Word Play

The Common Gold

2012-07-01T10:01:00.000-04:00

Aurum nostrum non est aurum vulgi

Our gold is not the common gold,
vulgar as that may sound
to some ears. What we want is for
things to unfold, to abound
in kaleidoscopic delights and fears,
to reveal their hidden wonder;
not for rigor mortis to take hold.
It's a type of existential plunder
we're after, leading often to tears -
though just as likely back to our gold.

Tides

2012-06-30T09:24:00.000-04:00

Recognize your tides, those subtle rhythms of
push and pull, nudge or tug of wish and will,
that thrill in advancement, or unease at abatement,
pleasure at the sign of each new turn because
the promise of an accumulated verve emerges,
and then how easily you glide and ride out your
trials and tribulations. And what jubilation when
energy is returning - when resistance is overcome!
No sooner is one barrier passed than desire begins
afresh. And oh how this feeling can remain like fluid
in the glass level of your life, as if you were standing
alone, plumb, the only verity amid a field of ruins.

A Kiss

2012-06-30T09:19:00.001-04:00

There's just nothing like a kiss.
When four lips coalesce, there's much more than
the parts, or even the sum of the parts. The arts
come close to this dance of open and close,
open and close, because just being fixed isn't
what the arts are all about. And like the arts,
all lovers flout the static state, and disavow
neat oppositions like sweet and tart, opting for
more of a protean equilibrium, trying to prolong it
so long as their muscles hold out.

The Seed

2012-06-30T09:11:00.000-04:00

Take of the fruit but
guard the seed. It's hard,
sometimes, to check
one's appetite when
under duress, or to reflect
on the shrewd maneuvers
comprising the intricate art
of existenz.
It takes a deft
hand and a keen eye when
one is trying to split
into slivers the ready flesh
that excites an age-old,
overripe desire. A wanton
craving can break teeth
on the indispensable seed -
generating a new, perpetual
unappeasable need.

Songbird Symphony

2012-06-30T09:01:00.002-04:00

Now begins the songbird symphony,
that blessed cacophonous revelry.
The sovereign sun summons this thrall
so supplicants can offer their varied hymns,
middle class middle managers all.
Yet one
invariably ascends to the highest limbs,
one that sings louder, longer, and prouder,
transposing the symphony into a concerto.

Affluence of Soul

2012-04-29T11:20:00.002-04:00

A swollen will,
like the over-full
bill of a pelican.

A deluge, surfeit
of glittering fish
back to the nest.

Profligate spender,
the urge to bless, to
share one's largesse.

It's affluence of soul,
not sickly need
confers a right to bleed.

Indivisible

2012-04-20T19:31:00.000-04:00

Indivisible I!
is her rallying cry
whenever she feels herself
splintered by life.

Faced with a choice,
with any back-and-forth,
she loses her voice.

Her voice is her self,
the ding-an-sich, she thinks,
of her being's wealth.

She thinks herself Queen
regnant, ever pregnant
with unassailable sovereignty.

But ever is experience
her indefatigable enemy:
her drives are divergent.
Life is full of lies.

The Depths

2012-01-28T11:22:00.001-05:00

You can swim in
and out of your depths
more easily now,
and willingly, and with
purpose. It’s not that
you deserve this,
because the mere
idea of desert is
foreign to the way
fate operates. But this
ability you now possess
was bought at a price,
even though it feels
like grace. And the lake
of fire you swam through
has refined you, so that
added to your pain now is
a joy born neither of
rebellion nor resignation.

In the Land of Sun and Seven Lakes

2012-01-28T11:17:00.000-05:00

In this wide land of seven lakes,
this level land of sparsely-placed
starchy palms, no one is invisible
to storied Phoebus’ piercing eye,
nor his feathered avatar’s ceaseless
soaring and searching (an osprey,
hovering, then plunging down
beneath the gleaming surface of things
to seize an unwary prize, thus
earning his undoubtable renown).
Here and there a scrawny lizard or
a mousy rodent discovers a respite
underneath a scanty cypress canopy,
an oval of shadow within a cone
of coolness and momentary safety.
Life can sometimes seem just such a
scorched wasteland, where unrelenting
desolation and unremitting nausea
comprise the whole order of each day,
though life also has a certain way
of creating pockets of convalescence
and redoubt, however fleeting they may be,
however long they let us work things out.

The Shape of Fate

2012-01-28T11:08:00.001-05:00

Not a flight from but a plunge
down into is what is needed,
even while knowing that neither
our love nor our hate can change it,
and impossible to know in advance
it’s shape or the extent of its
reach. Indeed, it's indifferent to
any histrionic beseeching or
long-winded speeches. In fact,
to call it an it at all is to simply
mistake fiction for irrefutable fact.
But that’s the way we are, we
stubborn primates, superchimps,
as it were, with an incurably chronic
modus operandi - believing we can
bend events to our will, but then
pitch a fit when we trip and take a spill.

Crows

2011-09-17T11:40:00.005-04:00

In the infamously
fickle ebb and flood
of life's delicately
undulating web, one finds
that crows are both
wary and bold in the whole
economy of it all. Rarely
does an inky Corvus
make any pivotal blunder,
even when the fortuitous
vicissitudes of life
threaten to sunder
life from limb.

Alchemy

2011-08-27T18:57:00.008-04:00

If all there is is flux and fire, then dire
though it may seem, the chance to perceive
so many worlds unfurl before one's very eyes
is like a Koothanic dance into which one is
lucky enough to be sucked, irretrievably -
and thus able to rise. This surprising flood,
this staggering eruption of forms, propels one
beyond the norm, dislodging whatever gets
stuck or suppressed, and lets one's spirit again
conjure and devise, because this endless
succession of dies, each cast as a deviation
from the preceding, releases a pent-up force
that begins the putrefaction of the petrified.

