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 |   "Scattered leaved with poetic imprints." My new collection of poetry. |
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P.(tree)Log ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Well, it's now mid- 2019 and this is still the only book I use to house part of my new poetry. I began using it years ago due to a lack of storage space in my over-700 item WDC portfolio. I really need to do some spring, summer, fall and winter cleaning. There are still lots of static items which have never received any mention by other members here. But that's part of the problem of being a writer ( musician, artist, actor ... ). I do not know how to network. Thanks for discovering this link. Please leave a comment. Bookmark it, please.... This is a writing site and not FarceBrook where it's so easy just to press the button "LIKE." (( And I am not a fan of the fact that WDC has added it. )) |
| His bedroom is dark enough, afternoon sunlight doesn't penetrate the slats of his venetian blinds. Others prefer the quiet of a willow tree, a shaded tent on a deserted beach on a day where there is no wind. He deserves his peace. I share stories of ideal vacation spots. The truth is, just getting away from habit is enough. The meals taste of exotic, dishes resemble dishes. Hot water and soap. But I rarely send myself a postcard after a satisfying meal at home. Add a beach umbrella and a portable barbecue, and there's romance about. Everyone likes a good love story. What happens under sunny skies [2014.25.7...b] |
| This afternoon, the physical therapist team was late, the stopfront was unlighted, no relaxing music filtered onto the street from the half-opened windows. Four of us waited. Not to be late, I leave with plenty of time to spare. I lose my way many times. Some people arrive with only time to run before the proper hour chimes "too late." I do not like to live dangerously. Forgotten the thrills of carpe diem. There were years during Peace and Love when I didn't care about anything but satisfaction. Looking at my younger me, I wonder who kidnapped him and who is this imposter. His soul seems smaller today. I talk too much, about things over which I have lost control. Items and events. I see therapists in other human beings and asume they are all interested in my "états d'âme." More and more I bore myself. I abhor people who repeat themselves. My tales of wonder and blunder ramble on like an old vinyl with the needle always stuck between the same syllables, making it seem as if I still stutter. How can one go foreward, always stumbling over clumsy feet and not respecting the ratio of the proverbial two steps backward for every step forward? However complicated the path is, I will not be late for my own future. stumbling and stuttering [2014.24.7...a] |
| A different grey has settled over the city. The thick rain clouds of the last three days have lifted leaving a left-over haze blurring details on the closest horizon. Further out the view that has accustomed itself to my appreciation has dwindled to a desperate no man's land. Close to home, parks and gardens glisten with with a palette of fresh, bright colors not yet dried on the canvas, as if recent storms have washed away the city's grime embedded into each living strand. The puddles shrink slowly, welcoming mosquitos before sunlight returns to bake the ground once more. Governing the nights, no starlight, no moonlight, but a white hovering of the city's busyness reflecting from the low grey drapes. It is weather for long hours of sleep. Above my bed the skylights are white covered, as with thick, January snowfall. No need to draw the curtains. When other winds arrive, the backdrop of life will blue in astonishing shades. Then I can open my eyes and stop imagining. closed in [2014.22.7...b] |
we hide in wind chimes waiting to be blown east names us, west laughs south calls our dreams north is fear - death's hand we are its shadows [2014.15.7...b] |
in my dream I sit at a sidewalk cafe composing haiku, weighing syllables against paraphrases a reactionary with checkerboard tablecloths, rainbow parasols and tourists dressed in plaid carrying beach apparel sunlight see saws across varied, broad-striped skies carnival plays the street I order another festival drink hoarding their gay umbrellas my child-me collected beach pebbles in my dream I am a mere student of words seizing minutes from that sunset before the moon laughs at jokes it remembered light years ago when the stars were also children in the moments of a dream [2014.13.7...a] |
