Let the poems speak

When I last posted here it was summer, and now it is not, prompting a haiku:

now is winter woe

winds creep past cracks and crevices

I dream weatherstrips

Which is sort of the point of this post which is focused on some of my shorter poetry.  Mostly I find that I am informed by the neighborhood or life around us, or maybe the past, but also sometimes it is just imagination and the voice or persona may shift from poem to poem.  But what I find consistent is that you cannot entirely escape self and self speaks in perspective, theme, or metaphor regardless of the surface from which it emulates.  Life is both great and also a place for a certain amount of cynicism where it serves well to examine before trust, especially if dealing with government or commercial enterprise.  And even with people because not everyone’s interests are going to sync up with ours.  Then there is empathy – which hopefully can exist irrespective of cynicism because this is not a linear algebraic world of two variables which are mutually exclusive of each other – after all, aren’t all the people we like or love flawed as well and what about us?

Perspective is then always to be considered and I think I am saying too much, let the poems speak for themselves……..

The Fog

Dawn replaced

headlight tunnels

with white ocean of fog,

I saw oasis ahead –

intersection, stop sign,

grey and faint,

then gone – visage falsehood,

mind’s eye stronger than any lens;

I wonder about my beliefs.

The Theory of Relativity Confirmed

The room stops,

I am in your arms,

time moves too fast,

Einstein was right.

7 years

Each day the man limps, left hand flapping,

lurch by lurch

As he passes under my ladder

His bad luck has already happened.

Patterns of the Mind

She says she doesn’t know dreams

unless feverish,

the cave too deep --

chilled, she hibernates,

patterns pressed on her skin

the only clues

to the night,

clear fresh eyes

she goes into the day,

nothing resolved.

We Hope You Like Her

 

 and yes, she is quite something,

we all agree

but what works for you

is what you don’t know –

what we won’t say,

with whom she has screamed,

those failed men,

her mistakes,

when she was terminated for

wrong emotions --

history prevents us

from seeing her now --

it is up to you.

Back in Memory

I am jealous of your back

does it remember

other fingers, past stroking?

I remember other backs

it is not the same.

The Subtleties of Existentialism 

Mr. Ching walks stooped

endlessly looking down

to where

the cans and bottles live

now

they come from the table

where there are long debates

nuanced discussions of

of others

shaded carefully

until it is time

to take out

the recycling

and Mr. Ching knows

somehow

instinctively

to arrive.

Stolen Line

you can hardly jump

she whips the rope like a storm;

clothes will miss it soon

The Angle To Fragile Repose

as the light tilted your shadow became long

before you faded from view

leaving behind only void

I will find some other awe

for the pedestal tomorrow.

Old Dry Eyes

those man tears cloaked

bountiful springs lost to dust;

now I cry from need

The Symbiosis Of The Therapist

you know I’m happy but

I hope I don’t confuse

listen to me when

I say that I am

really partial to the blues.

tell me more about your sadness….

The Rape Of Her Face

in that field she was tender on the rocks,

her fingers ending in polished jade

held near her breast

as she arched her back

in the shade hole of the umbrella,

their long lenses poking

until her smile was worn off her face,

what an excuse,

no one could stare that hard and long

without a machine.

Some

of you may imagine the lawn full of accent plants

arranged through employment underground to

governments not knowing the rats above in the palms

where breeding takes place at a more rapid pace so

who will die first is not who lives last in the long run

long after lawns are gone the way of governments

probably chewed up by the them they will be super

with a big S on their pesticide resistant shirts and

as strong as cockroaches lifting boulders out of pits

you gotta give it to them rats often unseen yet still

in your life and yard all the time so is that why you

pay taxes thinking it keeps the lawn cut and clean

What Color Are Values

the traffic light blinks green yellow red green

over my friend as she cries

Street Spirit, dollar paper, help feed the homeless

do you drop a dollar?

blink on this --

what if she takes her kids to Disneyland

and your beamer needs gas

My Girl Skye

skye you are so indifferent to me

with your blues and twinkles

preoccupied, you conceal our relationship

with fog and clouded judgments

but then you weep

and I know you care.

Amazon

the if-then logic of the bee

is difficult to follow,

how does it choose the next flower?

bet you better understand

“recommendations for you in fiction and literature”

as they blossom in your in-box

seeking nectar.

