Tag Archives: poem

POEM: A Mythical Child of the Corn

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Whenever I tell anyone that I grew up on a farm,
I get a certain reaction,

“REALLY?”

As if, of all the lies I could tell, that’s the one I’d pick.

You believed me when I told you I’d met the original Hamburglar,
but not that I grew up on a farm?

[Incidentally, I did meet A Hamburglar, but I’m pretty sure it was a sweaty teenager with limited job prospects.]

I don’t really think these people think I’m a liar.

Perhaps they thought farms are like Conestoga wagons and cave paintings,
quaint reflections of simpler bye-gone days.

Maybe they thought their corn chips were grown in petri dishes in a subterranean factory.

[Bad example. Maybe corn chips are manufactured that way, but I’m pretty sure somewhere there is a hose through which good old Hoosier-grown corn is fed in; maybe it’s just defective kernels that weren’t salable to the makers of feed for hulking Angus cattle, but still…]

Anyhow, I suspect they are just excited to come across someone so rare — if in a workaday way.

It’s nothing like meeting Neil Armstrong or Beyoncé,

but rather like meeting the guy who did Neil Armstrong’s tire alignment or who cleans Beyoncé’s fish tanks.

A mundane superstar.

A mythical child of the corn.

POEM: You’re Killing Me, Ms. Dickinson, or: Samurai Surgery

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“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”    – Emily Dickinson

 

It’s mean accuracy and angry power that can cleave the top off a head;
neither merely scalping the reader,
nor decapitating him.

Popping the top to blow the mind is samurai surgery.
Some lines tink against the forehead like a dull knife,
while others — with razor-sharpness — succeed only in shearing an unsightly bald spot.

The fabled Taoist butcher could cleanly slice between the bone ends,
never dulling his cleaver,
but that’s not much help for one seeking to take off the top of a head…

or is it?

POEM: Sunset on the Sea

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Will those trawlers haul their nets through the night,
even after darkness has descended?
When clustered stars offer the only light,
and the land-locked day has long since ended?

Are fishing vessels like the dreaded shark,
that swims endlessly when wetted by sea?
No mourning nor merriment owed the dark,
and miles between the hull and the quay.

They persistently glide on ocean tides,
measuring time by space left in the hold.
There’s a secret some sailors will confide,
each outing ends in a death unforetold.

There is the pleasant death of days at rest,
but then there’s becoming Poseidon’s guest.

Ninja Nursery Rhymes

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Public Domain image from Wikipedia

Ninja be nimble,

Ninja be quick,

Ninja knock you on the noggin with a big stick.

***

Ninja be stealthy… healthy… and wise,

Ninja snatch like a snake, pull out your eyes.

***

Biscuit in a basket,

Ninja put you in a casket.

***

Heading home from the archives,

I met this cat who had five lives.

He’d met four ninja in lives past.

One life was lost in a big blast…

two were stabbed,

and the last one gassed.

Reaching home, ninja at his door,

his lives remaining numbered four.

***

Uh, oh, Ninja,

Have you any heads?

Yes, sir, yes, sir,

Three over in the shed.

One for my Lady,

One for my Lord,

One for the practice,

’cause I got a new sword.

***

Eeny, meeny, miny, egg.

Catch the Shogun by his leg.

If he hollers, make him beg.

Eeny, meeny, miny, egg.

***

Hey, Willie Winkie, you’re making too much noise.

Running around town, checking on girls and boys.

If you’d have done your job, and shut the kid up.

I’d not have had to put Ambien in his juice cup.

***

5 Haiku on Consciousness

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thoughts form & float,
reflections of a gliding bird
over murky pools.



sleeping deeply,
universe? where art thou?
do you rest too?



within my dreams,
i feel the familiar,
but see the strange.



images gel,
but seeking sense in them
sends them hiding.



next car rolls fore,
i yank the parking brake,
halting false back drift.

POEM: Flower Market

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Taken in September of 2013 in Bangalore at K.R. Market

Garland coils in saffron and yellow.
Burlap bags of loose blooms in many hues.
Free petals strewn across the floor.

Vendors sit like stamen, still amid the chaos.
Customers waft around like pollen on the wind.
And workers flit about like industrious bees.

POEM: My Nature, or: Water Cycle

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Lay me down amid the mountains,

where the sky can call to me.

Set me under the falling rains.

Let me flow down to the sea.

I will float up toward the heavens,

and I’ll glide across the sky.

I will tour the Wonders seven

as a tear drop, sans an eye.

Rain down, run down, rise and repeat,

cycling to the end of days,

feeding plants and beating the heat,

heeding the summons of sun rays.

Long vacation in a glacier.

This is just my human nature.

POEM: Dizzy

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Public Domain photo from NASA – ISS [International Space Station]

i’m seeing the world through spin arc,
like long exposure photos of a night sky,
the ones that generate Van Goghesque color swirls,
and always offer a stock-still element for contrast:
a tree,
a windmill,
a radio tower,
or a satellite solar array.

“Stock-still” is a bold damned lie
for something moving at 600,000 meters per second,
as it:
revolves,
orbits,
and expands
its way through a universe
that loathes stillness so much
that even the atoms in a block of cold iron,
floating in the depths of space,
are jittery.

POEM: Some Clichéd Advice

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Steer into that dizzy skid.

Don’t pop the top, blow the lid.

Life happens: while making plans.

No plans? Just kick that can.

Dance, like they ain’t watchin’ you.

Buy a vowel, get a clue.

Yesterday is history,

Tomorrow is a mystery,

Today is a gift, like socks.

Which you should grab, after dropping your…*

______________________________________________________________________

[*Note: I caught “Full Metal Jacket” on TV last night.]

POEM: Himalaya

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How the feet slow, up amid the ice flow.
Where air is rare, and each step goes higher,
thinking of those who froze or maybe lost a toe,
yet trudged through the scree, the snow, and the mire.

But who’s ever said it wasn’t worth the trip?
You may well hate to feel yourself suffocate,
but you’ll buy your permit, and get all equipped,
strapping on your pack, taking task with fate.

To see the orange glow on the ridgeline,
like fire dancing on the edge of a knife.

But what monster has such a wicked spine,
begging a fight to the last ounce of life.

Please meet the lovely “abode of snows,”
I think you’ll find her worth the throes.