AT DAYS END (2022.08.22) The setting sun creates fire in the sky. Flaming yellow, orange and red. Filling heaven's dome on the westward rim. A quiet slow burning… that if you allow it… will slow down time, transforming burning consumption into transfixed wonderment, as the day is calmly destroyed in brilliant visibly-changing color. Birds fly to their nests creatures burrow in their dens and other resting spaces. And I, heart-harnessed to Phaethon's Chariot as it recedes over the horizon, am humbled by the beauty. My eyelids, growing heavy with the fading light, also find solace and rest. An ending for some. A beginning for others. The chirping of birds gives way to the chirping of crickets and lightning bugs twinkle at twilight in the shadow of darkness like stars on the wing that children can chase and catch with their hands then marvel at the magic within their grasp. Letting go to see the stars take flight. Dreamtime has come again. I wrote this poem while listening to this music and watching the sun set. https://youtu.be/O41y9vuVT3s Best if not played to loud and even better if reading the poem out loud (slowly with a sense of longing and wonder) while the music is playing.
poetry
A Good Lie
The Good Lie
I lied to you
and that is true.
I told you something you wanted to believe.
I let you believe something I did not agree with.
You wonder why I’m distant?
I do not wish to give a truth that hurts, room to breathe.
I wanted to give you room to evolve
and grow in your own time. Not my time.
I was taught; ALL lies are bad
and we should ALWAYS tell the truth.
But everybody lies:
lies of omission,
lies of deception,
lies to protect,
lies to self,
lies to manipulate,
lies to harm.
Motive is the key.
I lied to you
and that is true.
because if I told you the truth about ….
You would have been forced to make a judgement
you did not want and were not ready to make.
because if I told you the truth
you would not have acted in the love, grace and mercy
in which you believe.
You would have endangered your own salvation and peace of mind.
And I could not live with that.
A truth never known is love in disguise and
an un-healing wound never inflicted.
I lied to you
and that is that.
Inspired, in part, by the film titled THE FAREWELL (see trailer)https://youtu.be/RofpAjqwMa8
sunday verses #14
3 MORE HAIKU
Framing seasons three
Winter starts and ends the year
Annual bookends
***
A breath of warm air
She comes around the mountain
Chase Winter away
***
She pushes forth life
Her pungent verdant bower
Earth's labour's give birth
SUNDAY VERSES #13
3 WINTER HAIKU
Winter ice on trees
glitters like festive tinsel
under morning sun
***
When days are shorter
fiercely blows the winter wind
piling snow in drifts
***
Frigid air on skin
Persistent chill burrows deep
Winter wet and cold
sunday verses #12
sunday verses #11
4 haiku for the end of Autumn. (12/01/21) Leaves begin their fall. Colors changing while you watch autumn's rich pageant. (11/27/19) Cold, dark, windy night; trees shudder; dead leaves unchained make fierce their escape (12/01/21) Distant in the dark. Sweet sounds the soft piano. Music in the night. (12/01/21) Chill'd, damp autumn night. Sleepless bare trees sway slowly. Unwrapp'd, expos'd heart.
sunday verses #10
(untitled) 1/29/19 1AM … with bigoted clam-shelled-shut heart pinched accusation and fervent digit all gesticulation their unctuous moral fortitude no reverence for creation razes the standard none can achieve happy to fail, happy to fall into the boiling cauldron of righteousness reason lost Who will avail the good, decent, compassionate and forgiving soil? … planting seeds to each grow its own kind fruit bearing and fruitless watered by streams of untethered acceptance. Virtues are best left in deep shadows where they are not exposed to the light of… …haughty self-aggrandizement, bleached by self-promotion or discolored by false humility…. … left in the heavy darkness when eyes close and sound fades to sleep… … perchance to dream.
sunday verses #9
HOLES IN MY CITY (2014)
There are holes in my city
where buildings used to stand.
Empty spaces are all that remain
where factories made my world.
A dream that never was
cannot be remembered or built upon.
There is no foundation
there is only dust and wind.
Remembrance is only a delusion
sickness of mind and soul
for a community that is trapped
in its struggle to free itself from nothing.
There are holes in my city
where buildings used to stand.
Places where people lived
where the voices of children could be heard.
Now there is silence
even the ghosts don't linger here.
Some say silence is golden
but the same silence can drive a person mad.
