Poem-A-Day #337 : Manhattan

Manhattan

On rocky tops the lighthouse beaming
its mirrored sun - arms
spread a veritable wide embrace -
there is a sand in the gleam - winking
causing pearl in the ducts of the eye

That pool created dip of earth
sinkhole - cocksure - earth loosing itself
a new address would be best - the beam
pressing buttons of travel making lease
on a room in Crown Heights

Oh the sound of gulls - this city on a hill
garbage belched from below it echos
reflects itself - reminds
what could an echo be - the
whole a twin sun binary edging

Poem-A-Day #290 : Nightscape

Nightscape

On your skin

A color like purple

It thighs and glides across surfaces

A woman is thrown into the pool of a taxi

There is night and then there is city

Each thing defines itself against the void of space

Your eyes are glares

The streetlight blinks yellow banishing color

Mono

A wish to be the reflection in your sweat

The smell of garbage

A rat across your foot

Uber and crash

Your teeth are violet

Poem-A-Day #188 : We Cannot See Ourselves We Cannot Unsee Ourselves

I've been reading a lot of Sartre. It's ruining/rebuilding me.

We Cannot See Ourselves We Cannot Unsee Ourselves

What to be done with a mirror that refuses reflection

It is a song that will not resolve it is the frustrating noise of refusal

A great 'no' hovering over the landscape in garish colors

We are in a country surrounded by the clicking of dolphins

And that is beautiful but disorienting to find in this landlocked space

Our faces are masks but this is too easy to say and too hard to believe

They are cages first for our eyes and the tangle of lint we call our minds

And then there are eyes let loose on the world to terrorize with their focus

The unreflection is a cataract light in your eye is just like broken silver

When we have a lack of it there is little to resolve ourselves

We are also the clicking of creatures pulled from the ocean and left to fend

Poem-A-Day #145 : A Theme Emerges of An Obsession With Nature & Death

A lot of the things in my journals are untitled. I gave this one a title that reflects where my mind clearly sits most of the time.

I think this is a bit of a riff on Pound's petals on a wet, black bough. But it probably could be argued that anything written about nature after Pound is a riff on that.


A Theme Emerges of An Obsession With Nature & Death (7/11/04)

Light catches
in the grooves
of the tree's abdomen

Leaves tremble
debate amongst themselves
whether to jump or not

It's the breeze that does it
that makes
the leaves want to fly, that

And the light
in the deep
skin-cuts of bark

Sparkling
in a rainstorm

Poem-A-Day #98 : Here Reflection - Here

Here Reflection - Here

The arroyo rapid fills - a tub about to over

At exactly one o'clock the clouds will open - book jackets who's words bold

The house groans under its own weight - cobwebs eaveing the roof

Something here about the start of summer in the desert - crack of lightening

The police car pulls away from the red light - leaves itself behind

Here reflection - here

Poem-A-Day #31 : Night

Night

          Blue shadow on the cheek

                    Smudge of gray ash in the fireplace

                              At night the vines hug the walls they are heart-shaped purple and bleeding on the bricks

          I'd say they were bougainvillea but that's obvious they may as well be ivy itching at the stone walls and pulling mortar from the cracks hiding animals hiding so many windows

                    You hide blue with orange

                              The cadmium is opaque is breaking

           In the YouTube video they show the woman covering the man's face with thick tangerine-colored concealer then with thick beige concealer then with rouge

          I don't get a five o'clock shadow

                    The bricks pop and fall the mirror hides itself