My sheer house is miniscule,
But here and now a lyric
Could take sublime molecules,
Make time's victory pyrrhic.
I give you this offering:
How I lived, a wish afloat
On songs of hope, softening
The wrongs which our scopes promote.
My dream to be feminine,
To see myself seem pretty,
A princess with eminence;
Pinced instead: what a pity.
I grew into depression,
My true self refused, repressed.
Desire became obsession;
To my shame I was possessed.
My own eating disorder
Bound up a need for starving,
Alcohol, and discordant,
Maladaptive wrist carving.
Death was posing constantly,
Its threshold closing around
Each moment of wantingly
Reaching, alone and unfound.
But I'm alive, shockingly,
I survived at rock bottom.
He found me worth pocketing,
Crowned my cursed head with autumn.
Before I was untethered,
Poured my puzzled blood weeping;
When he brought us together,
He bent thoughts that lie creeping.
A half-dozen medicines,
A path that wasn't direct
At last mounted reticence,
Perhaps found something correct.
We shacked up through manifold
Setbacks, yet we grew happy
Trusting plucky animals,
Our muscovy ducks' flapping.
There's still the same confusion.
Will you blame that I re-slept
My years' yearning delusion?
I've merely learned to accept.
I've lost and gained employment,
I've tossed the rains from islands
To focus love's enjoyment;
A voice spoke above violence.
I'll never be omniscient;
So I must weather demons,
Though I fear I'm deficient.
I know my sincere reasons.
I'm not very capable
But caught a merry lifeline.
If even I'm shapeable,
Could seasons prime our lifetimes?
To mention that important
Question: what matters really?
Is self-knowledge supporting
My shelf of solid feeling?
Am I truly self-aware,
Can I duly note defects
In myself that interfere
With my health's tender reflex?
Have I built my quality
Which sadness wilted above;
Deeply lies my policy:
To keep those I call beloved.
Category: Quatrains
Cadmeian Dream
Cadmeian dream where do you hide,
dream of founding conquerors?
Novel ideas glinting beside
innovative conjurers;
Narrative man, marionette,
dance a jig we haven't seen.
Reveal things we'll never forget
when their forms in shadows lean.
Discovery bright magnetize
kindred soldiers to a fate
Inspired, driven to strategize
campaigns toward something great.
Where's the ancient magic now,
once from caves of numinous
Mystique? What are we to allow
prophecies so ruinous?
Almost everything is given,
leading us, fascinated
To the hollow shells we live in:
blank slates, deracinated.
Almost everything we're burning,
and we know the fuel won't last.
We're capable of discerning
danger but speeding too fast.
What have we left now that we've thrown
it all in for knowledge? We
Toil to relearn what we've disowned
pursuing technology.
Technology is not what matures
insights, compassion, or trust;
Rather it's a pipeline for tours
of infrastructural rust.
Culture is gone America,
schizophrenia and ads:
Our tradition generica
of attention-seeking fads.
Recognition at any price;
everything exists to sell
Cult-of-personality heists,
hallmark of our living hell.
What's authentic and what is not,
and more importantly—who?
This pre-apocalyptic spot:
nothing revealed, all on view.
Systems and secrets, sabotage
lurking at the rainbow's end
Sculpt from the mists a drab mirage,
and the powers play pretend.
Or are we the real pretenders,
gaming life to build a sense
Of importance? We upenders
who'd shake up our portents' fence?
Flattened, diluted, left to run
aimlessly, as in a dream
Whose conditions are cunningly spun
for a big business's scheme.
So what are we, and who am I,
what makes of me a Cadmus?
Why should people rally to my
ideas of joy and sadness?
Yet Cadmus did know who he was,
let his nation come from fate;
Clearing my own self-concept's fuzz
is enough to contemplate.
New Neighbors
While driving to Walgreens for you,
A pair of sandhill cranes
Stroll along the sidewalk,
Their foreheads blazing cherries.
They carry their tender frames,
So tall and russet brown,
Lightly as soft breezes
Going nowhere briskly.
We've seen a good few
Lately, are they here
Advising safety; it is
Hurricane season soon.
Now they're rounding our
Corner as I return.
I hurry you outside
To meet our new neighbors.
I snap some blurry pictures
Of their graceful exit;
The leaves into the curtain
And sidewalks they make their runway.
Unpicked
Every grain of sand is consuming.
Winter after winter culls
Our offerings, and our reserves,
Overripened, go unpicked.
