A ticket pinned to the thigh reserves it,
the whole cadaver is parceled off - of course.
Legs are a late harvest, these often-indigent parts
carry a visual poverty long after the body is plucked.
Under watchful eyes the young medics
separate muscle groups, filter large blood vessels
from fibrous runnels, hesitant scalpels
seek out fascial planes.
The leg is devolving to scraps,
yet, ingrained in the tissue
I sense residual shades of a former life,
seaside postcards, old photographs,
perhaps campaign ribbons, odd tokens
amongst yellowed newspaper clippings,
all briefly surface as conjectured images
beneath a probing knife.
The gray flesh retains its personal history,
I imagine that behind the knee
there is a wife, children, and a separation
all spectrally etched between femur and tibia.
Much of the ensuing bone-whittling years
are demonstratively scored
across a formaldehyde and jelled narration.
The students suppose they dissect a limb,
while I notion that I turn over bloodless pages,
of an unwritten story,
and now the last few attached ligaments
remain as threads that speak at last
of a long journey’s end.
Categories:
parceled, poetry,
Form: Free verse
in the early light of day
i rise from shadows of dreams
two days ago a cousin i hadn’t seen
called to say my aunt had died
at the age of 101 who
time and time thought about me
and a moment of sorrow
became a brief celebration of life
recollections from the last time
of time together my cousin and I spent together
of time I spent on her parents farm
of time she spent at my parents’ summer cottage
a paradise as it lives in my mind
beyond the time it was parceled and sold
we talked about moments passed
and now it’s fall
now i look out the window
at brown leaves in november
once green in may
in reflections of nothingness
and visions of everything
and now
as i plot a busy day
a bird outside of my window
sings a bittersweet song
as the life I knew fades into memory
the whispers of lives of the children
my cousin and I once were
Categories:
parceled, autumn, cousin, death, longing,
Form: Free verse
Larks are ascending funnels of sky,
songs smoke from enteral chimneys.
In an industrial park a fine Autumn light
burns bright.
Shoes fill with walkers,
we are out and praising
the clanking machinery,
for we are all leaves
in the same furnace.
What we suppose
to be sleep and decline
is a wooded factory, a whittle and grind
gearing-up for an over-spilling,
a bundling color-filled season,
one that will in time
hammer snow out of spoilage.
The Larks are trilling,
they rise to the top of their voices.
Conveyer belts of cooling hymns
are ready to be parceled and sent,
addressed graphically:
'Return to Sender.'
Categories:
parceled, poetry,
Form: Free verse
The Year: Long Squandered 1999;
Frank Flynn had found my sent parceled poems ‘fine’
“They can lend themselves... to live performance”
Wherefore I mount for each surveillance….
An Atypical BBC Staff:
His signed statement A frankness not by half;
Laminated have I his bold comment:
Above My First Degree ‘A Document.’
Saw Frank, too, in My Enclosed Verses
‘ Originality of Rhythm’
Then, whoever, their action rehearses
Hasn’t The Spurious got to fathom.
And Frank had marked their “freshness of vision”
I began to crave their prompt diffusion…
Owe I Frank self-rediscovery:
A focus sidelining livery;
Strong reasons to start idolizing self
And speedily start assembling A Shelf…
The Last I should crucify of The Crew;
If he were still alive The Safest Jew.’
Categories:
parceled, appreciation, beauty, career, celebrity,
Form: Rhyme
An hour before dawn,
the market people arrive
then settle like nestling birds
beside the Ping river.
Girls squat over large straw hats,
hats brimful of dried chilies
or small freshwater fish.
They lay down bamboo mats
laden with okra, aubergines, mangosteens
and rambutan.
They are not from Chiang Mai
but are a Thai hill peoples,
villagers that have cycled through the night
to bring their produce here.
Carefully they wrap your choices
in newspaper bundles tied
with red raffia.
They offer this livelihood to us
with modest smiles.
A daily subsistence parceled with a grace
that can be felt as a currency, a simple act
of transference.
