The reclining Buddha oversees
the diligent seated Buddha.
Is this an analogy of the mind,
or just a monk's proclivity
toward a superabundance
of Buddhas?
Superabundance of Buddhas [Free Verse]
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Tag Archives: Free Verse
Iconic [Free Verse]
Everyone gets to be a person,
Few become icons:
What is it to have a lasting
image more well-known
than one's work?
Che Guevara, Bruce Lee,
Heath Ledger's Joker --
Images you can find on
back-alley walls from Lagos
to Prague to Kochi
to Seoul to Santiago
and back again.
Seen day-after-day by people
who never saw Enter the Dragon
or read of the Cuban Revolution,
or saw Nolan's Batman Trilogy,
but they know the faces.
They have thoughts about them
-- and, sometimes, strong feelings --
just like so many people have
thoughts about Alexander the Great
based solely on his name
and a rough impression of history.
What must this be...
blessing or curse ...
if icons had some way to care?
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Spring Swerve [Free Verse]
Spring can swerve.
White patches,
holdouts from yesterday's snow,
are melted by today's rains.
Buds no sooner form
than are encased in ice.
No self-respecting Summer
day could bring snow.
Winter won't hatch
a butterfly.
Autumn can't turn
a red leaf back to green.
But Spring can swerve.
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Ivy & Stone [Free Verse]
There's something relentless
in an old stone wall...
But, also, cold and dead.
One knows it will not stand forever --
that it will go the way of
ruins, rubble, stones, and dust --
but, still, it can outstand any man.
Ivy climbs to camouflage the stone's
cruel deathlessness,
But then the ivy stands on the wall
year after year after year...
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Mobile Home [Common Meter]
Turtle exits its hiding place
beneath a rotten log.
Its shell snags on that old, dead wood
he drags the log along.
Does he know that he's double-shelled?
He seems so unaware.
When he breaks free, he gains no speed --
just crawls on like he don't care.
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Stumped [Free Verse]
A stump in the forest
is like a gap in a
wedding party photo
where they photoshopped
out a renegade relative,
but forgot to erase
the person's loafers.
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Information Boneyard [Free Verse]
The Information Age
bloomed & died
from wave after wave
of information inflation
and counterfeit information -
cheap knockoffs flooded
the market!
We live in a
post-information world:
an information junkyard,
to be precise.
Rusting, useless detritus
poses as treasure.
We catch glints
and think it value,
But even turds can glitter
in the Sun.
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Candles [Free Verse]
Ancient cathedral:
pews & altar
long gone.
Cold air creeps
through cracks
to flicker candles,
Candles lit for
those long dead —
though long remembered —
on a cold, winter day.
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BOOKS: “The Suppressed Poems of Ernest Hemingway”
The suppressed poems by Ernest HemingwayMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Available online – Public Domain
I read this book because my curiosity was piqued by a reference to poems Hemingway published in Der Querschnitt, a reference that was made in a biography of Hemingway I’ve been reading recently (Forty-Three Ways of Looking at Hemingway by Jeffrey Meyers.) Five of the seventeen poems in the book are from Der Querschnitt. (Ten of the poems were published in a book entitled Three Stories and Ten Poems and a couple are odds and ends.)
The Der Quershnitt pieces are bawdy by 1920’s standards, though not particularly for today. The other poems can be a bit intense, dealing in subjects like death in war (Champs D’Honneur,) suicide (Montparnasse, and a curse upon literary critics (Valentine,) but tend to be a bit more refined (excepting Valentine. which may be the least elevated of the collected poems.)
The poems include a mix of lyric, free verse, and prose poem, though all are fairly short (the longest, The Soul of Spain, fits in three pages.)
My favorite was a short lyric poem entitled The Age Demanded, which considers the paradox of the 1920’s as a progressive age, restrained. I also found T. Roosevelt to be fascinating because in the act of critiquing Teddy Roosevelt, Hemingway (wittingly or not) gives us a bit of autobiography. (i.e.“And all the legends that he started in his life // Live on and prosper, // Unhampered now by his existence.”)
I give Hemingway more credit for saying interesting things by virtue of being bold than for saying anything in a particularly interesting way, but it’s enough to make these poems worth reading.
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A Space Between [Free Verse]
The space between
this & that,
us & them,
then & now,
now & later.
The pregnant pause —
a pause without cause —
Just senseless nothing
in between.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 