Tag Archives: philosophy

Wherein the Book Implies Source

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book

Wherein the Book Implies Source 

And words form the vessel by which we traverse centuries, the river
stitched across the valley’s floor, easing access.

Accession by choice. Inorganic memory.

Vellum conveys its origin: of a calf.

How like an entrance it appears, a doorway to a lighted space.
Closed, it resembles a block of beech wood.

To serve as conveyance, to impart without reciprocity.

Framing the conversation in space, immediacy fades.

The average calfskin may provide three and a half sheets of writing material.
Confined by spatial limitation, we consider scale in terms of the absolute.

The antithesis of scroll; random entry; codex.

A quaternion equalled four folded sheets, or eight leaves: sixteen sides.

Reader and read: each endures the other’s role.
Pippins prevented tearing during the drying and scraping process.

Text first, then illumination.

Once opened, the memory palace diminished.

* * *
This originally appeared in April 2014 as part of Boston Review’s National Poetry Month Celebration, and is included in The Circumference of Other, my offering in the Silver Birch Press chapbook collection, IDES, published in 2015.

ides front cover 92915

Recording of “What the Body Gives, Gravity Takes”

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falling
A recording of “What the Body Gives, Gravity Takes.”

Thank you, Finnegan Daley, for the request.


You can read the poem here.

Snow Country

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Fuji

Snow Country

desolate the reach
of space a
curved line of

white empty as
the loneliness one
feels the tone

is different on
a day like
this she says

unaware that her
words fall like
snow in the

mountains soft quiet
in the roar
no one hears

* * *

Another piece from the eighties…this first appeared here in November 2015.

FACES 2

5 Poems up at Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I’m delighted to have five poems up at Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art. Another dream come true… Many thanks to editors Veronica Golos and Catherine Strisik for taking my work.

 

My poem, “A Brief History of Babel,” is up at Bonnie McClellan’s International Poetry Month Celebration

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image

My poem, “A Brief History of Babel,” is up at Bonnie McClellan’s International Poetry Month Celebration. She’ll be presenting 28 poems following this year’s theme of “Neural Networks: The Creative Power of Language.” It’s going to be a fun, interesting month.

Wasp

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wasp

Wasp

Outward, the quest for
space and the wings’

hunger to unfold and
shed this home of dark
flesh and encompassing desire.

And each thing remembered, the broken
sheath, the flowering desert’s return,

reflects the notion of being, of intent
in action and its corollary,

the gift of living through death.

* * *

“Wasp” first appeared here in October 2015.

flowers-in-the-desert

Roast Chicken (recording)

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roast-chicken

Another attempt at recording. “Roast Chicken” was first published in Kindle Magazine in December 2015, and also appeared in Gossamer: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry. 

 

Roast Chicken

Contemplating the afterlife of birds,
I empty the carcass. My wife
offers rosemary sprigs,

which I stuff into the cavity
with whole garlic cloves
and seared lemon halves,

and then I compact it by tucking
the wings under and pushing
one leg through a slit in the other,

lessening the surface. One might
debate the shape of a bird’s
soul, the sanctity of structure

and limitation, of ritual and
the weight of fire’s gifts in
human brain development,

but trussing is essential
to the goal of proper
temperature attainment.

I pat it dry, sprinkle kosher salt
on the skin, put it in the oven,
set the timer for an hour, pour wine.

Following custom, we eat
without saying grace.
Piece by tender piece, it descends.

Forecast

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freezing


Forecast

Does the peach
blossom

count its
numbered days

in the lure of false
spring?

Smiling, you admit pleasure
in cruelty,

in assigning lots
to the relief of those

never called,
and those whose answers

remain open,
unfixed.

The freeze is coming,
you say.

Let us pray.

 

frozen

Morning Covers You

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eye camera

Morning Covers You

1

We extract
light, bleeding
it out one

diamond-shaped
hole after
another.

Finger the results.
Remediation
in form

or placement
to best
advantage?

At night
loneliness cradles
our bones.

2

You arrange our bodies to greater effect,
presuming lesser horrors
to be less.

A list emerges.
Refuting one,
accepting another.

Choices fixed.
Ecstasies of failure
purged.

Morning covers you
like a blue
shroud, so pale.

So cold
and bitter.

This originally appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine in April, 2014, and on this blog in October 2015.

diamond fence

Palinode (platelets, sign, color)

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red

Palinode (platelets, sign, color)

Cloistered, it circulates and combats, feeds, heals
and defends, destroying, at times, its host, and thereby
itself. Extracted, it congeals into a dark symbol,
resembling our innermost facade. The reddened
moon, incorruptible and estranged. A bull’s eye.
I pressure it daily, measuring flow and constricting
elements. Numinous river, source of strength, the internal flood.

The internal flood summons bitterness,  application
of the embodied life, rubedo. I inscribe my name in
three strokes: the upright, the downward curve, the
encompassing circle, omitting the between: as above,
so below. The color-blind more accurately perceive
texture, alleviating the effects of spectral sensitivity.
We build from within, flowing outward in unison.

Flowing outward, split asunder, I assume the neural
response. Color, as expression, as survival factor,
attractant and warning. As symbol. The ancients
buried red pigment with bones to hasten renewal.
Life energy, passion and rage. The force in bodies,
in spirit, in blood. Shade of the alchemist’s sulfur,
glowing embers, ash, the transitory energy of human desire.

 

This first appeared, in slightly different form, in ditch, in January 2014.