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  • Drooling Cynicism

    She drooled cynicism.  Think
    of it, the dripping gore of her hate; the ulterior motive of your
    intentions you cannot hold back the bile you choke on, only the old
    school habits and false social mores caps that vent.  The Iron
    Claw of hatred raking the innocent open eyes of, how sad (pathetic?)
    that such a nut cannot be cracked, too bitter and sunk deeply in your
    craw.

  • Poetry, I've Found You

    Found poetry is the rearrangement of words or phrases taken randomly from other sources (example: clipped newspaper headlines, bits of advertising copy,
    handwritten cards pulled from a hat) in a manner that gives the rearranged words a completely new meaning.

    A classic example was found in William Whewell’s "Elementary Treatise on Mechanics":

    "And hence no force, however great,
    can stretch a cord, however fine,
    into a horizontal line
    that shall be absolutely straight.”

    though when it was pointed out to him, an unamused Whewell changed the wording in the next edition.

    Stylistically, it is similar to the visual art
    of "appropriation"
    in which two- and three-dimensional art is created from recycled items,
    giving ordinary/commercial things new meaning when put
    within a new context in unexpected combinations or juxtapositions.
    Appropriation art often plays upon a double-edged meaning,
    wherein the object's new artistic meaning makes a political or
    philosophical comment on its original purpose, and the same can be
    said for the way 'found poetry' can contain clever wordplay or evoke
    ironic contradictions in the way we use language.

    My appropriation:

    Million dollar scratch.
    Board meeting, battery warf,
    Oversized load,
    U.S. Foodservice,
    Kazmouski, local 379,
    South 93.

  • Missing

    The feeling of missing - or more
    importantly of wanting to miss - arrives on the back of
    expectation.  Expectation has gone wanting and arrives tired (or
    seemingly so) and disappointed.  Playing catch up is not an
    option.  While you could show up with your game face on, run in to
    the arms of where your were meant to be, you of course do not.  At
    this time you want to go missing.  To bathe the supposed wound in
    a poltice of lonely with some liquor thrown in.  As you sit,
    disquieted and liking it, your drinking buddy regret shows up. 
    He's not strong enough to drag you off of your hiding stool and back in
    to the Sun, with friends and the reason you came out in the first
    place.  No, he's just there to remind you you've done this before
    ... remember?  And you didn't want to do it last time, either.

  • The Sun Crane

    The day started as a shower's
    damp towel; dawn and humid.  The cool ocean water wore a cap of
    mist about two hundred feet high.  There is a new new building
    going up which has a massive Crane in the yard.  The Crane was so
    big the assembly of the beast took a week and several tractor trailers
    and crew.  I came out of the station and glanced up at the
    sun.  The mist allowed me to look up at it freely its yellow ball
    pale and shown through the water veil.  At that first glance the
    the Crane's mast was fully elevated, its top obscurred in the the ocean
    fog.  The first two thirds of the mighty arm punching upward into
    gray soupy nothing, out of sight, lost to the ether and heaven. 
    The angle of it made it seem if you drew a line through the fog 
    the arm hung above the sun.  And you could imagine the Crane's
    hook, two cables steadying it, holding up that fiery orb.  That
    huge weight, the massive Sun hanging off of that hook, all that
    interplanetary force transferring down the steel and cable to the
    machinery and down through the treads to small Mother Earth.  The
    effect was felt, standing there at the harbor with the ocean breeze
    slapping your cheek, you flexing your toes to steady yourself - perhaps
    to help prop the firmament up a bit and the Sun Crane holding the
    blazing summer Sun high in the early morning mist.

    - I just see these things ...

  • Incandescent Sun

    Rising at dusk, cutting the moon
    a full noon light, my avain
    friends will not sleep tonight.

    Marking time Mockingbird mocks
    alarms and clocks, the sodium
    colored glow and sleeps not.

  • Wreck Of The Courageous

    If would that my tongue could but utter

    these feelings sent careening

    over rocks silent and mute.

    The knot of my heart expands,
    beating, burning to be quenched
    in the foam of your sea green eyes.

    Waves rolling between us,
    my courage is flotsam and jetsam
    on your smile, rushes to me,
                recedes,
    and rushes back.

  • Daily Grind

    rev. 2
    Birds incessant chatter starts; 3:30 AM.

    Classical alarm music; 5:23,
    Mozart's triumphant return; 5:30.

    A small stained glass lamp,
    thumbed light switch.
    Boxers, socks - two pair.

    I shut the door leaving
    a sleeping Carol, a foot,
    it's toes peer at my back.

