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At first, a kiss of morning dew~
then hunger. Orange teeth that chew
through girders, bolts, and battleships,
through forgotten coins, through fingertips.
Patient as a waiting noose,
it loves the things we let slip loose:
the tractor in the broken field,
the knife no hand will ever wield.
It writes in cursive, slow and deep,
a love the strong pretend to keep.
Time’s own tongue, it licks the edge
of every vow, each steadfast pledge.
And when at last we all descend
to join the nails we failed to mend,
rust will sing its lullaby~
soft, so soft, the way things die.
(“Corpus Callosum”, 2017, original encaustic)
Reverse Osmosis of Life
It’s a two way street
The way reality exists
Divided into truth on one side
And illusion’s delusions the other,
And yet the most fascinating aspect
Is the membrane that exists between the two
A membrane of I don’t know what,
But which I’m sure the ancients had a name for,
Which divides, insulates and yet connects
And filters through cosmic osmosis
The personal and transpersonal,
Or you could say the mortal and immortal.
Sometimes I can feel the membrane at work
Seeing it even just beyond the limits of my mind’s eye
Knowing what it’s doing
As it transpires
Because I am in fact on both sides simultaneously
At least to some degree.
Everything after all is an extension
And expression of Life,
You, me, us,
In whatever forms it finds us
From refined and subtle to coarse and gross.
The other night I dreamt of being a bridge
Not a figurative one, but literally
An object with girders and cross members
Able to span a stream or gully.
It didn’t surprise me, just intrigue me
That the creative nature of the Mind
Is what it is
And in fact, is all there is.
(8/18/25)
Force that turns glass shards to mists
and causes girders to bend and twist
flesh and bone cannot resist
nor mortal word can console this
pushed to the brink
with blotted ink
the buttons pressed
have secret links
to battles pitched
it might seem rich
for ribbon bars
as spirits lift
the bodies stiff
a cheek to kiss
for some they dare
not lift the lid
an endless list
of souls to miss
we ask the question,
‘is it just this?’
jampacked city streets
that jangled and banged
in the raucous jarring day
shifted
from business to boogaloo
squeezing into moonlight
party lights
gin and lime-kissed
gimlet sequined dress
strutted
in studded six-inch heels
riveting flair
provoking jive and jazzy nights
to tame this lion of New York
The bed swallowed the evening
sucked-up in slumbered
sobering snooze
exhaling the drunkard’s stench
while the warmth of whiskey
and you next to me
laid dreamy still
popped up and propped up
restless and ragged
realizing the changing view
through the dirt-stained window
a pool of placid sunrise
igniting
colorless clustered towers
bulwarks and girders
scraping the sky
out of the easterly clouds
a creeping golden palette
arose
touching every crevice
defining each silhouette
your body stirs deliberate and slow
rainbow hued eyes
slenderly slitted catching
the new-found light
opening, tenderly revealing
the landscape of your smile
disclosing
a cozy contentment
waking with hello
as I fall into your dream
and a new day
Small stadium built in the late forties,
minor-league once, but has been left behind,
built with girders and backless, wooden seats,
a local relic of an older time.
The players look so young, barely can shave,
the pitching is rough and some balls are dropped,
a few have been drafted by big league names,
one has promise, at ninety-four was clocked.
Young kids run around, and between innings
some do wacky races upon the field,
but have fun even if they’re not ‘winning,’
and the high-fives from the players are real.
So far not a hit has yet cleared the wall,
but six bucks is still good for live baseball.
I think of my ancestors building you,
Tying and placing tree-trunks, like girders, in queue;
They constructed you, then, with stones,
Twisted, turned, criss-crossed, hung, dangled in zones;
Road bridge, railway bridge, gate bridge, bay bridge,
You resembled longest and tallest mountain ridge;
Clapper, beam, truss, arch… you became suspension,
Cantilever, cable-stay, movable, floating, and high-tension;
How fond designs you are in, today, like miracles,
Magic of marvelous magicians waiting for oracles...
Travelling from place to place, and meeting people,
You build up relationships from valleys to hill steeple;
Though, through you, communication is continually created,
Has communion betwixt hearts clemently elated?
Connecting, interacting, do you construct relations?
Beyond hills and cliffs and national foundation…
Socialization, cultural extension, and environs easy,
You’re sometimes breezy and other sleazy and queasy...
Cognition, senses, sensation, and sensitivity,
Once broken impulsively, aren’t you in vainly pity...???
15 March 202
Of yore, a gold-gilt structure stood tall
upon a mountain
there it remined on for ages
as an ancient vine-veined temple
a crumbling ruin tottering
on the edge of the world.
Within it a ghostly priest dwelt
waiting long for a sign
shuffling from one alter to another
while the edge of the world
drew ever nearer.
Then all tipped over….
some say it was always a heap of clouds,
just a hollow construct.
The mountain it was built upon
simply melted into nothing
a massive shrine tumbling away.
