Word Play

A Kiss

2008-12-15T05:40:00.003-05:00

There's just nothing
like a kiss. When four
lips coalesce, there's
so much more than
the parts or even the
sum of the parts. The arts
come close to the art
of open and close, open
and close, because just
being steady isn't what
the arts are about. Like
the arts, lovers also flout
the static state, disavow
neat oppositions like
sweet and tart, opting for
a dynamic equilibrium,
trying to prolong it so long
as their mouths hold out.

The First Love is the One

2008-12-14T06:32:00.009-05:00

The first love is the one
you never forget, they say,
or at least the one you
regret the most anyway,
but not in an opportunity
cost kind of way, more like
opportunity lost. That kind of
love never congeals, is never
susceptible to frost. And though
the years roll along the road,
your ever recursive mind goes
panning back through the past,
revealing the precious ore,
trashing the dross that accrued.

Spiel

2008-12-13T16:16:00.002-05:00

Some are and
some are not
good at telling
spiely things.
You have to get
a certain feel
from the crowd
if you're going to
engage in a bit
of spiel. Repartee
and a repertoire
are both a must if
you're not to feel
like a heel and lose
the crowd's trust.
Too much booze
and you might
just as well leave -
unless you've
got a glockenspiel
up your sleeve.

A Flake of Memory

2008-12-11T06:40:00.005-05:00

A flake of memory slowly falls
end over end, side to side, but
certainly is no mistake, merely
finely jagged edges without
proximity to any other flake,
to any base or central kiosk stall
where impressions are stored.
Detachment from the hoard spells
the certain end for our lone
ragged fragment with whatever
imprint will be its only seal forever.

The More We Learn

2008-11-30T08:10:00.003-05:00

The more we know the less
we understand - as if that
were equal to sage advice
like a bird in the hand.
But facts are facts and that's
just a stack of inventory,
the result of an over-eager
ingestion. But we need some
mental bile and certain other
juices of digestion before
insight can be sent flashing
down the brain's oily sluices
into the gaping vat of mastery.

Morning

2008-11-29T06:22:00.002-05:00

The gray light grows
lighter as morning
comes closer, and the
dawn swells greater
and greater as the first
forms become clear.

A Many-Feathered Thing

2008-11-28T11:13:00.005-05:00

Poetry is
a many-feathered thing,
and the frame
of poetry is hung
on a language - bones of
grammar, sinews of
semantics, out of which
grows shimmering plumage,
each word a feather,
abundant shades of color,
depending on how
the sunlight hits it;
and then the shudder when
it wings and sings.

Crows in Air

2008-11-27T14:42:00.002-05:00

Four sable crows
all in a row plow
snow-laden air,
and yet remain
wisps of shade
while making
haste with stealth.

Dare Fatis Vela

2008-11-26T08:52:00.002-05:00

Dare fatis vela is what you decide.
With your eyes you size up the hull
and measure the tide. The mast is
upright, and the mooring ropes all
cast aside. You may sail far away
or maybe not at all! - keep in mind
there's no recourse to any police force
when you're dealing with such caprice.
And if you had just known the price
beforehand, you simply wouldn't have
handed your karma over to the Fates,
to sail both charted and uncharted seas,
sail too near fords, or negotiate fjords,
eluding Scylla only to be consumed
by Charybdis, because now you see
the Fates can't be lured or implored.

Nektar

2008-11-25T10:56:00.001-05:00

Hummingbird, its thrumming mandible
docked deep inside the nectary, filling
its ruby-colored reliquary with saccharine
sustenance, its figure engaged in a dance,
as the paper-thin wings keep a stabilizing
rhythm, a rolling, a partial oscillation
around the horizontal, and the peristaltic
movements of the slender, centered throat
of this ruby-throated hummingbird keep
the ambrosial nectar coming and coming.

The Devil's Wine

2008-11-18T14:04:00.004-05:00

Poetry is the devil's wine,
they say. And that's just
fine because no one can deny
his cosmopolitan style.

But the cons of devil's wine
may in fact outweigh the pros
if you're vehemently opposed
to what many consider to be
the defining traits of both
poetry and wine: ecstasy

and intoxication. Exhilaration

may well be tops of the pros
of the divinest verse whether
long or terse or hard to get at
at first, and the one that flows
down deep furrows and slakes
a heretofore unknown thirst.