There are holes...
sunday verses #8
PLAYERS SONG (date unknown)
what you lookin’ at?
what you laughin’ at?
what you makin’ fun of?
the end has come
lights gone down
crowds are gone
strides across
this sawdust clown
baggy pants
dirty shirt
worn out shoes
treading through
another broken town
hotel room
lonely bulb
peeling paint
dingy and dank
inhabited mold drown
what you lookin’ at?
what you laughin’ at?
what you makin’ fun of?
the naked man
in the bathtub
smokes a cigar
wearing the painted
face of a clown
milky surface
soapy water
shimmers like diamonds
one deep breath
he’s sliding down
what you lookin’ at?
what you laughin’ at?
what you makin’ fun of?
warm wet meditation
wraps up the man
mind quiet, at peace
distant thunder
smoking cigar lifeline
rising up
paint-stained flesh
reveals the man
washed renewed naked
suffering reality frown
what you lookin’ at?
what you laughin’ at?
what you makin’ fun of?
sunday verses #6
POEM FOR LATE AUTUMN (*composition date unknown most likely sometime between 2007-2009)
Skeletal beauty Parade of bones Rooted in mire Grasping heaven A bridge between divine and profane Waiting for winters blanket Redemption in white Covering past sins Peace and rest in a season of sleep *while I don't remember when this was written I do know it was inspired by a line "snow falling, falling like forgiveness from the sky" in the song "Darling Christmas is Coming" by Over The Rhine from the album SNOW ANGELS (2006) https://youtu.be/IinpwBPwRZI
sunday verses #5
10/27-28/21
ENTER THE EVENING
A shadow crept across early evening.
As I was retrieving the mail
I stopped in my tracks and looked up.
A thousand wings whispered across the autumn sky
in undulating murmurations of velvety simplicity.
None collided with the other but danced a ballet
in perfect synchronicity across heaven.
The tinted hues of sunset;
royal purple and brilliant orange painted
against a dark blueing background.
Even the cricket at my foot that stopped its chirping
and, propped up against my shoe,
seemed to look up in amazement.
A pair of local chipmunks scurried about in the chilled air
foraging for nuts and berries to store for winter -
oblivious to the magic in the sky.
In one step I had travelled
from the reality of a chaotic and stressful day
into a calm, quiet and peaceful evening.
sunday verses #4 (boo edition)
3 Haiku for Halloween
Halloween is here
Holy weaning light to fright
in a dark’ning time
Great pumpkin glows bright
Horror visage narrow'd eyes
Jack-o-lantern laughs
Little humans haunt
Costumed terrors are alight
Offer tricks or treats
sunday verses #3
UNTITLED 4/24/2021 We are living in the time of parables and revelations choosing sides retributions morality plays we are “everyman” we are the evil that haunts our reality passport economy buy and sell only if you carry the number of the beast innocuous as an inoculation tremors and terrors of the soul as those who are weak from fear strike out and seek control of the courageous their souls listing off the coast of truth drowning in their desperate thrashing and gnashing of teeth marching and clawing up the mountain of victims they create toward heavens inverted hell fear of a zombie apocalypse the walking dead if we look at the soul it’s already here. We consume media we consume ourselves we consume everything humanity’s legacy on earth will be our consumption we’ve lost too much to turn back now in the past our consumption was tempered tempered by “out of stock” “special order” “import only” cash shortage but that has changed online everything is available all the time any time for a price on credit with our very own pay pal we forgot the payback we forgot the shark will come hunting for what is owed the environment culture social religion politics science all will come hunting and haunting enslaving for what they are owed.
sunday verses
Toilet/Potty Poem (10/2021)
Sitting on the toilet in
Solemn contemplation
Staring at the shag rug
Covering the Autumn-chilled tile floor
Faces and shapes emerge
Beasts and people
Both fantastic and frightening
Revealing themselves
Emerging in the trampled fibers
Of bare footed traffic
Before I roll them up
To erase their existence
In the reality of life's washing machine
Like shaking an etch a sketch
Re-setting the tabula rasa of imagination
Tower of Babel
TOWER OF BABEL (19.8.21)
you turn on the TV blah blah blah you turn on the internet blah blah blah you turn on your cell phone blah blah blah our tower of babel moment everyone talking blah blah blah people listen only to what they want blah blah blah preaching to the choir blah blah blah our tower of babel moment we live in a versus world us vs. them black vs. white police vs. everyone republican vs. democrat vaccinated vs. unvaccinated Christian vs. Muslim enemy vs enemy against the other our tower of babel moment when we speak the same language we speak different languages we’ll go our separate ways enlarge the distance between our pride shamed our arrogance wounded our tower of babel moment otherwise, we can do anything together ---------------------------------------------------------- What if this passage is not an "origin story" on the evolution of language but instead an allegory on human arrogance and it's consequences? Genesis 11:1-9 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.... They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
CHAFF IN THE WIND
I remember when Saturday
Felt like Sunday
And I was dreading Monday
Feeling like I’m strung out on junk
(Which I never tried)
I was strung out on life
(Which I couldn’t escape)
And it wasn’t pretty
I hated my life
The world I lived in
Staked to the ground
Face up in some tribal ritual
Eye lids propped open
Waiting for the sun to burn me blind
I just wanted to die
But couldn’t
Feeling rejected
Outcast, judged and ridiculed
Was it done to me?