| So much inclement weather has left the gardens empty. Heavy with humidity, trees wait for a rustle of wind which has finally settled. The stone paths have dried long before my feet contact them. Their steps leading upwards are irregular in depth and height, I negotiate their uniqueness carefully. I gather strength from their oldness. Grass is wet, the slopes glisten like mid-spring. I have waited all morning for this respite. I carry no book to read, to throne on a bench, sole conqueror of this space. Nonetheless, I wait for the phone to ring. It will jar the tranquility here. I cannot avoid the disruption when it occurs. Later, after the news, the moon may spread the clouds just enough to allow a reassuring glimpse of beauty. I must become a rock tonight. It is not my hour to be crushed into ashes. the space of rocks [2014.12.7...b] |
| If I write a dream, before Morpheus catches my nodding head in his supple arms, would the colors soothe my aches, would the gentle forest sounds calm the overload on my shoulders, would the words I imagine take me beyond my mortality onto another plain? Last night I compiled lists of qualities of everyone my life had encountered. I could not place myself last, though so many seemed more worthy before a long cross examination. I have heard music I cannot describe, the gears shifting between heaven and hell, my sense of analysis incapable of anything other than appreciation. I have loved gods and all of their angels, statuesque and of the most charming charnel aspects. I have prayed, and damned those closest to me -- two things rarely known to me outside of this oblivion. I have asked questions of Plato and Jesus, their answers making those tender hours of bliss swoon in my memory for days past my waking. I have seen greatness. I have tasted poverty and abandon. These things I forget, too foreign to my day to day. The rest, decades and decades of dreams, throw upon my waking mind slivers of perfection that shine, sometimes, in the early morning sunlight. This is why I arise. Hoping, just once, to improve my reality. [2014.11.7...b] |
| One hundred and ninety-two steps. Give or take five. A narrow staircase between two rows of buildings, how it would be lovely to own a home on this incline. Moving in would be a bitch. On the boulevard above, small portable umbrellas all seem to be of floral patterns, gaily offsetting the drizzle and over present grey sky. I wear cheap fold-into-a-pocket hooded raingear. Why do windbreakers and other keep-out-the-elements outdoor apparels all have elastic tightened wrists, making these garments into instant portable saunas? Unwelcome in July, the falling mist is cold on my face. I am on my morning expedition to purchase groceries for two. My lover has been lamed after falling from a ladder's certain height, breaking his left ankle. There were thiry-seven stitches and he will make airport alarms go off when he can fly again. We made a list of things he needed, things we needed and I will surprise him with things neither of us thought about. I am his legs. Although he is not yet ready to listen to my stories about umbrellas on the boulevard. The pharmacy closed precisely at noon. I was ten minutes late. not fast enough this morning [2014.10.7...a] |
| i am not yet pleased with the title, but want to post this before I leave for Lyon. center of night caught up in the blight of darkness' fever the collective snoring of hundreds of sleep-filled people wakes me, just enough for the tendrils of insomnia to place a crick in my neck and say "ha! you see?" I spit back "silence! damned gnome have you no respect for my aging bones my quivering muscles oblivion's hunger?" I have scared him the conversation, capped in brevity induces no pieces compatible with rest I twist clockwards, two hours since I dove successfully into that beloved state of nothingness "jigsaw?" he knows his ABC's of temptation I select Cervantes hoping windmills will blow peace upon my puzzled, aching being I fight once more against inevitable dragons without magic pills thus I lose this battle too you cannot tempt me thus [2014.9.7...a] |
