Flight

The leaves are made of emeralds, chrysoberyl

jade stems supporting amethyst flowers

opening to opal needles hovering,

darting in and out of their tubes.

We watch, hovering on wings of air

without caring where we go,

drifting among the smoky quartz trees,

malachite weeds tickling the soles of our feet,

long leaves sliding in between our toes,

nose tickling from amber pollen

drifting, flying through the quartz air.

Our freedom comes with consequences such as these,

pollen blown from trees and weeds,

diamond serpents biting our heels without warning—

but we'll always choose our waxen wings of air,

our flight, so lifting, so brilliant— 

amour.

Damselflies

Damselflies in cyan-shining green

deftly darting though the weeds,

land on cattails’ pollen hat,

lighting yellow dust into air.

Sunlight glints transparent wings

held steady, fold-up fashion

like thin-winged butterflies

whose bodies shine in blinding blue.

The damselfly’s deft, delicate line

lifts up on cellophane wings.

It darts through the air

to find its prey.

A mosquito caught

by crunching, tearing jaws.

Blue Skies

The skies were blue.

I went to hear a band play
in the park. People were there.

They called it off for threat of rain.

The skies were blue.

 

The skies were blue.

I wanted friends to come with me, 

go for a ride in the country.

They would not come for

threat of rain, though

the skies were blue.

 

The skies were blue

when I went out

to walk in open woods.

So soon I found my clothes were wet,

from warm summer serein because 

the skies were blue.

Agape Eros Agon

 I wish to make a home of loving you. 

I wish to fuck you endlessly, contrast black sheets with your body.
I wish to love no one but you, a true 
Lust, a never-ending lust, fulfilled by you and your girlfriend’s
Love, as pure as apple blossoms, a snow
Of clothing strewn about my  bedroom,
Of petals whitening the spring, as pure 
As I have never been and never want to be again,
As the wind I was before. Winds blow
Skirts up over hips, hinting at life’s greatest pleasure,
Across the tundra of my past. You cure
My lust for the moment—I will need you again soon to fuck
All winters and turn them into bright spring.
I want to bring light to your covered places.
Nothing is purer than the love I bring.
Nothing is purer than my lust and my desire for your body

Condemned

The old woman sits alone in her house,

dust filling the creases of her skin.

She now matches her clothes,

her furniture the same shade of gray.

She chose her place years ago, a place

where light has not sifted through

the soiled panes in soiled walls.

She no longer has the energy

to rock in her chair

or yell at children frightened

of the witch who lives in the spooky house--

children's imaginations the same

yesterday, today, tomorrow.

The same as the loneliness she feels,

having given up on the sun, preferring

the chill of the empty room, empty

but for her, as empty as her drawers,

her refrigerator, her closet, her cupboards.

No children to see her, to even miss

her calls or absence.

And now the smell has dissipated from the house,

the flesh stretched tight over her bones. 

For Roland Barthes

I

I am

I am so

I am so very

I am so

I am

I

I am

I am so

I am so very

I am so

I am

I

I am

I am so

I am so very

I am so

I am

I

I am

I am so

I am so very

I am so very bored

Are you, yet?

A

A poem

A poem based

A poem based on boredom?

Why?

Why not?

You accept Theory based on boredom. 

Voyeuristic Philosophizing

Voices on every side, saying

And meaning in islands of sound

Merging and emerging to mean

New things in my ear--

Channels to my mind until

I hear ideas and twist them in

My mind to thoughts now filtered by

Derrida and Wittgenstein,

Nietzsche and E.O. Wilson

Until they have become my own.

I philosophize on the sounds

Slipping through the air, across tables

And to and through my ear canals,

Translated to electric pulses made

Into meaning in my mind, twisted

To thoughts, new and reworded, forming

A new world view of fragments

Heard and read--

Philosophy by collage. 

Man and Message

"People should listen to the message

and not look at the life of the man"--

A sentiment common, heard places 

other than from a young women in a coffee house.

Good art is--

form and content in harmony.

An unaesthetic sentiment above--

Unaesthetic : unbeautiful : unmoral.

Hypocrisy is--

form and content in conflict.

The person portrays the message beyond

syntactical, grammatical sounds strung together.

To be aesthetic: "People should pay attention

to the man who gives the message."

You have to live a life of style. 

Trying to Say

An endless series of poems.

An endless series of novels.

An endless desire for sex.

An endless trying-to-say.

And endless trying-to-show.

An endless series of paintings.

An endless series of sculptures.

An endless superabundance.

An endless overfilled cup.

There are those of us who try to find

That final thing which will still the mind.

But do we want desires to cease?

Do we want our active minds at peace?

The poem which finally says it all.

The prose which shows the finished soul.

The full-filling orgasm.

The at-last-I-have-said-it.