    The mornings business flushed downstream.

    A peek out the window at the changing weather.

    I Turn on the TV; NECN till 6, Channel 5 till 7.

    A stone cold tea pot,
    tepid soaking suds,
    the kettle on high.

    Shorts, sneakers, and tee-shirt
    corporate uniform; black shoes, pants, belt,
    collared shirt and tie.

    I pour the boil over dark English leaves,
    the pan - heavy - the egg whites
    cloud and sizzle.

    The world awaits in a gray folded sheet,
    which I read, eat, read, eat.

    slivers of plastic in my eyes,
    stubbled cheek razor teeth
    brushed, flossed and gargled.

    A peck at her cheek startles
    her smile and the sun rises
    she to me - making the 6:58
    the hardest part of the day.


  • Equilibrium Tipped

    Equilibrium
    tipped backwards on her stool.  She so desparately wanted to keep
    upright; mother always said "a lady is never found laying
    around!"  A pair of cool cubes shouldered up to the bar and she
    slid further and farther into her drink and something more
    comfortable.  Oh they looked so smooth and shiny and she could
    only imagine pouring languidly over their headiness and the room
    spinning shudder.  Confidence had abandoned her long
    ago and would not come around here unless there where shots and
    beer and who likes her anyway all chatty Cathy talking to any rimmed
    glass and swizzle stick that didn't laugh out loud at her too
    tightness and last years last year.  My God, she wished to be
    straight as a pendulum - only sometimes  - plum line straight
    -  only sometimes you so badly wanted pushing and swaying and at
    the end of that arc, at the end of that long rope, out and back out and back and higher and higher holding on by only
    one hand and wowah Jesus, woo-hoo! 

                To
    let go. 

               
               
               
        To feel the unfelt

               
               
               
               
               
               
               
        and no care

    and in that abyss feel the
    warm closeness of no everyone and a shared alonetogethernoneness. 
    Sometimes .... someday ... (someday she wish oh she wished she might,
    first star she saw)  she sighed the room into focus and pushed a
    steady state on to the bar.  The flies had gathered around the
    social stickiness and where watching the multi-screened sports show
    with their multi-faceted eyes all glittering green and sapphire red
    blood shot veins and all the time not knowing where she was or the
    score.  The band had pulsed ahead of her and the crowd had noised
    in behind and she smiled and tipped the bar, it was her night off.

  • An Exercise In A Word

    The
    writing exercise was simple: write a single syllable word on a piece of
    paper, pass it to the person on your right.  When you receive your
    word from the person on your left start writing with the first word of
    each phrase being the word you received.  After a time pass the
    paper to the right and continue until you receive your original
    work.  Go!

    not

    Not before I met you
    Not that day the clouds parted
    Not the green of your eyes, and
    Not the smile you give.

    Not the end but beginnings
    Not the yes in your lips
    Not forever but always
    Not in the end.

    Cup of my life, chalice adored
    Cup that I drink from
    Cup never scorned.

    Cup that holds us
    Cup from which we sup
    Cup of our hands
    Cup to our lips we bring up.

    Bell of the flower
    Bell of the ball
    Bell which rings forever
    Bell to us all.

    Bell you bring me
    Bell I see you ring
    Bell covered in velvet

    Sneeze and I bless thee
    Sneeze my heart out
    Sneeze when I love you
    Sneeze all of me out.

    Post my notes dearly
    Post our words high
    Post I'll tie around me
    Post till I die.

  • The Battle of the Sonnet

    An Itallian sonnet has the form:
    abbaabba (cdecde or cdcdcd or cdccdc)
    The English sonnet the form:
    abab cdcd efef gg

    If I dislike something it is
    typically for two reasons; one, it truely sucks; or two I haven't
    really tried to get it and have gone on the defensive.  Here is my
    attempt to go around the first reaction I had to the sonnet.


    I am the form sonnet Italian, to this you must resign,
    my words rolling in octaves and triplets quatrain
    whose meaning is never but obviously quite plain,
    my shape made and marked by the end of each line.
    Though what you will write is in no way a crime,
    it is gone past pleasure and is climbing into pain,
    you worry your hard work will end up in the drain,
    you wonder, is this worth my precious, scant time?
    But we are just fourteen simple lines each climbing
    soldiering over walls, confusion and into the breech.
    Place us in ranks, mustered and marshaled by rhyming,
    to arms my General, fire the cannon, to you I beseech!
    This battle is won not by whit or by luck but by timing,
    the victor has won when to the vanquished they teach.