Poetry for Scientists
-------------------------------- Turning Jan 29, 1997 A leaf pirouettes from above; a toe of this ballerina points through the death dance of empty space. Where she touches down she will be received, and the golden dancer will recompose into a leaf again. ******* Ashes Sept 20, 1997 A tear falls from the eye of a young girl. Although clear, she looks under it. She lifts and holds it toward the sun like a magnifying glass that makes big her thoughts. She wonders how so many feelings can fit inside this jewel that rains as the art of emotion. A hurricane rages down the coastline of her cheek. This isn't the water cycle she learned in school. She turns the tear around and sees her reflection, distorted by her tears. This isn't my face she says. No, she still has the beauty of the original face. Of all the faces. Into that mirror she jumps leaving only ashes. ******* April 20, 1997 Stay mindful. Don't believe in poetry. You know how words can deceive. We are ever greater than our words and deeds. Defying definition and explanation, we run out of words. Some of us run out of reach. Some out of luck. Just when you think you know something... poof, you run out of reason. ******* I ask why things grow old in this old world. My companion of fifteen years has become rickety. Eyes glazed over, his hearing long gone... My throat swells. My mother shriveled up and died too. A transluscent body unable to do anything, not even make bed soars.. In one long still moment her breath rolled away. Ideas about that grow old. Is it our taste for the absurd that brings us here? Surely someone tried to talk us out of it. I kept his tags. They hang from a doorknob and jingle, waiting to go outside. ******* Smoke rises into the air. Lives move disintegrate disappear. I watch a lifetime pass before me, becoming a little greater than time. Nothing matters, but everything counts. ******* EXO All his power was on the outside of his body. A suit, clean shave, and neat hair, his chest puffed up like a rooster-- powerfully on his way to the top. Inside he is hollow like the heart of a log rotted out by the world. ******* Poem for Max Freedom is being able to have and halt a bad idea. Freedom is seeing and understanding what's in the heart. Freedom is the will to forget, and remember. Freedom is the movement in motion inside us when one is very still. Freedom is the falling rain that doesn't resist. Freedom is Max releasing a live rabbit kit. ******* Of Words can sometimes make no sense; the realm of the philosopher. Words can be coupled, arranged, joined and bonded together to speak in a fool's language: if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it fall, does it make a sound? We make sense of these arrangements that make no sense. The more complicated and less real, the more we like them. Of course a tree fell in the forest. ******* Pressure pressure pressure! air water oil pressure calibrate demarcate gauges meters dials evaluate digits and degrees lines signs and cosines measure information pressure pressure pressure! Just tell me what I need to know. ******* |
Poems from the Heart
----------------------------- Truly Political Animal-- Inorganic Beings Feb 20, 2001 Hold on to someone; best if it be you. When the waves come crashing in on your shore, their thunder will obliterate your peace. and their pounding will wash all of your self away. You will become part of the tide lifting and falling. The onslaught is impersonal; inorganic beings bring them about. They may look like you and me, but there isn't anything truly alive and wonderful about them. They don't recognize life signs. They just make themselves a nuisance. Hold onto land when they come by, they can't help but make waves. Like the dead moon pulls at the night, the way shadows eat light, non-living beings make themselves known. Black holes-- they can empty a whole galaxy of love and goodness. (Inorganic beings, Castaneda, The Active Side Of Infinity) ******* March 20, 2001 I practice the world's second oldest profession: I'll write about anything, any time, any where. Most of the time it means nothing, like this. But when the lovemaking really happens inside, really happens, and I'm reminded about what's what... it becomes something like, this. ******* That June 15, 2001 I'm afraid to bow down to that god. If I bow, I pay homage to that. If I bow from fear, I pay homage to fear. I bow to the god who loves you and me. ******* I'd like to see the spiritual Masters on a bad day. ******* April 5. 