The at-last-I-have-shown-it.

The painting which expresses all.

The sculpture which turns all truth to stone.

A final satisfaction.

The cup is finally emptied.

A dream of death--

A dream of Hell--

A loss of breath--

A dungeon cell--

I must share, I must share my view

Of life--for my sake, not for you.

I never wanted this rare gift, it's true--

But now that I have it, I must confess

It is a curse that manages to bless

My life, transforming all the more from less. 

An Ode to My Grandfather

I cannot see a bumblebee
Moth hovering on transparent wings
Without being brought back to the field,
Now new houses, where I first saw them,
Buzzing bee balms while we watched,
Connected through nature, bird watches
In the winter where we saw
His goldeneye-hooded merganser hybrid
Floating on the Saint Joe River,
Taking me to see the upland sandpipers,
The round, brown birds whose nesting site
He had discovered on the very day
That I was born. Where else can I trace
My love of writing, my love of nature?
The strokes that weakened him just showed his strength--
And yet he chose to die before my mom
So he would never have to face her death.
To me, he is the man who found the nests
The upland sandpipers made, who raised
Raccoons, screech owls, cecropia moths.
The man who taught me to love birds and nature
And not to be afraid. He's who I love--
The one who showed me moths
That look like hovering bumblebees.

The Misogynist

He is alone at thirty-five, a man
Alone and single, never married--he
Has heard from every woman every excuse
And reason why they will not date or love him.
"You think you're better than me," one said
To him, though not exactly true--repeated
More accurately by another when she said
She thought he thought he was "Too good for me."
He wondered why women saw themsleves
This way, in a shining sun that hid their beauty
From themselves, lighting bright the flaws he overlooked
Because he loved them (or, so he thought).
Others would not leave abusive men for him,
Loving their abuse (he thought), makeup used to mask
Unwell what they could. Too old, he heard
Another time, "You don't fit into my plans."
And when his friends would wonder why,
Without themselves trying to help him
Meet someone who would love him, he was alone
When he was, "Such a great guy,"
And "Such a good man," who would
"Make a good match." But when his friends
Talked among themselves, they asked each other
"If you weren't married, would you date him?"
No one would even lie--any more than she'd explain.
And yet, he knew that they all lied when they
Said they'd try to find someone good for him.
So, he was left alone at thirty-five
To wonder when the next excuse he'd hear
Was, "No, I can't. I need to wash my hair."

The Postmodern Generation

A generation beginning
Kerouaced in the head,
High road hippies
Goovin' to the music
Of The Beatles and The Grateful Dead,
Heidegger, Sartre, and Derrida,
A generation living hypocrisy,
Living the lies of their ideals--
Ultimate conformists
Masquerading as individuals
Now showing themselves
Now openly conformed
Set loose their collective crisis,
Psychoses leagalised and loves
To then be contended and cleaned up--
Not by them; no, never by them--
T0 question is to grow--
But by a new emergent order

Melina and the Origins of Art

When you first became bipedal
You held your arm up high
And spread apart, in movements which belie
Our orangutan ancestry.
And now you think that you can wheedle
Your way with hugs and kisses--
You bring me shoes to put on your feet
And point at the "bir" that sits in the tree
And toss your plastic dishes.
Your arms are loaded down
With bracelets of all colors and designs--
Yes, decoration is the seat
Of art, I see the signs
Of how we try to make
Things special for each other's sake
And not just for our own renown. 

A Random Walk Through Boredom's Lands

Scattered, shattered, darting thoughts
I don't know what I think I thought
Lots to do, but I am bored
I hoard and stored what makes me bored
Fragments and too-abstract thoughts
What's more abstract than abstract thoughts on thoughts?
The book is mocking me
The paper's mocking me
Stupidity is mocking me
Your thoughts are garbage-in, garbage-out
It doesn't matter how you process it
I have to hear stupidity
I'd rather go for a walk
Watch T.V., a movie with my wife
Watch a play?
Too literary today--I've bored myself
I close my eyes
I hear the whispers all around
I want to give a walk and take a talk
I saw bluebonnets blooming on the roadside
The wisteria have dropped their purple clusters
I want to bury my face in her nakedness
My arms pressed against my wife
The rest of you can go to Hell
Let us escape yours at least
Its relentless, mocking, cruel demands
On time and life
The crime of rhyme
The cruel crime of rhythmic rhyme
You hear the heartbeat in my line?
Shut up and work
Shut up and let me work
Shut off the phone--no, throw the phone
Thrown into the world
Among a people who don't care
That they mistake me all the time for them
Bring the backhoe to retrench
Your prejudices and hatred of the new
Your constant glue
To every we that you mistake for the true
Like every monster man in Scooby Doo
I'm really sick of all of you
There's Facebook on the phone
An article about creative block
And how it's fixed by using neuroscience
None of this is at all creative
It didn't even break my block
And midnight now has struck my clock
I'll sleep until the crowing cock

