Thursday, January 31, 2013

Standing Tall In Moonlight

Image found on The Frog Posted by We5Ad 22 Oct 2009



Standing Tall In Moonlight

I stood then outside
to piss grandly in moonlight
on so many nights,
on my flat dry rock
standing tall under the deck
above, just touching
the post beside me
as always, and what I got
for that persistence
was mossy barkdust.

July 27, 2010 2:49 PM

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

A Fish Out Of Water - 3WW

Thom writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As  always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

To link up with this week's Three Word Wednesday *click here*

This week's words:

Drab; Pulsate; Tendril.

Taxidermy found on Cool Things

A Fish Out Of Water

Drab means without hue
and more, exhausted to boot.
And yes, that's the thing
besetting me, that
I've become that guy, bled out,
ash gray pallor though
I pulsate still, shade
of some living thing rustling
just outside the back
door, a wan tendril
of my grasp seeking what's left
of what I once was.

January 30, 2013 5:03 AM

I hope the parody in this comes through. Things aren't really that bad. I know I am not the only one. I wonder why it is so much easier to write the dark side. The only thing left to do is stick the fish head on the squirrel's body and call it a day. A hug and a kiss to all the girls. You guys - I am not leaving you out, but I don't kiss guys usually. I do hug my friends though. I hope all you people are my friends. I am placing all of it in God's lap where it belongs.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

The Bakery



The Bakery

Pollen bread tastes like
the strangeness in the sun's rays
striking blinding white
surfaces, color
stripes, the opinionated
shaping of flower
flour - how can this be?
Only if faerie relents
and bakes up new loaves.

July 26, 2010 7:28 PM



Monday, January 28, 2013

At A Loss

Sharing the mountain top with monkeys...



So what shall I do next? Hmmm. I just noticed a stack of bills... Maybe I will pay bills... Or do the dishes... Or take a bath...

At A Loss

I don't know how to
ease your pain, offer you peace,
raise the dead, roll time
back before that choice,
let you know I was the one,
tell you I love you.

I don't know how to
strip this aching from my bones.

At a loss, I go.

July 25, 2010 11:47 PM

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Where Are You Now? - A Magpie Tale

Image of Charlotte Gainsbourg chosen by Tess Kincaid to lead on this week's The Mag

Where Are You Now?

You sang your way in
and left me hot images
on the redwood slab,
the table in front
of my knees now, knobs of bone
that grind sand between
moments of my claim
on you. As if you matter.

You were my dream but
you were not a real
girl - Pinocchio all in full
drag, wooden head girl.
My heart full of dust
and ache for what you could be
and me too, me too.

January 27, 2013 10:34 AM

I have written this poem to the image left for us on Mag 153. That image appears in my fantasy recall as an image of someone I might have known back in the sixties, me in my twenties. It seems to be an image of her as she might have been in some other story of her youth and mine. I am grateful I she did not appear, did not rise up within me until twilight colored things differently. I am grateful I knew this dream for a short time rather than the lifetime obsession that could have been. I think. Maybe not. This one's for you, dear.

Join The Mag creative writing group

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Feline Love


Feline Love

At this one moment
you hover between the mouse
and my spotted hand
waiting for my touch.

You shave your whiskers using
the nearby edges to
squeeze out your feelings
and then move closer, touching
me with the thin tips
at your boundary.

I put up with you like this.
We are both old now.

July 25, 2010 9:12 PM

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

It's About Time! - 3WW

Thom writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As  always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

To link up with this week's Three Word Wednesday *click here*

This week's words:

Brag; Icy; Polite.


This illustration is said to depict one of the old Shakespearean actors on the road, travelling and advertising the plays.

It's About Time!

What a wild red hair!
I don't mean to brag it up
or dance a jig on
your stone ground coffee
(not too bad oh icy one!)
nor on your grave's head.
I mean, after all
that inaugural hoopla
over the beltway
it wouldn't be so
polite of my own damn self
to get all lord-like.

