Category Archives: poem

POEM: Literarily Insane

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Hemingway off’d himself–
curled up under his
own looming shadow.

What loomed beyond
that shadow was the
great unfathomable.

Peering into it might
have been a comfort,
or might have killed
him in pre-greatness days.

***

Kesey’s Chief wondered
how the Irishman could live
in his own grandiosity of being.

McMurphy’s sanity was surely
built upon a foundation of delusion–
sanity and delusion forged iron-clad.

Meanwhile, those free of such
delusions huddled in the fog,
unable to step out into life.

***

Heller’s Yossarian summed
up the whole damned mess:
claims of insanity are a
recognition of one’s sanity.

Who else seeks to turn down
the volume on reality?

Other than one who can
hear it well enough to know
when it peals thunderous?

POEM: Abhaya

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Stand atop the wall.
Feel the conch sound.
Watch the arrows sail.
Survey the killing ground.

Know you’ll someday die.
As will all, I suppose.
For those who die well,
it is no tale of woe.

POEM: Land’s End

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Land ends in a wall of fog.

If you were told it was the

end of the universe, you

could not prove otherwise.

It glides up to the cliffside.

Stealing sight. Silent theft.

Ears ring. Seeking sounds.

Mind searches sensation.

Senses wet cotton dulled.

Solitude sweeps over one.

What would happen if one

stuck one’s arm inside the

fog? Would it expand into

infinity?  Or disintegrate

into a lawless zone free of

 mathematical certainty?

POEM: Under the Rug

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a vessel cracked

an act of ransack

a pile of shards

one can’t discard

but swept aside

never to be eyed

under the rug

like Kafka’s bug

POEM: The Humorless Giraffe

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So now, tell me, Mister Giraffe:

How come I never hear you laugh?

Are you too tall to hear the joke,

or are you just an uptight bloke?

Human humor is elation

vis-a-vis

circumvented expectation.

Since I never do misconstrue,

I never need let them know I knew.

POEM: Figment

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i’m a figment

a wisp of consciousness

once spun across the universe

now unspun and dangling

once entangled with

all that is, was

or

ever could be

now

a

dead wire

POEM: Roadside Dog

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Tail tucked.

Eyes weary and watery.

A roadside dog.

A part pulls it to the edge,

seeking to shoot into the street.

Amid the roaring chaos machines

that rumble and surge

–shrill or silent.

A part pulls it back,

claiming the comfortably known.

A stretch of sidewalk free of danger,

free of metal monsters,

devoid of food.

Sitting at the roadside,

fear fades as its hunger heightens.

Until the dog is compelled to propel

itself in among the hurried humans

& their rolling death boxes.

POEM: Stone

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someday someone will stumble on the stone

a stone outlasting skin and bone

a stone surface pocked and mossy

though once it shone polished glossy

brushing off letters worn shallow

on a stone face bleak and sallow

rendered so by nature and time

twins spoiling all not in its prime

they’ll read a name with bookend dates

and be shown they hold a common fate

should one become legend and myth

you’ll still not outlive your monolith

POEM: Crack

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When it travels through the crack,

who knows if it will come right back?

Is it a crack in space or time,

or in the fabric of your mind?

“Maybe it’s matter” said the Mad Hatter,

“But if it goes in fat, it’ll come out flatter.”

POEM: River to Sea

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The river twists through a barren landscape.

Filling with flotsam, detritus, and silt,

dragging death downstream,

it will pour into a bright, blue sea.

You should savor that scene,

but your view is from above,

and so you see a shit-colored plume

splaying into the clear, calm waters.

And you fear the shit stain

will spread across the sea.

But it doesn’t.

It seems to settle.

You never knew the clear and calm could

subdue those murky, mucky waters.