a snowy park. chubby birds flit about in search of seed
Snow Birds [Haiku]
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Tag Archives: poem
Beautiful Scum [Tanka]
the algae pond - dappled with leafy fractals, patterns shift. what moves: water or branch? or, perhaps, just my mind
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Soulless Voyager [Free Verse]
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
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The Thoreau Life [Common Meter]
What a way to live one's life, in a cabin made of wood; never to be governed by: "I have to! I must! I should!" To set one's sights on the day's needs as one's only master, and not be told, "you move too slow, you must live life faster." To start the day by a cue from rays of the rising sun. To end the day when the day ends, not only just've begun.
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Lantana [Tanka]
two flaming umbels of yellow-orange lantana; but my eye moves to the bud cluster that sits in the background
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Wheel of Watching [Haiku]
watching monkeys watch humans, watching monkeys; ad infinitum
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Foul Winds [Free Verse]
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.
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Sneaky Monkey [Haiku]
one monkey minds its own business; the other has mischief in mind
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Labyrinth [Free Verse]
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?
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The Flood [Senryū]
a farmer surveys his new stretch of sea, mulling careers