January 23, 2013 12:35 PM

It is said that all of Shakespeare's plays performed at the time at the Globe Theater ended with a jig performed by one of the company or more. It is not clear exactly what dance "jig" meant in the 1600's, at least not in the Shakespearean context, but the dance was light and lively. Apparently these jigs were performed at the end of the tragedies or comedies, just the same. They may have been choreographed to match the play in some lively way and apparently were designed to assist the audience's well being as they departed the theater.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Reminders Of Your Shape




Dark furry hope... What other kind is there? Perhaps bright lemon flower hope, or how about the watery sweet seed spitting hope of a watermelon summer? I could contain the maple sugar hope of an early spring of rising sap. The heat of summer hope in the hum of seventy thousand cicadas between here and the corner where your house is. God, this never ends, this embodiment of hope. The crystal knife edge sharp hope of a clear and dry winter's day. The slogging squishy hope of waterproof boots in the middle of an Arkansas swamp. The tiny hope found in the leech's mouth when you have backed him away from your thigh by the judicious use of an approaching flame. God Blesses you all. There is more than enough hope to go around. An abundance of hope.

Reminders Of Your Shape

Yes, you shower me
with reminders of your shape
and color, and clear
from here I can get
the whiff of your clean perfume,
fresh from the river,
fresh from the garden,
and me all bear like, covered
with dark furry hope.

July 20, 2010 7:38 PM

Monday, January 21, 2013

Holy Moment - Reprise


The angels speak amongst themselves concerning the humans scuttling among the tumbled boulders near the first cascade beyond the cirque...

Or perhaps it is humans who speak among themselves concerning the crickets they keep in bamboo cages...

Holy Moment

They too have touched us
in this matching of their love,
in this last descent.
It is here we meet
with them most surely,
in loving the tiny ones
with their rapid hearts
and small secret thoughts
who leave us so easily
and so soon.

November 28, 2009 7:38 AM


This offering is reprised entire from its first posting on May 9, 2011. Please check out this Ted Talk. It is compelling and deeply, deeply true.

Intermission

This intermission has been brought to you folks sponsored by an anonymous and rather vicious virus or other weird bug. I am back to work now but it's iffy.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Just Passing Through - 3WW

Thom writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As  always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

To link up with this week's Three Word Wednesday *click here*

This week's words:

Dismal; Luscious; Waffle


Just Passing Through

The small town Dismal,
Utah is not the place you
find the luscious babes
and no one will feed
you a waffle. Tried for both
on my way through, got
an unpleasant nudge
from a comic book sheriff
with a handlebar
mustache and a big
old hogleg hung tied down low
on his khaki hip.

January 16, 2013 4:35 AM

Monday, January 14, 2013

Taking A Stand


Taking A Stand

I watched them try to
break you, take you down, teach you
the truth of these things.
I saw the sweat bead
on your ruddy forehead, run
into your red eyes.
You would not budge, no.
You grinned that wild grin saying
"No fucking way, man!"
I was like that once.
I remember me truly
not so long ago.

July 19, 2010 8:17 PM

The truth be known, I am taking a stand right now, dealing with a type of musician I know from the "halls of the academy". You see I am a lifelong musician but I come from the ranks of the rest of us, not the academy trained. While many of the giants of contemporary music also trained in the academy or at least trained in "that sort" of music often and incorrectly termed "classical", the doors are open to many other roads and there are many masters of western contemporary music who have no idea what the academic types are talking about. My actual training was a few years of piano and voice leading toward and in high school in an aside of my main thrusts in my education. I got the great privilege to train in a church choir under Edwin Dunning, then the head of the department of music at San Jose State. I loved music and then I found a mentor in a folk singer in a local coffee house. I sat for hours and learned his approach after the fashion of following the guru of the eastern traditions. Then I spent years realizing my own style on the guitar from the way he played his and sang his songs. After six years I hit a wall, a limit to my progress (because I was forcing things and didn't know how to stop that) and left it all behind. What I left behind was professional level performance but no audience.

