Avoiding the girl-scouts
I hasten out of the store
trying hard not to see the people
huddled in their thin coats
as they wait for an infrequent bus.
This ice-chilled evening
with its stark revelations
is like the nag of an irregular heartbeat
sheathed like a thorn in my shoe.
Later, by a warm fire
sitting in an upholstered armchair,
a despondency chews at my breastbone,
it is a reaction hard to pin down,
to objectify,
a lingering presence.
My mind shifts through a symbolic iconography
effigies depicting:
a lost and hungry dog,
an ill-treated child,
a stranger I refuse to call brother,
places long deserted,
places found far too late.
A love unpicked from a now withering vine.
That same presence
sets a table and chair before me
that I may write, try to explain
this tumbleweed of unnamable sorrows,
a phantom, that even in happier times,
I recognize it as a coarse impression
akin to a grating scar
beneath a tender tongue.
Tomorrow may emerge as a frail old lady,
struggling with full shopping bags,
head bent to a cold uncaring wind.
Many might offer her a lift
but in my present brittle mood
I probably would frighten her,
so,
I don’t.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We carried them home in shoeboxes
poked with air holes,
our fingers trembling
against pastel fluff~
yellow as buttercups,
blue like faded denim,
pink like bubblegum
stuck under our beds.
They cheeped in chorus,
a sound so small
it could drown in a rain puddle.
We named them
after cartoon characters,
after dead grandmothers,
after whatever sweetness
we could scrape from our imaginations.
By Monday, the dye ran in their water dish,
streaking their feathers into something
less magical, more real.
We didn’t know
they’d outgrow the colors,
that their feet would twist
from walking on newspaper,
that no one’s mother
would let them stay.
The grocery store manager
just shrugged,
his apron smeared
with something unnamable.
Take ‘em, he said.
They’re free.
you may read the accompanying memoir vignette at: poetrysoup.com/short_stories/peep_peep_baby_chicks_13614
clouds
appear as shapes
dragons sometimes
forks and trees
naming the unnamable
a search for home
(Anthony and Cleopatra)
busyness
seeming much to do
and the rain
in opposition
(King John)
tears
and swollen rivers
dissolving
the boundaries
separating home
(Richard II)
the weather
seems to facilitate
or oppose
bringing to stories
uninvited guests
(Love's Labor Lost)
youth
a scattering for
experiences away
while never departing
from home
(Taming of the Shrew)
If you had never heard the word beautiful,
Would you know what it means?
Could you grasp it in the curve of a smile,
In the hush of a sunset bleeding into the sea?
If no one told you a painting was art,
Would the colors still stir your soul?
If no one called kindness lovely,
Would warmth still bloom in your chest?
If no one told you what loving is,
Would you know how to love?
We drape meaning over things we don’t understand,
Dress the world in words that barely fit.
Is beauty the pleasure of our eyes,
Or the ache it leaves behind?
Maybe we are fools,
Chasing reflections in water,
Falling in love with illusions,
Trying to name the unnamable.
And maybe that’s why I ramble—
Because beauty is not in what we see,
But in what we long to understand.
("Heaven and Earth", 2024, original encaustic)
Planting a Seed
Sitting quietly
I find a seed within my heart
and entering into it plant something
unnamable which was there all along
but unplanted.
The seed grows into a tree
which expands, arms out
to feed a sky it creates
which in turn welcomes and holds
it in soft embrace.
Earth and sky thus joined
complete a circle
conceived in light
but experienced as all the stuff
of dreams made flesh and fiber.
(2/15/24)
If I took my heart out of its cage
you would think: "ah offal, just meat,
fresh blood if I eat it quickly."
.
Crazily, you call 'need' love,
you're crazed, heartless,
a cannibal, a crippled dog
baying at a savage moon.
Limp tongues turn to syrup eventually.
Clearly these bodies are ravaged temples,
apes howl about its holy alter.
And yet, cherries are flesh,
their sweetness is in the hunger.
I drink and remember your face,
it is a landslip,
pushed by one iron gray hair.
We are mad, madly unhitched,
we hang from a mirage of love,
dangle from its limp sinews,
lips puckered,
ever willing to name
the unnamable, what it is not.
I. Noise in an empty hallway:
My old leather shoes protest as I hurry down the linoleum tiles
Like I'm wearing a little piece of history older than I am.
II. Headlights on a dark road:
Speeding down narrow country roads
windows rolled down and Autumn wind rushing through the car
Ripping my hair from its tie
My arm stretching out the window, numb in the night air.
III. Ephemeral beauty:
For a moment, life is endless and incredibly brief
Stretching before me like a dusty trail at sunset
Disappearing into the trees.
IV. Origin of life:
There is this vague, unnamable incomprehension in my chest
Like euphemisms, that is the easy way out
This is the hard way: I am alive, alive, alive
When one cell became thirty trillion, I gained consciousness.