| There is no direct path. I feel compelled to zig-zag, whatever the direction, whatever the destination. There are detours for beauty’s sake, a sort of walking meditation. Mindfulness, in today’s lingo. Detours necessary to avoid certain streets or certain sidewalks, to enjoy certain houses or certain shop windows. I am not superstitious, nor a creature of habit; but direct paths to and from multiple destinations, i.e. the bakery, the vet clinic and the closest supermarket, simply do not amuse me. When I speak, I zig-zag also, aware of a lack of tact, certain brutal words of truth; there is no simple way to suggest someone needs breath mints. "Perhaps after all the dental work you have had recently, thirty seconds of brushing twice a day is not quite enough." The path to banish halitosis is never an easy one. My childhood acne was exacerbated by Mommy Dearest's fear that my breath was never fresh enough. The former, the mirror quantified. Of the latter, I was never certain. Listerine after brushing three times a day and still I cupped my hand in front of my mouth every time circumstances placed my voice in close proximity to another human being. Avoiding and hand-cupping became twin addictions, one dependent on the other. I used to perfume myself heavily, hoping it would hide what she insisted were "all the unpleasant odors". I’m still not sure that this zig-zagging is not an additional source of stress. She’s dead now, but her ghost-maternalizing still walks hand in hand with my shadows. So I take the least likely ways here and there, hoping to lose both. I get lost a lot. the fresh side of the street [2014.8.7…a] |
| Once again there is a blight upon the day. The rain has quieted, as has the negative influence of certain unsavory and unstable inhabitants on the periphery of my life. Summer vacation times have seduced the lives of many, having departed at sunrise. The streets mellow in their surprisingly desertedness. Even the outdoor handy-man and his portable workbench are silent. I imagine him repainting garage doors, requiring no electric saws, drills or hammers. I try to find my voice in this silence. I am glued by impatience. Two over-emotional letters I wrote have not received an answer. A naked pain spreads from my heart to my head, a treacherous path of tension that knots my muscles into swollen sea-faring ropes. I sit in the berth of my darkened bedroom remembering other years when the same frustration caused a tsunami of tears. Now, they are muffled sink holes between the ebb and flow of rising pain. In kitchen cupboards no spirits tempt this unquenched thirst. No medication which, if taken in improper doses, might leave a permanent trail from this desperation. My pen scratches holes in the paper, writing another treatise of inaudible words. I was not born mute. deaf and blind [2014.7.7...a] |
| They bloom like forgotten, ancient weeds. Second by second, another faint drop clings to the each window pane; they do not slide. Hundreds of bubbles slowly drying, replaced regularly by new ones. Were there light, they would glisten like tiny rainbows. There is little luminosity. The rooms are dark, even with curtains not performing their role of occulting the space with intimacy. There is bird song. It too slows and accelerates as higher, more mysterious uniformly white clouds replace ones emptied of their water. A man with a heavy African accent punctuates this background noise with his insistent, hello, hello, hello, hello bellowed into a cell phone as he walks to wherever his legs will carry him. His voice booms a word unheard by one, most important person. A distant boom-boom-boom of teen-age birthday-party dance music makes the neighborhood throb with its faraway rhythm. Drums beating messages from one hilltop to the next, only the language is unknown to people not born just twenty-something years ago. Sixteen unpaired socks dry on a portable indoor rack. They may, or may not, be matched with other changelings found deep in various drawers overcrowded with unworn teeshirts and ratty underwear. A more thorough housekeeper would pile these soft objects in a box kept under the kitchen sink, to be paired with cleaning liquids for windows and floors, walls and curtains. A collection of old colorful plastic mechanical pencils should probably be added to the list of discardable things: they have never had their lead souls replaced. Their erasers are for the most part new. Suddenly all sound has stopped. Perhaps a prayer being answered. Have these small distractions found a path towards more eternity than their original creators had intended? Pigeons dart by the study window. Their movement brings an insistent and unwelcome cooing back to the wet air. Fledglings with beaks wide opened trying to avoid raindrops diluting the taste of flies and spiders. They, like rats and cockroaches, would have so many centuries of collective memorized tales to tell. No one knows the language. distractions [2014.6.7…a] |