Then I spent years without music in my life even though I could sing in choir, having trained right to the edge of professional there and also had this guitar thing going. That music life I left behind was in the sixties. Then in the nineties a series of life changes gave me my music back and the issue of desperation I had was gone. Since that return I have developed a style on the keyboard, developed a percussion style on certain hand drums, and I returned to singing in serious venues but never really to the guitar... well a girl friend helped me revive it for a few years. Now my body has largely failed as an instrument and support to instruments but I keep the keyboard alive.

I have been told by someone "in the black print" I am far too inexperienced and limited to talk of such matters as Just Intonation with one of the academic elite. The thing is I can in fact talk about music theory, have audited courses in it and also in her kind of music and other necessaries and she is just full of shit. Her problem is I can't use the exact right words in her realm (she teaches in college) and I don't come from her circle of musicians. This also excludes most other musicians on the planet. It excludes absolute masters of musical forms other than the symphonic forms she prefers and has made her life in. I have no doubt that the orchestras that she works with use Just Intonation but under certain musical performance choices they have to modify that stance without question, entering another kind of modified tuning. This is all quite esoteric to most of you. The debate pisses me off. I have told her so. She continues to keep her nose above the fray in a particularly irritating way though she continues to reply and all this is happening on yet a third person's facebook page. I am comfortable with her sallies and my replies, confident in what I say. I am not backing down.

When I was singing in a local chorale specializing in Estonian music, I had the opportunity to meet several people of her stripe and some of them were as irritating as she is. It seems to go with the territory.

I don't think it is costing me very much in any deep way. What is really cool is that today's poem has arisen in the normal rotation as the next "new" poem never before published on my blog. :D

Rant over.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

All Wrapped Up - A Magpie Tale

Thanks to Tess Kincaid for the image of a person curled on a chair. This is the image which started this sequence on body socks. Join the Mag Creative Writing Group

All Wrapped Up

Wishing you were here

So many colors
sweep the whole of my service
whether I sit curled

Rugby World Cup

or root for your team
reaching for the seven point
stars in your good soul

Body Sock Design

or I dance on streets
(you create near your doorway)
waiting for entry.

Written and posted January 13, 2013 9:15 AM

Friday, January 11, 2013

Hugging The Bear


One of the things said in some places in AA, drinking is like making love with a gorilla (or maybe a bear). You are not done making love until the gorilla is done. I believe this poem partly came from my recall of that saying. This is actually funny, isn't it? Maybe you have to be alcoholic to have this kind of humor in you.

Hugging The Bear

Hugging the brown bear
is not recommended in
the campers' guide books.
You need to get God's
own drunk to do something like
hugging the brown bear.

If you hug the bear
you will end up smelling like
bear sweat (do bears sweat?)
and maybe thinking
you should eat huckleberries
and salmon, raise cubs.

July 16, 2010 7:38 PM

Thursday, January 10, 2013

War Planning


War Planning

You have passed the plan
to me for any comments
I have re zombies
and the coming dark
days of the apocalypse.
I can feel my brains
curdle and they itch
at the thought of the hunger.
You seem definite
though I know better.
You and I both understand
the fog of zombie
strategy. They don't
move the way we might after
all is said and done.

January 9, 2013 12:43 PM


Wednesday, January 9, 2013

So That's What Happened - 3WW

Thom writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As  always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

To link up with this week's Three Word Wednesday *click here*

This week's words:

Focused; Pair; Vacant


So That's What Happened

You demanded it.
Stay focused, you called sadly
shaking your huge mane.
Grow a pair, you fool.

I kept on staring vacant
eyed and then I fell
flat on my damn face
in sudden total recall
of the last three years.

January 9, 2013 5:00 AM

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

An Evening At The Cabin


An Evening At The Cabin

The mouths of the dead
are always open she says,
sighing in that way
she has of sighing.

