Tag Archives: Free Verse

Mad Saints & Scientists [Free Verse]

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Mad scientists are terrifying.
Mad artists are reassuring
(par for that particular course.)

Mad mathematicians
seem harmless enough,
as long as he or she
stays in his or her lane:
the one with numbers
and angles
and sets.

Mad Saints are the most hated
& most beloved of lunatics.
They serve as necessary examples --
not there to forcibly deprogram one,
but to show that it's an option.
One has the choice to be free,
whether one has the will or desire to be -
that's an open question. 

But those who sink the red pill
must learn that in those waters
thar be monsters.
(If only those of one's own making --
i.e. Nietzsche's abyss staring back.)
Voids can't gaze.
Only that which one crams 
down its abyss-hole
can do the gazing.

BOOK REVIEW: Puella Mea by e.e. cummings

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Puella MeaPuella Mea by E.E. Cummings
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

Free online at: Project Gutenberg

This is a single poem, Cummings’s longest, a love poem to his first wife. It’s a longform poem – at least by the standards of poets of the Modern era, though at less than 300 lines it’s far from epic in scale. It’s a beautiful love poem, favorably comparing the wife in question to Helen of Troy, Medea (from “Jason and the Argonauts,”) Guinevere, and other historic beauties.

It’s a highly readable poem; its short lines pack a lot of punch, and while Cummings writes in free verse, he’s not afraid to drop a rhyme or play with the texture of meter to give his lines an appealing sound quality.

The edition I read included art from Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and Kurt Roesch. It’s definitely worth checking out this edition, particularly if you enjoy Modern and Surreal art.

I’d highly recommend this for poetry readers.

View all my reviews

Soulless Voyager [Free Verse]

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I am the soulless voyager
cut loose from the dock
in a rudderless craft

Kicked this way and that
by angry winds that greet
all flat surfaces, and --
having met a surface --
pushes it away with maximum effort

Where will my ghost ship take to land?

After all,
every voyage must end -- 
be it purposeless or purposeful

A craft can only circle 
(having been caught in the currents)
for so long before it's whipped
off into sand or rock or 
some unlikely port

That's the great mystery,
the mystery by which life
is made worthy of living
 
one never knows whether 
one will be tossed to a port or a rocky shoal,
a shoal whose rocks will rip open the ship,
like a deer dressed by a poor hunter,
being torn at jagged angles
so as to be unworthy
to be called a ship or boat or even 
"thing that floats,"
becoming a rusty structure,
resting at an odd angle
near the shore

but maybe this ghost ship 
will be tossed roughly against 
the rubber bumpers of a dock,
coming to rest 
such that what remains
can be offloaded

Foul Winds [Free Verse]

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As a boy, I remember reading about 
the horse latitudes.
Those were the places in the ocean
where - at times - the winds didn't blow
for long periods at a time. 

Drifting in the middle of the Atlantic,
sailors would cut loose anything that
wouldn't keep them alive
& which might weigh them down,
that sometimes meant shoving horses
overboard to tread water 'til
they died from exhaustion.

People used to live or die by the winds.
Today, we only die by them.

That's what occurred to me as we sit
closer to nuclear annihilation than we've been
since I was a teenager,
and as I reflect upon
the prevailing winds.

Labyrinth [Free Verse]

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the vaulted corridor is
lined with portals to places unknown
and linked to other hallways
in an infinite labyrinth

one can go from "here"
to anywhere,
but there's no map 
yours will be a stochastic journey;
one might prefer to systematically
 duck one's head into portals,
getting a feel about whether 
a given route seems favorable --
but we all know that one must often
travel through unfavorable territory
to get where one wants to be

and so it's like being thirsty in a life raft --
as per Coleridge's Mariner:
"Water, water, everywhere, 
Nor any drop to drink"

in this case,
 it's a free ticket to anywhere,
if you can only find your way,

but what're the odds?

Visionary Poets [Free Verse]

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Blake had visions of angels
&
Ginsberg had visions of Blake

I'm sure some 
angelheaded post-Hippie hipster 
has had, or will have had,
 visions of Ginsberg,

But who are Blake's angels hallucinating?

Maybe the angels have no eyes
and have
visionless visions 
of visionary poets?

Cemetery Walk [Free Verse]

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And in the end,
the dead are still
and the graveyard's quiet
is not so bad.

The monuments weather;
in due time,
letters become less crisp
&
dates become debatable.

A clean read means
there maybe someone 
left to mourn.

And fresh flowers mean that someone
has tracked their melancholy 
through the place,
and the air feels heavier,
and my mind feels heavier.

And I read names:
familiar & not,
popular & not.

I read names to distract me
from thoughts of my own dead --
to avoid tracking my own melancholy
through the place.

For, you see,
I've brought no flowers.

In Medias Res [Free Verse]

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Journeys start with a cattle-prod jolt 
& a kick in the soul --
not at an airport,
or a ferry dock,
or a taxi stand,
or at the curb.

By the time you've gotten that far,
you're already traveling.

By the time you've "decided" to go,
you're already traveling. 

Travel begins earlier,
if in the dark,
because travel is not a dream,
&
only dreams start 
in the middle of nonsense.

Real life flows down 
a continuous and unbroken
stream of nonsense, 
drifting at a rate slow enough 
for your brain to make a movie of
rationalizations,
so that your brain can tell you: 
that you're in control,
that you know what's going on,
that you know what will happen next,
&
assorted and sundry bullshit like that.

Cold Shore [Free Verse]

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Was it a lifetime ago,
or was it a dream?

I remember it being a 
long drive to a cold shore.

And I sat alone
on that shore,
and I sought a shark --
not out in the waters,
but within myself. 

Finding nothing,
I felt the thing to do
was to 
rattle in rhythm with
the twisted hustle of
pounding waves,

and I awoke, 
shivering under piercing
points of light
that somehow felt cold,
& 
made me feel cold -
deep inside.

Prayer Flag Impermanence [Free Verse]

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prayer flags languidly roll
in the courtyard
of the monastery

one monk
has seen the flags
every day since
they were erected

&

before that
saw their predecessors --
sun-bleached and tattered

that monk
 looks upon the flags
as if he's never seen them before
and will never see them again

each monk was taught to think this way,
but he's the only one who sees this way