What Time

time you are but spilled gasoline on the pavement

vanishing as I watch,

I should light a match to better understand

your violence.

Weather Theory

do you feel the vibrations, the flutter of those wings?

touch them to know the butterfly dust

on your skin,

thousands of miles away,

that is why the wind blows here.

Slime Mold, I Love You

Slime Mold, I love you,

we are crawling together on this dirt,

you might tell me who I am

if I would listen.

Now We Go To The Y

sweat dripping onto the machine

which doesn’t know I am alive --

I am only trying to remember

the savanna, the hunt, the sun.

Chores

wrinkled  I mop floors

doing chores mom taught long ago

childhood felt again.

Senseless

what a puzzle sleep

you vacant before fleeing shards

the day jumble-tossed

to violence and extremes

while in body still-bound

your shifty eyes search for truth.

Garden Generations

flinty life in the small trees of tribe

shouting cuts of love

oh, the

reasons given while the blood leaks out

leaving but worm husks

in the root-tangled earth

igniting new growth as the tribe flowers again,

with razor leaves.

Fear

sudden sweat in dark tunnel

with pictures of spiders and rats

painted invisibly on the walls

and looming large

until a glimmer of light

was seen at the other end

like so many moments in life.

Weightless

the water pillowed   

fleshy

 against my hands

I slide

an eel at play

poured through the shockingly blue pool

as I remember you from the night before

            how strange it is

to escape from gravity yet again.

A glance in a Dark Bar  (Tanka)

did you try the past

I brought to you at first glance?

I wrote appetites

into your skin with wild eyes

too bad it might not be real.

Canyons

here we are across

little canyons

with light moving

wall messages from etched

sharp rock outcrops of disappointment

and into later dark,

the edges unseen,

we cannot step for fear of falling

into another belief

Tanka Hope

Are you done with Hope,

after watching our friend die?

Hope has no muscles

damn damn ethereal thing

starting with caps, like a God.

Haiku After Neruda

Neruda was not

poisoned so now we can walk

close to where he sleeps

Before and After Melting

1.    Enjoy Life

your leaf pile larger

before flame but mourn all the

colors then unseen.

2.    Expansion:

you culmination

of box top life toys, plastic

television mind

until; the epiphany

found liner notes on fall trees.

3.    Blowup:

in empty space

breath in a balloon expands

past atmospheric restraints –

huge as a mortgage bubble suburban house

with motel decorations and unread fake-leather bound books

near the football-loaded flat screen in the man-den, meanwhile

her powders and potions dusting upstairs pink closets

where you don’t dare inhale toxic, perfume laden air,

what a pile of dead leaves --

that and what is due,

the hair-spray platitudes

and crinkled dry love are going to explode

poof

from the heat,

balloons melt  close to the sun,

but as you fall you will see all the colors burning.

4.    Surprise

at last came a day

he woke up feeling normal --

what the fuck is this?

Haiku:  Silicon Valley Women

rich internet man

says  many fours think they are nines

now his flesh hangs torn

I Want To Sleep More and Other Dark Matters

One of the enjoyments of life is reading the science information to be found in The New York Times, often in the Monday science section but also sometimes in the magazine or just daily if the information is noteworthy – it gives any layperson willing to read it an expanding sense of the universe which we all know now is expanding, one of the forces involved being the Dark Matter. 

I like this name, Dark Matter, even better than the misnomer “The God Particle” which some journalist applied to the Higgs Boson, another tiny elusive thing which we are spending billions to confirm at the Cern particle accelerator located about 900 feet underground in mostly Switzerland although it overlaps in to France a little bit.  The 27 Kilometer circular tube is powered by huge magnets which fire in a sequence to pull particles to near light speed before they are thrown at targets, bursting apart matter into component pieces which last for fractions of a second only measurable with electronic eyes and high speed computers. We are truly peering into what used to be the dark.

The Physics of Memories

Time, how can I know you besides as

Destroyer?

you spill my life

into the dirt,

you are gasoline, evaporating me,

I should strike a match to better know your violence,

how can you be a dimension

when you give no space,

pushing me relentlessly ahead

to the cliff?

I will visit Switzerland to see the Ring

where they hope to destroy you within

twenty-seven kilometers of gizmos wired

to choke the truth out of you,

maybe then I can again know childhood

instead of seeing the monsters of congress and my life

at work at nothing in the attic of my mind,

burning my soul to ashes,

tell me --

is this Alice or us in Wonderland?

