Tag Archives: Free Verse

Watchable Monsters [Free Verse]

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They were written into 
the lives of ancients,

written into the oldest
stories,

carved into cave
& temple, alike.

These beasts terrorized
and defended --
sometimes both
at the same time.

Towering stacks of hours
were lost to the
beastly crunch of their teeth.

Early peoples tried 
feeding bleating creatures 
to these intermediate beasts --
these watchable monsters:

 one's too scary to chase,
but too still to run from.

But they were as relentless
in their non-hunger
as they were in inspiring
long chains of possibility.

Diamondless Diamonds [Free Verse]

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Diamondless Diamonds?

Sounds like Daoist doublespeak
or 
a crazy Zen koan.

But, it's that which has
imaginary value,
but 
not real value.

Much of what human hands
reach for or produce
(& which human minds obsess upon)
are diamondless diamonds.

People stare at them 
with covetous eyes,

but when those eyes
saccade away
there's no reason to believe 
the diamondless diamond
still exists.

Eyes covet
what the mind knows
to have no particular worth.

Diamondless Diamonds
may change the world
for moments at a time,
but then are gone - 
and instantly forgotten.

Self-Aware World [Free Verse]

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I am a witness 
for a self-aware world,

a world that's not just 
chunks of matter,
but an organism that dances
 matter into 
an entity that can know.

It can know truth
and fiction 
and the truth of fiction
and the fiction of truth.

It turns order into disorder,
but with knowledge salad
on the side.

I'm a compartmentalized agent
 of a super-organism that is 
beyond my capacity
to understand
or speculate the purpose of.

I am a lonely witness.

Steel Creatures [Free Verse]

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servo-whine striding,
yet 
silent in stillness,
 
mechanical creatures
roam the plains:
pack hunting
with skill
but 
without purpose.

it's the only thing they know.

Strange & Alien Sky [Free Verse]

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Looking out the car's rear window,
I saw a strange and alien sky,
and wondered where I was,

and whether I was still somewhere
that I would - elsewise - recognize,

and - if not - whether I could get back,
and whether I would want to go back.

I saw a strange and alien sky,
and did not look to see the ground.

Gunsmoke [Free Verse]

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the acrid smell
of 
burnt gun-smoke
dulls
in the mind,
but not 
in the air

the brain tires of smelling it,
and so it fades,
but
it has nowhere to go --
not in this violent place
of dead & heavy air

Iron String [Free Verse]

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Emerson said,
"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."


REM said,
"What's the frequency, Kenneth?"


Will Kenneth's waves propagate down the line?

If so, would they add to,
or cancel out, 
the waves of others?

That depends on the frequency, Kenneth!

I guess that's why Michael Stipe
took such an impassioned interest 
in the question.

Is it even a good thing if one's waves
add to those of another?

Might it not become disharmonious,
like a runaway washing machine,
shaking violently,
parts flying through the air
in smooth ballistic arcs
only to bounce and clatter 
in dull discordance.

Does one's iron string
even need to come into contact
with Kenneth's? 

Might not the wave energy 
passing through the air
stir up a resonance in one's bones?

Questions, such as these, haunt me --
not to mention:

Who, exactly, is Kenneth?

Poetry on the Cob [Free Verse]

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People sometimes tell me 
they have trouble understanding poetry.

That's because they consume it
as they would a banana,
starting at one end and chomping
down to the other.

Poetry has to be consumed like 
corn on the cob.

One should start at one end
and work down to the other,
but then one has to 
go back to the beginning --
change one's angle of perspective --
and - again - go from one end to the other.

I can't
emphasize
this point about changing 
one's angle of perspective
enough. 

There is a difference:
with corn on the cob, one rotates the corn,
but, with poetry, one has to rotate something 
within the reader.
Otherwise, one is just chomping into
an empty rut -
a track devoid of sustenance.

Then, one has to repeat the process
until every last morsel has been consumed. 

That's how one ingests poetry.

The Raging River of Human Nature [Free Verse]

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Human nature is a raging river
which a few shitty sandbags of common sense
will not detour. 

Some people stand on the bank
and shout at the river.
I will admit, I've done the same.

But those words neither soak in
nor bounce off that raging river --
they're made silent,
dying in air. 

Some people try to steer
the river by splashing at the lapping waters
near its edge,

But none of them is Moses,
not one can dam a river by force of will.

And - even if one could --
eventually, that person would have to let go,
leaving a backed up and angry river
to rage onward.

Suicide Slide [Free Verse]

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One burning moment --
taffy-stretched to the edge of reason:

stretched so broadly that one 
can't fathom escape -
like Monkey on the Buddha's palm

One burning idea --
cloned, and then carved
to make infinite variants,
and painted infinite shades:
the dark tone of each
darker than the last

Burning ideas populating
the vast expanse of a
burning moment,
until the urge to escape
insists that one carve a hatch 
into living tissue

But what is it that does
the stretching of the burning moment
&
the cloning of the burning idea?

Can't that stretcher and cloner
 be wound back,
scaling all to proper proportions?

And can't it be done before 
that terminal instant 
is carved in jagged stone?