We only rehearse our songs to Silence,
But if we were heard, and approval
Laid on us, would we know what to do?
If it is a genius that alights
On me, how do I form a technique
From it; and where beyond the sand
Can one find a base to build?
The words and directions of others can't
Reveal memories' inner world;
But to be there with them and to share
In the common dream, like beholding a peacock,
The world beyond yet partaken in,
If you could just accept and exalt it.
Even the unpicked fruit gets eaten.
Last Walk of the Night
The frogs are echoing from God
Knows where; the new moon is
Here to be missed, and it has rained.
The sky is blank overhead.
It's a navy blue hour,
Lit more by the apartments'
Lamps than anything above
Us and the twinkling blades of grass.
The glittering water is almost asleep,
Softly shifting; planes above
Hum toward TPA,
The city a milky way below.
We stroll the pre-dewed lawns,
One last visit for the night.
On the grass not far from the path
Are groups of little dark spots.
Each one of those tiny shadows
Is a precious friend nestling
Back their sleeping, carbuncled faces,
Resting the white curves of their eyelids.
Talking with Muscovies
Muscovies are delightful companions.
When I approach they hum and purr
And vibrate like little engines
Cooling, then settling down.
When my muscovies are enthused,
(They're not my muscovies,
But I'm their person,)
They pant aloud as if laughing.
Norm is a conversationalist;
He'll announce himself even when hidden.
George and Percy sneeze their greetings
Softly, while father Franklin snorts hello.
Steve and his girl, Zebra, are quiet,
But he'll nod and puff, she'll sweetly coo.
Brothers Edgar and Loyalty
Hype each other up with chants.
Patch squeaks and Mama gently trills,
As do Millay and nested Helmet;
And when he's surrounded by friends,
Granite erupts in exuberant laughter.
Norm gets me a little wet
Norm gets me a little wet
Leaping up from his swim in the pond.
Huffing and panting, he greets me
On the carpet of grass and clover.
He was born to swim.
Every day I see him out there
Bathing, diving; I watch and wave,
Arrested by his beauty.
His downy, feathery breast and head,
Trickling water as he fluffs his crest,
Gleams; shaking off the excess drops,
He beats his wings so close to me.
His red leather mask rings
Around his eyes' amber irises;
They catch the sun when he tilts his head,
As do his iridescent wings.
A single thought, bacterium-sized,
But then pride: he's so comfortable
With me; and thankfulness: he rests
In the bush beneath my window.
V: Ever More Questions
Many extant facts of power
Shape the world. My vision can't
Decipher them so I cower
In ignorance of their plant.
I'm small and rather like it so;
Having leisure to account
For little more than my own goals,
Which are but a small amount.
But even a more modest dream
Can flash nobly, with reason
To sharpen the edge of their scheme,
And cleave unto cohesion.
I'm thankful to have even this,
Call it dream or obsession:
All that proves that I exist
Is love and its expression.
Love and goodwill and nothing else,
May only these be my gifts;
May each of these old scars and welts
Nurture something that uplifts.
And don't let me be fooled again,
Taken in by rage and hate;
Don't let me sink to anger's den
Where grim cancers replicate.
When I am blind, as I often
Am, I rely on goodwill,
And other people's care softens
My heart when I seek blood to spill.
Charity of good vibrations
Is soothing and assuring.
The clarity of elation
Flies upon a strength enduring.
I live for the dream that is love,
Which is how I choose to phrase
That all I'm ever thinking of
Is a future smile to raise.
Which sounds like quite a paradox;
I do, comparatively,
Little in my life's narrow box.
Is it lived narratively?
I have deeply seated instincts
I don't know how to explain:
The crowds with anxious imprintings;
Ones I love to entertain.
With only sight and impression,
Fear of manifold judgments
Holds me in silent possession
Deep in labrynthine dungeons.
I'm not the most outgoing but,
To me, connection is key;
And if this helps in knowing what
I am, then it has to be.
I believe the answer lies here—
The flux of interaction:
Within impersonal voids, fear;
Among friends, satisfaction.
A desire for image control?
Perhaps, but even on stage
Where I can play my chirping role
My fear becomes the mind's cage.
The answer must be expression.
I'm petrified of being
And constantly fear confession;
Is it me that they're seeing?
A portion of it's conviction;
I know how I lived was wrong
Before, so now benediction
Given helps me get along.
As if I have some gift to give.
Before, when I didn't try,
I was empty, I couldn't live.
I was nothing living a lie.
