Monday Poem

Sacrificial Goat everything unknown snaps to light upon awakening in bed, supine, sun-given day ignites a fire, blankets burn, mind’s the filament of a lamp upon awakening stupidity tumbles down a sheer of chance, small thoughts plunge, they start an avalanche, the ground gives way beneath our feet upon awakening light ricochets from every wall, blind see,…

Monday Poem

Six years ago at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine, I was standing under sculptor, Xu Bing’s, two Phoenixes.  The cathedral is huge and beautiful and so were the artist’s sculptures. Our friend, Bill, who is a warm, personable, and very knowledgeable docent at the cathedral had suggested to my wife and me …

Monday Poem

…..“Time was so huge then. …… It could not fail.” …….. —from a poem by Nils Peterson When Time Was Huge that’s the exquisite difference between then and now— the space in time, the beautiful duration of it, its roominess; its amplitude was great enough to contain many dreams, multitudes —today time is crimped in cramps of years…

Monday Poem

Lolla Rossa in a field behind our house, Lolla Rossa, transfigured in morning light becomes becomes the instant a groundhog just on haunches drops and scuttles under the shed becomes the light that shaped her becomes particles, waves or both which transcendentally show themselves to us here in this room, and there too fifty feet down…

Monday Poem

On Dystopian Ships of State I’m on a big boat (which the nautically savvy call ship) if this ship’s a cocooned load of light atmosphere its steel will float, but it will tip if its load’s unbalanced— if its equilibrium is off it’ll start to list— if not adjusted it’ll end a sacrificial goat, sucked to…

Monday Poem

God gave names to all the animals, in the beginning, in the beginning …………………………—Bob Dylan Cut to the Chaste to be called anything, to be called, Jim, for instance, is to be tagged for life unless you choose otherwise and pull a new name from a hat— a new you, say, Ed— which would amount to a tangle…

Monday Poem

Pattern Language strolling through town with Plato we take the sidewalk one step at a time; shards of its exposed aggregate form archipelagos, and overhead, Jesus in a cloud, or is it Lao Tzu explaining Is without a word clefts in the bark of trees we pass define Appalachian humps. we saw Scranton strewn along a grey gully on the…

Monday Poem

A Question of Necessity Can you tell me a certain thing that is a moral fact? … is a specious question because the fact of the thing exists as something essential to the survival of homo sapiens in creating civilization, though civilization does not always believe in the necessity of its essential thing: the root of what…

Monday Poem

Illinois man arrested for spray-painting swastikas on gravestones  —NY Daily News, 5/31/18 Epidermis ….. skinhead: a thing shrink-wrapped in pink tissue, shorthand for fear ….. epidermis of a skinhead: a nonsensitive layer of skin covering the true skin, or corium; or the outermost living layer of an animal, a layer so thin it flakes like…

Monday Poem

9-Lived Cat where? where are you, ……….. on the willow-hung swing ……….. in a field of golden grass? where, ……….. in the hemlock ……….. straddling the limb at top ……….. hands sticky with sap? are you ……….. sitting on the well-house step ……….. with the lake at your back ……….. remembering a future of ……….. yes! or collapse? are you ……….. on the topmost…

Monday Poem

Flight and Gravity a story, a recollection of 79 summer solstices bundled in one thought of when I was young—a carpenter with muscles, sweating, lugging planks from lumber stacks  to half-framed houses, stud walls proud in sun, precise in ranks   ……………………………………….  a thought that segues into a later solstice down the line, along the way, a…

Monday Poem

“This is conclusive, and if men are capable of any truth, this is it.” ……………………………………………….…— Blaise Pascal, on his wager  Blaise’s Place Blaise’s place is on a sunset strip sliced razor-straight through desert air many cul de sacs veer from its hot black path which is squeezed in a pass between mountains there west where…