Or did I do it to myself?
In the back of my mind
In the shadows of
What I remember myself to be
I felt there was another side
I just had to get there
But the road was dark
There was no light to light my way
Shadows loomed large and mean
In my withdrawal
Happy is an illusion
And I wanted to get lost in that illusion
But knowing the magicians secrets
Is it possible to ever enjoy the magic again?
Are these fancy words for a poem,
A memoir or just letters jumbled with meaning
meant to get lost and scattered like
so much chaff in the wind
… the times…
man out of place
I find myself in a strange situation.
I am dead yet my body does not know it.
Looking at the world about me I no longer recognize….
What should be familiar is strange and unknowable.
There was a time when I would have relished
the strangeness and foreignness of this lifes situation….
I actually find it unnerving.
It seems that any foundation or rootedness
that would have grounded me during such times
has been swept away…
so completely and with a sense of finality
that even when I go to familiar places or spaces,
I do not recognize them. I see familiar faces and hear familiar voices
but they only seem to be echoes of a past long gone.
I may as well be a foreigner in a strange land.
Nothing matters as I am no longer connected…
I am truly a man
out of place
in space and time…
not knowing how it happened
or how to change it.
Should it be changed?
I suppose time will tell.
What will the future hold?
What will I look like
in the end?
What will the world look like
in the end?
Our humanity will be changed,
but will it be for the better
in the end?
Will we look back as through a glass darkly
and say “Who was that?”
In the end.
My life has become abstracted beyond recognition…
I put one foot in front of the other….
how should we then live in these troubled times?
Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
Max Ehrmann, 1927
the highlight of joe biden’s inauguration
something fishy
I once saw a fish
washed upon the shore.
I stared down as it lay
on its sandy grave
taking its last breath
then stepped away
as the seagulls came
tearing away at the carcass.
And I thought.
This is the best we can hope for –
not to be remembered –
but to provide for whatever comes after us.
Knowing, like the fish,
when to live
and when to die.
The older I get
the less optimistic I feel.
Fantasy is for escape,
reality is for living;
however unpleasant it may be.
absence of field
If you’re familiar with photography you are most likely familiar with depth of field. But I want to explore absence of field and I think all of my photography does that in some way. I’ve written a little bit about a related viewpoint previously when I discussed my fascination with what goes on outside the frame of the photo. But absence of field is yet a variation of sorts of that notion. What is absent in my photographs? It really is quite obvious. I recently came across a poem by the great poet Mark Strand that describes this absence of field perfectly.
Keeping Things Whole
BY MARK STRAND
In a fieldI am the absenceof field.This isalways the case.Wherever I amI am what is missing.When I walkI part the airand alwaysthe air moves into fill the spaceswhere my body’s been.We all have reasonsfor moving.I moveto keep things whole.
So therefore; when I take a photo it is complete or whole because I am not there. I, the photographer, am always moving . To keep things whole for my photos. You may see me in someone else’s photos but not my own. I am the absence where air rushes in. Another way to look at it. When you stick your hand in a river, lake or any body of water – as you withdraw, does the water hold the shape of your hand? No. It rushes back to fill the void. The water cannot tolerate the void. It must be complete. Such is a photo. It captures the completeness(i.e. wholeness) of all things – even if those things (like today’s photo) may seem to be missing something. It is still complete as it captures a singular moment of the subjects evolutionary life cycle. When I am dead even though I may appear to not move; I will continue to move as the decay process takes over until I return to the earth as dust. And when I am no longer remembered, when that dust is then used to bring nutrition or life to something else after I am gone I will still be moving. Absence is just as important as presence. This also helps explain why a photo will never be of the future – it will always be the past because the once the photograph has been taken the photographer moves on even though the subject in the photo continues to change. You may say, “what about time-lapse” photography. That still only projects the past. By time you see it the subject has completely moved on. It is all part of maintaining a wholeness in the universe. Absence is the grace that presence cannot afford. We do not need presence to be happy. We can find happiness in absence. To loop back to the poem we can find happiness in the rush of air to fill the void as I move away until something else comes and fills that space. Probably the closest thing in photography that captures the sense of moving to keep things whole is Polaroid or instamatic photography. While you are watching the photo develop the blank space slowly becomes filled with the image. From absence to wholeness. But unfortunately that’s where it ends (or does it?).
