The Margins

Night nibbles at the margins
of the day, yearning for its page
to be read all the way up to dawn--
a book we can't put down
until dreams illustrate its musings:
Silverfish scuttle away
upon discovery, and
brittle-page odor of
a thousand nights stowed away
threatens to awaken us--but
does not have the kindness
to do so.

12 September 2012

Wringing

                                         leaning against the door
                                            of the refrigerator
                                               to hear the hum and
                                                  to feel the reverberations,
                                                     to absorb the rush of life
                                                        outside that other door--
                                                           the electricity of connections
                                                              to voices and ideas
                                                                 and busy-ness
                                                                    and songs and chatter,
                                                                       growth--
                                                                          to escape the fading
                                                                             of life and dreams
                                                                                soaking me up
                                                                                   like a sponge,
                                                                                      leaving me dripping
                                                                                         and spreading across

the floor

Love Poem, Inspired by the Bards

Love is deeper than any sea that
I thought I would ever scavenge,
A rough and roiling voyage--
Not a frolic in a pond
Which only breathes of fronds and polliwogs.
Love is not Ophelia's barge entombed
With weeds which drifted her unto death.
Love leaks in floodwaters of despair, yet
Builds a lighthouse to guide the valiant bark
Home to its craggy shore.
Love is not the perpetual trumping by a hero's antics
Nor a schoolboy's daring
To prove the heart for a flutter
Of a simple kerchief or the wink of a darling Calypso.
A steadfast hymn is the longest song--not a Siren's call
To dash one's heart, not an Antony's pact with Cleopatra
To die for drama's sake to prove that the world is cruel.
Monotonous seems the daily embarking and the disembarking in
The mornings and the nights,
And persistent are the tides that ebb and flow with lunar moods--
But passionate sings the deepest rhythm that few can ever hear
In the crashing of the waves of dear devotion that
Sanctifies my reason to dive headlong into the depths--
To be one with the currents that satisfy my reason to weave
The net that holds my love as a constant trophy.

ANOTHER PLAY HAS ENDED





Another play has ended.
The audience disengage the
                              Magnetism of the boards--
                              Catharsis completed,
                              The cycles of heroes repaired.
They tread gingerly into aisles
Toward other realities, lumbering
A bit, questioning the return
To the tedium that has sent them into this
                               Realm of the stage of sounds and
                               Sights, marvels and ether--
Wondering how
                               To enlighten--
Murmuring
To their equals and to themselves
(unlike groundlings and fickle mobs)
So as not to frighten
                                The Muse
Whom they wish
                                 To carry away as in a basket
                                 Of rushes--
                                 To flow gently
                                  As a river might--past the populations
Who know no art.

SECOND RESUME

A second Dorothy Parker

I would rather like to be,

Yet I fear she would say,

"Go hang in a tree."

RINGING IN SPRING WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS

 



Spring has sprung;

See how they run!

Seize the day--calloo, callay!

The goat man whistles;

Follow through the thistles!

Pick a memory bouquet;

In the sun we'll make hay!

Gather up rosebuds!

 

O how the sap floods.

Amongst Starfish on the Shore

A sounding board...more likely a sponge,
Almost drowned bearing up
Under the gravity of
The venting of marooned Sirens
Needing relief...
What is the mouth of a sponge?
It becomes a thing crusted
With squamous salt
If she finds herself washed ashore,
Dried up and abandoned
After reeling through the nebulae
Of eddies and tides and jellyfish.