A new poem, which has a visually inspired structure (amongst other jewels), best seen/read at: http://imunuri.blogspot.com/2012/11/construct-into-platonic-cube.html
The IMUNURI prompt for this poem was of the theme ~
Gotta have heart:
O orators, body sculptors, what if you could put something else inside the middle of the body? what emblem, symbol, or doohicky would you place in the great hearchitecture (heart-architecture) of our corpus? Write a poem about it.
Extra credit for visualizations that accompany your hearchitectural sculpting.
slope ridge line light
Photography –a medium I first explored over three decades ago and now find myself coming back to again, is compelling. It is the appearance or illusion of what was seen –not seen by the naked eye but by the camera, as Garry Winogrand so aptly noted as he discussed photography while being filmed himself for a documentary on photography.
We can look at photography in another way, not the way the camera ‘looks’ at the world in that split second aperture opening, but the way the human being and the human eye explores and glances, focusing or not focusing at something. Each photograph I take asks, if it can be said that way, to be looked at differently. In the photo above, for the body/brain there is a gestalt here. There are worlds within worlds in this image in the way I experience it. There is abstract beauty, there is light, dance, majesty, tenderness, softness, a deep relax. I love what seems to me the visitors, the trees high up on the ridge drawing my attention and intersecting the ridge line, riding the slope of this arid mountainside.
I love the scale shift in detail from the foreground to the very distant space of the ridge on into the sky. The feel of the day that drew me out into its changeability is touched here in this photograph, for me. Something breathes more easily within me in the presence of this light and shadow illusion of a land and cloud scape. So where might we say this landscape exists?
As invisible
as an updraft, the eye soars
as the osprey’s flight
Penthouse and other conversations
This is not a house / but what pretends.
I am here nonetheless living / and life and my life fill this space
Life unfolds through different orders
There is tenderness amongst these words,
and I might wonder in the in-between
I just was not able to crowd out the thoughts
where holding, housing seems real.
that gruffness in the face of subterfuge, mine or ours.
•
Building has made things lie lifeless
I’ve been a builder of many things
and what has come to know these?
split myself –polarity of material plane
Something feigns to dwell and comes
as if one thing is better than another
nonetheless as if dwelling here abides.
confined within the designs of things.
•
Oh, the mis-take of it all. We borrow
No mistakes really whenever I see
and borrow such blurring until
resting is what is such that
little edge or distinction remains.
resting and restless find their joining.
•
I rest in the in-dwelling,
Yet I cannot be in without out
the in-dwelling needing no arrival.
coming and going are the same.
It is the departing, which lays waste
This one who departs and does not see –this
and waste again, as unsettling ensues.
song is for her to remind and restore her.
•
I dream of simpler forays
In the dream there is this dream too
the meeting in directness
one cannot be without the other –yet
where the purest movement speaks stillness,
their divide is what is not real –breathing
unlike the manipulation of reality taken on
now –All is beyond question welcoming
as second nature and even first.
the manifest as the poetry of it All.
•
I pause, considering ~ the in-dwelling remains
Still point / zero point
needing no artifice, climbs without effort
welcoming the manifest
and also falls with no aversion.
as the poetry of it All.
note ~ In italicized bold are excerpts from:
Please consider reading East Coker in its entirety, if you are at all inspired!
