Tag Archives: poem

Sky Dogs

the dogs are in the sky

in the clouds

the colors are their sniffing ground

I walk with them  wild openness

nothing tethered

their playing field

is pure changeability

from one moment to the next

 

the sky dogs roam

but in their roaming

come home again and again

never leaving the vastness

of their infinitude

bedding down only

in the thunder and

the lightning

 

howling and braying

cascading down the gorge

the tender-footed ones

follow the light traces

wings of birds

starlight

the calls of coyotes

and bright cactus flowerings

 

they dig

and dig deeper

into my being

pirouettes and thermals

carrying me to the

outer atmosphere

beyond any longing

swimming a rarified ocean

 

and as I follow

will I tip onto the other side

even imagining

another side

has the weight of

pretend and posture

this vastness holds

no bars on any spiral

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Painting Bodies

for Becci

.

If I had painted myself today

I would have been thinking

of our conversation and how

.

you seem to be in two places

at once while I — take chase

in hopes of getting sympathy

.

for an aged cheese, long sitting

on the shelf in wait of a gourmet

taster, just like you, someone

.

who’s not deterred in the least by

stinky concoctions, can see them for

what they are — real, incased, beauty

.

in a tough rind, the skin of this

body politic, the only one evident

to me at this time. “I don’t think

.

you understand,” I say to myself after

the conversation has gone on to other

doings. I’m so tempted to say, “What good

.

will it do?” But I don’t. Instead I look

for anything that could serve as pigment,

binder, carriers, brushes –preparing.

.

As I paint myself today, the body which

is not me, returns into its elemental

unfolding falling back towards the

.

natural order of its emanation: water

to water; seed to seed; fold unto fold;

mineral saturations and truth and grit.

.

“What/where is that other place you exist?”

.

A Stand In As Myself or Something Else

I have sometimes written a poem without having to be aware of the writing

You see, the poem aside from its writing or typing is an entity of its
own. It is seen, heard, felt, paused,

And squeezed out from behind the corner of the eye, the eye that is not
an eye

.

One where seeing comes in a whole other spectrum than

The usual one –not one you can manufacture here –one that exists already

It comes of its own accord like twilight or dawn, nothing can stop it or begin it

.

When you pause in the words, you’ll see a whole shift of light

It can easily be blocked, consciously or unconsciously; but if you let it be, everything takes on a different tone

For that time when things look as they do in between

.

The poem appears, it comes into its own, and recedes as if it has breath

[those reading and writing access it equally yet different]

It cannot be said even which comes first, the one who reads or what writes

.

And being is like that, too –am I myself or something else

What moves this now, not such that it is a hall of mirrors

But the something else continuously speaks itself as if I were the pen and paper

IMG_0296

Mapping the Material World

[written & drawn as an opening to a creative collaboration w/Daniel Ari in some way, shape,
or form for a book of Daniel’s querons* & drawings/art/illustrations of 58 artists – titled ‘One Way to Ask” to be published later in 2014.] 
 
*a poetic form of his design, although this poem is not a queron
 
.
We map our existence
with the oddest of things
And yet is it any surprise
really? We being the creatures
Of comforts, habits, all the controls
strung out barely discernible
Yet everywhere we go ~ handling
this, setting that just so,
Hot, hotter, quiet, quieter even still.
Beauty, fragrance, order, mess.
Taste, timing, listening ~ all experience
awaits and awaits, yet also
Passing us by, pondering us like
the creatures we are.
Experience having us, we are
possessed by that which dawns on us,
possessed in measure, great and small.

.

IMG_0236Mapping the Material World