Tag Archives: Free Verse

Thermoclines in the Park [Free Verse]

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Running through the park,
in the light of the rising sun,
I pass through a band of cool air,
and a little later,
pass through a band
of warm, humid air.

And, I wonder whether 
I'm having a stroke.

Isn't physics supposed 
to push the warm air over
into the cold,
or pull the cold air over
into the warm,
or both, 
and to keep doing so until
the air temperature
is an undifferentiated mass?

Had I stumbled into a
glitch in the Matrix?
Was the simulated weather 
breaking down?

Why was thermodynamics
misbehaving?
I had so many questions,
but so few answers.

And so many miles to go.

Simplify [Free Verse]

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One item per day 
was abandoned
until living got hard.

But like Diogenes -- 
who gave up his cup
upon seeing a boy 
slurping from cupped palms -- 
eventually, it all was gone.

Each item hand-weighed,
its weight against is usefulness,
and all were found expendable.

Slant [Free Verse]

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They told it slant,
but not all the truth,
and it rolled into the ears
of the willing
and into the minds
of the faithful.

And in those minds
it was built into 
a swift machine,
one of great power -- 
if little reality.

But deaths never required
reality of motive,
only 
reality of matter.

So, the wild stories
became wild ideas
that were the bane
of us all.

Thoreau’s Wish [Free Verse]

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Caspar David Friedrich, Arctic Shipwreck (1824)

“I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible”

Henry david thoreau, Walden

Too many people wish that the world consisted
of those who held the same views as they -

who loved what they loved,
who believed what they believed,
who would do what they would do.

I can't imagine a more boring world than that.

If there aren't those with different:

ideas,
desires,
beliefs,
and values, 

then who will show me something new:
something that -- for good or for ill --
will change my world 
and advance my understanding.

If truth be told,
I'd just as soon spend time 
among the crazy sages who --
having rejected all programming --
will not be made prisoner to a train schedule,
let alone to a norm or convention or protocol.

The madmen who shaman one 
out of all mental conventions.

But such as they are hand forged,
each vibrating at his or her own wavelength --
hard to see and
 not easily found.

98.6 [Free Verse]

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The secret is...

we're energy machines.

This wild ride we're on is all about
staying 98.6.

The meaning of life
might as well be 98.6.

You work to make rent 
to be sheltered at 98.6.

You go to the store for groceries
to stoke the fires of 98.6.

You put on your coat or slippers
to keep yourself at 98.6.

You go to the beach
to warm to 98.6
&
then sweat to drop
back to 98.6.

You take medicines when you're too
far off the mark of 98.6.

You turn on the AC 
to sleep at 98.6
& 
kick off the covers
&
drag the covers back
& 
adjust the AC...
all to sleep at 98.6.

You may wish to be a flash fire
of a million degrees,
but life leaves you at 98.6.

Some day you'll cool off
and your career as
Thermoregulatory Maintenance
Specialist 
will be at an end
& 
you'll be done with
the trouble of staying 98.6.

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?