Blue is Not of This World
  
 
  
Since the blue of sky
  
Serves as the threshold
  
Of the Beyond
  
 
  
Blue thus has this solemn
  
Superterrestrial gravity
  
According to Kandinsky
  
 
  
Since blue is not of this world
  
The individual is inexorably 
  
Drawn toward the Infinite
  
 
  
Blue will disembody
  
Whatever
  
Becomes caught in it
  
 
  
& since blue
  
Is the color of dreams
  
& geomantic dragons
  
 
  
It provides a climate for the surreal
  
As blue is the deepest gaze
  
That plumbs the Infinite
  
 
  
 
  
The Times when Light is Fresh
  
 
  
 
  
The times when light is fresh
  
& nakedness becomes a ritual
  
The poet-seer employs her song
  
In seminal moments
  
In the momentum of parables
  
In gracious saving light, downpouring
  
 
  
She first asks to be buried in the clouds
  
W/ her pages intentionally left blank
  
Then she asks 
  
How infinite is the bandwidth of love?
  
& then she asks what it takes  
  
To gestate a new poesis within her darkness?
  
 
  
By glowing images of Fate
  
She does find upon her altar
  
Old duties made of fresh smoke
  
She now sings melodies in the dusk
  
To consciously employ those twilight songs 
  
Because she is solely the Daughter of Clouds 
  
 
  
 
  
The Elegance of Gutters
  
 
  
“I refuse to be thrown under the bus Holmes”  
  
 
  
The parameters of this status might be:
  
Still unlost yet palpably not solvent …
  
 
  
“Mostly I proceed with full-stun mojo, right …?
  
Hell, I might even be the last taboo standing …”
  
 
  
The ballast of debris provides traction
  
With these long audacious strides he takes
  
In & through the stark elegance of gutters …
  
 
  
“Somedays you’re the sailboat 
  
Riding the shining waters,  
  
& other days you’re the bird 
  
In the plane engine”
  
 
  
Patches of deep blue insist upon leaking
  
Through his interim glooms tho …
  
 
  
“My only job right now is to keep riding out 
  
  The heavy surf of spiteful uncertainties …
  
 
  
It’s like, versions of yourself
  
Is all about staying in your own movie”
  
 
  
Born from his disheveled poems,
  
An elusive ascending in-stance
  
Tends to swallow up the excess griefs …
  
 
  
“You know Holmes, I smoke only the air 
  
Of imaginary circumstances even as I unload 
  
This quit-claimed baggage as fast as I can …”
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
The way the days began to knot up,
  
In gainsaying the accidental apertures, 
  
In marking the unwritten dream pages …
  
 
  
“What we do here is metaphoric
  
 Teardown and rebuild” he explained                                      
  
 
  
Like the way kids love mud & running water, 
  
He wanted to persist via a fresh buoyancy …
  
 
  
“But of course love is always a conspiracy …”
  
 
  
Yes, but viscerally experiencing nothingness
  
Prepares you to be primed for elsewhere …
  
 
  
“If you call it with a good eye Holmes,
  
The stray particles will no longer quaver …”
  
 
  
One spring morning, he found himself wearing
  
The varnish of all those years of wear & tear …
  
 
  
“I declined, only because it would not 
  
Have been an honorable fight”
  
 
  
Therefore, in any forward texture of silence,
  
Poetry became what everything else wasn’t …                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
  
 
  
 
  
The Druid’s Wind
  
 
  
The power madness of terrestrial gods
  
W/ psyches so symptomatically lesioned 
  
This Is NOT about some
  
Goddamn contest in 
  
Drycleaned dialectics, believe me
  
 
  
Only the poetry of renunciation
  
Can assist those of us still listening,
  
Yet resistant to a profane world,
  
Even as this time & austere emptiness
  
Might be all that fate leaves us with
  
 
  
Any quest for the Invisible Meanings
  
By homage to nameless gods 
  
Does not always require 
  
Eating the flesh of magic pigs
  
Or gusts from The Druid’s Wind
  
 
  
 
  
Altar of Masks
  
 
  
Although she walks her mobile ink well 
  
Her texts really seem to murk up the muddle   
  
W/ her mystified poetry making it all look 
  
So pretty
  
& also, where would the corresponding vision be? 
  
  
  
Having a bi-weekly love fest with her literatees 
  
She who would be a poetic Nefertiti
  
How does she not succumb to the labored overreaches?   
  
Or is this just a dancing for the treasure of attentions?
  
Or a wand-dowsing for transient love perhaps?   
  
