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A good place to put a few photos with poetry
Canvas
A quilt, a pair of chairs, a bit of pretend
One little boy whose imagination lends
Itself a tent beneath stars and midnight sky
With pillows of grand adventure and blankets of fireflies
Endearing and enduring canvas of youth's play sewn
But then the tent tumbles as mother calls him home
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joy!
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Midlife Song
My heart spills its beats into
the pulse of my life
steady, sturdy and stable.
The dawn creeps in like a cloud of fog
slips in over the mountains,
surreptitious and stealthy.
I acknowledge the beauty of the
sun, the hue of the horizon.
The sudden blast of red
is dawning in my eyes,
streaming streaks of criss-crossed
mauve and amber clouds painting the sky,.
Yet there is the passion of the morning,
draped in coiled sheets and tangled limbs,
dewy kisses competing with the
morning mist.
Wild, free, thoughtless abandon.
Sighs echoed in the bird’s song.
Only to evaporate into the heat
of day, whispering
songs of days past,
Passion
does not hold for long, and
the experience is long since
forgotten.
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Art Forms
She is like the moon hiding behind shadows.
her outline sharp against the blackness of night,
the clouds move across her face
whenever the subject grows complex.
She is an imposter, moving across the sky,
faking her life, holding the keys given to her
by others who knew more,
holding them so tightly that she
bleeds tiny droplets of bright crimson red
like the drops of paint she sees on the canvas before her.
The keys fit only the most abstract of art forms
hanging there before her color-blind eyes,
with smashed up limbs and tangled torsos,
contorting faces pointing towards
failing insights of French-connected
fleets of fancy.
Growing up meant accepting that pieces
fall together as they should
no matter how she tried to mash them together
to make art a life form.
She saw nothing more than reality while the keys
cut her hand, pressing her to accept life as an art form.
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Eagles Falls
He stood like an eagle towering on tall cliffs
above all he thought he owned.
The trees, the dirt, the creatures within,
all his to command.
He stomped about with little regard
for their place in the world,
or their hurt on his path to progress.
It had started out small, a little thing,
a misplaced foot, a misguided hand.
Yet it grew to be so much more,
and he did not even realize it.
The power, the awesome responsibility
he owed to the world.
He remained in ignorance, seeking only
self-gratification, and an inalienable right
to take whatever was at hand.
Those under his feet screamed out in pain.
He heard their pleas, but blamed them
for putting themselves in his way.
They should work harder to allow him to
make what he would of the world,
as he grew greater from their labors.
He had more of a right to be where he was,
than they had to exist where they did.
He could move wherever, and whenever.
And one day they revolted, with the sun and the
earth as an ally. They swallowed him up, and ate him
whole while he exclaimed his outrage about his
fate.
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Penn Station 4.20.02
Knowing others can smell your trepidation does not keep you from moving
forward into the large cavernous guts of the city. In your own town the caves
are made of stone and the mountains are made of the earth’s sweat. Here traipsing
like a hiker through footpaths worn by angry hurt tired boots of fine Italian leather,
sweaty boy shoes, and razor sharp woman heels you hear the constant hum of
motor mouths making meals of mousy minions on mini cellular phones.
A woman helps you buy a ticket to a place in Brooklyn you’ve never known. Pushing
all the buttons to connections in dubious outer planets. Your apprehension trickles
down the ledges of your collar bone and feeds into the icy cold reservoir at the base of
your spine. Hoping no one notices you move forward into the non-stop stomping.
stomping feet, stomping onward to destinations untold. Everyone knows where
they are going, except you.
Fear keeps you moving, to be still means being lost and being lost leaves you vulnerable to unfathomable outside forces. Looking at your ticket you see you’ve bought a ticket from point B to point C. A man behind a glass of tall shimmering light speaks through a microphone to announce to the world that you don’t know what you are doing. Cringing, you have asked for help and are told that you cannot get there from here. Must start all over. Can’t get your money back until later, sometime later, not now.
The man points westward, downward, into the caves, as your steel gray limo waits. Your vehicle contains hundreds of special people just like you, with interior to match the insidious green pallor of most of the occupants. It rushes within like a snake caught in a jar. As the token kerplunks into the slot and the revolving turnstile hits you in the thigh you realize there is no turning back. Caught in the forward motion of the city, caught in the ever circling rhythm, caught on the back of the serpent.
The platforms are virtually empty. Great concrete slabs filling space and time. A mother comforts a crying child. People start to filter in. All is still. The air is short here, fumes and furnaces burn the eyes. A rumble begins in the outer core of the Earth. A rush of wind. You stare into the wormhole and see black. People moving quickly to your left, a mad dash down more steps into the unknown. A or C, there is no B. Hop on the ride that arrives first, as the music stops.
Your heartbeat and feet match the steady tempo of the tunnel. You find a seat and soon your body starts to sway as the mother car rocks her babies in the womb. At each stop you warily watch for signs hoping this train is pointed in the right direction. Doors burst open, incoming youth. Exclamations. Move to the side. You want to make yourself
Into the dirt spec imbedded into the hand rail. The slow ebb of tension which was flowing into the curl of your toes now raises to your neck. Boom box down in center, music blares.
High rolling gymnastics, flying feet, and clapping hands engulf the car. Mouths turn upward as a new beat invades. The black music warriors perform leaps and bounds with
the sway of the car and the music. The entire car puts their hands together, and separate as they dip into pockets and purses. The youths exclaim it is a full days’ work for
a Saturday. They as quickly leap from the car, entertainment, city style. The car, the ride, the kids all part of an ending which never begins.
You have arrived. Moving up the stairs you see it is raining. The world is as it has always been.
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