2001 Double-fortune cookie says: Practice fortitude now. Any moment could be your last. And: Gather yourself up for the next moment. Practice the leap now. ******* Buddha Light, Two Sugars 3am March 28, 2001 I turn toward Buddha nature while stirring my coffee. God, Buddha didn't even drink coffee did he? In the mundane I look for enlightenment to focus and fix my mind in the sublime, to rest my heart in the exalted place-- I've put in too much sugar. Buddha points to a flower... Stirring doesn't make it go away. The sound the spoon makes is a childhood sound: the early morning twilight peal to waken. ...at this early hour, emptiness and fulfillment wander in. Realizing caffeine I could write lots lots more. In under two seconds I'm unaware I'm washing my cup. What was it he said about compassion? ******* April 25, 2001 You say you cleared the path to your door so god would find the way. They say clean your house instead; that's where god's hiding. ******* May 31, 2001 People turn to God when they're scared. So, in the end, when you're about to die, it scares the hell out of you. ******* March 24, 2001 Life, equal opportunity employer. Rich, poor, tall, short, who you hate, who you love, it doesn't matter. Without judgement or discrimination it recruits us all. A mosquito, a Hitler; no mind, just life, true friend to all.. Archetect of homes for the soul, filling all the empty spaces. Personnel director of the creature pool, administrator to the renewal of existence.; you push this pencil along and write your vitae. ******* Present Perfect April 1984 Lilacs push on their buds, completing. Two robins listen to the ground, complete. No line between self and others, completed. ******* Many feast with past masters; some dine with the living. It's the light, not the road. ******* |
Observations
----------------------------- Triage Nov 2, 1998 Three women step into the river; one is blind, one deaf, and one doesn't speak. No, they are not evil. The blind woman steps carefully, feeling the soft sandy bottom between her toes. The deaf woman runs in splashing the others. The one without voice gently surrenders her hands to the river, letting its current take them. The blind woman listens intently for the sound: some days it's bright, and others dark and rumbling. The deaf woman looks into its depths and watches it carry the sun's echoes out to sea. The one who doesn't speak sits, letting it cool her body. The woman who is blind gently washes her arms. The woman who is deaf bends down and peers into the river quietly washing her face. The one who doesn't speak throws back her head and feels the cold stream lift and carry away her long dark hair. Drinking, they cup their hands and carry water to their lips in the same way. The river is the root of all savory things, to the blind woman. Inside she who is deaf, the river is the crash and thunder of many waterfalls. And to the one who will not speak, it's the liguid breath of her world, her ever companion. Each is quenched in this way, and moves to the other shore. ******* Modern Romance Can't you find it in your heart to hate me? Wouldn't you like to crack me open and stuff in all your anger? Raise your voice please and yell at me for the lowdown cuss that I am. If I can't piss you off, how will I know you love me? ******* Valhalla Cafe Sunday Morning 2000's Where's the smell of cheesy eggs this morning? The chef flew out the door at one a.m. This moment requires a silence, a shhhhh..... a shush of the hand, to keep ourselves to ourselves. I smell coffee for one and solace for none. I look for heaven in the wrong church of human zeal. Endlessly I wander into the religion of their minds, while their warmth resides in their hearts, whose entry way I missed in these wee hours. Table for one in a corridor of doors, where slight of hand moves something behind them, but never to the door where I knock. I now realize why Sunday morning devotions were contrived: to distract us from our follies here on planet stupid. I smell the coffee. ******* A candle dark unlit by flame awaits a spark to earn true name. For a candle not till set alive burning off both wick and hive. ******* Question March 8, 1988 Anything everlasting does not exist. Not these words, nor the idea. Our ideas betray us, and our words follow like puppies. I try to say: anything everlasting does not exist. Not our love, nor this world, nor the next; neither evil, nor good, nor time itself. Our imaginations betray us: they give asylum to anything everlasting, to that which does not exist. Behind this veil we manufacture our dreams, blueprints for our world. In this restless sleep we create the everlasting, again and again and again... ******* March 15 1991 There are flowers that die in the summer rain, some fall to October's freeze; these we call annuals. Others live on beneath the ice and snow, through pounding cold and endless Winter nights. And these we call true love. ******* Jonesboro Arkansas April 10, 1998 Why do young boys kill young girls in Arkansas? Sometimes love wonders over to the fuzzy side of the dial; like trying to pull in a station that's too far away.. A broken heart can bring down your antenna like that, where there are voices without words, sounds without meaning. Boys unable to hear the sweet hum of life rebuilding them... Think of the stardust that falls into the corners of your room. Could we be less a part of one another? Love everyone always. ******** Metamorph April 22, 1998 She turned me into a moth tonight. Gladly I flew to her flame, mumbling and bumbling and fumbling, stupid as could be. That fine distrurbing energy is still within me now. The moth never means as much to the fire, as the fire means to the moth. ******* |