Time Bitten Memories

 

Rhododendron and fresh mown zoysia grass,
Fragrant halos that come undone,
Fumes of creosote oozing from poles
Sweating tar under a scorching sun.

Sap on sodden pine needles
Glow wistfully like amber tears
That fall through vaporous piles of leaves
Decaying beneath layers of years.

Oil stained sand behind a gas station,
Dew soaked chat on the tracks,
Draining colors of autumnal dusk
Into after bedtime black.

Solar apparitions in purling glass
Diffuse through Venetian curtains,
Star chip white bespeckles the night
Where no warmth of color is certain.

Splinters of hope and anguish
Peel like paint off the ironwood transom
Of my family’s boat, set low in the water,
While our spirits hold fast to the stanchions.

Our mother’s love playfully chases us
Through the biting measures of time,
Silhouettes run and ripple down rows
Of linen memories that dry on the line.

tis nothing if not heardShare on email
Email
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on facebook
Facebook
0
Share on print
Print
Share on google
Google
Posted in poetry | Leave a comment

Gadaffi, Diamond, and Me in the Basement

Neil Diamond can save the world…woke up this morning from a dream in which Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi is living in my childhood home basement. It is a finished basement, with a low ceiling, and it smells like the faint flatulence of cinder block.   So, Muammar, he sits there silently for days on a metal folding chair besides a vinyl covered card table with some bottles of water, Pez, and some old fashion donuts on a paper plate.  He is mostly still, looking up once in a while to reflect on something distantly beyond the corner of the basement and then he looks down to jot some notes on a scratch pad.  I’ve hesitated some tries, but I cannot engage him. One day, a song begins to play on the radio – but the acoustics in the basement are clear like I was hearing it in my head; I start looking at him (non-amorously) and I start to sing, “…hhhands – touching hands —- reaching out—-  touching me, tuh-ching YOU…” and then he stirs and turns his head to look at me, at first like an old steel shed riding mower, his engine sputters and then he kicks over and he begins to mouth the words meekly escalating into full bravado, “Sweet Caroline, DAH DAH DAH, good times never seemed so go, SO GOOD – SO GOOD – SO GOOD…I feel inclined….DAH DAH DAH…” and he speaks over the song, “I remember LISTENING to this when I was MUCH YOUNGER…!”

The Genie is out of the bottle, I recommend we start blasting “Sweet Caroline” over the war torn regions of the world – where rickety old tyrants and despots can listen and reflect and turn over like old riding mowers…. (HEY, I SAID IT WAS A DREAM!!)

tis nothing if not heardShare on email
Email
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on facebook
Facebook
0
Share on print
Print
Share on google
Google
Posted in character sketch, essay, poetry, vignette | Leave a comment

Many a Seasons Harvest (in progress)

It was the Autumn of our lives
A breath, a breeze, a voice
Aging planks, abandoned ploughs,
Reaps options,
and sews a choice

And so the logic is stressed
As one and one yields one.
Whether we stroll
or trudge in from the cold
We arrive bountiful in a boundless home.

In a test of trust, is a trace of rust
trailing tears down a face of steel
With the season at low
I waited for snow
Pacing wish trails through a fallow field.

For a kiss becomes the fabric
Held together by seams of faith
When Winter is done
The foxes will run
Softly in vernal equinox landscapes.

The earth turns in a moment beneath us
While the sparrow flies sweetly alone
Past the larks
And into our hearts
Now empty where our crops had grown.

We’ll gently cast seeds along furrows
Through summer warmed soils at sunset
Safe in the ground
To emerge with a sound
Of a choir that brings in our harvest.

tis nothing if not heardShare on email
Email
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on facebook
Facebook
0
Share on print
Print
Share on google
Google
Posted in poetry | Leave a comment

Lovely Dreaming Foxes (I-VI)

I.

We agreed at 3am on this one thing…
we were silently pondering in the darkness
soul kisses and caress cast sparks around us like embers
flicked from the flames,
soft floating down in the blackness, like crying stars or
what could be
the eyes of lovely foxes
falling asleep in the forest.

She says what I am thinking, she always does this,
“I love you, isn’t enough as an expression,
to convey what is going on inside me.”

II.

