Put the sun at your back and run headlong toward the darkness. Killing days at record speed, leaning into the terminus, and you wake up in the light and prepare for another westward run.
Westward Run [Free Verse]
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Tag Archives: Vers Libre
Possibilities [Free Verse]
Possibility. That which is not, but could be: in the future, or in a world as feasible as our own. (perhaps more so?) When is a possibility a reality? It may not be a reality unless - and until - it comes to be, and, yet, might be a basis of reality, decisions are made on assumptions that a possibility has high probability of becoming reality. I see kids playing and feel the expanding field of possibility, and wonder when it starts to shrink, to collapse? When & why does possibility die?
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Elephantine Baobab [Free Verse]
It's called Hatiyan-ka-Jhad because it looks like a huddled herd of elephants -- not only in its corpulence but also with its rough, gray skin. So rotund at its base that it's hard to figure how its slowly slimming upward taper can come to twiggy ends, and not be a mile tall. The branches are overly muscular, like a bodybuilder who got carried away, moving from strong and vigorous into the domain of science fiction mishap. It has its own mythology -- multiple creation tales about how its seed got from Madagascar to the middle of India half a millennium ago: tales of fakirs and royal envoys. It's even been said that the Forty Thieves, the ones who tormented Ali Baba, used its hollow as their cache cave. But it refuses to respond to "Open Sesame" -- so I guess we'll never know.
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Tree of a Thousand Twigs [Free Verse]
When monsoon rains soaked the soil, that old tree toppled. They cut it out of the roadway, & I went out to count its rings, but found it not with hundreds of rings, but hundreds of trunks -- many no more than twigs. What a mighty tree a pile of twigs pressed together can make, & now it's gone.
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Into the Light [Free Verse]
crawling from the cave, like Plato's untethered shadow man a portal to perfection, as perfect as anyplace can be: meaning, it has depth & credibility the day is cloudy, and yet it's blinding, blinding to eyes attuned to the light of dancing orange flames, flames seen secondhand -- bounced off a wall, a dark, dank wall what amazing sights must there be - out there don't disappoint me now
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Deep in the Forest [Free Verse]
What happens in the strange, nearsighted isolation of the forest? -- sounds dulled by thick, soft moss and masked by burbling water, and insect buzz, and bird song What happens to the rude mechanicals who venture too deep into those soft but terminal lands? -- where the last stand of life plays out
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Mythic Love [Free Verse]
Myths cheapen love with potions & pointy passion projectiles, pansies squeezed over the eyes of cold souls [when paired with a proper incantation] can make love from naught or turn love on its head, but that which can be turned on its head is not love -- & never was love.
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The Axeman [Free Verse]
Hangman... Axeman... Guillotine art-eest... Stool-kicker... Lever-yanker... Elongator of necks... His motto: "Making them deader than your average beheader." Sharpening his blade, Split hair-testing Precise as the Taoist butcher -- blade between bone, no nicks allowed Killer of killers, an audience thriller Step right up... Any last words? Masked & shirtless + pudgy & sweaty He's the hangman, the axeman, a killer of killers.
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Anarchy [Free Verse]
Anarchy evokes chicken body bumper cars. Constant movement that is not only undirected, but also: fast, violent, random, chaotic, and doomed to be short-lived. Anarchy seems like space in which many participants would soon be on their backs -- legs churning in spastic bursts, ineffectually. Like toppled robots or cockroaches that waded through gassy trenches. Limbs moving, as if confident that they can right the ship and recover the upright. But everyone watching knows they can't -- that the laws of physics won't support it, that it's just wasted motion. They might as well be in night terrors, for being able to move ineffectually seems only moderately less terrifying than not being able to move at all -- when faced with a situation from which one wants badly to get away. But, maybe, I've got it all wrong. Maybe that's not Anarchy at all.
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Self Speculation [Free Verse]
What's a Self? ...a soul? ...a set of neuronal activity? ...an illusion? ...a ghost in a machine? ...the body, the brain, & the whole enchilada? Memories can be false, and some always are. Thoughts can be illusory, and some always are. Feelings can be flighty & fickle, and some always are. If one loses a little toe, is one a diminished self, or still whole? What about if one loses a pinky toe-sized mass of brain? So many possibilities: ...death, ...changed personality, ...emotionlessness, ...speech pathologies, ...blindness, ...memory loss, ...coma, ...no discernable change, and so on. What's a Self? ...a dog? ...an embryo? ...an AI? ...an extraterrestrial? What is a self? Am I a self?
Tiger Riding for Beginners 