the high tree hawk scans for prey from lofty heights; the rat scurries - unaware of far-flung foes, but side to wall all the same
High Tree Hawk [Tanka]
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Category Archives: poem
Visionary Poets [Free Verse]
Blake had visions of angels & Ginsberg had visions of Blake I'm sure some angelheaded post-Hippie hipster has had, or will have had, visions of Ginsberg, But who are Blake's angels hallucinating? Maybe the angels have no eyes and have visionless visions of visionary poets?
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Cemetery Walk [Free Verse]
And in the end, the dead are still and the graveyard's quiet is not so bad. The monuments weather; in due time, letters become less crisp & dates become debatable. A clean read means there maybe someone left to mourn. And fresh flowers mean that someone has tracked their melancholy through the place, and the air feels heavier, and my mind feels heavier. And I read names: familiar & not, popular & not. I read names to distract me from thoughts of my own dead -- to avoid tracking my own melancholy through the place. For, you see, I've brought no flowers.
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In Medias Res [Free Verse]
Journeys start with a cattle-prod jolt & a kick in the soul -- not at an airport, or a ferry dock, or a taxi stand, or at the curb. By the time you've gotten that far, you're already traveling. By the time you've "decided" to go, you're already traveling. Travel begins earlier, if in the dark, because travel is not a dream, & only dreams start in the middle of nonsense. Real life flows down a continuous and unbroken stream of nonsense, drifting at a rate slow enough for your brain to make a movie of rationalizations, so that your brain can tell you: that you're in control, that you know what's going on, that you know what will happen next, & assorted and sundry bullshit like that.
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Chicory Dance [Haiku]
chicory - its little blue flowers sway, dancing with stems
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River Trance [Common Meter]
I sit on a green grass riverside, watching brown waters flow. Some karst monoliths stand behind in which scrubby shrubs grow. I feel my mind could be swept on down to the sprawling sea, while my body would stay behind asleep with back to tree. And panic and freedom both rise - untethered from earth's hold. As I see the future and the past blended at the threshold. And space, like time, has no meaning -- just an amorphous blob. I awaken gasping spastically, my pulse in a wild throb.
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Cold Shore [Free Verse]
Was it a lifetime ago, or was it a dream? I remember it being a long drive to a cold shore. And I sat alone on that shore, and I sought a shark -- not out in the waters, but within myself. Finding nothing, I felt the thing to do was to rattle in rhythm with the twisted hustle of pounding waves, and I awoke, shivering under piercing points of light that somehow felt cold, & made me feel cold - deep inside.
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Pale Blue [Haiku]
pale skies stretch across the great beyond, dwarfing an angler
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The Over / Under on Clouds [Haiku]
a dark cloud down in the valley shines white from the ridge
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On Second Thought [Common Meter]
The scholar sits, contemplating the world's perfect order, but finds that "perfect" is a stretch. "It's close to the border between Disorder and Chaos. mere miles from the junction of Great Malady and Mayhem deep within Dysfunction."
Tiger Riding for Beginners 