new stuff
 

"minimal me"

I am learning my lessons well.
Reflected in ancient tidal pools
I see how shallow I am.

The numberless stars say
I do not count for much.
The September moon casts sharp pine shadows across my brow.
It is so far above me.

Dolphins smile, knowing they are superior beings.
Eyeing me, they dive deep,
demonstrating I do not see beneath the surface of things.

Even the sand fleas make me twitch like a puppet.

Nature teaches.
To be free, I must be free of me.
To make sure I understand.
It plans to kill me.

Wow. I just love that line. Very powerful choice of words in that one among others. I really liked this. It's so smart too. I think most can relate to feeling like that sometimes. I need to learn to start writing like this...in that kinda format n stuff too. Never tried it maybe I should give it a shot. Great stuff I'll be sure to keep my eye out for more of your works.

Asta!!

To some, this may sound like badgering, but I think you'll understand because of the conversation we had earlier. I read this with a mock british accent in my head for some reason. This made a few lines stick out awkwardly... it's hard to keep the flow and tense going smoothly, but each line speaks clearly for itself. Message delivered.

Appreciate yourself
Appreciate your surroundings
In the end we are all one & individual
A paradox
Empathy




Good one, art

im depressed now :). fantastic writing. i like the visualisations i get when i read it. please post more :)

Thanks,
Yes. I do think it sounds better without the English accent
;)

OK. This next one is similar but even more loose in its construction.

(Please see next post)

"I am old and I will die one day"

I am old and I will die one day
So I thought it was time I came clean.

I gained enlightenment at an early age.
I lived a so-called “normal life” with this knowledge
So that you would believe me when I decided to reveal all
As I am now doing.

It’s not comforting to know
Hearing this will not set you free.
Freedom is not for us in this life.
We cannot be other than we are.

We pass our time with useless things
As if we live forever.
It’s our bodies doing this.

Our minds know very well we die.
But our bodies refuse to hear of it.
Our bodies desire the useless things.

We go about our days in service to these dumb limbs
Serving them endless amounts of what they desire
But does not sustain them
Making them as comfortable as possible, as they demand it
Because they refuse to accept they will die.

Our brilliant minds are filled with petty annoyance.
That’s our lazy bodies talking
Constantly forcing us to confront ourselves in mirrors
So we can see the damage we’re doing.

And while we know love is the answer,
We are faced with the hard fact
We can only be loved to the degree we love ourselves.

And we do not love ourselves.
We are our bodies.
And because they are such stupid brutes
They are utterly unlovable.

I am good looking enough to know looks are worth nothing
And wealthy enough to have figured out it has no value.
I am intelligent and know I can never be smart enough.
I see far enough to see an end.

Enlightenment is like these things.
Once it is yours you see right through it.
And you know
Like everything else
It is nothing at all.

The secret of life is life.
We all possess it for a while.

I am old and I will die.
It's time to say the things I've said.
I am old and I will die.
You’ll know it then.
I was already dead.

my chills' chills have chills, art.

now i know without doubt that a theory is definatly right. we are all connected, you just touched my soul, dude. something that only a very few select precious souls can do. this made me laugh... not in a funny way.

when i have clarity or when something works i just feel alive and i laugh a deep, deep belly laugh. wow.

my whole time on tfp was worth it for this one passage. Thanks, Art. thanks a lot.

Thanks you, Z.
That means a lot to me.

I was already dead... What a great way to end a great poem...Glad to see you in the lit forum.

You have immense talent Art, but if I wasn't a regular reader of your journal, I'd be spooked.

DD, undertstood.
I'd scare myself if I didn't see the humor in it all.

the insights are very on point, and your words are very well chosen for the task. its very interesting to see how you construct your view of mind and body, and i think i learned something very valuable. thanks again...

"I am good looking enough to know looks are worth nothing
And wealthy enough to have figured out it has no value.
I am intelligent and know I can never be smart enough.
I see far enough to see an end."

I love this part. Please keep sharing with us... I, for one, will look forward to your writings.