She tells me to quit bitching
about all that stuff
and about congress
as well - no damn politics
tonight, not in this
cabin.

Flickering
light dances across my page.
I barely make sense
of the strange forecast
found in my reputable
list of axioms.

January 8, 2013 1:03 PM

Monday, January 7, 2013

Second Sight


Second Sight

I think maybe I
saw you for certain this time.
I could tell you this
I guess but I am
not very brave, more like deer
than lion and you,
the slippery one,
you slide out from under me
all too easily.
I fear you will get
loose and tell all my old friends
what I've done to you.

‎January ‎7, ‎2013 12:17 PM

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Did I Say That Aloud - A Magpie Tale

image by Daniel Murtagh
courtesy Tess Kincaid's The Mag

Did I Say That Aloud?

I would touch your breast
with my skeletal fingers
but you shut your door
smiling as you do
and I am weather beaten
and wet and freezing
in the cold cold day.

I hope your power goes out.
I am all screwed up.

January 6, 2013 12:01 PM


Join The Mag Creative Writing Group

Friday, January 4, 2013

Delusion - Reprise


Even when I know better I tumble down the rabbit hole and find the bottle, says, "Drink me!" Of course I do.

Delusion

You make me your slave,
Paint my eyes with false colors,
Tell me your true lies.
Why do I believe?

I woke up today, again
You brushed me with sweet
Falsehoods. I want them.
God help me, I do want them.
I'll do anything.

Written December 21, 2008
First Posted April 4, 2009

Thursday, January 3, 2013

Baptismal Waters


God is a grieving God. This is a crucial aspect of Divinity, so much so that the central vision of the Judaeo-Christian tradition is one of sacrificing the most cherished manifestation of Heaven on Earth. Of course the One who gives up His only seed be that Son or Messiah of His people, of course the Father grieves. And because God is Infinite, so is the grief. This is not only crucial, it is fundamental. You can divide the Infinite an infinite number of times, and not only is the result infinite, so are each of the divisions. Thus His Love, His Joy, His Hope and His Grief, all are infinite even when focused precisely and infinitely on you.

As well, you may note that I say "gives up His only seed". There is no past tense in the presence of the Infinite. All is present.

Baptismal Waters

You spoke well to me,
a voice I will not forget,
words that wove true love,
a weaving that took
threads of air, of fire, the warp,
earth and water, weft.
Your tears were warm rain,
tears of great and new release,
and I've collected
them for baptism
for they are truly holy
as now so are we.

July 15, 2010 8:00 PM

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

One Too Many Words - 3WW

Thom writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

To link up with this week's Three Word Wednesday *click here*

This week's words:

Idle; Nagging; Pace


One Too Many Words

It was no idle
time and she wasn't nagging
either. I had just
picked my poem's pace
and sallied forth in adverbs,
in nouns and round verbs
building two five lines
and one seven in order,
some kind of order.
That's how I do things
these days, waiting for the ball
to drop, the sky to
fall.

January 2, 2013 6:44 PM

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Reaching Agreement


Reaching Agreement

If I should stand here
and, bowing, drenched in moon mist,
in this best white light,
would I then rise up
and reach the Pure Land to sit
across from the Holy One,
see then eye to eye
and reach agreement with Him
on what will come next?

July 14, 2010 8:03 PM


There is the possibility of argument over what is story and what just is. It is hard sometimes to draw these lines without distress. I hope that in 2013 we can settle down and just do what must be done with a minimum of argument over things. I live in many worlds. I spend many hours in corporate America, producing estimates, plans and directions that are the purview of mechanical and industrial designers. I keep reasonably current in stuff that happens at the leading edges of science, cosmology and quantum mechanics and all that. I am a poet and linguist and philosopher, have more than a smattering of psych and sosh. I was once seriously involved in astrology and I Ching, and I remain respectful of many ancient disciplines of mind and soul. What I do is dance.



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