| Nothing restful. Midnight is a dense, sultry darkness, binding my eyes to shadows. The anticipation of a noise, from within, from below, from beyond the opened windows, fights like shell-shock where only restlessness remains. These sounds cannot be forgotten. Sleeplessness imitates them well, floundering between the boundaries of now and then. Barbed wire and land mines. Testing the limits of the visible and the imagined. To tread water under a starless sky, praying that the salt has stifled the rouging that seeps from the injuries and that sharks will not sense tension from desperate leg motions. My calves cramp. My fists pound at their rebellion as if I am banging my head against the bedpost. Hoping to bludgeon myself senseless and inoculate the dreams with real pain, palpable, measurable, countable as I follow the swelling of my pulse as it diminishes towards a death that does not grant me its presence. untitled [2014.5.7…a] |
| The long lingering light of day has finally calmed into a uniform anthracite. It reduces all of my horizons, physical and emotional. The only sounds remaining are the residual humming of city life and the throbbing pain in my heart. It has, as is customary, awakened me like a physical disturbance after a few hours. Like an old cancerous friend who should no longer be welcome in the intimacy of my bedroom. I no longer fight his arrival. Tonight the pain points to the twisted road of an unforgiven direction. That first moment those dearest to me solemnly shared their vision of my impurity. They justified themselves with the good book. They mistook their fears and painted upon my life a reality that screamed of ignorance and bias. This theatrically unreal discourse was served in low hushed voices as desert arrived in a lovely restaurant, after a lovely meal I thought up until that moment had been offered out of love. In a single flash I learned of the blinders and qualifiers they placed upon their religiously defined version of love. They made me feel like dirty dish water. Greasy and tepid. A single, cruel hypocrisy that twenty-five years later makes me suffer from its deep soul-slashing. Come alone, do not bring your man. We can find love (a certain thwarted definition of the word) for the sinner, but will not welcome the sin in our home. Did they truly believe that my unconditional love for my family could endanger their children? I cannot seek solace in the darkest hours of the night. Do they know why? Moments to clothe my unwashableness in sweat-streaked sheets. Moments that do not appease their banishment. Yes, solitude is this cancerous friend. He has refined my definition of love. Those of my blood, born to a purity of love that should never create boundaries, have partitioned me, like a criminal in a cage, with no care packages. I am as empty as the dark night. They have left me to stare at the stains of their words painted on the walls shrinking around me. unwashable [2014.24.6…a] |
| The sunset is pinkish, with orange and deep purple stripes. It lingers as they all do after the summer solstice. A few windows visible from my fourth-floor perch have greenish or bluish television tints. They shimmer. As will the starlight later on. There have been no clouds today. That forecasts another clear night. Perhaps the dreams will come pleasantly, instead of terrors and monsters, improbable visions of devilish colors; my sister’s prediction that I am doomed to hell. Lately I fear the hour I must fall asleep. I procrastinate as long as my weary body will allow. Way beyond the moment the streets are calm. Beyond the last footfall of people hurrying home to the comfort of their own beds. As I close my eyes I will remember tonight’s colors. They are perhaps that untimely and vivid backdrop for the unrestful nights lately. But if I conjured the black backdrop of night sky and the silver starlight, would not the black and white create a world where things are just so and contains no element of transition? Heaven and hell. when closed eyes see into imagination [2014.23.6…b] |
| I am a voyeur, piecing lives together, translating unspoken thoughts. I hear the crack of a broken soul. It’s like you're talking to your dead twin. Angry because he's gone deaf, angry because he is dumber than you, angry because he didn't anticipate your loneliness. It's time to plug in that pinball machine, rock that loud music from the 70s and down a pint of whiskey with a shot glass of forgiveness. This last mix, of course, is dangerous. Beware: maudlin side effects. From outside the triple paned, frosted glass of this oh-so-breakable tower, I see your hands fumble through life. But intentions, burned beyond my recognition, char away the light. A lifetime from the explosion point. Unsettling the dead brings back more stench than their favorite cologne. uninvited conversations [2014.1.6…b] |
