church bells peal on a rainy, leaden morning
tern squeal heard between the tolls —
rain muffled
fishing boats ride out on the rolling ocean
exact whereabouts unknown
POEM: Leaden Morning
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Tag Archives: poetry
POEM: Sunrise Beach
people stagger down to sunrise beach,
like a zombie horde,
bed creases still fading
Sunworshipers —
in the literal sense —
not the kind seeking some shade of bronze
and what better to honor?
should the sun fail to shine
we’re eight minutes from our midnight
should it disappear altogether
we would hurl away,
an ice block
to be slung about by gravitational fields
or to simply careen into some other
unsuspecting block of ice or iron
except for vents from our molten core
all energy begins in that solar furnace
all green leaves
all creatures who eat the green leaves
all the creatures who eat the creatures who eat the green leaves
all fired by that grand fusion
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POEM: Relativity [a sonnet]
in the space of a blossom’s drift to earth
i feel the gravity give way below
i’ve all the time for terror, shock, and mirth
as tics and tocks go viscous in their flow
each emotion will be given its due
stretched out as if by hands that squeeze and pull
and i can feel, better than see the view
as the planet hangs in a peculiar lull
by the time i start to see the humor
i’m bouncing off the pavement on my back
has my mind been rewired by a tumor?
or has my train of mind slipped its track?
then a blaring horn fills the silent void
and return the kindly and the annoyed
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POEM: Perspective
red lights glint off the rails
no trains pass by tonight
moon striped in jet contrails
I wonder who’s in flight
perched upon a boxcar
jets seem so far from here
I see a patch of stars
recall words of Shakespeare
about heaven, earth, and my philosophy
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POEM: Mythic Moonlight
faces glow in mythic moonlight
a world away from here
you may ask what makes it mythic?
the stories that one hears
a young son regales his mother,
who hangs on every word,
with a tale of lunchtime mayhem
and food covertly hurled
two lovers chat about a dream
that one of them just had
about a few stolen moments,
in an alien crash pad
and an old man tells a young one,
he’s not afraid to die
how he left his fear in a field
with a piece of his thigh
so many people share one moon
focal point of their stares
souls unload a bit of burden
from the heft of their cares
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POEM: Split Personality
i am sender and receiver
of the
voiceless voice
i am projector and audience
of
movies of the mind
i am perpetrator and victim
of
pleasure and pain
i am a human brain
stacked on a
mammalian brain
stacked on a
reptilian brain,
and all at odds
and then
I am
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POEM: Block of Time
some say time is a block —
a finished work,
not full on one side of the present and empty on the other —
all causes and effects are settled —
except the causeless first cause
and the effectless final cause
we worm our way through time
like a worm chomps through an apple,
rather than building a future along time’s arrow
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POEM: Blake’s Virtue
by Thomas Phillips, oil on canvas, 1807
box of virtue, or box of sin
which one does this act go in?
and why put each one in a box?
to sell the sins down by the docks?
Blake the madman, Blake the pious
the difference reflects your bias
wedging each act into a crate
dilutes the evil and the great
all so the vain can extricate
themselves above the ones they hate
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POEM: Pangong Tso Haiku
painted skies
make mountains puny
by contrast
in thin air
poor sleep paid in
grand skies
Pangong Tso
seen as by the prisoner
from Plato’s cave
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BOOK REVIEW: How to Love a Country by Richard Blanco
How to Love a Country by Richard Blanco
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Out March 26, 2019
This book takes one on a roller coaster ride of insight into the author’s relationship with his country as an immigrant from a family of Cuban exiles. At times the tone is hopeful and at other times seething or even vitriolic. Unlike many of the angry works of political verse of late, this one sometimes reflects that most beautiful of pragmatic truths: one can’t truly love anything if one can’t embrace it imperfections and all. As it happens, this wide sway in tone is partly the result of these poems being collected from various sources. Having a poem commissioned by the State Department in a collection with a poem that was a response to a news story about someone being gunned down is bound to result in some variation in feel. Still, I think the poems were well-organized to reflect the various trials and glories one goes through in a relationship. The angry verse is well-positioned toward the middle, and about the time I was over the rage, the storm clouds began to break up and a more beautiful scene unfolded.
The poems are prose poetry or free verse. There is beautiful use of language interspersed with plain-spoken verse.
I’d recommend this collection for poetry readers. I don’t suspect it will have a particularly wide audience. A jingoistic reader who picks it up for its title will drop it like a hot rock long before getting to the aforementioned angry plateau. Which is not to say that there isn’t something to be gained from reading this book even if it doesn’t comport with one’s own views. The issue of division along fault lines of political-philosophy is a major theme of this collection.
