Category Archives: imagery

Swept up (Cento)

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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.

Very present like a dark poem,
far and unreadable just out
at the edge of this poem floating.

And it is this rocking back and forth

to take in to sate the mouths

of humid heavy air and the wing music
of bees and flies.
Only, of course, they can’t sustain the part.
Tomorrow waits with a big broom.

**************

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

The last ones

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Where the omegas light
or the zebras graze
coming to a sundown at the end
of a day, with the hues just finishing
at the edge of the page.
Come what may.

Trek down to bottom
of the waterfall,
the pool that collects and swirls
and spalls. Shapes majestic rock
to a minor crawl.
You’ve seen it all.

Walk away from
blood and tears you’ve shed,
The memory maybe still fresh,
and living in your head. Not
worth the pain or the dread.
That’s what they said.

The last ones take
a moment to decide,
to conquer and reign in the now,
the meantime. It’s true what they implied,
yet often untried.

A part of you

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Emerging in the sleeping dew
with softened morning light,
are you among the sable fringe
casting forth your bright?

Walking on the air of day
with wisps of gleaming kismet,
are you sprite or angel summoned
without claim to coquette?

I comfort your implied embrace,
the smile you offer as you roam,
the auric presence you have shared
lives inside this poem.

 

While

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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.

contained

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she brought me words in ceramic
all polished and glistening,
language sauced and disheveled
and piled in this vessel.

she sent me themes in a crate
stacked edge upon edge,
corner and treatise
with motives alleged.

she carried her thoughts in a barrel
swirled and unmixable,
leaving me pondering
the whole thing was fictional.

when all that I managed was off-beat or bland
and all that I want, her true heart in hand.

Potential

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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.

A careless triolet

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A sudden silence in my wordless voice
that snared the rain and callous wind
and dripping eaves, by choice.
In sudden silence paused my wordless voice
with little notion to rejoice.
Between disdain and careless twinned
a sudden silence in my wordless voice
that snared both rain and callous wind.

Metathesis

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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.

Pastel

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In springtime, when our love was young
as children frollicking, run ’round and sung
wearing orchid dresses or mallow
neckties – to romp in damp grasses
in crayola sunlight.

Late winter of another year
in charcoal black and sinister
veneers of burgundy and brown- our hopes
and passions tread into ground.
And lasting what seems of a full bitter night,
unanswered prayers of a hopeless plight.

Come morning, then, in the orange dawn
a windless chill – almost gone.
An Easter vigil, impassioned rites
borne of blood-red, silver, black and white,
returns a prize bought with a cost-
hope eternal once thought lost.

Puzzled

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The color is at least a brown,
though it shades a bit of red
with purple tones at corners
and the interlocking tab.

A protruding sense of purpose
it contours like jagged bone
meant to match in synchrony
maneuvering to its own.

And yet, uniqueness hems and flanks
the space, the opening it takes
and turning ’round the key
will not fill disparate gapes.

So left then, is a scenic -rude-
all unveiled and bit-by-bit
assembled there in lots and cast
and there one piece does not fit.

All solving will not cure the form
inside this pale, imperfect zone
of puzzle pieces. Looking close
a wealth of hues and shapes, its own.