Alternate Paradise All poems hint death, though some pretend not to mention it decked as they are in bright intentions to make it moot, but it can’t be helped, it looms over every word no matter how light, no matter how fresh and bright a poem may seem it can’t resist death’s ballast, can’t throw it…

Be Alert Among Words Be alert among words, they’re shifty illusions like 2-d boxes of joined walls on a flat page, straight-forward and innocent as tots but, they can turn inside-out in a blink, spontaneously, now, as you listen. Though once closed cells with steel wills they may transform in instants, shape-shift, morph like a high-speed…

“Researchers have found evidence of an existing body of liquid water on Mars . . .(the) principle of “following the water” is key to astrobiology – the study of potential life beyond Earth.” —BBC News 7/25/18 Astrobiology —a nod to Robert Frost Now science tells of a water lake on Mars seen through algorithmic lenses,…

—the family of simple, monosyllabic words.                    –Adam Zagajewski, Another Beauty Bread House Salt God The tsunami smell of yeast inundated our house the mornings our mother baked bread, up through floorboards it came, up the stairwell it spread stirring our dreamselves alive, fresh loaves, bells for the…

Odder Still As odd as it is that the moon comes up behind the inelegant tree behind our house over the dark mountain —grey white and silver-dollar like, a night eye weeping silver— it’s odder still to think of a moon that never was …………………………….. As odd as spring seems, fresh and crisp as the salad…

I’ve looked at Hair from Both Sides Now I once had hair dark-brown and cumulous Now more like cirrus-wisps, things are getting serious: gone from dark and voluminous it’ll soon be dissapearious As I contemplate my pate I’m thinking life’s mysterious As I contemplate my fate I’m thinking life is spurious Jim Culleny 7/6/18 Enjoying the…

“In every myth something human speaks, it’s characters are interchangeable, what’s essential is the underlying truth regardless of cultural or theological details.”  ……………………………………………. —Roshi Bob Woman at the Well She saw him there, there was no doubt about the knowing look in his eye, she’d come to draw water because her bucket was dry He…

Womb of Being Here I am, in it, curled as you are, as all are who breathe. I found myself here, not by my choice but by that of something other. So, I’m here wondering how you interpret the mystery of it —not its biology, but the phenomenology of it, the cloud of meanings of its textures…

Architecture and Light what would architecture be without light, or light without architecture, man-made or that which has emerged over eons: incredible trellises of trees, their intricate frames of chiaroscuro on light-slanted walks under shifting limbs while leaves flash and flutter through the architecture of the light within skulls: synapse nets of Rorschach blots, their…

Understanding of Unity Among All Living Things We arrive dumb as stumps, wailing as if we already knew the inevitability of outcomes Why did we not laugh instead, foreseeing joy, or simply remain mute in the moment, suggesting sudden premonition—> the instant awareness that life would bring both understanding and awareness, all provoked by the…

Until the Night Drops .. ,,,,,,,—written as a song (link below) ‘ Fog lifting off of the river Frogs in a chorus of croaks Moon lit up —just a sliver A fire that the unknown has stoked ‘ Chuck Berry singing Johnny be Good his guitar lighting fires in our heads greenhorns working out would-could-should fresh ones a…

…. Ménage à trois Isn’t it a miracle that three atoms have combined in electric love to become that fluid substance that bears boats and wrecks ships, that fills bays that breed and protect life, that sustains it, the essential stuff of bodies and minds, the billows of overhead mist that rain and surge through…

Constellations Who will herd the creatures of the constellations across the prairies of the night sky if we disappear like dinosaurs into the mists of archaeology? Who will name them? Who’ll call them Crab and Bear, minor or major? Who’ll domesticate The Lesser Dog, The Little Horse, The Wolf ? Who would think to inscribe imaginary lines between anonymous outposts…

The Cardelaveo Abyss Without you would be the Cardelaveo Abyss which is no place I know or which even exists unless by coincidence because I just made it up to convey the vast emptiness I would know without you Awakening in a 2 a.m. funk what I was doing up was being down, not in…

As the Minute Clicks a new night and cool —unlike June in Jersey when I was green but June anyway anyway it comes it’s June it’s June regardless of you June then June now mid-evening 8:30 by the clock —the night dark almost in the window the sky glows grey behind silhouetted trees slate-skin clouds…

Gong and Pennywhistle You can play a cheap tin pennywhistle or beat on a big gold gong. Down here on earth in the soft grass or stinging thistles nobody stays here for long —nobody stays here for long, those up on high and those way down low breathe the same bitter air, we’ll just have…

Burning Bush At twenty I danced the tops of walls— Nijinsky of the double top plate bent in-two like an onion shoot unbending up through an earthen gate, lifting sticks to be put in place, nailing their tails held against my boot, walking the wires of gravity’s net as a spider commands its filament web…

Lucky Again Yesterday today might never have come but I’m lucky again It did and here you are my bulwark against a lone sea. In the garden you began years ago in our plot of sand where little grew but wild strawberries close to the ground, their tendrils groping dry earth, we now have hibiscus…

Current Tally: I’m out here stacking days as if it were a sport, I’m up to twenty thousand six hundred eight. I sweat memory. I’ve taken off my shirt, I’m feeling great, but as I stack them up time is growing short. I tally what till now I’ve done. Not far from a stack of stones…

Another Piece of Eternity I’m peeling back a page reading a new day by the light of a new sun. Mom died years ago, or was it yesterday? I once read something similar by Camus but was too new to understand that time bleeds, its dyes are not fast but run between years and sometimes…