Musically Samuel Barber’s Adagio For Strings captures these notion especially at the climax where there is a great silence/pause which punctuates the sound.
or you may like the Choral version by one of my favorite vocal groups.
el camino
*el camino translated to english means “The Way” – more than a vehicle.
EL CAMINO
Out in the wilds
in my rusted 1969 El Camino
pulled off the side of a desert road
the only light
a cigarettes glowing ember end
the stars my only friends
“Buenos Noches From A Lonely Room”
on the radio
quiet like
listening outside to inside conversations
yet here I am alone
staring off into the night at
a glow
far off on the horizon
the site of an alien invasion?
just another boring city
that never sleeps
I decide to NOT “go toward the light”
comfortable under the shadowy blanket of night
resting in my inspired darkness
sitting in the bed of
El Camino
Cocoon
mobius faith · COCOON
I am in a personal, creative, social,
emotional and professional cocoon.
Once a caterpillar,
I thought I understood life.
Now it feels like time has passed me by
and I no longer understand or
recognize the world I live in:
irrelevant, voiceless, useless.
I can’t move.
Wrapped in blankets on a bed.
Cocooned in my cotton chrysalis.
I peer out through fuzzy threads
and see people moving about,
attempts at normalcy.
But, I have no desire.
I am weak and sickly;
left to the shadows of a previous life.
I have neither the will nor the strength.
I’m left to wonder if I will emerge from this cocoon
to a new life,
a new type of existence
or if I will die in my encasement.
Will I be able to break free and
enjoy new life?
A new existence?
Better Health?
Feeling “at one” with the world around me?
Or will this shell become my abattoir
slaughtered in silence.
Perhaps I will emerge an avatar
able to engage, teach, foster and encourage the souls who remain?
“If you live long enough and hang in long enough
the world will learn to love you again” (*)
So, now is the time of waiting
and hanging in there
waiting for the metamorphosis to complete
as I wonder….
Will I be a butterfly or a moth?
Will I dine on the sweet nectar of milkweed?
Will I flit and flutter toward the light of my undoing?
In the end the question is not “how?” but “when?”
Even butterflies can die in their cocoon.
* quote by Toya Willcox in the liner notes to her new boxed set.
ESCAPING ONE’S OWN SHADOW
poem to the world
We Did It Our Way (6/14/2020)
For all those around the world
who have have been sickened and harmed by
America’s bigotry
America’s duplicity
America’s meddling
into your lives, your governments, your countries
this legacy of self-interest
“I don’t think there are any Russians
and there ain’t no Yanks
Just corporate criminals
Playin’ with tanks”
“The child of hatred comes of age…
The sad neglect will surely take its toll…
Violent times”(*)
For all those around the world
who have prayed
prayed in earnest and
prayed continually
“A plague upon America.”
“Death to America!”
or cried out “when will it end?”
God has heard you and
God has answered
I can tell you
with more coronavirus cases
and deaths
than any other country in the world
with social unrest
caused by a pandemic, racism, inconsistent values,
police brutality and failed leadership
I can tell you
that you may feel confident
you did not have to lift a finger
you did not need to attack us
God has heard your prayers
and like the tower of Babel
Our “language” has become confused
like the walls of Jericho
all you had to do was blow your horns
we have come crashing down
the modern Rome is falling
you did not have to lift a finger
you did not need to attack us
let the ruin be a lesson
We did it our way
We did it to ourselves
* 2nd stanza quotes taken from The Call’s eerily prescient album MODERN ROMANS (1983)
“I can’t breathe” (a poem)
“I CAN’T BREATHE!”
The long long night in America
violence, hatred & anger
200+ years overdue if you ask me
and not in the least surprising
“I can’t breathe,” “I can’t breathe!”