The Truth of Easter

The dogwood with its crosses and central crown of thorns
Heralds in the Easter season.
Whether as white and pure as Christ Himself
Or streaked in pink by His blood.
Easter is not as we've come to see
With pagan rituals of rabbits and chicks.
The true meaning of the season is clear.
He is risen!
The Christ I worship died not on the cross,
There to stay forevermore.
He is risen from the grave
In victor over death
So that we may not perish,
But have everlasting life.
"He is risen!" let us hear the angels cry!
For had not God come as Christ,
Love, Faith, Peace, would be in vain.
But he has come, he is risen!
Let us forevermore remember it in the Easter season,
When the dogwoods with their white crosses bloom.

Transformation

When I was a boy I walked in fields
And woods behind my house,
Enjoying the solitude of the trees.
I would lie and watch
The water bugs, larvae, tiny tadpoles
Swim in streams and pools.
Jewel weeds with orange- and yellow-spotted
Cornucopia flowers hanging down
From thin stems under leaves on plants
Spread in large patches, crowding out
The poison ivy. May apples, thick
Stems with umbrella leaves,
Some split to allow a simple white flower
That swells to a yellow fruit --
More like a lemon than an apple --
But who'd enjoy the sound
Of May lemon over May apple
Or even want to try a taste?
The rest of the woods was dead leaves
Or tiny trees trying
To catch up with their parents.

Then one year, the farmer
Who owned the woods behind my house
Cleared the tiny trees and brush,
Leaving only open space
Between the taller trees.
I was angry when I saw it.

Then, that summer, I took a walk.
The streams, the jewel weed, the May apples --
All were gone.
But in the open space,
With all the extra light,
Bright blue lobelias and hot pink bearded orchids
Spread throughout the woods.
One set of beauty could not help
But soon replace the other.

A rarer beauty had taken over.

Mother's Records

My mother taught me how to live
By standing on a stepladder
In the hall closet
Hiding her vinyl records
As I handed them up to her.
"Don't tell your father," she said
As she covered her records with a blanket
"We'll bring them back out
When your father gets over this latest fad."
We knew
When our church stopped preaching hard
Against all rock-n-roll that he'd forget
And mom could then retrieve
Her records. Elvis would
Fill up the air again.

Sea Birds

Seabirds singing, sailing over waves,
Wandering where wings and winds take them,
White wings all too often.
Gulls and terns, white against the sky,
White against the waves.
Do they hide in the sky in their white wings
From fierce fish,
Sharks' sharp teeth snatching them from the sky?
Is this really a fear for the albatross
Soaring over open oceans,
Delicately dipping down for fish and squids
Swimming near the surface?
And what of brown skuas or black,
Bright-beaked puffins?
Puffins perched on northern rocks, peering out,
Watching eider ducks swim between waves
Appear
Disappear, wondering
Where they went, sometimes vanishing
Completely beneath the waves,
Searching for fish.
Eiders, too, are white
With but a bit more color
On their beaks and heads.
They must have less to hide
Than the gulls soaring overhead,
Though the eiders sit in silence
While the gulls gab incessantly.

Rock

Tapdancing bumblebees
Flitting, flying, flourishing
Far from the fantastic
Mediocre sky.
Diving deep into the sea
To ski the mountains'
Flowing pillow lava
Erupting down into the rocky caves.
Stone temples rising
Triumphantly crumbling
Out of sight,
Down the cliffs,
Whistling over rocks
that break into twos and threes and fours.
No longer seen,
Dropping headlong before the fall.
Black and white reality
Lying in strength before, beyond, beside,
Tangibly intangible.
Shining smirking crossing faces
That cannot be discerned,
Wheezing helplessly
As they travel to the moon.

Waves

Waves -- we all are spacetime waves,
Complex waves of information --
We speak our culture into existence
And speak each child into humanity.
We are negentropic skies.
Waves of sound, waves of light,
Waves of chemicals fill the world
And inform it, forming it.
Bees see ultraviolet landing strips
On the flowers they feed on
To make the honey we feast on
At our festivals of life. We
See only white daisies.
They decorate our hair and fields
In waves of white and yellow light.
Waves of chemicals fill our nostrils --
The sweet smell brings us pleasure-waves,
Attracts us as we are repulsed
With the threat of stinging bees.
The sweet complexity of choice waves
Us on or away, and home.
The sun shines in the sky,
The stars sparkle clear night skies,
And particle-waves observe each other
And us into material existence --
As we inform our children into
Human levels of complexity, and keep
The universe growing and emerging.
We stand in the doorway and wave --
We wave "hello," "goodbye."