"Isabel"

Bottom dwelling
Looking up - I sometimes do
The old air ocean everywhere
Disturbed

The fringe of your turbulent skirt
On my head
I’m so small I can’t see your knees
Or that deepest black hole
Of yours
I can see on TV

They call it your eye
But I know
What it is

Isabel Gone

Here up north
A hundred miles inland
Air's like it rolled off a south sea beach

You left a mess, you know
You must have been too proud to care

And everywhere
The trees bare more
Tell you the truth
There are fewer trees today

You were a murderess too
Bittersweet in my hand
This orange Monarch
Died young

Getting rough out here.
The cicadas of late summer are silent.
Their crisp skins, strewn around
mixed with acorns,
lifeless leaves.

My path is crossed by doomed survivors
- old bees getting a final buzz off of their chests
- limping crickets fooled by mid-day sun
- crazy drunken flies in kamikaze loops

The praying mantis I spy
poised on a fire escape downtown
has no religion.
And the green katydid
flying toward me
with impossible wings
is unnerving

These squirrels are way ahead of me.
Summer was just a dream
and they knew it.

It is nice to see that you are posting here far more than you have since I first joined.
Thank you for sharing your work.
~Angel~

Thanks Angel.
The poems are happening as a result of regular daily walks I have been taking for a couple of years.
They've become a spawing ground for poetry, which is a good thing, I think...

man and dog
 

our pact with dogs is we are their masters.
we get to make the hard choices.
they get to accept them.
they never stop loving us.

we never stop loving them either.
but it's harder for us.

Brain Freeze
 

Words are frozen mind crystals.

Sentences are chunks of ice.

Once they are formed

That part of the brain stops thinking

And just repeats the words

Over and over.



We end up with titanic icebergs

In our heads.

Oh how very true this is!
Great analogy.

sound underfoot
 

once, sound was all above me
buzz of crickets, shrill cicadas
shook the trees

absent now
instead it's the sharp crunch
of insect bodies
mixed with acorns
beneath my boots

there’s old leaves too
one day they’re tree-bound and wind-rustled
and the next day they show up
down here

this transference
seems fraught with some meaning
that’s beyond me
like the warmth that slips farther
away each day

I know it is gravity
that does it
but it seems
much heavier than that

Late in October
 

Playing the odds of one more warm day
The last katydid is hanging tough
While a mantis prepares for hara-kiri

Nervous chipmunks pool intelligence
They’re drawing up secret maps
And hiding them in burrows
I hear each year they forget
Where they’ve stashed them
And so must struggle like the rest of us
Blinded by frozen eyelids
Stumbling, falling
Toward utter hibernation

Squirrels are in my face
Staring right through me
Peering for nuts I may have hidden
behind my ears

I guess I’m no threat now
Compared to what’s coming
The ones who can’t take the pressure
throw themselves in front of cats

Really enjoyable. Both thought provoking and entertaining. I tend to write poetry only when I get inspired, usually by something someone else wrote. I get jealous that I never thought of this or that line. You have inspired me over and over again today. Thanks, and keep it coming.

Eyeing me, they dive deep,
demonstrating I do not see beneath the surface of things.
_____________________

The secret of life is life.
We all possess it for a while.
_______________________

The cicadas of late summer are silent.
Their crisp skins, strewn around
mixed with acorns,
lifeless leaves.
________________________


Really liked these lines. They got to me for some reason which is what is so great about poetry. Thank you for letting complete strangers get a view of the world through your eyes.

That is the type of writing I love to see on the boards, keep it up!

it's a good way to hone one's thinking, I'm finding.

appreciate the comments...thanks

Fault for the Fall
 

You’re just being cruel now
We really did all we could
To pretty things up around here

A lot of us are trying to pick up after you
But it’s a lost cause and we know it

Leaves are strewn around
With no concern for what’s getting clogged up
Don’t you know the rain needs somewhere to go?

Treeloads of berries are just rotting on the ground
The sidewalks are all sticky
And it’s starting to smell
We have to live here, you know

It’s cold, too
Getting fat is making sense
Already, some of us are starting to give in
Those white flakes you threw in my face today
Were an insult, weren’t they?

