Sep 5, 2015 | Free Verse, Poetry |
Strange anything at all exists. What is, is! Profound tautology, but I can’t find a curtain to pull to let me see behind “is” Wittgenstein snorts like an impatient horse, “Haven’t you ever heard of getting snared in a language game?” This is the form fashionable in the West of what in Indo-Persian lore once was called a “tilism” * a magical landscape that can pass for real and hold you for a very long time, even your whole life. A substantial part of the beam of my attention, is always held in wonder that a pen can be, that I am, that a green shirt can be, that light and robins can be… I’m dazed by what other people take for granted. I’m a child or a fool or both mixed up together. The wonder of water and palm trees and the blue of sky And dark and stars and the ever unrolling scroll of dreams. I admit it: I’ve been lost all my life and this is where I’ve lived and this is who I’ve been An undeclared mystic *See the “Adventures of Amir...
Aug 22, 2015 | Free Verse, Poetry |
too much to read, much too much to read I watch the leaves falling from the trees like words from the pages of books the sun has written I, too, am a book that the sun has written winter will be soon and white and cold I’ve lost track of what I once may have known I’m like that oak becoming naked I’ve lost track of most of my questions they’ve fallen from me like leaves from a tree I keep on reading my way beyond me I am the bare bones of who I once...
Aug 20, 2015 | Free Verse, Poetry |
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza enantiomers of a single compound the right handed version and the left handed version the same in chemical composition but breaking light differently Myself, I’m a racemic mixture, Don and Sancho,...
Aug 14, 2015 | Free Verse, Poetry |
Words For Waves If I were to compose words for waves, I’d wander the shore, mile after mile, month after month year after year as I changed ages, letting the sun set on me and the moon rise on me sometimes a scimitar, sometimes a golden eye, and the stars stick their fierce pins into the sky, letting the sun rise pink again on my pink flesh I’d wander the shore and let my feet be familiar of the wear of sand and of rock, listening, listening, listening, for I’m certain that the waves have a language all their own, a way of speaking and making themselves understood and I have always aspired to be their translator. the importer of their ancient virgin truth I’d leave the clouds to others, even though cloud and waves are intimately connected as both are water I’d leave the land, too, its vast barrens, and strange hewn grotesque overweening ranges of mountains all to others I’d keep my feet walking, listening, listening, listening for the hint of a word in the thunder rumble of huge breakers minted on the open ocean Or perhaps it would be the fan of surf spray that betrayed a clue in a random moment, a first word confident of what came after though yet without form the waves are connected to the deep, to the hidden skin of the earth that was once surface, perhaps, then dove deep into a soothing darkness, an immense quiet, a place to wait and keep on waiting for whatever might come next But suppose, after all...
Nov 5, 2012 | Free Verse, Poetry |
In my appointment book, in my own handwriting,the obligatory medical illegible scrawl, a notation,for 1:30 PM October 10, 2011, Columbus Day, onlyI can not read it. I discern something like M__id___,but can not attach a name to this awkward rune At 1:30 PM October 10, 2011, Columbus Day, I waiteagerly for help in deciphering my own scrawlto arrive in the form of a particular patient, solutionin the flesh to the mystery I have made for myself,but no one, no one at all comes and mystery deepens It is an unknown no one who comes, who fails mein unraveling the knot I have tied for myself, the “not”with which I have filled this particular time slot.In more than a quarter century of practice I’ve notdone the like, never invented such a loose...
May 28, 2012 | Free Verse, Poetry |
When I was six, open air book stalls along the banksof the gray green Seine, sold old maps, exotic, all fake,that fascinated me for whom they were the genuinedoorways to an imaginary geography, the presenceof other places much more interesting than here My father tolerated the spell I was under with mixedindulgence and disdain, he let me look and lookand look and ask questions – “What language is this?”“Do ships still sail here?” Does this island still exist?“Why not?” he would ask, puffing out white smoke Despite many trips, despite my yearning for thesetalismans of voyages, despite hours spent looking,spent comparing, spent investigating, we neverbought one of these maps, which made them evermore precious, lodged as they were deep in my mind Not only much older now than I was then, but mucholder now than my father was then, I hold it allas something ordinary, imperfect, yet magical,the way we were together then along the banksof the gray green Seine, as I imagined...