A few coins are exchanged.
The barter and haggle
of a busy city market is absent here
just the affable contact
of a hand to hand correspondence.
A mutual recognition
of the rivers that join us
and the oceans between.
Categories:
parceled, poetry,
Form: Free verse
His body fell away in parceled shadows.
His mind headed for a mountain cabin he had
hammered together with the long soft nails
of desire.
That first winter was hard,
ground had to be cleared,
wood had to be cut and stacked,
the cabin sealed against gnawing winds.
At night bears explored his defenses,
snow storms probed.
He had to hunt small game to eat,
he set traps. Always cold, exhausted,
and famished,
At night, crazy with hunger,
he would boil the scant food
until he could wolf down
the scalding partly-cooked meat.
He grew thin and wiry. His beard long.
He began to track and bring down deer.
For long days he could rest
as Spring came
to dance lightly on the mountain.
That summer the sheriff drove
then hiked up to pay the newcomer a visit.
He had heard that a dead man had
cleared some acres.
They shared a comfortable smoke
on the front deck.
Then the sheriff asked:
Why he had not moved on
to where most dead folks go to?
He replied:
I was looking for a higher heaven,
one that still needed some climbing.
The Sheriff nodded in agreement.
Categories:
parceled, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Follow a path that is trod by no footsteps
down to a flowing river.
There is a fish in the water
that has swallowed your joy.
Watch it leap, its silver form
diving into the air for no reason at all.
It has no feet, but watch it dance anyway.
See how it gulps the air that would kill it,
teasing death, then plunging back
into the sparkling river water again.
Sit yourself down
by the clear and rushing flow,
politely address the dancing fish,
be respectful.
Ask it to share its joy,
for there are no parts to joy,
it cannot be divided or parceled,
remember that you once came from the water,
you still have its salt within you.
The fish will see this
and it will offer you the joy
that never left you -
you left it.
Categories:
parceled, poetry,
Form: Free verse
By morn, and under cerulean skies,
he rises from sheets and soft pillows of down;
and gives praise; for the Lord is just and wise,
and great to behold by this earth all round.
By noon, he sets about his songs and rhymes,
labors whose creation gives him pleasure,
and purpose, for an infinite lifetimes;
pressed down, piled, and parceled with good measure.
Then, by eve, lest beastly Insomnia
comes, he now and anon derives his rest
from the night's orgies with the Muses: a
reward that none may oppose, or protest.
A bard chaste for all time, and hence unloved,
finds love with the muses: for they're beloved.
Categories:
parceled, allusion, hyperbole, loneliness, love,
Form: Sonnet
An hour before dawn,
the market people arrive
then settle like resting birds
beside the Ping river.
Girls squat over large straw hats,
hats brimful of dried chilies
or small freshwater fish.
They lay down bamboo mats
laden with okra, aubergines, mangosteens
and rambutan.
They are not from Chiang Mai
but are a Thai hill peoples,
villagers that have cycled through the night
to bring their produce here.
Carefully they wrap your choices
in newspaper bundles tied
with red raffia.
They offer this livelihood to us
with modest smiles.
A daily subsistence parceled with a grace
that can be felt as a currency, a simple act
of transference.
A few coins are exchanged.
The barter and haggle
of a busy city market is absent here
just the affable contact
of a hand to hand correspondence.
A mutual recognition
of the rivers that join us
and the oceans between.
Categories:
parceled, poetry,
Form: Free verse
Slaves of wages for generations
long forgotten in history’s screenplay.
Each hand for a moment has held
the torch.
The people are waiting in lines.
All toilers have resisted.
All skins have felt the blaze of blood.
The people are waiting in lines.
While trash still clutters the streets,
while starving stomachs
roam like rabid dogs.
The people are waiting in lines.
Our tears have been cleaved
and parceled,
sold like floodplain to the blind
by corporate politicians,
while the people are waiting in lines.
We are lured to live among the cushions,
to rest here where the river rises.