I wonder,

tipsy-topsey,

electrons in two places at once,

gravity called a weak force

and Time, you are called out,

your metronome stumbling

on sister Velocity –

is fair foul and foul fair –

our sphere a Macbethian deceit?

high-energy physics has me lost  --

I think Einstein must have been Shakespeare’s bitch

for all the witches he has spawned,

in the catacombs of Cern now

the alchemists rending the cloth

looking for threads, nearly tearing time apart,

there I would dance around the caldron

to hear the witches speak of

cat mews and hedge-pig squeals,

of quarks and things,

‘tis time, ‘tis time they would sing

and I would throw the eye of Newton in ‘til

‘tis time for Alice

for only the mad hatter gets to murder time,

oh, Time for me you are gasoline

spilled,

vanishing constantly yet never stopped

so Time, I ask you for my relief,

you being quite close to the Dark Matter

and other things, yet

I think only the White Queen

can put me backward to

before my wars,

to a first kiss,

a hairless chin,

until I will suckle mother again

and disappear in her shrunken womb,

I will be the light

reflected in parents eyes,

pure joy

but there are no electromagnets to return me

‘tho those witches and wizards of Cern

unravel the cloth and see

the particles of gods,

things on the dark side

of matters (where I think some of my memories go) –

this, Time, is your dimension,

those memories of things past,

you, forward, ticking at your own pace

and I back and forth

like a fly in that collider machine,

scattered by it all

until I am stuck at tea-time

while the wizards hurl their beams

at light’s slowed clock –

let the white queen accuse me daily

of memories in only one direction

but of that I am glad,

as glad as anything to be found

in that huge dark Ring.

Recently one theoretical physicist, Lee Smolin, proposed that among the Strange Things (emphasis mine) that we should consider is that the Einsteinian concept of the relativity of time may be in conflict with how time may behave, if we can anthropomorphize time, in the evolving universe. In fact he postulates that the universe, to sustain life, has its own anthropomorphic qualities, evolving within the narrow ranges to sustain life, provide black holes, and forming stars, and that only by looking outside of the current definitions of modern physics theories can we explain some of the relationships between things; for example, how can an electron exist in two places at the same time or how can one particle appear to be tied to another simultaneously, as though there is no distance between them because one effects the other without any lapse in time?  Smolin proposes that the universe has a universal time which is not subject to Einstein’s relativity and that the laws of physics and how the universe operates are evolutionary, seeking efficiencies like water runs downhill.

Here is the real kicker – Smolin says that every particle in the universe is in casual relationship to every other particle.  Does this sound like a modification to the adage that when a butterfly takes off in South America it changes the weather in New York? 

Weather Theory

do you feel the vibrations, the flutter of those wings?

touch them to know the butterfly dust

on your skin,

thousands of miles away,

that is why the wind blows here.

But as a poet I love this stuff.  How do I address the mysterious without wandering into the spiritual?  To me if anything stinks of anthropomorphic application, it is the spiritual where we tiny short-lived animals ascribe all kinds of our species’ characteristics upon causality, applying simplistic caveman answers to the strange things, almost as though water, in order to flow downhill, must have a brain or have been powered by the thought of something which at least resembles us enough for us to describe it being sentient and having influence over the world and us as kind of a super animal or super human.  And yes, I did enjoy reading the Superman comics as a kid.

So where does that leave us with the Strange Things?  How do we explain what is going on?

First of all I think our quest for how the universe functions is mostly going to entertain us as it allows the creation of smaller transistors and so forth.  Better living through Bosons.   But also as we dispense with myths and beliefs thousands of years old (is that really possible in this world?), we should be able to both move forward as a people toward some more realistic understanding of things, such as the fact that the universe is indifferent to us, and also we should paradoxically go backward – to return to the honesty of sensing things as they are to us as a bunch of animals who think.  We should be able to understand that the factors which determine our behaviors are just about everything, almost as though Smolin’s theories of causality are confirming astrology and Jupiter’s position relative to Mars is why you are on a tear today (just joking).  I prefer to stick a little closer to home and point out that our evolution has created us as sensitive creatures working below the level of conscious thought to survive, so we catch our mega-data much as NSA does and we process it for clues underground, in the dark, and then, depending on who we are, things swim to the surface and are done – rationalized, performed, ingested as our free-will-determined behaviors.

