Poetry Month

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beauty

you can't eat beauty
besides paying attention there is nothing
to it
glazed gaze fixed like a mineral
bursts of moss
green bullets
that puncture a veil of silvery mist
i am seething inexhaustable dwarf desires
behind this crooked smile
high
on a mountain side
i am hurricaned flowerheads
with eyes of black metal

under suspicion

I am still under suspicion
done with jail
but always being watched
people set their clocks by me
I am useful
if you look hard enough
a house wren landed on the porch railing
stayed 30 seconds
and then flew off
a week before one landed
on my shoulder
I still believe
in the variegated blue hue
of dawn
and the cacophonous silence
that swallowed my voice
the pantomimic dancing bones in the
garden juggle my mind
I will be out in a couple of hours
apropos of Rimbaud
I really will be someplace else
*
(with W. Frawley & J. Eaise)

#2012 20090319

Greeting
    the goose couple
    while heading into
    Building 6.
Eyeing a patch of grass
The "He" goose
    Wondered if he should
    have "fourths."
Curling up
    under the dry,
    warm awning
In front of
    the door way
The "She" goose
    looked settled;
Migratory rest stop.

2006 20090305

Jumping up on you
Trying to
      mouth a hand
Eventually barking
      a "Hey! Don't you
      want to play!
      I do."
Panting golden
      smiley face
      staring back;
an offer you can't refuse.

The Moral Order - Illuminating essay by Morris Berman

In the interest of saving space and of providing a more readable experience, we are providing a link to the original essay along with the excerpts below. We believe this is relavant material as it explores the malnourishing cultural context in which poets, artists, musicians and other creative beings of this age are "caged".

...Modern societies, said (Max) Weber, were governed by bureaucracy; the dominant ethos was one of “rationalization,” whereby everything was mechanized, administered according to the dictates of scientific reason. Weber famously compared this situation to that of an “iron cage”...

(referencing the book"How Americans Use Time", John Robinson, 1977)
...Robinson discovered that on an average daily basis, five minutes were spent on reading books (of any kind), one minute on making music, thirty seconds attending theater and concerts, and less than thirty seconds on visits to art galleries or museums. As depressing as these figures are, they are surely much worse thirty-two years later, given the heavy corporatization of the culture, the dramatic increase in the attention paid to television and video screens in general, and the widely acknowledged decay of the American educational system. Indeed, the square footage of shopping malls in the U.S.–4 billion as of ten years ago–vastly exceeds that of schools and churches. All of the available data show that the typical American citizen has about as much interest in the life of the mind as your average armadillo...

http://morrisberman.blogspot.com/2009/02/moral-order.html

the cool spot

those moments when
the flickering shadow of
transience
lingers
and contracts in the whirl
of our impenetrable
emptiness
our ragged hearts
need to get back
to the sailboat
in the attic
*
the moon was lost
in a timeless bit
of illusion
i stopped crying
suddenly
the frigid air
was inside
me
the blue patches of
snow were illumined by
mortality
as if i were someone else
walking away from a stranger
dividing solitude
was becoming a point of
orientation
and departure
with no way out
of the split
*
perfect skin
is on sale
in the basement
i read half of that novel
hopping around like a kangaroo
walking between raindrops i remembered
how much i love the beautiful fog
when i returned to the electric light
of the work world i thought
i don't bend over enough
i looked at my bloated
midriff
with inner vision
i sent a request down
to the basement of bones
i want to live in the mountains
in some unnamed country
sorry for the blank email
but then again i don't need frigid air
to find the cool spot
*
(with j. eaise)

I'm Sorry

two words my father never
spoke to me
two little words
could make all the difference

I thought of writing
to tell you so
I thought
of writing...

Perhaps, I thought,
I ought to tell you
as a father ought
perhaps, teach a daughter

Perhaps you do not know
the harbored potential of those
two little words
perhaps you do not know how I've longed
to hear them
how I long to justify
my un-sought-after
perhaps even unwarranted
forgiveness...

Perhaps
it's true
you are too proud

Perhaps somewhere
in that gray space
of slippery memory
you imagine that you have
uttered those words
to me...

or, perhaps
you feel no such utterance
required?

Perhaps it is only your own loss
you are sorry for

or perhaps,
you are not sorry
at all...

2005 20090226

Letting the
      vast quiet
      seep in
From Mt. Baker
      to the Olympics
      and up Vancouver Island.
Clear, calm, quiet --
      not the usual blustery cold
      that assaults you --
at South Beach;
Feeling the energy flow.

upper meadows

upon the upper meadows of brief living
her halo fits time’s beauty
thence come unusual formations of sense
and abstractions from dense matter

the under-rind a trying set of postulates
messing in assorted cocktails of feelingfacts
in the romances of sex-bliss goddess bless
them you go whew! bless them goddess forever

a youth-dive into the wave like a scoter
all the more ebullience of potential
coruscated common jeweled salt suds
mango toboggan swimming the swan’s road

that’s all for now muchacha the dawn is come
I’m off to catch the air before I see the sun

shimmer

first cat is best cat is Japonaise-
on the sofa’s firmament of skyrock
firmed in the stices threaded to micro
is allworld the end of the edge is lazyland

laugh at Night sauntering 'round the house
deepsucking the spirit ejaculating
in cool flowing dark packets surrounding
one thought in a mind and your head

leaves a moon on the silver-plated mountain
on the mountain lies a key and a passageway
the child you were is caught fishing for a future face
with which to apprehend the shimmer of argent skin

uncertainty and certain firmities-
how one becomes another in the cyclic dawns!
a kind of opening out into cold knowledge
not knowing who talks or puts a mountain on the tongue

Katrien’s Jin Shin

you begin me crossing
cautiously ashore an African waterhole
with every pulse you know:
I am the flock of nervous birds that measures
every aspect of your approach
with its million-eyed flinching
a dominion defended in reluctant peripheral take-offs

we both know where we are by the sound featherflap
and the confused vexation of pelicans landed in your wake
pulses folding together like wings to a ribcage
your breath is a hope insisting itself
as you walk gently into the center of it all

and know: when the beaks have stopped.
In the last moment
all the black and gray blotches stand perfectly still.

from above I see you are a miracle listening
because you end me
a white sheet rising
high and lovely in a blue whisper wind

Stink

nest

our every name
sky night rain summer garden snow
change time through beautiful storms
of words
that nest in our laughter
together

#1991 20090122

Driving through
    a tunnel of fog
Landmarks
    occasionally
    floating by
Suggesting progress;
Dream state.