Tag Archives: Free Verse

Jacob’s Ladder [Free Verse]

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I'm dripping into midnight --
my world has disappeared.

My eyes crack to light and life,
but I forgot to hear --
remembering, 
the silence is broken 
& I hear a rhythmic clack.

But I can't help but wonder,
where it is that I'm at?

I'm at the bottom of a wooden staircase,
too steep to be sound,
looking up until perspective
makes the case vanishingly thin.

Should I climb the staircase?

What else can I do?

Will I wake
half way up,
and find myself
in the blue?

The laws of dreams force my hand,
I can't stand paralyzed,
and I'm halfway to infinity
by means that I know not. 

And I'm thinking of the line from that 
children's prayer:
"If I should die before I 'wake,"
and I think:

"What the hell is wrong with parents?"
that's the thought upon which you're going
to leave with your child
to "go to sleep?"

And you're wondering why the 
kid is up all night?

Because dying in one's sleep
doesn't start to seem
like a fine prospect
until one is an octogenarian. 

And so I sleep...

Gothic Imagination [Free Verse]

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I first saw the stone beast
by the light of a bright day --
frozen, still & placid

My second sighting was on a rainy night,
a steady, careless rain,
the kind of rain
that seems to have declared
itself the new default mode.

I saw it in the space of lightning flash --
the silhouetted gargoyle.
It lacked the fine detail
of its sculptor's effort.
It lacked the clean edges
and ornamental effects.
Imagination filled in the lost detail
with scales rippling under
muscular flesh.

And while the lightning felt prolonged,
it was still just a flash --
leaving me to wonder whether
I'd really seen it rear back,
preparing to lunge off the wall?

And then I saw the world through its eyes
and all was better...

and then all was worse.

Avalanche [Free Verse]

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One false footing
erases the screeched blackboard
writing that'd formed in my mind
& 
everything becomes a blank, white
emptiness --

Not a good empty.
Not a good quiet.
The emptiness of blinding pain.

That's the slow, cold death
of falling into a drift
and then cascading,
tumbling,
tumbling,
in an avalanche.

Wrenched asunder -
or so it feels -
and left to go numb in a
silence so total 
that i know 
it's my first experience 
with true silence. 

We all fall down?
That's what the plague rhyme says,
isn't it? --

Madmen & Holymen,
and those who take this fall
and are twisted into a 
grotesque blend of both.

Which way is up?
Tiny seedlings can tell,
but I cannot.

I'm lost --
50/50, I dig myself deeper
into my own doom.

My life trickles in a file of hours,
dripping into that dim distance 
of non-time. 

I'll stay lost until the spring thaw
when I'll ride the glacial runoff
to complete my tumble
as a gray and bloated thing.

Three Little Lost Thoughts [Free Verse]

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When one loses one's keys,
they're always the last place you had them,
but when you find yourself -
more often than not -
it's someplace you've never been before.

There's love that isn't 
love at first sight, 
but there's also beauty that's not 
beautiful at first sight.

Humans are the most absurd creatures,
and our competition includes 
animals that lick their own butts.

Thin Cities [Free Verse]

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There are cities where
the veneer of normality 
is so thin

that it feels as though
one could fall through
at any time,
plummeting
into the true city.

Varanasi,
New Orleans,
Tokyo after midnight, 
parts of Prague & Bangkok

I can't say what's beneath
the veneer,
but, oh, does part of me
 want to know!

These are places 
better visited than lived in,
for their magic cannot 
survive extended proximity.

Pensive [Free Verse]

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In days of old,
did pensive dancers loaf about,
leaning on temple doorjambs?

Or, was that only the case
 in the minds of sculptors?

The Forest [Free Verse]

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A sprout sprouts from the dirt.

Above, dead leaves keep 
the tender leaf cool & moist.

Below, worms churn the soil --
churn and aerate. 

Fungi decompose the lowest leaf layer,
turning it into nutrients for the sprout.

I'm tapped into all that magic
from afar:

-creation & destruction,
feeding into each other

-energy becoming life,
life becoming matter,
matter that - 
in turn - 
becomes energy.

If there's a forest,
I am the forest.
I'm life and energy
&
 death and decomposition...

all in due time.

Mallick Ghat Market [Free Verse]

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Loomed over by Howrah Bridge --
that big steel beast --
the flower market is a world of color,
marigold garlands in orange, yellow,
and alternating orange & yellow.

The odd stack of roses:
white, pink, and -- of course -- red.

White garlands with red accents.

Greenery.

Loose flower heads in piles,
pecked at by tiny birds
that bounce and flit.

Rose petals at risk
of being carried by a gust 
into a swirling cyclone of 
romance --
only to be left littered on
the muddy pavement.

Mind-Breaking Poetry [Free Verse]

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I need some mind-breaking poetry -
some Blake, some Dickinson,
some Yeats, some Whitman,
some Langston Hughes.

I need a poem that's a kōan, 
that makes the mind a mackerel fish,
and doesn't mind doing it.

I need a poem that sizzles
inside my bones.

Dreams All the Way Down [Free Verse]

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I awaken from a dream
within a dream,
and I'm still dreaming --

dreaming that I'm walking
with the others,
the others that I'm told
are all me,
walking in some vaguely familiar
exotic destination

Of course, I don't know I'm dreaming.

I did wake up after all,
but it turns out that

it's dreams all the way down.