No markets can be called free
while hosting inequality.
The people are waiting in lines.
We medicate to escape,
numbing to the barbarization.
No economy can be called just
without democracy.
The people are waiting in lines.
We shall watch for clues.
We will know the signs.
Every torch shall rise.
The people are waiting in lines.
Published: Dissident Voice, August 2, 2020
Categories:
parceled, america, class, poverty, rights,
Form: Political Verse
A note pinned to the thigh reserves it,
the whole cadaver is parceled off.
Legs are a late harvest of the indigent.
Their limbs carry a visual poverty
long after the body is plucked.
In a small room, I separate
muscle groups, filter large blood vessels
from fibrous runnels.
My scalpel seeking out fascial planes.
The leg is devolving to scraps,
yet ingrained in the tissue,
I sense residual shades of a life.
Seaside postcards and old photographs,
war ribbons and yellowed newspaper clippings.
The gray flesh retains its memories.
There’s a wife behind his knee,
bone whittling winds have not erased her features,
her youthful form still entwined
around ashen ligaments.
A child climbs up from an ankle bone,
as a sinewy plasma -
it has no substance of its own,
but borrows and gathers a varicose presence.
Sights and scenes invest
a limbs mangled landscape.
Images that can’t be cut away
by living hands.
Some imagine they dissect a limb,
but I turn bloodless pages,
read images once squirreled away,
that now form these sinews
of a journey’s end.
Categories:
parceled, poetry,
Form: Free verse
POTD 10-5-19
Dedicated to My Inspiration, Timothy Lee
Joy harnessed from soft internal lightness
was pulse promised with attraction’s might
and sealed blissful bound by our first kiss …
with lips our hearts found their home address
Our emotive blessings deafen my questions
and ease my perception’s limitations
for you are my parceled Eden freedom …
our haven structure is couple completion
I chose marbled strength upheaval plans
that thru change I might someday know your name
and realize you like I breathe in nature …
no matter your season, it reaps my pleasure
For the first time in my heart’s entire life
I’ve no need to incite change thru strife’s design
and limp again within my dreams scorched rubble
to find my soulmate while my pains struggle
Categories:
parceled, appreciation, emotions, endurance, faith,
Form: Free verse
The Amputated Leg
A human leg it is! With senses numbed the village stood around the dump;
It’s a curse! Righteous path we diverted, in shiver, the devotees driveled;
A dog might have dragged it, in what’s app, the android fingered techie drooled;
Consult the occultist, shouted the stout village chief and all became dumb.
Mumbling Sanskrit lines, the temple priest came with Ganges water to damp
The rumbling evil with a sprinkle; Holding their breath tout like Chiseled
Idols stood the village as he summoned the deities reciting mantras unrivalled;
‘Sacrifice one leg of pet or cattle per family to our goddess in her holy ramp,’
Pronounced the priest, in bold piety; they heard him in rapt devotion.
Then came the info youth at the cutting edge of both tech and culture
With police personnel and a dog to sniff out the path of the offenders;
The crisp kakis deftly parceled the amputated leg without any emotion
Off to forensic probe, pilfering the priest’s fee with their faith and culture;
And the dog barked at the careless Nurses, for dumping the leg without defenders.
Categories:
parceled, anxiety, confusion, culture, society,
Form: Sonnet
A delicate ember awaits anonymously,
A parceled out soul awaiting un-abandonment,
Equestrian voices longing to be heard,
Magicians waiting for the magic word,
But you see??...
You already are what you long to be.
Categories:
parceled, analogy, celebration, creation, dance,
Form: I do not know?
Treatise of love suborn
Of feelings, desires shorn
With parochial aspirations born
On ritual wings bourne
Romance brokered forlorn
On christening morn, personal
license torn
Deeded by title; underwritten
with scorn
Parceled with dowry; with
annuities adorn
Liabilities, a fitted mantle
charitably worn
Categories:
parceled, love
Form: Rhyme
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