The Magus in His Cell at Night

2011-06-29T19:02:00.008-04:00

The brooding magus scrawls his sigils across the floor, while crawling on calloused knees and palms rubbed raw. Madness has steadily crept into the mind of the magus. The obtrusive beams of moonlight illuminate his scribblings, these doodlings that issue forth like the voluminous effluvium from his pores. A vision he tasted once but couldn't quite capture haunts his every hour. The sigils alleviate his need to approach, to translate this dubious image quartered in his heart. This is his daily art, his means not to sublimate but to evade his heart.

Canis Solus

2011-05-14T19:48:00.000-04:00

It’s been said they’re
stuck in time, stuck

like a repetitious rhyme
droning on and on.

Fixed, cordoned off,
insulated from

worry and regret, neither
impassive nor effete,

never disconsolate, never
in need of condolences

or an opiate, perpetually
sentenced to isolation

from both self and separates.
Who knows what the future holds?

Who cares what the past foretold?
All that matters is the present tense,

all that matters is the present mold.

Heights of the Soul

2010-12-15T18:29:00.008-05:00

There are heights of the soul
from which even tragedy
ceases to look tragic.

It's not magic, because magic
suggests being removed from
existence, a disconnect

between cause and effect,
and that would be fantastic -
in the literal sense.

How can this be? From whence
comes this appearance of
an insouciant ambience?

Is it awareness of separateness,
a distinctive trajectory propelling
one beyond the mediocre mob?

Is it the attainment of objectivity,
a necessary space and perspective,
a proclivity for originality?

Whatever it is, it's a maverick
sensibility, but not frantic;
more like a measured, disciplined

rigor to one's character, a restraint
placed upon one's nature, not
to negate or to enervate but

to mobilize, to organize a
hierarchy of drives, a mise en place
indicative of sublime panache.

Animals

2010-12-13T19:33:00.006-05:00

Animals, we are,
at bottom.

There are channels,
grooves

dug deep into our brains -
love, for instance,

suggests the persistence
of the carnal

inheritance of our
bestial existence.

First Love

2008-12-14T06:32:00.011-05:00

The first love is the one
you never forget, they say,
or at least the one you regret
the most anyway, though
not in an opportunity cost
kind of way, it's more like
opportunity lost. This kind of
love never congeals, it's never
susceptible to frost. And though
the years roll down the road,
your ever-recursive mind goes
panning back through the past,
seeking the precious ore, trashing
the dross that's accrued.

Spiel

2008-12-13T16:16:00.004-05:00

Some are and
some are not
good at telling
spiely things.
You have to get
a certain feel
for the crowd
if you're going to
engage in a bit
of spiel. Repartee
and a repertoire
are both a must
if you're not to feel
like a heel and lose
the crowd's trust.
Too much booze
and you might
just as well leave -
unless you've got
a glockenspiel
up your sleeve.

The More We Learn

2008-11-30T08:10:00.004-05:00

The more we know the less
we understand - as if that
were equal to the sage advice
of a bird in the hand.
But facts are facts and they're
just a stack of inventory,
the result of an over-eager
appetite. But we need some
mental bile and certain other
juices of digestion before
insight can be sent flashing
down the brain's fatty sluices
into the gaping vats of mastery.

Morning

2008-11-29T06:22:00.003-05:00

Gray light grows
lighter as morning
draws nearer, and dawn
swells greater and greater
as the first forms become clear.

Poetry

2008-11-28T11:13:00.010-05:00

Poetry is a many-feathered creature.
The supple frame on which it all hangs is
language: hollow word-bones, through which
breath and voice resound; sinews of syntax,
out of which grows such gleaming plumage,
each line becoming another barb of the vane,
and its resplendent hues of color all depending
on how the light reflects back into the eye -
and then the shudder when it wings and sings.

Crows in Air

2008-11-27T14:42:00.005-05:00

Four sable crows
all in a row plow
snow-laden air,
yet remain wisps
of shade making
haste with stealth.

Dare Fatis Vela

2008-11-26T08:52:00.008-05:00

To give the sails to Fate is what you decide.
With your wide eyes you size up the hull
and measure the tide. The mast is upright,
and the mooring ropes are all cast aside.
You may sail far away - or maybe not at all!
Just remember there's no recourse to any
police force when you're committed to
such wanton caprice. And if you had just
known the price beforehand, you simply
wouldn't have handed your only destiny
over to the Fates, to sail both charted and
uncharted Deeps, or wander near fords, or
negotiate fjords, eluding Scylla only to be
ruined by Charybdis. And oh, how you see
that the Fates can't be lured or implored.

Nectar

2008-11-25T10:56:00.004-05:00

A hummingbird, its
thrumming mandible
docked deep inside
the nectary, is filling
its ruby-colored reliquary
with saccharine sustenance.
Its figure is engaged in
some kind of dance, as the
paper-thin wings elicit a
stabilizing trance, a rolling,
imperfect oscillation around
the vertical, while the
peristaltic movements of
the slender, glinting throat
keep the ambrosial nectar
coming and coming.

The Devil's Wine

2008-11-18T14:04:00.005-05:00

Poetry is the devil's wine, they say,
and that's just fine because
no one can deny his cosmopolitan style.
But the cons of devil's wine may in fact
outweigh the pros if you're
vehemently opposed to what some consider
the quintessential aspect of both
poetry and wine: that is, ecstasy.
Intoxication and exhilaration may well top
the list of pros of the divinest verse
whether it's long or terse or
hard to get at at first. And the one that flows
down long-dry spiritual furrows
awakens a heretofore unknown thirst.