The Brain

2008-11-16T09:06:00.008-05:00

1.

Can the brain
change the brain,
ending the latter's
tyrannous reign?
The incorrigible
gene needn't feign
mastery over every
act or lofty thought
because its power,
strong as gravity,
goes unnoticed
and is all too easy
to maintain.

2.

But if the brain is
the brain, then
who or what is
doing the shaping?
It's true the brain
looks like clay, but
better minds know
taking hands to that
fatty mass will mess
with all its delicate
circuits and relays.

3.

Maybe the brain
can change
the brain.
It's undeniable that
the brain
gains both mass and
insight by
running the gauntlet
of life (hopefully
with a
resilient helmet).

4.

Without being
the same, umpteen
trains of thought
worm their way
adroitly through
gray matter as if
it were an apple.
And just as worms
burrow into fruit,
words and forms
enter the brain,
blending and then
coalescing until
they reach a final
amalgamation.
But then there's
no way to tell
what's what, and so
that just adds to all
the mystification.

5.

Some say thoughts
are what train
the brain - but
then where do
thoughts come from?
Do they float
idly through the ether,
drifting toward
a webbed encephalon?
Or do bits seep
out of dense marrow,
condense into
an intense nodule
unable to wait for
tomorrow, embedding
itself into the brain
with earnest compulsion?

6.

Is the brain for us or
against us? Is there
even an us separate from
soma, axon and dendrite
multiplied a billionfold
in an organ whose folds
are home to neurons
more fecund than that
pump house of sperm?
Speaking of tails, there's
a clue that may help us
sift through this whole
mess. Myth may come to
our aid, provide context for
what appears to be a
conundrum for some. The
ouroboros is an ancient
serpent depicted devouring
its own tail, and yet it lives,
eternally. It's a primitive
cybernetic feedback loop.
Our brain may be like this,
even though at times it
gets frenetic and can make
one of your eyelids droop.
But the brain is not behind
an Iron Curtain, and the
ouroboros contains no
bits that are ferrous...

7.

Some will still assert
that because we don't know
what makes neurons start
or ideas flow, there must be
a ghost somewhere in the machine.
Some won't even dare to flirt
with the can of worms, preferring
to stay mum or even inert.
Another side is less harmless,
those who confidently insist
that empiricism is best, and so
even dare to tell us there is no us.

Fallen Leaves

2008-11-12T15:51:00.002-05:00

Again the time comes when
the tearing wind and thrashing rain
denude the icons of the season.
We love their audacious gold,
gold being the item of desire
and awe of our race across space
and time. In the still-green yard
the scattered members of what was
a brilliant whole lie noiseless
and still. There is no life out there.
Some are lying adjacent, others
overlapping. What was radiant gold
wrapped around each tree is now
faded yellow on the ground. Gold
stands for what our human sentiment
arbitrarily assigns to elements. Gold
rings, gold trees. All is as it must be.
The yellow leaves are merely debris.

The Double

2008-11-11T21:00:00.002-05:00

In Dostoevsky's
The Double, the hero
is a split self. But
things are much more
knotty than that, not
as clearly discrete,
not a neat and tidy
dissection, cut up
into two chunks. In fact,
persons are splintered,
like thousands of
iron filings skirting
the sticky edges of a
permanent magnet,
crowding around
their chosen poles.
So maybe now we have
the whole notion.

Treading Water

2008-11-03T10:00:00.041-05:00

Treading water,
fatigue and
foaming spatter
can make you
falter.

An undulating
plane is all that
separates you from
two worlds: one
where some
hope is clung to
like barnacles
to a hull.

The other
we could call
surrender - the willful
softening of all
long-taut muscles
thanks to a cascade
of chemicals deep
inside the brain.

And no one will know
about the throes
of anguish in this
little pixel of ocean,
once you've seamlessly
slipped beneath the plane
with barely a blip
or detectable ripple.

Wracked with Worry

2008-10-21T16:53:00.001-04:00

Wracked with worry.
Of course no one willingly
gives himself to the rack.
It's a fact that the world
will work hand in glove
with his wound up mind
that won't slacken or even
change tack. It's a crafty
racket, he thinks, as he feels
the steel-like threads of his
white jacket slowly contract.