The fires of protest burn brightly
and the media focuses on the event
not the root that caused this burning bush to grow
Another black man dies
in police custody
“I can’t breathe,” “I can’t breathe!”
each word like bullets fired from a gun
verbal shots ring out
while 3 cops pin a black man down
one brutally kneeling on the neck
and a 4th stands by complicit
It isn’t enough to suppress the black and brown man
his black and blue soul suffering
under the weight of white oppression
and the poison goes to the very top Mr. President
racism given a badge
There is no honor here
It’s not courage that carries a gun and uses force
only a white coward dresses in blue
and cynically claims
“I’m only doing my job”
when they crush the life
out of a black man already subdued
“I can’t breathe,” “ I can’t breathe”
If we are surprised by the violence
we should be ashamed
If we are shocked by the brutality
we shouldn’t be
If we do nothing
We are complicit
“Please, please, please,
I can’t breathe, please man.”
And another black mans soul
ascends to heaven to early.
“Please, please, please,
I can’t breathe, please man.”
I wrote the above poem in reaction to the brutal killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police and the nationwide protests and violence that followed 5/31/2020.
4 essential tracks for this time in America:
The Last Poets – HANDS OFF!
Gil Scott-Heron – HOME IS WHERE THE HATRED IS
The Last Poets – RAIN OF TERROR
War – SLIPPIN’ INTO DARKNESS
Bonus Track – From the film SLAM starring contemporary poet Saul Williams.
we are the people
Well Iggy Pop has done it again. Like Bowie and Dylan he just keeps surprising us and gets better and better. His newest album (2019), FREE, is a real breakaway from previous efforts – jazz textures abound. His primary collaborators are soundscape guitarist Noveller and jazz trumpeter Leron Thomas. Pop only co-wrote 3 of the 10 tracks. As he wrote in the liner notes he “…wanted an album in which other artists speak for me, but I lend my voice.” And what a voice it is. In addition to the three tracks he co-wrote he sings/speaks the words of Leron Thomas, Lou Reed and Dylan Thomas.
I find myself repeatedly listening to this album. I find it deeply moving. Here are a quartet of tracks.
Starting with the title track FREE which Pop co-wrote with Leron Thomas
Next is the poem WE ARE THE PEOPLE, written by Lou Reed and was published post-humously.
We are the people without land
We are the people without tradition
We are the people
Who do not know how to die peacefully and at ease
We are the thoughts of sorrows
Endings of tomorrows
We are the wisps of rulers
And the jokers of kings
We are the people without right
We are the people who have known only lies and desperation
We are the people without a country, a voice, or a mirror
We are the crystal gaze
Returned through the density and immensity of a berserk nation
We are the victims of the untold manifesto of the lack of depth
Of full and heavy emptiness
We are the people without sorrow
Who have moved beyond national pride and indifference
To a parody of instinct
We are the people who are desperate
Beyond emotion because it defies thought
We are the people
Who conceive our destruction and carry it out lawfully
We are the insects of someone else’s thought
A casualty of daytime, nighttime, space, and God
Without race, nationality, or religion
We are the people, and the people, the people
And now for something a little lighter – JAMES BOND, written by Leron Thomas. I nominate Iggy to do the theme song for the next James Bond film. What do you think?
And to round out this post here is a classic poem by Dylan Thomas,
DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT.
And do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rave at close of day
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Though wise men at their end know dark is right
Because their words had forked no lightning
They do not go gentle into that good night
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight
And learn too late, they grieved it on its way
Do not go gentle into that good night
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
And you, my father, there on the sad height
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray
Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
3 Good Friday haiku
Winter’s dying gasp
Before Easter’s rising dawn
Good Friday’s snowfall
This morning out my window #2
Snow falls on Friday
A Savior rises Sunday
Spring surprises all
This morning out my window #1
April morning snow
Quiet soft burial melting
to resurrection
It may be Friday – but Sunday’s on the way!
Late Autumn Haiku
Cold, dark, windy night
Trees shudder; dead leaves unchained
Make fierce their escape
4 haiku on death by suicide
Living, one’s own terms
no judgement for suicide
Dying, ones own terms
********************
Sweet Sweet Suicide
The last exit from life’s stage
Stigmata of choice
********************
On a high blue bridge
She jumps, flying toward the earth
Releasing all cares
********************
It takes great courage
To take the reigns of death
There’s no mortal sin
yet 3 more haiku on death & dying
No more dreams to live
Heart stops, brain ceases, life ends
A cold grave welcomes
*********************
Freedom on the wind
A bird will fall from the sky
Its heart beats no more
*********************
And when the end comes
Can there be beauty in death?
Flowers in the snow
3 more haiku on death & dying
Ending transitions
Matter to anti-matter
Life turns into death
********************
Flesh will decay fast
When life is present no more
Bones will decay slow
********************
Circumstance unknown
I know neither time nor place
When death comes for me
... on being and becoming ... 