Do you like stories of empathetic behaviors? People behaving altruistically?  Dogs and cats together?  Let’s talk about science and evolution.  Why shouldn’t free will mean that we all just go for it and get everything we want with the most powerful winning all?  Isn’t that what is happening today with the 1% getting richer?  Why then do people in need give generously to others?

Think about single celled creatures slowly getting together and forming a union for survival.  It is now known that slime mold, for example, can both exist as single celled organisms in places of abundant food supplies, or band together for survival when food is scarce. Then consider the human body which has a whole bunch of cells banded together and evolved so that some cells perform special functions that other cells don’t.  It is another stage past the slime mold because as the cells specialized they could not disassemble.  Then add in a whole bunch more organisms that don’t have the same DNA but which also perform beneficial functions and the resultant ecosystem walks and talks while underneath various cells are sending out chemicals telling the body to be hungry, to have sex, to sleep, and influencing emotions.  Some have proposed that modern sanitation has had some weird consequences so that fewer bacteriological exposures have resulted in more allergies, lower defenses to infection and even, in the absence of stomach worms, a less well balanced digestive system. 

Slime Mold, I Love You

Slime Mold, I love you,

we are crawling together on this dirt,

you might tell me who I am

if I would listen.

Let’s then think about some of the survival characteristics of the animal which has evolved into the modern human.  Banding together to hunt would be an asset.  Being territorial would be an asset.  Protecting children would be an asset.  Forming emotional bonds so that family units have a will to survive would be an asset.  Having and following leaders would be an asset so long as they are reasonably well chosen. These things are fairly obvious and well established. We see leadership in a herd of cows, we see cooperation in a pack of hunting wolves, we see territoriality in household cats.  What this implies is that the modern human, evolved primarily in wild circumstances where these characteristics were extremely beneficial, now often lives in such density that some of the characteristics are a bit in conflict with others.  Of course we have also evolved with memes and we have cultural characteristics and layers of retained learning which includes codification of empathetic behaviors into moral strictures, philosophies, laws, etc. and all religions include instructions about behaviors which are central to their messages.  In spite of all of this the human condition continues to be filled with self serving at the individual and group levels and thus we have crime and wars, not to mention the destruction of the environment which we need to survive.

So here we are with the human condition on teeter-totter between self and group and perhaps that is as it always was after the start of agriculture provided the stability for us to gather in large groups.  Citing science again, recent use of ladar (a laser technique that looks through foliage at the ground using computers) has indicated that failed cultures such as Angor Wat in Cambodia or Mayan cultures in Central America failed from too much city destroying the ability of the city to provide for itself.  Sure, now we have the ability to float anything half way around the world for now, so the shift of balance next time is likely to be a larger event in nature than merely local water or food supplies. We are all of us contributing to that coming doom or at least major shift in the paradigms of life as we drive our cars even if fuel efficient, and chatter on electronics – we are all consumers of the world, eating it up as a swarm of bugs might consume an apple, and our old moral codes do not seem to weigh enough towards the group and survival.  Will this be another evolution?  Given the relatively slow pace at which we humans can biologically evolve compared to short lived bugs, we many not change fast enough for most to survive unless it is a evolution of the memes – that is, an evolution in learned behaviors, heading back towards those few humans who once practiced the holiness of the Earth.  Here I think I could support the use of the word god, just so long as we don’t do that anthropomorphic thing.

Maybe we just need to sleep more.  Science, without the use of 27 kilometer tunnels, has determined that sleep is more than dreams, that sleep is the place where memories are fixed.  If you don’t sleep well ,or enough, you may not retain learning as well.  If children do not get good sleep they may behave in nervous ways which are misdiagnosed as ADHD, leading to inappropriate treatments.  Here I am only partially joking because what if we did not rush around and do so much that we don’t get 8 – 9 hours of sleep a night?  This accelerated life is symptomatic of a malaise which demands more and more yet does not provide any more true satisfaction than living in the dirt outside and following the rhythms of the seasons, as we evolved.

Now We Go To The Y

sweat dripping onto the machine

which doesn't know I am alive

I am only trying to remember

the savanna, the hunt, the sun.