A Short Poem
It Fades
She did love me once,
if only for a night—
it fades and it fades
by the hour and by the day—
what was once so real
is distant memory.
Year 2018 365 Photo Journey (April 11th thru April 30th) – Downtown Indy, Downtown Chicago, Windmills
Here are some pics of downtown Indy, some windmills on the way to Chicago, and Chicago itself. Enjoy!
April 11: Building
April 12: Lincoln Park
April 13: Water Tower / Hancock Building
April 14: Downtown Chicago
April 15: Windmills At Sunset
April 16: Windmills At Sunset
April 17: Windmills At Sunset
April 18: Windmills At Sunset
April 19: Flowering Tree and Monument
April 20: Victory Field
April 21: Flowering Tree and Apartment Building
April 22: Walker Theater
April 23: Flowering Tree
April 24: Inside the Library
April 25: Inside the Library
April 26: Inside the Library
April 27: Inside the Library
April 28: Windmills
April 29: Indy
April 30: Indy
365 Photo Journey
Apparently, this is a thing. Consider it a challenge, a journal, or a journey (I prefer journey). Take a picture a day and post it to your blog. Here are some reasons why you should try it, too.
First Draft Words While Reading Eugenio Montale
Your Words
I once thought
to bind you with my words,
but now to your words
I wish only to be bound—
and to the devil if they fall
on faces bittered by them
and ears deaf to your song.
An excerpt From Mottetti (Poems of Love) by Eugenio Montale
You know this: I must lose you again and cannot.
Every action, every cry strikes me
like a well-aimed shot, even the salt spray
that spills over the harbor walls
and makes spring
dark against the gates of Genoa.
Copied from the the book Mottetti Poems of Love which you can buy here:
First Draft Words While Reading Octavio Paz
Finally Awake
When I finally woke to life
also I woke to death—
for both are incarnate.
There would be no love without death—
No life without love.
The Poor
The poor walk with bruised, disjointed egos.
If only they knew we are all helpless paupers.
Assertions
She said:
“I don’t understand poetry.”
I said:
“I don’t understand prose.”
Neither assertion is wholly
false nor true.
Forest
A trap and its animal.
The beguiling hunter.
The forest and her trees.
The wounded and the free.
An excerpt From The Balcony (from East Slope) by Octavio Paz:
What you have lived you will unlive today
you are not there
but here
I am here
at my beginning
I don’t deny myself
I sustain myself
Leaning over the balcony
I see
huge clouds and a piece of the moon
all that is visible here
people houses
the real present
conquered by the hour
and all that is invisible
here
my horizon
If this beginning is the beginning
it does not begin with me
I begin with it
I perpetuate myself in it
Copied from the the book A Tale of Two Gardens, which you can buy here:
Adrift
A Short Poem
Adrift
He finally sees the morrow—
when all that’s left is blindness—
when all hope’s lost for land or shore—
only squalls or deadly tempest,
or maelstrom’s eye and heady vertigo—
or lapping waters placid
on timbers rotting—
the marrow of
his only home—
a sinking raft
now adrift—
for long the ocean’s child.
Year 2018 365 Photo Journey (April 2nd thru April 10th) – Random IMA
Here are some pics from the IMA. Enjoy!
April 2: Daffodils
April 3: Statuary
April 4: Arbor
April 5: Lightbulbs
April 6: Inside the Greenhouse
April 7: Inside the Greenhouse
April 8: Hanging Plants
April 9: Tiny Oranges
April 10: In the Garden
365 Photo Journey
Apparently, this is a thing. Consider it a challenge, a journal, or a journey (I prefer journey). Take a picture a day and post it to your blog. Here are some reasons why you should try it, too.
Shameless Gestures
A Short Poem
Shameless Gestures
You come
only when I call with this solitary voice–
you listen–
only when these bare-toothed baubles,
brimming with promise
both primitive and grotesque,
are with shameless gestures swept away,
and to pieces fall and break.
Between Two Seas
A Short Poem
Between Two Seas
Look upon the young faces,
and see a springtide that lasts forever.
Look upon the old faces,
and see the dead on graves’ precipice.
In the strait between,
one must strive to be,
not by straining,
but as a steadfast farmer gathers strawberries.
The work is not strenuous,
although the sun may be, at times, too hot,
and one’s basket too full
or empty.
Do You Hear Them?
A Short Poem
Uncommon Heart
I first saw my heart hanging in the sky
and cried, “Share your secrets, Uncommon Heart.”
I was born that day
yet those words are still written,
penned in shadows on the dark hillside,
and still they are sung
by angels on the other side of the bright, blue sky.
What are you now, Old Soul?
A gutted fish?
What cruel fisherman wrenched
the bowels of your years
out of you?
There’s no Truth in Death—
Despite the bitter authority of its decree.
Your heart remains,
molting its human, sublunar shell—
Sun-bound, hung from the clouds—
for love’s sake its secrets tell
of a glad and glorious coming home.
Was It Last Night or a Life Ago?
A Poem
Was It Last Night or a Life Ago?
Was it last night or a life ago?
When I was an old, frightened Pharaoh
turning in hapless circles like a wounded ape—
my eroded kingdom—eternal!
from my torn veins—of gold!—flowed like the Nile
into the open sea—
the crimson void from which every wide-eyed, terror-stricken question
is answered only by an abysmal, mocking echo of itself.
Unartful deception.
What fool into folly’s pit falls for loss of reason?
Were it not for you, Sun Seed—
and your hot breath on my libidinous ears
I would’ve long ago ceased to be.
I flail against the tide of vile crimes—
mine own and those of my tribe
that you, Sun Seed, so lovingly bequeathed me.
Dare I scorn your dispensation?
For I do so love life … love both you and life,
lamentably. Were they not one and the same.
But that was last night or a life ago.
And now on this, the other side,
both you and life seem not so far apart.
On this, the other side,
unfolds a water lily—
a womb from which a scarab born
skitters, half-circles—it rolls its ball of dung—
You! The bright, burning Sun!
Drying up all the pain in my bones—
to which birds worship in unbridled song—
to which even the doddering trees with limbs uplifted glorify
from which a weeping, young boy is born—
each of his tears a man or woman made.
It was last night. It was a life ago.
Fallow night I dread you so.
But now I stand trembling
under the infant sky—
and you, Sun Seed, flower at her naval—
and still I breath
heaving within this mortal womb.