Poem Up at Windows Facing Windows Review
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Tag Archives: life
Poem Up at The Night Heron Barks
Forced By This Title to Write a Poem in Third Person About Himself, the Poet Considers the Phenomena of Standing Waves, Dreams Involving Long-Lost Cats (Even If He Has Not Had Such a Dream Himself), And the Amazing Durability of Various Forms of Weakness
Forced By This Title to Write a Poem in Third Person About Himself, the Poet Considers the Phenomena of Standing Waves, Dreams Involving Long-Lost Cats (Even If He Has Not Had Such a Dream Himself), And the Amazing Durability of Various Forms of Weakness
Five White cat always made sure no rats gnawed my books.
— Mei Yao-ch’en
His brain is squirming like a toad.
— Jim Morrison
Standing by the water, the poet wonders if,
as in this dream, his dead dog and Five White
might seize the separate ends of a rope and blend
their tugs, matching highs and lows, growls and purrs,
with near stillness, dawn to dusk and back again,
always equal, sharing through death their love
of work and honor. He throws a small branch
and asks the dog’s ghost to fetch, but it remains
at his side, as if reluctant to leave. How to release
what you no longer hold? Shadows disappear in direct
light, but always return at its departure. The
raindrop remains intact through its long plummet.
Words, though unspoken, hang like lofted kites
awaiting a new wind, a separate rhythm,
beyond compassion. He cannot hear it
but joins his dog in singing. The cat yowls along.
This piece first appeared in deLuge in fall 2016, and was drafted during the August 2015 30-30 challenge. Thanks to Jeff Schwaner for providing the title (which I edited for publication).
Self-Portrait with Umeboshi (with recording)
Self-Portrait with Umeboshi
Our resemblance strengthens each day.
Reddened by sun and shiso,
seasoned with salt,
we preside, finding
comfort in failure. Or does
the subjugation of one’s flavor for another’s
define defeat? The bitter, the sour, the sweet
attract and repel
like lovers separated by distances
too subtle to see.
Filling space becomes the end.
What do you learn when you look through the glass?
Knowing my fate, I say fallen. I say earth.
Ah, simplicity! When I was a child my mother would occasionally serve rice balls in which a single mouth-puckering umeboshi rested at the center. These have long been a favorite, but I admit that umeboshi might be an acquired taste. Commonly called “pickled plums,” ume aren’t really plums but are more closely related to apricots. I cherish them.
“Self-Portrait with Umeboshi” first appeared in the Silver Birch Press Self-Portrait Series (August 2014), was included in the subsequent print anthology, Self-Portrait Poetry Collection, and also appears in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform.
Music: “Senbazuru” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
If Ahead I See
If Ahead I See
Gray skies filtered through light,
eyes adapting space,
the possibilities of the
horizon or a foot
lashing out in reflex,
what do I learn?
The house finch sings as if
all air will expire at song’s end.
Falling, I release this misplaced trust.
The path, muddied and crowded with fools.
* * *
“If Ahead I see” is included in my 2017 chapbook, From Every Moment a Second.
Aleppo
Aleppo
A father sings to his son,
dead two days,
and the platitudes persist.
Widow of night. Lantern’s trick.
What trace, you wonder,
exists of humanity in these etched
walls? Light bleeds through a crack
like rules unheeded and scattered.
Another sheer looming of hours.
The song, continued.
“Aleppo” was first published in Vox Populi in August 2018. I am grateful to editor Michael Simms for his continuing support of my work.
Dispatches from the Pandemic: This Old Desk
Dispatches from the Pandemic: This Old Desk
This old desk whispers hints of lives lived in separate peripheries, of unseen treasures and thoughts and deeds. Whose fountain pen scrawled love notes on the inlaid leather pullout, which daughter broke a crystal finger bowl and wept for a lost pet? What books rested behind these glass doors? What curiosities? Old pocket knives, polished stones? Spent cartridges? And in these slots? Perhaps perfume bottles and note pads. Or unanswered letters and a worn deck of playing cards. A tin box of regrets, another of joy.
Haiku and Whitman
mingling behind beveled glass
Look: my mother’s ashtray
The desk and I are slowly making our acquaintance. I pledge that I will never take its untold history for granted, that I’ll respect its presence and do my utmost to fill it with purpose, with cherished objects and the satisfaction of good work. In turn it offers me solidity, an altar at which to sit and think, to rearrange words, create lists, read, conjure fantasies, breathe. I’ve only just realized that I’ve lacked such a base since abandoning my Texas shack fifteen months ago.
Another window
frames the distant crow
Home at last!
Chill (Cento)
Chill (Cento)
I shiver a little, with the evening,
and you print a shadow like a thin twig.
Wait for my death, then hear me again.
He believes a pomegranate is a thesaurus,
the thundercloud, tomorrow’s puddle. Is
this hunger unlike that of others?
When a drowning man calls out,
his voice follows him downstream.
Why am I grown so cold?
A cento is composed of lines borrowed from other poets. “Chill” owes its existence to: James Wright, H.D., Ingeborg Bachmann, Eduardo C. Corral, Blaga Dimitrova, Forrest Gander, Yusuf Komunyakaa, and Adelaide Crapsey.
“Chill” first appeared on the blog in March, 2016, and was subsequently published in Long Exposure in October 2016.
The Question is Never
The Question is Never
Who will lock the door
or leap in front of the jacketed
bullet. Nor is it four words
born in lust and camouflaged
with piety. No one cares
if you blink or continue
breathing. No one knows
what you think. Nothing
matters. Not the pen
in her hand or your finger
on the trigger. Not the crying
and the dead and the stains
in the hallway, the man
in the street hiding behind
himself. The question
is no question, but an answer
struggling to emerge. Never
formed, never truly complete.
“The Question is Never” first appeared on Vox Populi in June 2018.
Destined by Gravity to Fail, We Try
Destined by Gravity to Fail, We Try
Having fallen from the roof not once, but twice,
I verify that it is not the fall but the sudden stop that hurts.
The objectivist sense of the little: the and a, my house in this world.
Galileo postulated that gravity accelerates all falling bodies at the same rate.
While their etymologies differ, failure and fall share commonalities,
though terminal velocity is not one.
The distance between the glimpsed and the demonstrated.
Enthralled in the moment, Icarus drowned.
Rumor has it his plunge was due not to melting wax but to an improper mix
of rectrices and remiges: parental failure.
Thrust and lift. Drag. Resistance.
Acknowledgment of form in reality, in things.
When the produced drag force equals the plummeting object’s weight, the
object will cease to accelerate and will move at a constant speed.
To calculate impact force accurately, include the stopping distance in height.
Followed by long periods of silence.
This first appeared on the blog in December 2015.
O at the Edges 