Not only that
You threw my hat in the dirt
When I walked out the door

And this killing spree of yours
Goes on and on
I know for a fact
The doe on the highway
Was innocent

How do you expect us to act
With such a wicked Mother?

Unappreciated
 

Sticking to my boot heels
Soft flesh of rain-pelted trees

Downed too early, the newspaper said
To show the very best of fall color

Another failure like this
And the whole year will end
In the middle of December

Instead of just freezing
It will be two weeks
Of absolute zero
And no light at all

Then we’ll be sorry
We criticized
Autumn’s best effort

Low-Rent Birds
 

I fall for common birds
My youth misspent
With bushtits and boobies

Robin seduced me
Each and every spring
I loved her
For her breast alone

I'm still thrilled by starlings
Simple silhouettes
With little hearts as grand
As the beating cores
Of brilliant eagles
That have no time to flirt

All birds are lovebirds
Equal in the blue eyes
Of the empty sky

cloud-flecked
blue air above us
summer green
surrounding warm skin
we’re free here
like butterflies
hawks, foxes
deer, serpents
like undulant trout


we're arms and legs
splayed wide
at play with each other
spead under radial boughs
of wide open elms

we're hot pink
as thistles
and naked
like the flesh of day lilies
pulsing nearby

as we pound each other
into the ground

You've got some great stuff here! Thank you very much for sharing it with us all!

Art, you are simply one of the most fasinating people to me. Your thoughts, your poems, you simple are an fasinating person. Even your face. It's so very much your own. If you've read Stranger in a Strange Land then you will understand what I mean by that. Don't ever change, or more to the point, don't ever stop changing. I really want to see what direction you will go next.
As one of my friends used to say, "I only you were gay, and only I were gay." lol

heh heh - thanks NiceGuy and Seer666...nice words - much appreciated.

I'm so sorry. Don't lose hope.

I took about 6 pages of notes and the result, so far, is this brief meditation:

...

cloudscape

up there in solid blue air
architecture of vapor
white water lakes
lacking shorelines
move cautiously
aware of imminent dissolution

their slow billowing crawl
is stalled by Sol

Some very powerful works Art. You are a very wise and talented man.

As always it is a pleasure and with deepest sincerity an honor to read your work.

Your kind words are very much appreciated, pan...
Thanks.

Wonderful....you have a way....a very good way.

I think a new poem -
not because you stopped those apocalyptic downpours,
tornadoes, even,
and show a day of actual sunlight and clear sky.
Hatched during your mean streak,
the mosquitos are mid-summer strong.

I was writing about that sky
before you took it away from me
for two too-long weeks.

I was lying naked under your sun.
And, as you know,
I was looking good back then.
I don’t think I trust you enough
to get back out there now.
Thanks,
but I’ll just forget about how I look.

Not only that -
I was drawing again.
My pen and paper
suffused by sunlight,
I drew up a storm...

whitetail

four million years
moving through
this hidden place
it has always been yours
but I share your secret now

deep in your blood
you know it by heart
and your heart
is my target

you’re everywhere
these barren days
sex-crazed
leaving traces
on hard ground, on trees
making mistakes

showing yourself
is your fatal flaw
you’re giving yourself away
and you don’t know that

you can not help yourself
I understand this behavior
in my own flawed heart

sensing me
in your space
I sense you in mine
you’ll die here
as will I one day

but you are more beautiful
than I
this is why
you will be the first
to die

I really like this one Art, Thanks

sure thing. seems like this time of year gets me thinking...poetically.
thanks J.R.V.A.

I love the juxaposition of that poem - even though we know certain paths will bring a faster end, we cannot break from the past.