Now there is nothing to hold on to, or see,
nothing to build upon, just endless sky
where all falls as a feather swept into
a bottomless well.
This allegory
is the tale of a religion that required
too many gilded girders to hold it up,
or it is a parable of a Mind
that knows naught of its power
to deceive or create.
I saw it being built on the sacred burial ground
of a field I had died nobly upon many a time.
Dark girders arose riveted to the skyline,
ashen boned concrete walls constructed
by unseen hands.
I still looked to the green field where, as Custer
I had made my many 'last stands'
yet it, like my naivety, was being erased.
I dreamed that I was a dog
chained to the school's bicycle rails.
Inside the new school
demented teachers screeched through split nails,
yammering edicts at small cringing minds.
When they installed the glass
and painted the new school building,
a foreboding stole upon me.
My scalp tingled,
I knew that the arrow in my eye
was going to be pushed
a lot further inward one day.
Walking way out on the lake
atop a cement-block pier
Waves lap at its sturdy girders
fish swim up to the surface, so near
Tiny specks below the horizon
boats sail near a shore far away
The water looks cold and foreboding
diminished light at the end of the day
Fresh winds spring up, the sun dials down
my jacket's pulled tight next my frame
A sliver of a pale moon rises
Will tomorrow be just the same
Wolves howl at the moon shining over the ridge
Golden light glancing off the silver steel girders,
Slithers of squiggly speckles ripple in the stream
After the trotline is suspended between buoys
The night fishermen play five-card stud poker,
And swap tall tales about their youthful follies.
written October 31, 2021
Anchored in the solid granite cliffs
On either side of the tree-lined gorge,
Above the C&O tracks and rickety shacks
Of farmers and miners and naked children
Playing in the dirt ‘neath the front porch,
Who stop to watch the coal train passing
Underneath the arching silver steel girders
Wondering wide-eyed how they built that bridge! --
Way up yonder like a humongous gray rainbow
With its promise of faraway places,
And pots of gold someday in recurring dreams,
Knowing it’s not likely they will escape
Just like none of their older kinfolk did
Even though they believed that bridge
Was the road to places somewhere, anywhere
Away from deep and narrow seams of coal,
And raw memories of their poverty-stained childhood.
FIRST PLACE WINNER
a Brian Strand Contest
Poetry Soup, January 14, 2022
My friend and I walked across the Pettus
Unthreatened like marchers decades ago,
The peaceful river below hummed for us
A freedom song; we aren't free, although
The span is shorter than it used to be.
We see progress written on the girders
Or did we mere imagine what we see,
Gentle waters ebb and flow like herders
Coming and going without disturbing melee
A time when peace will rain supreme,
The placid waters still rolling on are free
As is the famous bridge crossing the stream.
Written August 30, 2021
Where strong and sturdy currents flowed
In rhythms like the march,
There stood majestic girders
In a towering silver arch.
With pride, the span was erected
Above the swollen run,
Where it caught infrequent glances
From a feeble winter sun.
The currents seldom paused below
To give the bridge a care;
But through the years they granted
Its lumbering presence there.
It shuddered at the heavy loads
That strained its cabled line;
It trembled when the monstrous rigs
Crept hard across its spine.
Then pushed to utter exhaustion
By the crowded holiday,
The bridge exhaled its final sigh
And vanished clean away.
The river moans a painful dirge
For cold and still and dead
Beneath the phantom silver bridge,
The gushing flood is red.
Gurgling, whimpering, lapping near
The feet of those who wait;
The waters pen a ballad on
The cruelty of fate.
revealed obligatory phrases turn out of tone
a deafening roar cascades in to the abyss
purging spectral visions barred from presenting
all in the name of truth yet never to behold
perspective lends credence but believed not so
easy to ride the train when it leaves the station
side tracking onto no where takes guts of
steel girders not withstanding the hastened
presence of crystallized thought...delicate
sounds issued, undeniable death roll of motion
hedged bets...the gods played a good game again
icing down the planet...the timing is understood
as everything expresses as part of the whole...
agreed upon or just fate?
High above gray Manhattan’s marge,
‘Midst toothsome towers in the sky,
A construction crane there looms large,
Dwarfing the crowds of passersby.
A new building grows, rising high,
Clouding another patch of sky.
A tower for trade will arrive
Where businesses may fail or thrive.
An unsung Mohawk warrior,
And an iron-ribbed Spartan crane,
Raising stanchions; bolting girders,
Work in harmony on the frame.
Clutching the cables of the crane,
Beam rider goes where most aren’t fain;
Riding angled steel slabs, held tight,
High aloft, nearly out of sight.
In their union, we may marvel:
From out of an architect’s dreams,
Row by row; level by level,
They unfold a right-angled frame.
And when the beam rider has gone,
Who will recall his days bygone?
For those who make real others’ dreams,
That is the way it goes, it seems.
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