I slow my exhalation rate –
my heart begins to slow.
The world then slows, at least my piece
just glides in glacial flow,
& all is well.
POEM: Stretch Your Breath, Stretch Your World
4
Tag Archives: poem
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.
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Spider Haiku
I
the spider,
binding itself four ways,
in a sham rack
II
spider darts
to the center of its web —
tripped by false finger
III
spider dangles,
slanting in a breeze,
reaching to leaf
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POEM: Grace & Beauty at a Distance
As I wade through tall grass,
it seems to be a hodge-podge of random heights,
randomly spaced,
and drooping in random directions,
but when I look out at a distance,
that tall grass smooths the world
into soft rounded shapes.
I guess a lot of things are like that.
Imperfections and differences seen near at hand
vanish into grace and beauty at a distance.
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POEM: The Tao of Being
Dance that mad head-on collision
into that which spins like a top.
Let it roll; but don’t make it stop.
Cleave, but don’t create the division.
Don’t strike out for fields, Elysian;
find Eden in being unaffected.
Be none; be all, & thus connected.
Sometimes, there’s might in precision,
but, sometimes, it kills through indecision.
Heed the Way more than the result.
No one ‘s converted by insult.
Stifle the urge to spew derision.
Moral superiority won’t keep you warm;
it’s just illusion of another form.
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POEM: Harvest on the Farm [Ottava Rima]
My memories of autumn are clearest —
the harvest time, when fields had turned amber,
with desiccated stalks – devoid of spirits.
And in the grain, we children would clamber,
’cause cleaning out wagons was time cherished.
Those short days are now brighter and grander.
It was an age of colossal machines,
and kernels of corn and tiny soybeans.
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POEM: Figure
little nubs in a rounded spine,
subtle hollows between muscles;
we lazily build with sharp corners —
corners that don’t exist
in the backbones of beauty
as we know it
graceful curves and subtle transitions
are beyond our capacity to build
but are the only shapeless shapes
that we can truly appreciate
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POEM: Epistemic Hungry Ghost
blocks of knowledge
sit in rubble piles,
having been coveted, hunted, and horded,
they sit in rubble piles
the Epistemic Hungry Ghost
is too busy gathering blocks
to shove and nudge
them into load-bearing
structural integrity
that takes patience & a plan
&
there are too many blocks,
so many blocks —
ripe for the picking —
so many blocks
Who’d have thought learning could be a drug —
a crack-rock addition
with a prettier face
and prettier fidgets?
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Spring Blossom Tanka
blossoms fall,
tumbling in a stiff breeze;
on the ground
they form a purple shadow,
ignoring the sunlight
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POEM: Visiting Dystopia [Triolet]
I opened up a book to a strange land.
A storied portal let me travel through,
and I looked down an unknown city’s strand.
I’d opened up a book to a strange land.
Here, ironically, all great books were banned
to keep the locals home and quite subdued.
I opened up a book to a strange land;
a storied portal let me travel through.
