I jump over waves in the wind, now thinned-
causing a splash on descent, and the water imbues.
I walk in circles in some well-trodden shoes,
soles that are worn to the heel.
And the crestfallen face of my mind
urged in the gentle spell of her lines-
the brushstrokes of her pastel flowing gown
compel me to write something down.
I frolic amidst the swell and soak in
the flow of her form that rescinds
the aches in my well-trodden soul.
I stand embracing the image and whole.
When you came with white rabbits in your arms,
not for greater gifts of genius,
the wispy, the lightly lifted or stirring threads of existence.
I’ve learned everything is falling outward –
Quickening for the land and sea,
Drawing contours, shapes, and lines.
Shining nowhere, but in the dark
watching illumination upon illumination,
plunging and lifting, the grain spilling back.
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring –
and vanished into where they seemed to start
They are the future of us all.
**********
This Cento was composed using lines from the following poets.
Rita Dove, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Christopher Buckley, Gail Wronsky,Stephen Edgar, Henry Vaughn, Robert King, Barbara Howes, Tami Haaland, Dylan Thomas, May Sarton, Seamus Heaney
The grey blue sky sits somber
till the sun arrives, pink glint and shine
off buildings -faces in the darkened
canopy revealed as blossoms in bouquets.
The stack of bricks sit solid
till the men decide, with sweat and mortar
placing them in preset order – line
structures built to demarcate.
The words I hear ring silent
till the light resides, with spur and purpose
on their ebbing rule and tide – a dawn
A gath’ring of brush come late.
Slipped into function, an x and o fashion
held fast between the thumb and forefinger
and shoved between stitches.
Crossed threads with fibrils
hatched of coral and seagreen coloring,
the twined straw-ness it sculpts
crossed purposes – to hold within
and to have beauty fitted on the surface.
Our eyes opened to the brief delights
of geminate pairing and not duality.
Negation, all fulfilled desire
gold with a heart of cinder.
Everything suggests something else.
When the weeds sprawl
it is not what you think.
The dust motes float
and swerve in the sunbeam
because I say we rather than they;
They change the color of your dream:
We is whiplash
and backhanded ways of settling grief.
And it is this rocking back and forth
to take in to sate the mouths
**************
This Cento contains lines from the following poets:
Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Robert Frost, AF Moritz, Muna Lee, Carl Sandburg, Karen Volkman, Lee Herrick, WS Graham, Susan Donnelly, Alison C Rollins, Ha Jin, Jean Garrigue, Jacob Saenz
I spent the morning reading my old poems
and realize they feel like memories.
The lonely ones that desire a second (or third)
reading, the triumphant ones
that trumpet their arrival,
the amorous ones –
they pull me into a corner by the collar and linger,
the nonsensical ones that twirl and wheel
about the sacred and profane, the love or disdain.
The obtuse, they wander.
The linear, they gander.
The poems, I gather to mind
and hold to abide in warm embraces.
They all have their places.
I’ve seen where the snow melts to rivers,
passing over the cusp of terrain.
Poured lonely and loved into vessels pressed
by eons, it froths and drives.
Pulling and pushing the raw,
Filling and turning the wanton mutation
of these bends and falls to impatience
and hurried decline.
Cold and clear – this water,
a gypsy surge
bathed with benevolent favor
and no time on its journey
for deliberation.
Embraced at its finish
and swirled among the pools
of a quintillion bonded kindred souls.
Time does have mercy. But it doesn’t enumerate or wait.
A mother of course goes on setting the table, even if it’s with broken plate
lit with the fire of sighs, casts spells, burns sage,
sweats in a lodge, her own prayers flaming,
Ask and ask until nothing’s left to ask.
This Cento is comprised of lines from the following poets.
Chen Chen, Barbara Ras, Sheryl Luna, Robin Morgan, Ko Un, Alice B. Fogel, Carry Fountain, Edwin Markham, Lucie Brock-Broido, Arthur Davison Ficke, Simon J. Ortiz.
Raw material
thought unneeded and defective
on snows of paper-
Coloring the outlook in real pigments,
a gradient in between the
two-tone coloration anchored
by the evil absence of light.
It must be a bitch
or at least alien logic
to walk thru or wear on
in such complications.
On the timing,
don’t rush or force the ending.
Science waits-
wins out over time and darkness-
increasing the demand for
beautiful poems.
I wish in sounds that the wind makes
when rustling the leaves in rain, and
shakes, scattered and thrushed.
In a way, it is like breathing –
in another, waved and brushed.
I brace my frame against the chill
that stuns and stings,
and howls the shrill coil.
The fear that it brings,
headlong and brittle
into the wind.
I lose myself in those rushing moments
of burst and calm, the fate of limb
with a wandering unction.
Casting aside the lithe, cold grim
then writing in new script, a whim.
Taps and Ratamacues 