| After midnight they're coming, going home, no more hullabaloo & the bars empty. The city sleeps on valium. What is it about these elephants parading through Manhattan? They go largely unnoticed, even this curiosity lacks enormity to stop drunken party-goers stumbling home. Perhaps they see pink & say to themselves "nope, can’t be". Me, sober & alone, I watch eight of them in neat a row, trumpeting to the flash of billboard signs. Three clowns follow, their arms bearing gifts, because I choose to think --no, I must believe -- that such defining oddness is strangely gentle rather than strange & macabre. Rather than assume they will try to bury the mastodons & wash away tons of blood with a single bucket. On this starlit night, when nature cannot forget, their weeping will not be shadowed. The one with a flashlight wears a coat of David, but does not carry himself with pious dignity. The one branding a shovel is Pierrot. His moon dress will be stained in a few hours, drenched from elephant tears. The other, the one with a bucket, is too skinny, his body painted like a black and white negative. He would frighten the children were they still awake. The elephants still wear shackles & circus frills. Human stench. maybe we should be asleep [2014.11.5…a] After a poem by Robert Brewer |
when we write about love revoke this tsunami of sadness witches dance at midnight when words do not tender from one place to the next your voice teaches me who I am alone in the city I cannot lose you the way that i can be wrapped in the hour you say yes at the arboretum we dine on desert beetles, we sip salted waves as the sun set in the forest we are the last couple on a new arch because the night calls us we spin beyond the next revolving cold water does not wash out love's stains a small tear in the pillows my head, your head like welcome miracles every dream consumes human memory follow me like bright stars no escape, never a shadow anywhere we dare to go until we die you origami me into patterns of eternity in the eight o'clock yoga class [2014.10.5...b] Author's Note: The purpose of this poem is to write a call and response poem based on a series of titles from Robert Lee Brewer's book "Solving the Wordl's Problems". I'm entering several new texts in his challenge to "remix" poetry from his book. Here I chose only his titles, which all represent the first line of each couplet, my "response" being each second line. The poem's title is not in my typical style; more an imitation of Brewer's very diverse and edifying titles. |
MURDER & THE LOVE CURSE sex, again NCIS instead of Coldplay decapitated husband the door slams wind catches it I drown in your last kiss I feel like falling off the twelfth floor balcony behind your shadow a last moment for myself here or there run to the elevator [2014.9.5...b] Prompt: Title alone inspired the poem. It is from poet Robert Lee Brewer's collection "Solving the World's Problems". I maintained only the twelve line form of his poem. |
| He said to loosen up, to take wing like a butterfly, to sense the diaphanous nature of its wings. I could have gotten into a rose. I’ve tried rose before, be aware of the space around me, but I got stuck doing convincing thorns. I was grounded, too much like a cathedral, too gothic, too praiseworthy. Not that butterflies and roses aren’t, but he wanted me to move, to flutter, to occupy all of the space around me. Not that a cathedral doesn’t do that; it takes space from the neighborhood and moves it inwards. Towards introspection. Although when you’re tithing ten percent, you like to be called a parishioner instead of space. Millions of people have died because of similar silly details. Boundaries and other segregating differences. The dead take up less space that way. We hover in cemeteries with potted plants. Pacing our places in space every Sunday from morning's stain-glass confinement to afternoon's mourning with oak tree deep breathing. Or sobbing, if we pretend to still care. How else can I become a rose? Intent. Look at it first. See its small blooms. Then as they open gently. Then the full beauty of fragrance attracting bees. I could do a bee. Or a hive, buzzing busily. Dancing to point my cohorts in the proper direction of the closest field filled with sunflowers. I tried the samba class next door two months ago. They told me I needed more supple, a willow or wind. I played being a stormed tree for ten days. Majestic stationary quiet, in between gusts. My arms tired of stretching upwards. Trees have no lines to speak, they're just filler. But I have great shoulder muscles. what we are not [2014.8.5…b] |
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