POETRY
Seen and Unseen
Like the millionandfirst butterfly
that happened into existence
in the latest last unnoticed blink of an eye
Like a shadow that falls across a perfect eye and rests on a cheek
making a perfect wing
resting ever peacefully there
darkness balanced against light
Like an idea a thought the merest thought the most delicate feeling
that emerges new into being
wings blinking
tentative
ready to flit out of existence at any moment quite as unnoticed
Such joy
that you do not blink when the most delicate things come suddenly into being
and spread their wings at your feet
Two Portraits
Too Smart
She lives in the land of roses,
In the valley of petal and thorn,
Where a scent that’s as crowded as prose is
Suffuses her garden each morn.
And who plucks at a stem in whimsy
Soon finds that his hand startles free:
Though a lady of elegant limbs, she,
There’s a wit that can wound like a bee.
Her hand has turned many a page, yes,
But her cheek has turned many a head,
And who once thought of beauty as ageless
Knows the blush of a deepening dread.
Occam’s Close Shave
He’s a guy who lives by the shortest course,
By the seat of his pants, on the razor’s edge,
A Macavity in some major hedge,
A force majeure, the darker horse.
Inconstancy’s his term for love;
He’s a willing ear for the fallen wives,
And he cuts his swath through their broken lives,
And he takes his slice from the cut above.
Damocles’ sword, a look or a word,
A thread or a threat, it’s all the same;
The more that he plays it, the less it’s a game,
And insanity’s merely absurd.
Pantoum
Would that I could wish
O dreamer of dreams who whispers in my ear
My name of names
You see through others’ eyes, imagining
O dreamer of dreams who whispers in my ear
The far side of the moon is oft as bright
You see through others’ eyes, imagining
My every heart’s desire
The far side of the moon is oft as bright
A different ocean with other tides
My every heart’s desire
Ready my every whim to grant
A different ocean with other tides
My name of names
Ready my every whim to grant
Would that I could wish
e (1998)
So it is, that
All you other Cyrano de Bergeracs
Emerge here in cyberspace, too,
Clicking out in frenzied cricket serenades
The best poetry your hearts can deliver,
Cautious of misspellings or foolish punctuation
That might put that dreaded nose on your face
And saber you out of the running.
You have lost at least two allies this century—
Penmanship and the smooth crackle of vellum envelopes
Pressed stirringly into a hand on the sly.
No risk of virtue or reality.
Fingers that could touch a face
Find their way over lettered keys instead,
And now the chemistry runs
More to cerebral and electronic
Than to visceral and organic,
Leaving less room
For the right errors of romance.
What lovely beribboned nosegays
Shall a future generation find from you?
What inviting sheaf of abandoned letters?
On Living in the Senses
Death comes not like a thief in the night
But like an acquaintance at the door
Wearing such familiar garb
That we admit it
Allow it at our table
Feed it
House it
Converse with it freely
Without recognizing it
The recompense of our error
Whether slow or swift
Is agonizing and severe
For the wages of sin is death
The error that of finding comfort
In habituation
Tradition Aside
Give me giant roses that smack of indescribable neon or something,
Not these scentless red ones that arouse only my embarrassment.
Give me jungle flowers that brighten in my eyes,
Not these cheap and cheesy daisies meant to last a practical week.
Give me flowers exotic, redolent with imagination,
That inspire my wonder and catch you up in it.
Paradise Foundered
Each system of beliefs sets forth demands
For its adherents’ passage into grace:
Some pilgrims hope the roads to holy lands
Comprise the strait-and-narrow to that place;
On self-forgetfulness do some insist;
While others’ ladder is a braided queue;
Yet others place their names upon a list;
Some souls are doused to be thus born anew;
Some wade in turbid streams of consciousness,
Extolling living out their given dharma,
While all the while at heart they’re nonetheless
Contriving to jump off the wheel of karma;
Some pray that much purgation will excuse
The errors they keep finding in their wake;
Some solemnize the absence of tattoos;
Some must evangelize, for heaven’s sake;
Some think austerity the proper scheme;
Some bend their will deliberately to fate;
Some die for continence in the extreme;
Some pay their dues to the collection plate.
But those whose ticket stubs say Paradise,
Who’ll rollercoaster ride until they’re heady,
Will boast they gladly paid the going price
Of giving up that they’re not there already.
Afterthought
Perhaps the punch line to the cosmic joke
Is that, no matter what the filter’s hue,
The forces of one’s context will invoke
Realities consistent with one’s view.