Foundation

2008-09-28T19:39:00.003-04:00

When one's foundation stones
reveal the slightest disposition
toward unhitching, the faintest
pulsation can yield the subtlest
listing - a quavering cascade
riding unwaveringly down the
side of a compromised façade.

Counterpart, Counterpoint

2008-09-26T11:24:00.014-04:00

Most want their counterpart,
which they also wish to be
a counterpoint - the heart
being the fixed intersection
between the two. To start
with the counterpoint seems
inimical to any connection
two may seek to create.
But when both movements
play their own imperfect,
uniquely unrefined tune,
that fused union is a melody
secure as the most coveted alloy.

Winter Spindrift

2008-09-24T17:30:00.003-04:00

Spindrift gems of only
sand-grain size
will soon be sandblasting
whatever they can
across the sweep of the land;
and the open face
trying to brave the cold
without any cries,
has no option but to try
to keep the wind at bay,
wrapped up or even
shut in, having no say
in all the ways of the wind.

Hanker or Hunker?

2008-09-23T18:28:00.001-04:00

Hanker or hunker - that's the fundamental
question mark. To hanker is to go after,
to embark, to thrust oneself like a hawk
towards an oblivious thrush. However,
to hunker is to lay low. Instead of blazing
flames you favor the slow smolder of embers.
It's not that you forgo the whole community
or its members; you just request immunity
from the upward lifting, the outward pulling
you think you're not ready for or not willing
to submit to. Maybe you are made to be sunk
deep in your well, another funk always just
around the corner. And so down you hunker
into your dark and dank, fortified bunker.
But others hanker after anything not anchored,
and endure both the grandeur and the rancor.

Dogs Don't Like Hugs

2008-09-23T10:20:00.004-04:00

Dogs just don't like hugs. It's true; and you can't
simply shrug it off, as much as you might want to.
You can't force their hand for fear of breaching
the bond that took thousands of years to form.
When forlorn humans get lost in an emotional fog,
they crave nothing more than an embrace or a
soft caress to chase away the encrusting frost.
But all hope is not gone - while dogs may not like
blunt hugs, they still speak in their singular tongue
and we in ours; and we can wish for a requited trust,
a prodigious and lasting love, no matter what language
we speak or gestures we make. We do what we must.

The Dark Nightsea

2008-09-22T18:51:00.004-04:00

The forces of life constantly unite and diverge
by the laws of love and strife and quirk,
forging tenuous coalitions or durable bonds.
But we can fashion a refuge from the surge,
a seaworthy ship both monumental and strong.
We can embrace the beauty of sweet fortuity,
rolling together fluently in the dark nightsea.

Stele

2008-09-22T11:00:00.002-04:00

An obdurate monolith sits
at the center of our lives,
an obelisk round which
we orbit; a mute, faceless
slab of monochromatic
inscrutability. Each of us
faces it, there's no escaping it.
We may even run aground
when we bash against it,
gashed so deeply we could
founder unless we found
the source of our wound.
It's our center of gravity
whether we grasp that fact
or not. Its adamantine essence
and unprecedented density
draw us eternally into its
holding pattern of endeavors.
Our lives are bound to it,
our natures determined by it,
even though we may never
really perceive or understand it.

The Ruminant

2008-09-21T17:14:00.006-04:00

The cow, the sheep, the bison -
each stands alone in its field:
no happenings, no excitement,
only the smell of stale excrement
scattered all over the here and now.

The only thing an old ruminant knows,
alone in its field, is chewing its cud
over and over, though the rain falls
and the wind blows; or a far-off thud
tells of a dead tree felled in the woods.

But the vitreous, expressionless eyes
veil the supple machinery that's inside:
apparatuses and reckonings so precise
that even the most indurated impressions
get ground down into the finest powder,
glittering like galaxies of minute stars.

But the only thing an old ruminant knows,
alone in its field, is chewing its cud
over and over, though the rain falls,
and the wind blows; or a far-off thud
tells of a dead tree felled in the woods.

The Pull

2008-09-20T19:49:00.002-04:00

It's not easy to pull away - even from a distance.
And when one's so close to the very thing one
wants to pull away from, it reveals such a heavy
insistence - a star-like gravity, the unavoidable
centripetal force nixing one's power of resistance.