That's an awesome interpretation amonkie. I can really see it in a new light now that you mention it...
Thanks - sometimes even our own texts are not entirely within our comprehension.

running, bleeding

blood's flying out of you
like a flock of red birds
freed up from pressured spaces

you're weakening now
running for your life
as life leaves you
marking the trees
with inner scent

the dry woods
soaked red
leaf and root
will grow anew
warmed and fed
by your pass

your deer heart, unaware
continues beating
pumping out your life
as if you are the world
but you are not the world
you are yourself
and you are dying

your bright tail
signals surrender
I'll make this up to you
this beautiful murder
you will continue on
within me

building the blind

I use your eyes
and think as you
see the old place
as new

treading familiar pathways
carefully leaving no trace
no scent of my presence
in our shared territory

stepping back
breathing it in
observing the execution
of your ancient habits
comprehending the logic
of your journeys
and the reasons why
you move

finding your shapes
pressed in the grass
where your kind halts
before stepping
over the break
in the rusted wire

where you scrape
the soft earth
where you pass
and have passed
for millenia

your prints still fresh
the raw rubbed trees
all the feral signs
of your dangerous life

you are drawn here
by the fallen chestnuts
the white oak acorns
where the autumn sun
warms the side
of the southern hill
where you hide at noon
by the quenching waterway
the cool places where
I spot you
beneath the moon

the old paths
converge here
in this enfolding valley
this is where
I'm building the blind
on the earthen dam
above the small stream

behind two trees
I tie branches
to brambles
lay a cover of twigs
drape brown grass
level a spot

when I return
I'll sit for hours
watch the frost evaporate
admire the morning mist
note the insistence
of the woodpecker
and wait
for the flashing instant
I end your numbered days

this ineffable
special place
is not so unique
each foot
of living earth
is after all
a place for dying

You know....I do not hunt.

But Damn....you just made it seem a rather inspired way to spend a weekend.
Thanks

It's good to read more of your stuff Art. I need to keep an eye on this thread more often. You contunie to amaze and confuse, bedazale and enlighten. I really enjoyed the last one. It seems a rare thing for one to find such beauty in death. Though is it the hunter following the dear, or the bear following the hunter? Hum, something to ponder. Keep them comeing man. It's like intullectual porn for a metiphor junkie.

Thanks for the kind words, Seer666.

Every once in a while, I like to use words more carefully than I typically do. Glad these have some value to you. They're like stepping stones along a clear path for me. So much of our experience is verbal - including our thinking. I occasionally have a need to create some clarity out of the clutter, I suppose.

Awesome, Art. thank you.

Ghostly World

If spirits do roam
In these spaces
Between the slow burning up of suns
And the inexorable downward slide of gravity
It must look this way to them.

Where the appearance of death is brilliant
And things freeze white in solid air
The escape of steam from nostrils
Mistaken for the soul
Turns things strange
Like getting gasoline

Out under orange and yellow bays
Great bright stalls on greasy concrete
The living dead stand still
Fueling up, driven to wander
Risking everything to get back home

The signs surround me
They are quite beautiful
But I know, in my marrow
They are all about dying

I’m not going out there
They’re spreading rumors
About spring - even rebirth
But that’s a matter of faith

Wow, I had to read this a couple times to make sure I was grasping the poem, and it always is good to think about how others view our world.

Thanks, amonkie.
Just finishing up a new one here...

My Heart Attack

There’s a man I’ve yet to meet
He lives over at the next farm
Been there just about forever, they say

I see him, dressed darkly, sitting on his tractor
He can raise a thousand acres of corn with that thing
And he can cut them right down again
Staring only at his wheels

When we moved in here
I waved the first few times he passed
He never even turned his head
So I stopped waving

He’s a decorated veteran – a war hero
The subject of a Hollywood movie
These days though, he walks slowly
Out to the mailbox and back

The other day I passed him in my truck
He seemed to pause at that very moment
Stared in my direction
I almost waved at him
But he wasn’t looking at me

He had just mailed a letter
Maybe he was having second thoughts
I think he knows the weight of his words

I keep thinking I should go over there
Make his acquaintance
He’s knows my family
He’s visited my friends

One day
He may come
To visit me

here she comes

Setting up for spring around here. The flying wedges of geese point due north these days. There’s the occasional seagulls resting up in superstore parking lots. A few farmers are getting the jump on things by turning over newly thawed fields. And there’s little bulging buds on bare tree limbs.

