Category Archives: Poetry

Anarchy [Free Verse]

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Anarchy
evokes
chicken body 
bumper cars.

Constant movement
that is not only 
undirected, but also:
fast,
violent,
random,
chaotic,
and doomed to be 
short-lived.

Anarchy 
seems like space 
in which
many participants
would soon be
on their backs --
legs churning 
in spastic bursts,
ineffectually.

Like toppled robots
or 
cockroaches that
waded through
gassy trenches.

Limbs moving,
as if confident 
that they can 
right the ship
and
recover the upright.

But everyone watching
knows they can't --
that the laws of physics
won't support it,
that it's just wasted
motion.

They might as well be
in night terrors,
for being able to move 
ineffectually seems 
only moderately less 
terrifying than not
being able to move at all --
when faced with a situation
from which one wants badly 
to get away.

But, maybe,
I've got it all wrong.

Maybe that's not 
Anarchy 
at all.

Self Speculation [Free Verse]

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What's a Self?

...a soul?
...a set of neuronal activity?
...an illusion?
...a ghost in a machine?
...the body, the brain, &
the whole enchilada?

Memories can be false,
and some always are.

Thoughts can be illusory,
and some always are.

Feelings can be flighty & fickle,
and some always are.

If one loses a little toe,
is one a diminished self,
or still whole?

What about if one loses
a pinky toe-sized mass of brain?

So many possibilities:

...death,
...changed personality,
...emotionlessness,
...speech pathologies,
...blindness,
...memory loss,
...coma,
...no discernable change,
and so on.

What's a Self?
...a dog?
...an embryo?
...an AI?
...an extraterrestrial?

What is a self?

Am I a self?

Line of Blindness [Tanka]

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mountains peek from clouds.
moments before they'd hid well;
i can't help but think
about all those times,
flying through clouds, blindly

Cockscomb Echo [Haiku]

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cockscomb flowers
stand like brains on a stick;
nature echoes strangely

Night Market [Free Verse]

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in the chiaroscuro world
of the night market,
fruity colors blare in
orange,
green,
& 
yellow
between angular 
shadows

the sun is down;
the city is alive,
and soon the 
night market 
will be lively

Ancient Stupas [Haiku]

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ancient stupas:
worn, pocked, and chipped;
age makes character

Cyclone in a Cup [Free Verse]

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coffee flecks swirl
in a steaming cup

cyclonic do-si-dos,
swinging and folding,
merging into clusters

between the cyclones
there are highspeed byways
cutting across the surface

a jitter of the table
seems to stop the dance,
but then it resumes

entropy falls to 
eventually follow its imperative --

entropy rising:
using order
to turn all that energy
into a lukewarm 
cup of joe

this same fluid clockwork
played out in 
primordial soup
to begin the dance of life

The Crossing [Free Verse]

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A ship
crosses the ocean,

in the darkness:
darkness, black & endless

no moon,
no stars,
just clouds -- thick & low
clouds that can't be seen

The ship has lights,
but those lights know
an event horizon

Lights sometime 
glint against the waves,
those roiling & undulating
waves,

and the lights bounce off
the ship's hull

But no one can see them,
because if anyone could see them,
the seers would be seen--
unless theirs is a ghost ship,
piloted by literal ghosts,
or some other agent of observation

Maybe there is fog --
not enveloping the ship,
(such mist would be felt
on the skin of those on deck)
but, rather, a fog between 
where the ship is,
and where is should be

For it is surely off course,
listlessly drifting,
all hope arrayed against edges:

edges of ice
&
edges of the world

Not that the world is flat,
but, perhaps, it's not fully sculpted:
maybe nothing lies outside
the range of the seen:
outside the bounds of experience

It sounds crazy, 
but all kinds of crazy
form in a mind
submerged in darkness

No Egret [Haiku]

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the egret walks
away from a lone cow that's
too still to stir bugs