Thank you Daniel Ari, TS Eliot, Kim Rosen, Jason Wheeler, Marna Hauk
[written during the last writing jam in Richmond ~ August 25, 2012]
there is nothing
oh so poetical
like the swim of sounds
all around
in the quiet holding
of silence perforated
by the most exquisite
traces of life cascading
from all braces and
otherwise non-races
of life arriving when
and how it does
gastric upheavals
sparkling weevils
squirm-ish peevals
trickling of sweet quieted voices
fountaining up like dampened water
and the metal keys
the piano of the wind plays
the heat flushes my face
what grace that pink
rose without any thorns
I wore my rose shirt
today just for you
and you and you
even the green of the
green envy and missing
leaves ~ all of us
in it together
this room
punctuated by soft time
no time only some odd
agreement we’d forgotten
about from another time
one without brave silences
held like holding your breath underwater
the eyes have it, but so do the ears
and so does the nose
nosing under
visiting the journey
that traveling could
never reach
Steady ground of multitudinous paws
with limitless capacity to reflect
I gaze through dog windows seeing
laying there aspects of my self
true and false whole as well as partial
muddied then still and clear
what a day of five tails telling
what might not otherwise be seen
foundling shaped coddled softened
from the inside out Mystic Eye of
the Beholder tender and fierce
at times rapidly interchanging
hesitant yet braised in a longing
contained by eons of shadowing
supplicant of the human heart
when opened vastly free
naked nighttime new moon confab
juxtaposes playful boundless reverie
extremes of pursuit and contentment
don’t tie me down but keep me close
tender toothed kisses unfettered affection
I see my own innocence here glowing
even with misunderstandings speculation
and day rises again the bright clear sun
the heart that opens deeply softly
eyes eyes eyes seeing watching tasting
putting all aside ready to desire delight
transparency confluence of many worlds
easy traveler buoyant riding over surface
and depth his role clear certain allowing
leave it in his hands but paws and nose
return again and again ever welcoming
d) Dear
unsettled bashfully brazen welcoming
committee of one of anything needing
alerting exuberantly caught in her own skin
and grace melting icebergs in her sleep
where all previous proclivities disperse
just give me something soft to curl onto
something to gaze into calm me full
in these simple yet abiding nourishings
no other steps in here in This Way
fraught with complexity and oh so
vulnerable would it could it be seen
only only only ready ready steady
bound within an unspoken allegiance
being everything and plus some to His
and yet what has been asked is more
than some could bear this bare note
• • •
And five tails told but only wagging
can tell what more is to be seen
dog windows to the soul of so many
internal worlds open space off leash
In a space we call dreaming
where body and brain step off
different platforms like when trains
going off in different directions
take us here take us there
only to return anew somehow
magically or maybe oddly
to that place we call awake
While dreaming all the world
arises and falls seeps in vaguely
staying as light as salt crystals
scattered on potatoes steaming
giving rise to taste what is more
true the salt or the root or the heat
do each of these overhear the other
mixing metaphors soil and cuisine
Dreams we call them conversations
they are each one overheard by this
collective organism of perception
yours mine ours who possesses
and what is private public distinct?
We send you off to do the deed
only to come along tag along with
knowingly or unknowingly so
The body awake a node or locus
a conglomeration somehow particular
to one yet an entanglement quantum
of several or many spread over
here over there transparencies one
into and through another another
indistinguishable where if any are
the seams as each interpenetrate all
An arc of overhearing
A heaviness on waking
burns off like dew
moisture of the morning
dream trails left by some
unsuspecting wish to be
or to love or have love
only forgetting no possession
brings such things
no accomplishment
weighs in as favor
making any wish true
There is something here
at work abiding
more brilliant even
than the sun
for it shines always
and looking beyond
the eyes yes yes yes
yeses reveal what is
eyes possibly of heart
beyond breath even
You are what is
Neither moist nor arid
distressed or elated
lost or remembered
virtuous or awry
engaged or foot-dragging
each and all of these
burn off in the sun
of their own making
like the dew
of this morning
a morning of night
What is
has
no
equal
force
= or ≠
cannot
be measured
and left
whole
simultaneously
Instead unfold within
ourselves resplendent
beyond the fascination
with things that break
only to be
rebuilt oncemore
trimming satisfaction
from something
that can only
be diminished
by its very nature
Empty like many things
cannot be named
empty is a verb
but doesn’t happen
empty’s not a doing
empty is what we
consist of more
than anything else
life living itself
We seem to have
a universe empty
empty full empty
Is light empty?
Is house empty?
All things are full
of themselves
even Space is
full of itself
Is this because
they are also
Empty?
Housing themselves?
Do we call something
Empty when we
cannot otherwise
perceive its thus-ness?
Perception itself
is empty / capacity
to receive
As I touch in
em
pt
yi
ng
≠
when
how
with what
where
does
some
thing
be
come
emp
ty
?
Life Being Life 