 
  
A little mendacity never goes for a good cause 
  
Like when it comes down to smelling a book deal 
  
Which just might spoil the sauce  
  
Which just might be worse than a night
  
Spinning around a room with the black whirlies 
  
 
  
So, along with swinging the meat ax   
  
One can’t get any closer to the edge   
  
When traversing Ego’s air space 
  
As it now compellingly becomes crucial 
  
For her to keep the landing gear down … 
  
 
  
 
  
“To write is an occupation”
  
                                                                    
  
Good poems
  
Serve as disturbances 
  
Of dark anti-matter,
  
Kind of like corroborations
  
Shored w/ invisible eloquence
  
 
  
Or perhaps substance & symbol
  
Alchemized into a fine matrimony
  
Just buzzing sweetly along like 
  
Horace’s poetic bees
  
 
  
As a fragmented revealing
  
By the “roguewords”
  
All poetry is memoir
  
As symbolizing = a throwing together
  
 
  
Dictionary bingo 
  
Might bring forth disjunctive harmony
  
If these blank pages keep demanding
  
Their own pesky language
  
 
  
Either/or metaphoric montage
  
Or obscure fragment collage
  
Is essential in composing
  
How to Kill the Cliché
  
 
  
 
  
The Strange Effects of Poetry
  
 
  
 
  
With a choice of rooms, 
  
I decided to sleep that night
  
                                              With the Poetry 
  
 
  
The floor of Poetry’s room was not too hard
  
& the poets, both dead and alive, 
  
Provided such good surrounding solace  
  
 
  
& sure enough, it could have been 
  
A rough one night stand there,
  
With Poetry in that room, 
  
 
  
But NO, it was just fine, 
  
& our tryst went on for weeks,  
  
With me on the floor, 
  
 
  
The dead poets on the wall, 
  
& all the various poems 
  
Squished somewhere in between …
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
Raw Approximations
  
                                          For Joan Stepp Smith
  
 
  
Caught in the reflections 
  
Despite these headwinds, 
  
Bucking on is what I do
  
These disorders maddeningly borderline   
  
As I listen to Sounds of the Unsaid 
  
Which inexplicably remain 
  
My first & only gift presently
  
 
  
To write on, like some who wave flags 
  
Wildly flapping away in the breeze   
  
Scribing anecdotes of sin & daring   
  
A forging on through the murky murk   
  
Even if all it comes down to
  
Just breathing & looking at 
  
Stacks of unopened mail in the morning 
  
 
  
The price of the past, archived somewhere   
  
Takes a lot of gumption to square up with   
  
To live a life replete with slow starts & abrupt endings   
  
By the attractive decay of future splendors   
  
By the reckoning of time within little squares   
  
By giving appropriate weight to intrepid smoke   
  
Yes, one may lose the bearings, & still not go astray 
  
 
  
Overcoming the uncertain in incremental efforts  
  
Just as one trades the where, for the wherefore
  
All the while nabbing some back pages 
  
Maybe with some intent on starting a fray 
  
With the dithering dopes 
  
But, hey, this just leaves you wide open too 
  
Way too wide  
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
Like rats jumping ship 
  
We could be talking 
  
Ritual slaughter here   
  
Really, this life on the streets 
  
Can be such a series of caroms 
  
So, trust me on this 
  
Please
  
 
  
It might be worse than trying to work out 
  
The Prisoner’s Dilemma   
  
As you gots to be tougher’n nails for sure   
  
I mean, the way the days knot up on you 
  
Your poor heart might possibly turn into 
  
Some kind of 
  
Salvage of echoes …
  
 
  
 
  
Experience Assumes Slippage
  
 
  
 
  
The forces that push us to delusion   
  
Palpably so evidenced 
  
Upon the very streets we walk
  
Under the vain shadows that follow 
  
Like promises subjected to recall   
  
Or some futile collecting of dunnages
  
 
  
Even with losing a mountain or two 
  
The mixed messages trounce nuance   
  
By the disabled ratios of bastard cuts   
  
& stuffing that genie back in the bottle 
  
Hey, Life has never held such promise!
  
 
  
Like a pen leaking all over the fingers   
  
One seeks relief from the little outrages   
  
When the insect storms spread contagion 
  
& toxic seeds induce further in-toxication   
  
Leaving behind only the relics of the interim   
  
 
  
Under this vague ceiling of sky 
  
Which has always had priority 
  
Those now born into this new world 
  
Are already ancient …
  
 
  
 
  
Semi-So
  
 
  
Obscure practices make the man
  
In a simulacra of metaphoric shorthand
  
 
  
Down to chewing
  
At the edges of a bloody night
  
A limiting of losses in the least last hours
  
 
  
Now thinking that only in Hollywood
  
Do the stars never align