V. I am not the sum of my parts:
I don't have the faith to believe
That all my thirty trillion cells are a fluke of nature
VI. Evidence:
I am the proof of divinity's existence
A signpost shouting "I am alive" thirty trillion times with all the power of my lungs
Designed for miracles
VII. Rene Descartes:
It is not
I think; therefore, I am
It is
I think; therefore, He is.
If I hold a little bird
in the palm of my hand,
it is as if
I am gently holding the heart of God,
even though the unnamable One
is that infinite Phoenix of Light.
For if I am gentle with this God
in my hand,
I shall be forever forgiven,
forever redeemed.
As a boy
I explored shallow river beds.
I carried home in a jar unnamed water-bugs,
minnows, tadpoles and
little frogs that glowed yellow
when the sunlight swam in the creek.
Now the sun comes to my window,
sheds streams of light
to carry me back
to where shallow waters sing
of all unnamable things.
A lady is missing.
She does not answer her voice mail,
distant friends look for signs
indications of further steps.
It can be presumed, assumed
that the end of her brilliant earth existence
faltered somewhere between night and day
where she wrote her poems.
Such poems!
She had come through,
she lived in the heart of Rumi.
Perhaps even now a Sufi wedding
between her and her unnamable Beloved
radiates across ten thousand heavens.
Let the sweet scent of ten thousand lovers
be her virginal wedding shift.
Let her be robed with light.
Long may her love poems
forever feed the hungry.
Live on forever Dorothy.
The mind is a long walk home,
dinosaurs unnamable
litter the green turf
of our travels.
Reptiles shrink to birds,
the larger birds collapse like balloons
eventually running out of sky.
Lizards rest in the top nest
of every reaching spine.
Some imagine waking up
still travelling with Walt Whitman
and other old guys,
all those long-winded words
sticking to boots
as the company plods forward,
while a slow-eyed crocodilian
lifts one bejeweled and crusty eyelid
watching for signs of new life.
Space returns to the surface
of the world
ancient and rootless
spreading an alien gossip
& streaking unmasked
through Area 51.
We are not home yet,
we are the infants of lumbering mammals,
more nimble and able
to see over mountain tops.
Let us walk the way the pygmies do,
leaving no shadows for the sun to eat,
trusting only in one naked thought
after another,
yet and all, still able
to pilfer the horizons of giants,
as if home where just one more
warming ice age away.
I Am as am, in being-ness complete
Self luminous, with vibrant bliss replete
Here and now present, in the joy current
Centred in void, to each pulse cognisant
Swaying to the rhythm of loves heartbeat
I Am both the static and dynamic
Self-existent aliveness ecstatic
Here on Mother Earth, flowing like the breeze
Fragrance divine, thus imbibe and release
Unified head and heart, view holistic
I Am! That I Am! The unnamable!
Beyond mind body, truth of parables
Living in this reflected universe
Swan-song love throb, in melodious verse
I Am the symbol of Gods miracle
18-March-2021
I was sitting in a church filled with light and beauty
listening to an organist as he gently fused my soul
Even the flowers on the alter seemed to be entranced
in this ethereal place where hardened hearts erase ;
And as I offered prayers to the Savior Lord of hosts
I was saturated with karma and unnamable mystique
Faith became a foundling, much braver then my fears
as I touched His loneliness, everything disappeared
Pondering on the crucifix another door was opened
and it was the HOLY SPIRIT who finally dried my eyes
Soon the only thing I saw was a broken Jesus friend .
as I sat on a wooden pew the organist just played
until the sun fell and the stained glass turned to jade .
December 1st, 2019
Contest Name: Holy Spirit
December 1st, 2019
Contest Name: Holy Spirit
Once upon a midnight otherworldly
My metaphysical, I could not awaken
Eagerly I looked for the literal
Through which came thrilling, thrilling, thrilling
The absurdist seemed happy instilling
The caring caring cultivating
The haunting never contemplating
Take thy evocation from out my heart
I crave the unfathomable, unnamable unworldliness
Suddenly, I heard some disciplining
Ah, distinctly I was capacitating
'It's that urbanity,' I muttered
Mjm September 18 2018
The sun has centered me
into a fascinating glare,
humble reason
amongst simple people
no to be misplaced.
They carry a hidden regret,
that constant abstraction
makes them survive
the unnamable decline,
those empty sentences devoid of meaning.
Here I come into the rain
cast into a slander,
clusters of tiny colorful figures
hastily are crossing the road
taking shelter of crumpled roofs
ravaged, still living.
Ahead, I catch a narrow way
through the raucous roar of the bus
a cavernous stomach
packed with bruised stares,
exhausted and silent.
Never too far is the river
hiding his incumbency
behind the dilapidated architecture.
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