The sky is lit by a higher warmer sun. Clouds puff up after descending from their high striations. Our road is a collection of muddy ruts swamped by thawing snowbanks. Most of last year’s gravel’s been scraped away by the plows of winter.

Got on my lighter jacket. Sus is wearin’ her fringe buckskin. Mimi’s in her lightweight western fleece. I’m writing fair weather poems and sus is out on the sunporch painting the landscape.

Yep. Winter’s windin’ down. Don’t matter what else is up its sleeve. We been through another year’s low down ride. And the tide’s on it’s way in ag’in.

Damn Art.....I honestly needed that "breath of Spring Air"....very nice

Art, this is simply amazing...
Wow...

J.R.V.A., that's a much appreciated statement from you. I'm pleased it struck a responsive chord...

My Heart Attack II

I saw him today
turning under corn shafts
he left over winter
for deer cover.

I had dinner
put out the dogs
and he was still there.

All I see now
is the tree of lights
suspended from his tractor
the beams shooting out
toward grey rows.

Standing against the slow advance
of his inevitable machine
stalks become sound
under invisible wheels
and the February moon.

He’s still out there.
By morning
the old crop
will be gone.

Damn Art....always a pleasure to read you.

Standing against the slow advance
of his inevitable machine
stalks become sound
under invisible wheels
and the February moon.

this was particularly well done.


thanx

...likewise, tecoyah.

always good to take in the work of another practitioner of the ancient art

Out naked today
Under the spring sky
I felt the photon fingers
Of the sun
Pulling hard.
I barely escaped
With my skin intact.

ART, i enjoyed that. Spring is certainly a time of renewal.

Your words conveyed the rays of sun with a graphic feeling. very nice.

Thanks, sweetpea...

It was remarkable enough to spur a new image...

more to come, I'm sure.

Coming from one already sunburned, that spring pull is just too strong to ignore - seems like we become naked in soul and spirit as well, to the changes in our lives that lie ahead.

Thanks, amonkie.
Seems my poetic year starts in the spring.
This image was notable as the first one of the (vernal) year.
More soon...

There is something very zenlike in your poetry Art. It covers the soul.

Appreciated, Astrocloud. Thanks.

So wonderful. Perhaps one day, when I am not so full of sleep, I will tear these apart and see what falls out.

Some of my favorite lines:

Isabel Gone
You were a murderess too
Bittersweet in my hand
This orange Monarch
Died young

Getting rough out here.
The cicadas of late summer are silent.
Their crisp skins, strewn around
mixed with acorns,
lifeless leaves.

^ when I was a child, I'd go around the neighbourhood in late August collecting the remains of the cicadas. I liked to think that they were fairy shells, despite how ugly some of the skins can be.

Fault for the Fall
How do you expect us to act
With such a wicked Mother?

What a perfect way to end. I love the connection that this poem, especially, makes between humanity and nature.

Your poems make me want to go walking. They're serene and thoughtful, hopeful and honest. Some of the best I have read all year.

Thanks, cellophanedeity - they are often - almost always - the result of walking through the world...

Nice, nice,nice....Thanks Art

dressing you with my eyes

I've been watching you very closely
for more than a month.

You're always up before me.
In fact, as far as I know,
You're always up.

You're there
when I awake
making yourself more lovely
right in front of me.

You do it so slowly.
I can't stare away.

New tones of green
cover your limbs.
Your body disappears
like the landforms
behind a peacock's tail.

Then suddenly you're adorning yourself
with cherry, lilac, and forsythia.

I can hardly bear
these differences between us.
You are the most beautiful thing.

Even I can see that.

Damn Art.....as always, inspired.

And I can only imagine the form of such inspiration.

thanks - the inspiration is all around me here, tec...

I could have been blue

I could have been you
On that walnut limb
At the center of the world.

I want you to wait
For my camera
I want your image
And to speak your name
As if by saying, “Indigo Bunting”
I could become you

And now with camera in hand
I look at empty air
Above the branch
Where you were

Beyond the grey-brown perch
Behind the green leaves
The sky is bluer now
From having held you