Tag Archives: Romantic Style

How to move through the rain

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Into each life, some rain must fall – H. W. Longfellow

Use an umbrella, preferably compact
and easily stored.

Use an umbrella, preferably full-sized,
with a six foot diameter.

Cover your head:
Use the Plain-Dealer
Or the Times-Picayune
Or an old copy of the Post-Intelligencer

Don’t use the Sun-Times
The Sun-News,
Or the Standard-Examiner

Move like Gene Kelly,
and sing,
sing and tap,
sing,
and tap and sway.

Pirouette,
in comfortable shoes.

Swing at raindrops with a Katana sword.

Be like a petal, opened
and rediscovered
in the spring.

Let the rain kiss you on your head,
as it must,
and even though a-washed in dreary
and cold, silver, liquid drops,
revel in the
-slishity slosh-

Calculate the horizontal velocity and random path
required to pass through a normalized distribution of water drops
falling
at their terminal velocity,
and walk
between
them.

Avoid the puddles.
Dash through the puddles.

Hold hands.

Soak,
and watch the water
drip from your fingers.
Down to the ground
and wash away.

As when dandelions bloom

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four months from now,
the sun will lie in wait,
hanging in the damp,
and the air will be thick
with summer’s late serenades
that twist
and linger,
before a precipitous
lunge. Time will stand still,
before exhaling at its crest
to signal an end
to an effulgent season,
four months from now.

into the wind

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It was cold when
I heard her singing, but
it was only an interlude,
filled with the remnants
that had dropped in between
an arpeggio’d smile.
still -improvised- it was enough
to wrap me against the wishes
of the wind,
as I chased it over the hill,
and casted fate in a song
of my own,
written in summer’s tongue.

Etude triste

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when you love her,
and practice different words
between the silences,
ascending in chromatic notes
to tempt her fortress
until the muscles betray the bones.

yet, lamps smother their song
and I hear a mandolin
when she says,
“it’s too soon for another forever,”
words that are too soon splayed
for another poem.

words of note

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An aubergine sound
and a hollow bitter wind,
that portends of a sadness, lately then,
after the reign of summer’s end
and autumnal color,
red and yellow and their kin.

When joy is moved indoors to stand
the test of winter’s blunting hand,
bound with the melodies to hum
within your heart, with flute and drum.

Seeking clear, in midnight skies, between
the snowfall, when angels fly;
and you, among the ones that seek and pray,
wishing upon the stars to stay
awake and listen to the songs you sing
with words of note for every little, living thing.

Then rest your head and fall asleep
in dark and as lovely as woods are deep,
and echos of your song on air,
warm the bitterness to fair.

matin chimes

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risen echos call forth
the dawn to come, with dew
from disconsolate night.
and in striking tubular bells
an aubade
in summer or winter played,
the pleasing tones describe
a recapitulation of the day.
each one silent, then sonorous
in glad resonant array;
different
from ones sooner struck,
then died away.

offset

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I turned the page,
and there was writing
on both sides.
symbols showing
the birth and death of an idea
comprised of words that twisted and faded
into obscurity.

I remember the texture
of the paper on my fingers, though,
rough fiber and noisy,
and the way the ink
nicked and disappeared
like snowflakes in autumn.

Consecrated between my finger and thumb,
without a varnish that might
have held words together,
it is the feel of the paper
that transferred longing.

questions

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The concept
is really simple, where
the addition of them
opens a language that
otherwise stumbles in silence,
As a simple “why ?”
infuses the sunlight and breeze
to rattle the trees in reply.

Yet without sound,
with eyes alone,
that creates a chasm in its invocation.
and, just as quickened,
closes a gap in response
between lovers,
with an embrace,
but no words,
and silence fulfilled.

Belong to me

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Cling to dawning’s drape, as hails the sun’s
revealing rays, a slow ascent, night is undone.

Wringing in, as rainfall on September flowers
belongs the day, as soaking unseen bowers-

hallowed, hidden dens from branching gables,
place of passion’s secrets –Jana’s cradle.

Then, in reflecting off one lover’s eyes,
light that signal darkness’s demise

screams the sounds, if they were voiced and free,
subsume this moment – come, belong to me.