivings, the same trees for years.

    We have our instincts, too, craving the trees.

    They must have offered a chirpy goodbye

    because I woke knowing something was gone,

    lost or forgotten but unsure of what.

    Do they rendezvous with old friends and kin

    or do connections, commiserations

    languish….falter in pursuit of nectar?

    Costa Rica! If we could go on an

    Eco-tour, we might sip the same flowers

    and they might zip-up to us tweeting their

    apologies for leaving abruptly.

    They did not have to pack, just lift and leave.

    Wouldn’t it be great to rise in air

    feeling all weight dropping from rising feet

    not having to worry about the dogs

    or what you’re leaving in the frig to spoil

    or if the bills are all paid or if you

    show enough affection and concern?

    They left three days earlier than last year.

    I marked it on the calendar as I

    cross off every day anticipating

    ….or is it gloating over surviving?

    I’ve got to stop this crossing off of days.