Causes and Colors

February 2008

Sort of a psychological drama. You never notice just how complicated things are until you try to explain them to someone else. Also some free association.

One subtle knock
And a set of nesting dolls
Unfolds into an armored column
Ready to defend a phantom.

What do you get when you shatter
A crystal statue? A field of knives.
Which one is the murder weapon?
Which is the keystone?

Castles: really just an elaborate way
Of saying “Fuck off!” unless
Cannons: a simple way to deflate
Elaborate gestures.

A persona that becomes a way of dressing
As oneself, as armored, as capable
Of feints, ruses, Hannibal’s gambit:
Man as a maneuver, Man
As a column of elephants.

Man as alpine, snowy, ready to cascade
Without meaning into his neighbors;
Humanity as strung together
By insignificant wires.

The mind as cat’s cradle,
In non-euclidean space, dimensions
Crossing each other blindly
In the synapses.

The smallest nesting doll
Is by necessity more vast
Than countless galaxies.
By necessity,

There are ghosts inside everything,
With their own causes and colors,
Yellow and black.
Best not to stir up the hornet’s nest.

Cascade / Stepping Stones

Spring 2007

Basically a poem about logical progressions. Er, semi-logical. To me.

There is a gasping of the eyes.
There are eyes that forget.
There are mysteries buried in handshakes.

What is a handshake? A test of faith,
A term of entry, a castle wall, a moat –
What is a moat? A lie about a river.

We build as many rivers as walls.
We also build walls around our rivers.
What does this say about skipping stones?
What does this say about burial at sea?

Memories

June 2006

Sometimes they come out of nowhere. This one wasn’t really about anything until I had to come up with the third verse. The first two just sort of popped into my head while I was trying to focus on my CompSci project. Ah, procrastination by inspiration.

---

Bind it up in turquoise angles
Leave it on the mantel shelf
Call it fate or call it vision
Call it love or blind ambition
But it’s killing you and you don’t know why

Why try to make emptiness an altar?
Make a shadow on the ceiling into something more revealing
When you could just be living all along

But you roll it up in wrapping paper
Throw it in the wishing well
Call it fame or call it fortune
Call it hope or call it torture
But you have to feel a little to get by

Why try to make emptiness an altar?
Make it into something softer, when it’s awkward just as often
And you could just be getting it all wrong

If it’s wrong, you still believe it
If it’s right, you may not need it
If it’s easy, well you don’t know why
If it’s hard, well still it’s worth a try

So you dress it up in Technicolor
Seal in a picture frame
Call it sad or sentimental
Call it strictly ornamental
But it’s killing you and keeping you alive
And you don’t know why

Misbelieving

June 2005

A statement of sorts. With a structure that is either complex or just sort of unstable, I can’t tell. This is one that’s had bits and pieces done for over a year, so it’s something of a composite of feelings. Also, it proves that I really just like playing with words.

I hold that the universe is
Inextricably inexplicable
To itself.

And our hold on the universe
Is amenably untenable
And not so firm
As it seems.

But we are not lost until we let it go
We are not blind until we see it so

And the universe holds with
Benevolent ambivalence
Something apart from us
And is stranger
Than it seems.

But there is no hope unless we cry
There is no faith unless we try
You wonder how and I’ll wonder why
But we cannot fall until we fly

And the universe keeps throwing
Unexpected undetected
Unbeliever’s miracles
At us.

There Is

January 2005

Another philosophical meditation.

An unfortunate suddenness
To the nature of things
As they are

An impractical dizziness
To the way of things
As they might be

A most difficult evasiveness
In the nature of things
As we’d like them

And a firm and inscrutable providence
In the way of things
As they turn out.

Out of the Clear Blue Sky

April 2005

Another philosophical meditation with natural imagery. I could do with better luck on option #2, really.

Sometimes life comes like a summer storm,
When subtle warnings on the winds are borne,
When the grey clouds gather in a mighty train
Calamitous, reckless, foretelling rain
And the prophet thunder before them goes
As we stand in fields as the warm breeze blows
Awaiting, with hearts bare, the wild flight
The blessed rain
And magnificent light
Of the storm approaching.

But sometimes also life comes sly,
With the barest hint or suggestion why,
It comes falling out of the clear blue sky.

Endings

Early 2004

With wild eyes to watch the winding seas
Go down into the bright darkness
As the stars collapse, exploding red hot fury
Into quiet mist as eternity stops
And infinity wheels into a pinhead, churning,
I should not be worthy.

With troubled ears to hear the sky breaking,
Screaming as the tumbling world is spent
In the cold void as the sun dissolves
Into the shadows of the galaxy shivering
Dark as infinity stretches to nothing
I should dread utterly.

With quiet mind to be the fading sunlight
Of myself upon myself and untold mastery
Drawing out all things once from the driving,
Furious, fragile flesh that knew the earth
And wind as I sink into potent oblivion
I should be content.

Poet's Prayer

2004

For a short poem, this took quite a while to get together. As close as I get to a summary of my philosophy on life.

Today I am boundless,
Infinite,
Nothingness,
Creature of spirit and fire.

Sing Hope,
Irrational, wide-eyed,
Unknowable,
Least-fortunate angel to guide the way.

Sing love,
All-redeeming
Breath of the universe
Angel, protector, uniter of souls.

Hope, be my avatar.
Love, be my advocate.