Maybe there’s no moving mountains,
but blow out the clouds and one may appear.
Out of the wall of white comes a rocky shoulder,
clad in spiky pines and stony protrusions.
POEM: Mountain Magic
4
Category Archives: Free Verse
POEM: Clifftop Flowers
Saffron-hued flowers huddle on a wind-whipped clifftop.
Sea breezes toss and twirl pollen,
eddies send some back down to the beach.
Land breezes feed pollen to the dark waters far below.
The flowers are ever-tousled by the wind’s rough hand.
What must they love, in their sightless stance,
that matches my sighted stare at sea and sky?
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
POEM: Agents of Change
They took the Moral High Ground,
commanding its lofty heights.
And never bombed trespassers,
but let them fail on their own.
Some wanted to let their anger show,
to know that they’d struck back.
Those few tumbled from the high ground,
landing in the scree of despot lackeys.
In the end, the powerless, that Juggernaut,
could not be defeated.
For every step usurpers made
shone a harsh light on their souls,
and all the world saw the gruesome image
that was reflected back.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
POEM: Baby Owl in a Tree
Baby owl in a tree
you may lack your elders’ sagacity,
but for cuteness, they ain’t got nothing on you —
And
yuh blend.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
POEM: City Noir
Neon-fired
Rippling lights,
churning & flashing,
colors dancing off the walls,
pooling & spinning into each other
Oh, how the colors glisten on wet pavement
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
POEM: Little-e Epiphany
The little “e” epiphany
strikes me in
the middle of the night.
Enveloped in darkness, I lie,
contemplating
the bold stories the world has told.
I think upon slapped cheeks
and
grand strategy
and
the universe outside my door.
I wonder whether one can
be change
and
change one’s being,
or
whether there’s a choice to be made.
I feel at peace —
though not enough
to drift back to sleep.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
POEM: Invisible World
The clouds are on the mountain.
The world feels faint and fading.
I look out in the distance,
but my eyes can’t focus.
I believe the world is out there,
but I can never say for sure.
What’s beyond the shape of
that distant line of trees, there?
Is it something good, or
nothing of the kind?
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
POEM: Seed of a Scream
The seed of a scream sits somewhere behind my sternum.
It writhed, crawled, or (maybe) floated there with great stealth.
It’s the spark that fires the powder keg.
There’s no old-fashioned fuse,
slowly burning like a sparkler.
You never see the rippling shockwaves,
just the debris —
that detritus that begs,
“What happened here?”
Scream stifling
requires walking around with no air to gasp —
no air to scream.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
POEM: Grace & Beauty at a Distance
As I wade through tall grass,
it seems to be a hodge-podge of random heights,
randomly spaced,
and drooping in random directions,
but when I look out at a distance,
that tall grass smooths the world
into soft rounded shapes.
I guess a lot of things are like that.
Imperfections and differences seen near at hand
vanish into grace and beauty at a distance.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
POEM: Figure
little nubs in a rounded spine,
subtle hollows between muscles;
we lazily build with sharp corners —
corners that don’t exist
in the backbones of beauty
as we know it
graceful curves and subtle transitions
are beyond our capacity to build
but are the only shapeless shapes
that we can truly appreciate
Tiger Riding for Beginners 