Poetic Absorption [Free Verse]

Read at the speed 
  of absorption,
   (not consumption.)

Sit with the ephemera
  that boils off upon
   each read.

It will be different
  the next time.

Don't memorize.
 
That hammers it into
   some dark, heavy pit
    that it was never meant to be --

a thing that sinks in water
   and plummets from the air. 

Hammering cleaves its wings,
   and it becomes hopeless in the flow --
    staggering like a deranged drunk
     in the dark. 

When you read it,
    only read it. 

Don't anticipate.

Be surprised. 

The Scrublands [Haiku]

dust rises,
 in little eddies,
  with each footfall.

Artificial Intelligence Limerick

There once was a cutting-edge AI,
  whose code discouraged telling a lie.
 Asked about our species:
  "Your thinking is feces,
  but you're smarter than the average fruit fly."

The Churn [Free Verse]

The water churns --
   no smooth laminar flow.

Each molecule fights its way
   down the mountain. 

Sloshing up into evaporation, or
    dragged, swirling, across 
     the rocky bottom.

This is no mighty, muddy river
    in a gentle glide.

It's pretty chaos;
    just the kind I'm used to.

That’s Some Fine Flocking [Haiku]

each bird in a flock
 oriented differently --
  yet, no collisions.

Winter River [Haiku]

winter sky mixes:
 thick clouds, thin clouds, no clouds.
  light dances, briefly.

Mythical Kings [Common Meter]

Don't sell us benevolent kings,
  such creatures can't exist.
 An unchecked mind won't self-censor,
  and lame dogma persists.

Runaway Imagination [Haiku]

a bird-shaped cloud!
 then the mountain becomes a
  dreadnought on calm seas.

The Mountain has Fists [Free Verse]

The mountain feels like it flows
 as much as the river that sits beside
  (or more so -- i.e. more smoothly.)

The contours of a half-buried fist --
 rounded knuckles and fingerbones --
 sit in the mountainside,
 as if jutting out of sand,
  but soft & green.

It looks like the whole hand could lift
 out of that mountainous topography,
 and flick away the buildings on the bank,
 or pluck canoes out of the river.
 (But now the water is too low and chaotic
 for any craft to pass.)

So, maybe the ancient mountain monster
 will just put up its dukes to the world,
 shaking that great, green, soft fist.