turrets turned as tires burned
forming a cloak of jet black smoke
oh hell! oh hell! for a tank shell
will pass right through, belching smoke of its own like a chimney flue
and when the wall is blown apart, and spall flies as from a cart of darts
I’ll long for naught, just I thought, while I wonder just what man hath wrought
Cubes of sand
Tumble on a tiny scale
Scouring history
Camel lurches
Only in a land of sand
could it kneel
Grain of sand
Do you miss the sea
from whence you came?
Bleached bones
Sandblasted lopsided
How will you go?
Wind blown
zebra stripes in the sand
Nature’s echo
Dubai
1.) Toss open a bag of words.
2.) Dance said words into a configuration in which they sprout a feeling.
3.) Shake vigorously until the detritus that detracts from feeling falls away.
4.) Read aloud.
5.) Shake some more.
6.) READ – SHAKE – REPEAT
Source: National Endowment for the Arts
by Gustave Dore (via Wikipedia)
Madmen on the march
Clones de la Mancha
Pouring through the arch
Lacking lingua franca
Seeking common thrills
An army of sham knights
Tilting at windmills
With more pride than fight
It’s not a sickness of the brain
that scripts this lunatic life.
It’s chasing the sanction of “sane”
that breeds this stream of strife.
[Note: A poem on the hilarity of defining sanity as the recognition of reality. As if any of us knows what’s real in a meaningful sense. Sanity is being able to pretend you know what’s real with sufficient confidence to avoid grinding against society’s sensitive spots.]
pounding drums
echo down the valley
birds calm
deep breath
fog dissipates
common peril
fog follows
will it catch us
before the pass
cow grazes
on the high trail
dispiriting
glaciers glow
in sunrise orange
forge iron, not
on the ridge
falls can be lethal
worth it
Source: European Southern Observatory (via Wikipedia)
Let me step up on my soapbox,
tell you about a paradox.
Said a scientist named Fermi,
“Why’ve no aliens made the journey
to bring us a nice fruit basket
or just tell us how fantastic
it is having us in the neighborhood.”
Scientists have racked their brains
considering competing claims:
“Life is hard and smarts is harder.”
“They can’t stock a trans-galactic larder.”
“They’ve come here, but are to small to hear.”
“They are shy, out of wisdom or of fear.”
Or, simply, “They all blow’d themselves to hell.”
I, too, have had reason to ponder
why aliens stifled the urge to wander
into our little neck of the wood,
and I fear we don’t come off so good.
What if, I ask you, heaven forbid
they think of us as the smelly kid?
Are we the seatmate who won’t shut up
about his robotic barbershop startup?
Do humans come across as the kind
to ask a stranger if they wouldn’t mind,
helping us move and antique armoire
or lending us their new flying car?
So when considering whether we’re alone of device or luck,
consider the competing hypothesis that we really suck.
rounding the temple,
walking its plinth,
reading each carving
like solving a labyrinth
battles and bulls
and decrepit hulls
of ships washed ashore
demons and ogres
who’d fought foreign wars
the Tartarus deep
and gods upon high
and mythical beasts
in water and sky
there’s no way this world
could be real or true
a vacuum of cruelty
a fanciful zoo
real enough to be carved in stone
constructs of mind, known but unknown
You think you know what’s real?
That’s so adorable.
You’re adrift in a space
full of false, hard edges.
Some say it’s turtles all
the way to the bottom.
Whatever a “bottom”
is or was or may be.
You are in the third act
of a two-act play, and
everyone has gone home.
If you fall to the stage
no one will hear or feel
the waves emanating
from that false, hardwood floor.
But I understand it
feels real to you.
the washboard road
sends vehicles
into
convulsive spasms–
violent shudders
that pop the wind from passengers
&
clack teeth
&
postpone words
because all utterances become
machine-gun moans
a dust plume of raw umber
slants away from rolling tires
seen across field and savannah
smoke signal of impending visitation
barren branches
rake the sky above
tines chaotic
crow turns head
aiming its lustrous eye
pausing mid-meal
snowy silence
ends in flapping wings
then returns
cornstalk stubble
dusted in dry snow
desiccated
breath tendrils
roil into limbo
forgotten