Lying there exposed below the weight of the cosmos,
I close my eyes,
imagining my curled up dreaming foxes,
when she appears;
clarity in crisp blue jeans, poised with hips sweeping up imaginings
from the forest floor.
My lover is standing on a cold brick sidewalk
of a city affixed firmly to the soles of her black suede boots,
as if the earth would fall out from beneath us if,
if I were to lift her up.
Strokes of mahogany hair,
with striations of brushed brass.
Her eyes seek the depths of mine making me a mystery
to even myself,
and they were like the hematite pupils of lions
looking out from holes in the foliage of a verdant jungle.
Our gaze meets gently, and then rips open the promise of time,
expelling a breeze,
and little parachutes of hope
float off like soft threads from dandelion blooms.

III.

Where does our love go today my dear?
Oh, how she stood there in the frozen sparkle of air
while her warm, moist breath slowly spiraled out
and suspended around her lips.
I could feel the spires of frost that nearly had moments
on her tongue before they melt in that mouth.
That mouth.
I love her so much,
that my imagination cries for a voice –
beating the chest of eternity for just a shaved second
of time before it disappears
into the clouds of passion.

IV.

I wanted to just walk up and inhale that mist –
arriving on a voice that came on the crest of sigh
after sigh, after…
I followed the contours of her hips,
she spun around toward me and the moment flashed
and froze –
like a spirit swallowed up by the darkness.

V.

Bone gripping, I shake with awareness,
its presence is lulled from the shadows,
sucking the dampness from our skin, leaving us
brittle and shivering…
the presence of another is called for.  Cold makes us lovers,
narrowing that space through presses…
bodies fall into the sheets…
warmth from sun flees, and our bodies
are drawn together.

VI.

Trails of life in the crystal powder,
white nights, desert, colors seen in the moonlight,
tree limbs,
dendrites encased in blue crystal
immortalize.

tis nothing if not heardShare on email
Email
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on facebook
Facebook
0
Share on print
Print
Share on google
Google
Posted in poetry | Leave a comment

The Messenger

I slip an arrow from the quiver
Oh last messenger please deliver,
This note I’ve written from my heart
And without which, I’m only part  “
I licked the feathers, drew the bow
Closed my eyes and let it go.
I hear the fibers resonate
A gentle sound for such a fate
Point, then shaft, then feathers fly
A line of hope across the sky
I open my eyes but lose its sight
A glowing arrow, in waning light
Wishing all its time aloft
I’m unaware the note slips off
Falling gently through the air
It softly finds an archer standing there
Drawing arrow and preening feather
She pauses and begins to read the letter
A kiss of words to hush the shiver 
Returning her arrow to its quiver.
In her heart, she bears the note
While my heart longs for what it wrote
Oh messenger please hear my prayer
Return my note with an archers care.

tis nothing if not heardShare on email
Email
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on facebook
Facebook
0
Share on print
Print
Share on google
Google
Posted in poetry | Leave a comment

who?

tis nothing if not heardShare on email
Email
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on facebook
Facebook
0
Share on print
Print
Share on google
Google
Posted in photo | Leave a comment

tis nothing if not heardShare on email
Email
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on facebook
Facebook
0
Share on print
Print
Share on google
Google
Posted in photo | Leave a comment

Visitation

His child smiles lovingly and with admiration at his Dad, who stands at the coffee bar at Starbucks, paused and smiling back at his son.  They sit nearly silent, but at rest at home, the single Dad with the thousand mile stare, blended with compassion; His mind passes gently over the fabric of adoration as he reflects on the lives of others he sees, wishing pieces of theirs were his, seeing his son.  His eyes glaze with pensive sadness, knowing its “visitation.”  What a cold and awful word.

tis nothing if not heardShare on email
Email
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on facebook
Facebook
0
Share on print
Print
Share on google
Google
Posted in character sketch, essay, vignette | Leave a comment

Sunrise in Infinite Moments

Two lives pirouette in a pristine moment
Slipping by the sentries of time
If all were dark, one star, one spark
Would inspire their hopes to align.
 
A quarter moon floats in the northern lights
So many years ago
Lighting her path for a wayfarer
But not this body, as so.
 
His pen hastens echoes in silence
And for her, no words, no need
His every sentence a hour, asks
Why sooner, can’t it be?
 
Souls spinning dreams at their nexus
Hearts and minds that do not forget
The sound of a voice calling them home
tis mute, softly desperate.
 
