to be poured steaming tea from a dented kettle, in a wooden building, hanging at the mountain's edge, at the end of a long day's journey, has a special spirit-raising force
POEM: Teahouse
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Tag Archives: Free Verse
POEM: Pandemic Claustrophobia, or: Strange Ways to Suffocate
POEM: A Life Dissolved
Image
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POEM: Mountain Magic
Maybe there’s no moving mountains,
but blow out the clouds and one may appear.
Out of the wall of white comes a rocky shoulder,
clad in spiky pines and stony protrusions.
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POEM: Clifftop Flowers
Saffron-hued flowers huddle on a wind-whipped clifftop.
Sea breezes toss and twirl pollen,
eddies send some back down to the beach.
Land breezes feed pollen to the dark waters far below.
The flowers are ever-tousled by the wind’s rough hand.
What must they love, in their sightless stance,
that matches my sighted stare at sea and sky?
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POEM: Agents of Change
They took the Moral High Ground,
commanding its lofty heights.
And never bombed trespassers,
but let them fail on their own.
Some wanted to let their anger show,
to know that they’d struck back.
Those few tumbled from the high ground,
landing in the scree of despot lackeys.
In the end, the powerless, that Juggernaut,
could not be defeated.
For every step usurpers made
shone a harsh light on their souls,
and all the world saw the gruesome image
that was reflected back.
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POEM: City Noir
Neon-fired
Rippling lights,
churning & flashing,
colors dancing off the walls,
pooling & spinning into each other
Oh, how the colors glisten on wet pavement
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POEM: Little-e Epiphany
The little “e” epiphany
strikes me in
the middle of the night.
Enveloped in darkness, I lie,
contemplating
the bold stories the world has told.
I think upon slapped cheeks
and
grand strategy
and
the universe outside my door.
I wonder whether one can
be change
and
change one’s being,
or
whether there’s a choice to be made.
I feel at peace —
though not enough
to drift back to sleep.
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POEM: Invisible World
The clouds are on the mountain.
The world feels faint and fading.
I look out in the distance,
but my eyes can’t focus.
I believe the world is out there,
but I can never say for sure.
What’s beyond the shape of
that distant line of trees, there?
Is it something good, or
nothing of the kind?
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POEM: Seed of a Scream
The seed of a scream sits somewhere behind my sternum.
It writhed, crawled, or (maybe) floated there with great stealth.
It’s the spark that fires the powder keg.
There’s no old-fashioned fuse,
slowly burning like a sparkler.
You never see the rippling shockwaves,
just the debris —
that detritus that begs,
“What happened here?”
Scream stifling
requires walking around with no air to gasp —
no air to scream.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 