Wrap your poem
around nothing
its bow mocked
in relief
Each word
but a gesture
of empty
deceit
Wrap your verse
in a vacuum
where all speech
is abhorred
The power
of emptiness
alone
— and unscored
(Dreamsleep: May, 2025)
Distant meandering,
macro denial
the moment a slave
to eternity’s child
Caught on a tether,
all freedom a myth
the boundaries self-serving
with nothing at risk
The sum past the tally,
its measure unscored
the players outnumbered
their names to obscure
Distant meandering,
macro denial
a lens that won’t focus
—an image beguiled
(Dreamsleep: February, 2022)
How do you lay off a writer…
unemployment assured
In labored obscurity,
his fortune unscored
How do you invest in a future
that’s devalued today
When checks never balance
—and words will not pay
(The New Room: March, 2021)
HEAVY HAIR
Blackness without astral shine
With weight: not color or texture, but heaviness
To withstand the breeze that ripples a blonder shock,
It moved as one, no gap between any pair
Of its black praetorians.
Infinite and dimensionless against the black matt coat
They disappeared measureless,
Could not be defined, only accepted.
Pendulum-like as the train swung,
They swung slow and well-disciplined,
Each strand unidentifiable as the seconds in a day;
Yet each contributed
Crucially to the orchestration -
Uncountable, but none might be ignored.
Strands of time are all known to Time’s creator.
As in a dream not yet dreamt,
A potential vision not even focused,
Controlled but impossible.
The sort of dream Mozart might have had:
Unscored yet existing.
…………………………………………………………………………….
NOTE
Written in admiration of a young woman’s black hair observed on a crowded train-ride
The morning sky fills heaven azure bright,
and shining eye doth peek to show from height.
Earth's hymnal's opened wide for choral strains,
creation's chorus trolls the sweet refrains.
Birds warble tunes unscored from post and trees,
with early flights of droning busy bees.
The cattle lowing softly need their feed,
and bleating lambs with shepherd cry for need.
It's day's first light and colors wake anew,
with golden beams the palette's plain to view.
Of every shade this sphere becomes aglow,
for "I Am" paints his scenes including bow.
Dew glistens crystallike on flower's face,
embroiders greens and leaves with sparkling lace.
The white capped mountains rise in purple row,
their slopes alive where pine and aspen grow.
Our morning's fine cantata seems complete,
and we do praise this laudatory feat.
The stage's arranged with beauty so sublime,
the Play, Good Morning, shows its scene on time.
It's light and heavy,
big and small,
clear and cloudy,
oval, elongated in a ball,
it taps and knocks,
falls to the ground and on the rocks,
its cold and hard and warm,
coming before, after, during storms,
falls quiet and loud upon the ground
sometimes without a sound,
it comes in sun or midday light
even in darkness of the night,
with boisterous and thunderous roars
a lightning show unscored
its dew, its mist, its blinding rain
to wash away the human stain.
In the first aria he begins to hum.
This is the trace of true art and magic.
Ghostly.
At one with the music but different and beyond.
An hors-texte someone might say.
I ponder the enduring nature of this experience,
this ghost of the artist,
unbidden, improvised, unscored, not even beautiful,
but it becomes what I listen for each time:
To search again for the traces of the dead in our lives.
Dothnie, where are you tonight, can you hear the waves
Breaking on the distant shores of my heart? Do you see
The rose sun wilting, while my bondaged spirit craves
The smile in your eyes silting like a salt and shallow sea?
O I left that land so long ago to bring back the golden fleece
Undaunted through winds, hail, and snow, I bent
Not to the strain of siren song, a voyage without feast
And after many years and long, still empty I relent
To find and know that true love is not a distant quest,
Nor a tale of mystery, it is the song ignored
Within the tumult of the fray, in the beating of the breast
The woman silent and reserved, unscored
Among the stars. O Dothnie, where the jasmines yield
Voluptuos odors to the night, when moon climbs o'er
The mountains and fields, do you from your window feel
The drums beating sweetly as before, as before?
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