Facing paths of thorns, fire, and rock
Mountains along the way
Gathering forever to fill the void
Of an instant held at bay.
 
Her eyes are liquid constellations
His words are steps, they start to climb
Steady and knowing, like diamonds and garnets
To forever remember this time.
 
The sunrise pulls them in weightless,
Free, and one, in the other’s presence
Her eyes fill the void of a lifetime
In Three minutes, and thirty nine seconds
 
(a collaboration!)

tis nothing if not heardShare on email
Email
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on facebook
Facebook
0
Share on print
Print
Share on google
Google
Posted in poetry | Leave a comment

Something to look at. (8/9/98)

Something to cast lines at from the depths of my soul.  It’s always about validation.His foot taps to a staccato rhythm.
Fingers on the buttons
With a pattern of taps and presses, he can take it up or down
Or replicate life, crescendo to death… or both.Cold, crisp, and distant brushes of clouds…too far to fathom…drip horizontally from the highest peaks…
drawn Westward by the turbulent movement of air roaming the perimeter of the horse latitudes.
He thinks, he’d like to be bobbled in the winds as they licked acres of tundra
17,000 feet above a small peace of driftwood that rolls happily
onto the discovery grounds of a blond infant with a sand bucket and shovel.

Just wanting to be loved by the consummate authority for his essence.
The desire to share every arc of excitement from every new discovery
was evidence that he needed validation.  He simply needed to be loved.
The electricity was intense, and the deeper in he traveled
from the orbits of the electrons and firing of synapses in his brain,
the more nothingness he found.

The writer is forcing experience down a funnel into an ink well…
Rather than drink from the fountain, he records the minutes
as the music spills all over the floor of his empty apartment.,
heard, but never really listened to.
He sits there drenched, although not a note, not a word, rained on him.

The closer the words get to the paper,
The further he drifts from the catalyst.
Its clearer now he is a robber of substance
And a graffiti sculptor.
Give him a glimpse of who you are and he’ll make it his.
You can’t have it back, you may only look.
But you’ll like what you see from the outside looking in.

He reaches for the pistol,
While, far away, the matador slowly drops his chin
Purposefully lowering his brow over the top edges
Of those deep dark Spanish eyes.
The metal is heavier than it looks,
No doubt that the density of a revolver
Far exceeds that of his shiny letter opener,
Which he has just jammed through a note,
bleeding into the grain leather top of his cherry wood desk.

An olive skinned picador gallops out
In a burst of intense hues, draws back his arm and
Jams the beautifully plumed lance into the base of the neck and
the head of the great beast drops…
and from that precise spot,
A latitude line was drawn to a location 8000 miles away.
At that precise moment,
As a silver trigger is slowly drawing back.

As the pride spills out, the bull stumbles and falls in a heap
At the feet of  the Spanish hero,
The crowd rises to its feet in a swell of cheers.
that stirs the bewildered bull to struggle to his knees, without grace;
The grace with which he entered the ring.
There cheers were like no sound the bull had ever heard.

The judge, jury and executioner,
Always at the ready, even as the verdict is announced,
“guilty of stealing the meaning from someone…larceny of substance.”
The sentence, “Death.”

There is no click heard as a gunshot
Resounds in the empty apartment.
His head snaps back, and recoils forward,
gravity tilts him from the barco lounger to one knee, then tipping.
As his body soundly strikes the floor,
The breath of the collapsed bull rushes out
blowing soft dust
Onto the boots of the matador.

The slow motion of waving hands and hail of flying roses in the stadium
Made the execution meaningless.
The matador trembles a smile, and tosses his hat into the air,
As it fell, a smoking gun bounces once more on cheap carpeting.

Meanwhile his father cheered as the Eagles
Ran the pigskin across the goal line with only seconds remaining.
His mother sang over the phone to a disconsolate friend,
The receiver tucked under her nodded head…
The sound of chopping potatoes could be heard
As the TV shut off in the other room.

They’d get the call on Tuesday.
His friends would “ask why,”
We loved him so much.
A girl he asked out only days before
Privately reconsidered his offer…never understanding why she just
Didn’t say “yes” in the first place.
After all, “He was something to look at!

tis nothing if not heardShare on email
Email
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on facebook
Facebook
0
Share on print
Print
Share on google
Google
Posted in character sketch, essay, vignette | Leave a comment