Category Archives: free verse

Choice words (Cento)

Leave a reply

Under the wordless sky, come
with loveliness and the icy drouth
of hate –

The diverse forms of things, how can we learn?
Such is life’s trial, as old earth smiles and knows
We call things beautiful, not as such, but because of what they mean.

One moment rests my heart, to rend the next
with words alert and bold,
betrayals so long repeated
that they are taken for granted.

And passing on, smiled like a singing rainbow,
the sky too soon shall witness on your winter hill
as atoms dissipate, as chance sorts life.

*********
A Cento is a poem comprised of lines borrowed from other poets. This one owes is origins to the following poets:
Edward Albert Clements, Margaret Fraser,V.N. Wylde,John Creagh, Kathryn Worth, Joseph Stanley Pennell, John Davies, Robert Browning, Anthony Madrid, and W.S. Merwin.

Crossroads Eulegy

Leave a reply

The church at the corner
of High Street and Orange
has closed its doors, and will be
torn down.
Peeling away the veneer of eternity
from man-made totems.
Perhaps, like its neighbors,
the touchless car-wash and
the auto lube- each seeking to
cleanse and repair brokenness – it suffered
from poor accessibility
from the main road
and people were not induced
to stop over.
Maybe it missed a key tenet
of going – even down the street
or across the tracks- to share
a moment.

All this – it makes way for the new road project
and adds extra lanes to this junction –
so that people can travel
to and fro,
but never have to stop.
Or perhaps, they will install
a roundabout – the evensong of
souls that move continuously
through the intersection
on their way to someplace else,
never noticing the the brick
wall that faces the highway.

Hidden

Leave a reply

In praise of pewter and braids –
and time that fills the empty spaces,
my songs carry with them
faces of blue, confiscated from clouds.

I imagine them as downcast-
bent as the newly emerged jonquils
under a storm.
Forlorn, as an abandoned
patch of last season’s snowmound.
And roiling with the murk
of runaway rainfall and laced
with mud.

Somewhere, burgeoning
behind the surging somber
lies her bronzing sun, polished
and rose umber, attempting to gleam
during the hidden moments of today.

Openings

Leave a reply

The picket fence between me
and the road blends and
culminates with symmetry of
scenery. Not a barrier like
doors – those of different
colors and woodgrains – openings
with stone thresholds, inviting
and structurally restrained.
Fences with alternating slat/space
continuums – so observation is not completely obscured
but the breach of us and them is there.
I focus on the panels and their monochromaticity,
accompanied by sun-glare and
it makes me move to the open space.
Here are changing things –
blades of sawgrass moving,
birds that appear and disappear
while rolling in the sky,
the maundering of a single
cloud. My mind follows.

Unknowns (Cento)

Leave a reply
The wars go on and on,
invading  your dreams.
Everything you saw
                                 you were,
and you saw everything.
Out of the heart of the ineffable
draw the black flecks of matter
and from these the cold, blue fire.
It produced a wavelike pattern.
All this prodding, so that to an outside observer,
we are the gods who can unmake
the world in seven days.
And just as I need every bit
 of what is seen,

even among these
defractions,
visions that witches brew,
spoken with images,
never with you-
There was never any more inception than there is now,
to go into the unknown.
I must enter, and leave, alone,
I know not how,
but knew love and
know it through knowledge.
-The darkness in the open mouth
uttered itself, pushing
aside the light.
Credits:
Jessica Hagedorn, Don Bogen, Diane di Prima, John Beer, Lisel Mueller, Jane Yolen, Michael Anania, Walt Whitman, Edward Thomas, Laura Moriarty, Helen Dudley, Margaret Atwood

Strings

Leave a reply

To string a harp requires some skill,
nimble touches, and a willingness to grasp
and hold resolute while tightening.

Or to be astute with numbers, theorems-
strings that interweave among
the axioms – truths anchor,
reasons believe.

The twine that twists and loops
as you create, with hooks and pins
to overlap and interplay.

A line to slacken and release
a toy, only to tighten and recall
its track, returned with joy beguiling.

Or words that link by sound
or phrase to sum-splice and describe –
inspire, perturb, dissuade.

Then tie the cord, the knotted ends
that yoke the different threads
we spin and lattice, but not
to demarcate –
The strength’s in bond
and plait.

Walls and Bridges

Leave a reply

Horizons awaken
and to get there from here one must see
where the hills and hollows meet
and the rivers and streams retreat
to dreams and shadows fey.

Please do not build a wall,
the kind where horizons are hidden from view.

Solidified mortar against the weather
against the sun and rain, that blocks
one or the other – when they -the both
of them just work together to ripen
and soak this land of opportunity.

I ask that you don’t build a wall,
the kind where there’s brick upon stone.

Though time will avail itself
The vines and the climbers –
the clematis and trumpets will rise
and entwine, stifling the numbness.
The grout it will crumble
with a shout through the pale
as history teaches – walls are assailed.

Do not build a wall, please forego
this thought of a modern Jericho.

The grindstone of building this edifice-
the structure and reasons abound.
The land and the people in unison
need something better – more sound.
Synchronous dreams and horizons.
Hope beyond now- shared not fought.
Walls will not bring us contentment.
Bridges are much better thoughts.

Thoughts on epiphany

Leave a reply

I have decided that music
bears witness to the scenery around us.

A woman wearing a bunny eared winter cap
can listen to “Wild Thing” and “Always a Woman”
and still be focused on serious world issues.

The sounds of Professor Longhair and Dr. John
refresh a winter day of Epiphany just as well as Kings College
at Christmastide.

A conversation with a beautiful soul
can ignite a fire – for warming a dulled
and calloused heart.

Walking on salted sidewalks
leaves a rhythmic pulse in your brain
with bodhran and guiro contributions.

The sparkle of lights in the darkness
of early morning never grows old. The silence
makes them shine.

The end of the day lingers when you drag out
the last light from inside.

balmy

Leave a reply

When indespant and lonse,
the words open up
and breathe on me
barthey verses, to which I’m wont.

Panoramic, juncted words –
brandished in copper,
malleable to the heart of trees
that shade the summer sun.

But sometimes sotted into mine,
the gold babuery of a balmy poet-
meant to insinuate and/or describe,
the otherwise abstract baptivized.

And other-sides in the silence
of a toiling stone wall,
an unlikely salving to soothe-
a compote of strength and solitude,

something only a barthey verse could do.

A Christmas Card

Leave a reply

Paper greetings, printed in opaque black,
swirled with ochre tones – and embossed
with tinsel and glare.

The serenity of straw and stable,
low station and artless beginnings-
in the midst of majestic creations.

Or how the mystery of snowfall
obscures the road ahead, yet in stillness
illustrates continuum beauty where we are led.

The green wreath, the evergreen bough-
decked in ribbon – tinged with gold
and captures glimmer and snow alike, somehow.

See the carolers, their faces
reddened in winter’s callous air –
mouths agape with our imagined joyful song and prayer.

In the bleak midwinter,
Snow lay all around, stars shown bright-
then pealed the bells more loud and clear,
Merry Christmas, Noel, this silent night.