Perhaps it may seem insincere,
But I try to give a care
For anyone; I'm only here
Since others sought my repair.
I can't make myself care about
Programs and propositions
Of politicking business scouts
On lucre-centric missions.
There's no way I can give a damn
About a word on a screen,
An entrepreneurial plan,
Or hands that pull strings unseen.
Is there truth in their influence?
Where human levels are breached
With their control over events,
Does the human heart get reached?
These things that we cannot react
To so much as must adapt
To; the fact of the power lacked
Feeding the sense that we're trapped;
These things bring out the sullen child
In me who'd rather not see
Problems which must be reconciled
Of most sorrowful destiny.
Do perpetrators meet justice
At the airy hands of prayers?
How the emotion of disgust
Is reduced to useless stares!
I avert my face from horror
But I never disbelieve
In the squalid state of quarters
Where the poor are born to grieve.
The poor who grieve to have been born,
Generations dispossessed
By their inheritance and worn
Down in their world without rest;
Who comforts them? It isn't me.
I've yet to reach out really,
But this shows the necessity
Of transmission ideally.
More real than the circumstances
Shaping who they will become
Are the lives that surf this madness,
More than just their total sum.
Though tinier than the systems
Bounding and schematizing
Multitudes, the spirit listens
To dreams worth realizing.
I'm accused of flowing idly:
Wasting time, writing my verse
I'll never finish; It's widely
True. It's living to rehearse.
But living goes on, as will I;
And my writing is dreaming,
It serves as the power supply
While here to search for meaning.
What will I offer history?
Is that really my concern;
Rather, what could my ceiling be
If I'm too caught up to learn?
When the ghost of complacence lays
Upon me with fatuous scorn,
I pray to see how patience plays
This game that seeks to suborn.
Within me a feeling persists,
We choose although we're destined;
When all of now seems artifice,
A voice from within questions:
Will you give up the quest for truth?
The substance hasn't truly changed;
The more we're the intrepid sleuth,
The more existence seems strange.
IV: the Poet Prays Again
I'm always wondering if I
Can reach up from where I am,
Can reach out though un-specialized,
Join us in this interim.
Am I equipped for this desire;
I'm a voice lacking a root,
As if autochthonously sired
Not from the land but from the mute.
And what is it I want to prove,
I existed and no more?
That even someone so removed
Could meet with you at the core.
The proof that is within us all
In moments without our skin,
Moments without our deeds; when small
And great in congruence spin.
The universe which supersedes
Individuality,
Which fades while entropy proceeds,
Is the same as you and me.
All visions of grandeur or wants
Are defined only by mind.
Most of the conditions we vaunt
Are fantasies we've designed.
The organ analytical,
Its power is its prison;
Conditioned into cyclical
Schemes, sees what really isn't.
The world-fondling senses receive
All that they possibly can;
They must in order to believe
That survival is at hand.
Hoarding data into systems,
Humans structure feedback loops
Into variants of subsistence,
Each with esoteric groups.
Many things we take for granted,
But the question of belief
Persists when we feel our slanted
Precepts flying like a thief.
Anything intellectual,
Is it as real as we thought;
What If without contextual
Excuses our maxims rot?
Does society disconnect
Need from soul from consequence
With abstractions of dismal sects'
Masquerades of common sense?
Can a solo mind ever know
Anything convincingly;
Assured beyond themself, bestow
Their substance unflinchingly?
There's but one way I've ever felt
Energy surpassing each
Limit I perceive as the belt
Restraining emotion's reach.
It's love which passes between souls,
Sparking across every void;
Love which finishes broken wholes
With golden bliss undestroyed.
Love the compass I shall follow
When one thousand different sights
Press me with their pills to swallow;
Love will split the wrongs from rights.
III: the Ad-vent’s Thicket
I fell into a skeptic's trap.
Agendas disillusioned
Me, and I've grown into the gap
Of fact and ad's collusion.
We live in the predication
Of mutable facts in our
Opinion-civilization,
Re-interpreting each hour.
Now meta-interpersonal
Dynamics superimpose,
Bleeding through by immersible
Parasocial scenarios.
There is a cause to champion
In each corner, no matter how
Obscure, mundane, or transient;
Everything receives a vow.
And everything has gravity;
Anything could pull one in,
And seem the ways things have to be:
A prescriptive bulletin.
There's always been a million paths
To fulfillment, so it's said;
So often they result in halves
Dualistically misled.
A place for my poems 