What we see remains apart from us.
What we touch we feel; we do not see.
We turn our heads away from our eyes
when we sense the pangs of contact
against our excessively sensitive skins.
We choose the centers of places to sit in
where the remoteness of all that surrounds us
adds detail to the screen of our vision
and creates [...]
Monthly Archives: October 2009
Sight and Touch
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Critique of an Author
The author’s skill lies in bringing his mind
back again and again to the theme he has posed
to treat of and bundling it up into new
and interesting shapes like a clown
twisting long balloons into giraffes and diadems:
examined closely you will see
where all their knots are tied.
His skill is artful but has no utility.
It is picked up [...]
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A Haiku
Words are stepping stones.
Leap from one to the next or
sink into the muck.
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Gathering Storm
Lightning flashes without thunder.
Blind, groping winds open doors
and pull open doors shut, bringing
smells of water like dogs to city centers
far away from the stormy turmoil.
There is lightning-like capriciousness
in the wind the way it whips up
and gracefully sweeps away, regardless
of whether bashing against impediments
to its course or flowing through
the wide-spread openness freely:
the blink of an eye [...]
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The Poet
Locked in the belly of a ship that has been
abandoned by all other passengers,
the poet hunkers in the dark marking
down the vicissitudes of the waves that slam
against the walls and raise the ship
to mountainous heights and thrash it
down violently. His record of their enormity
and their frequency might never meet
the eyes of an interested reader; the [...]
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A Poem
A poem is a smack in the face.
It has all the tingling sting one leaves:
A localized red burn of anger mixed with shame
rising to the height of a pointed tongue of flame
Its dully lined handprint is left on
the white cheek of conscience as well:
The poem’s smacked reader either fuming for
the dishonor done to him, or [...]
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Two Haikus
A styrofoam lid
tumbles over its edges
in the taunting wind.
******************
Feedlots and slaughter-
houses I am fine with, but
birds kept in cages?
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Past Three
I think I need to go for a walk.
Maybe come back here later,
continue,
maybe not.
It’s past three
in the afternoon.
Such a beautiful day:
cool but warm.
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Desolation
I walked among crowds in the bright morning sun,
obscurely elated as if a burden had lifted from somewhere
and I were divining its absence from the lightness in the air.
Though nothing shone clearly, everything stuck itself out
to be seen, nakedly lacking points of reference to guide
the eyes from one place to another. The present
was constantly out [...]
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Father Figure
The ways we sit have slumped into comfortability.
The weight of our own bodies has become
more than we’d like to support. Sitting hunched
can hurt, but it’s better than sitting up straight.
The rigidity with which the emblematic
father figure holds his head as an example
to his boys is rooted in poise and politeness.
Children always respect but never trust [...]
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