Poetry

Occasionally I will post a poem or some other piece of writing on my blog under the title “Adventures in …”  Why?  Because I like sharing and sometimes I write things that I don’t feel like publishing, for one reason or another.  And if I’m not going to publish it through traditional channels, I might as well share it. The following poem is certainly not one of my best.  I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote it.  But it is the first poem I’ve written with the note feature of my Zune HD.  That’s pretty cool, no? Anywho.  Feel free to let me know what you think. Here’s the poem: “Snow Globe” The dream slips into nothingness, the chasm a story that never ends and whips the world into a warped waking of minds. Who are we in the dream but the tender wisps of someone’s eldest aspirations? Who do we become in another’s dreams but the hope transposed over the globe of the soul. When we grow into our own snow globes we turn the dream upon itself to become the careful display of nostalgic longing. Until one day the new child forms from the chiasmic center of a hurricane ocean of imaginations. Until we become ourselves the makers of globes.

Yes, I have become an emo poet.  Whatever.  Personal bullshit compels me to write things that reflect the confusion crap going on in my head, even if said poems don’t make sense. Do with this what you will… Here goes: “Not a Poem” Quiet chambers dead in night blank, empty of voices: Dead! Dead inside. A rustling — rodent, scourge of the earth. Black pierced by sword eyes. Piercing. Piercing souls, life itself. Empty.  Numb. Numb like the corpses, the mother who loses everyone to a war. Empty. Death streaking on the walls of hearts. The pieces broken, the puzzle collapsed by moisture. Quiet chambers where day and night are suspended by nothing.

I don’t feel like prefacing this with a grand explanation.  I’m having a shit day. So here’s a poem I wrote for NaPo.  That is all: “Chickadee” A chickadee fee-bees into the monstrous sea-green sleeves reaching up for the sun: a photosynthesis love song. But no voices hear him, for the grasslands are barren. His voice cries out regardless — fee-bee fee-bee tsit tsit — hoping that the low-flying wind slapping the ingers together will carry his voice to verdant lands — tseedleedeet chicka-dee-dee-dee — where new feathers perform their own journeys. To no avail — they dream for something else than what their lands can provide. That hope sustains his voice like a honey drizzle on the vocal chords — fee-bee fee-bee. But there are no verdan fields and no lonely ones peering out                        for him. He whistles his song until he can no more, until his throad cracks blood, his chest burning, ashen, no longer supporting the moss-tinged air. Who will hear his voice when he no longer sends it out on winds twirling with life? Or does he sing anything at all if there is nobody around               to hear him, like the fable of the tree. The chickadee lies down in the grass, unable, unwilling to speak, silenced by ghosts of unfulfilled promises.

Today’s NaPo poem was not actually inspired by the picture in this post.  Rather, it was inspired by some random thoughts I have about cats, which includes thinking of them as slave masters.  The poem isn’t explicitly humorous, though. In any case, here’s the poem (feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts or a link to your own NaPo entry): Bow before your master… “Temples” I dream the sun swept me away on a cruel wind tide with twisted fingers of porous stone creaking and graceful sunbolt hands lifting me to a heaven                                   yet written in the histories. Not Death’s vision, but the serene whisper                                   of a higher plane. The cats known the place by its temples, where they collude to one day return with men clipped at their feet —                                   No, paws.  Claws.                                   Whichever. Terrible the feeling of loss, but the cats are emperors in their minds and they have no dreams but those they bring back (in black)                                   to the old Empire. Rule, Britannia.  Britannia rules the waves… Perhaps it should be Catannia rules the graves. Or perhaps it’s a pernicious psychosis which explains my distrust of cats. (Or, they are truly up to no good,  clambering on clawed limbs in nostalgic obsession). How alike, the cats and empire, ever so sure of themselves, sure of me                                   sure of the winter bones                                   left behind by their soon-armies. My mother says I have an over-reactive imagination (or is it hyperactive, like a feline enemy), but to read between the lines of my dreams                                   tells me “Doom.” The tricksters have finally come to play…

Hooray for poems about birds!  Nature rocks. Today’s poem was inspired by the following: Brownie points for anyone who can figure out what kind of bird that is… Here’s the poem: “Feather Skies” The warbling Northern Mockingbird chirps a stranger’s tune, acid words spilling from his beak: “HUMAN…Human…human…safe!” Others announce my arrival in turn, turning their beaks to the side so their blackberry eyes can see the world beneath their wings. “human…Human…HUMAN!” I watch them, curious at their undying attention, like the reverse end of a lover’s coin. “Human…human…safe!” Who am I to these air sirens? Who do I become in their eyes? “Move away…Move away…Move away now…” There, the mother hen clucking her little orders; There, the little whisper of the Earth mother serenading the world with wild harmonies. “human…Human…HUMAN!” I look in their beads of ethereal visions and see myself reflected as if by an ocean. “Human…human…safe!” And in that moment, I see myself, the bird man waiting to fly on skies of upturned buckets, toes wriggling in the fog where feathers play.

No need to explain the inspiration for this one.  It’s self-evident. I know what you might be saying.  “Another love poem?  When did you become such a sop?”  One might answer “when he got a girlfriend,” but that wouldn’t really account for it.  I’m simply a hopeless romantic at heart, and so I write these little poems, bad as some of them are, as expressions of that silly habit. Do with that information what you will.  (Yes, I am four poems behind now.  So sue me…) Here goes: “Great Fictions for a Maiden” For you I give my lion’s roar until the mountains quiver in their foundations and beg for mercy. Only you can give it to them with your milk honey touch. For you I raze cities and continents so that they might know what it is to be willing to sacrifice worlds for another. For you I pluck the moon and the stars from the sky with sad little fingers until skin burns to ashes and the atoms split. For you I tell great fictions, for there is no other way to express the inexpressible except to indulge in fibs and drudge up centuries of falsehoods trapped in men’s hearts. For you there is no end to that journey, to the day-by-day expressions which threaten to terrify mountains and destroy continents and split atoms. For you I give these little things as proof for a theory with no answers.