More poems

Most Literate Letters

This beautiful day you've become your muscles--
Galloping across dandelions--then
Hard--harder--thighs grip your pelt's rip--till soul rolls
Right to the horizon--withers when

One looks again; and if I could I'd see
Sun glaze your withers goldsoft--but it's hard
To look at that dazzle for fear dear me
Will rip right off to a visage cartoon has starred;

I guess it's exactness has me wither
At what hardly ceases to astonish;
I take too much; I admire the giver
Who may flood--silt--soil--but not admonish;

Although it's true a withering address
May fix--the hard part's forever a mess.

Note:

1--The poem above is my first attempt at writing a Shakesperean sonnet which fits Helen Vendler's criterion, in which there must be at-least one word repeated in each stanza, and that then too is in the couplet as a "couplet tie"


Pretty Bell

The
Theologian
Rang
A bell

Made of copper
With some
Straw stuck;

Honey-colored source
Of sound
Insinuates
Cerement

Cements someone to
Their Vision
Is necessarily flighty.


Pieces

1

In the gleam of an ivory eyelet
My power animal, my giraffe,
Smelled an overwhelming
Odor of violet.

2

The author of
The serious
Drama wondered
Why didn't
Anybody laugh
As if there are
No funny parts!

3

Her newly completed sleeve
Consisting
All of hearts
Or the word for heart
In 12 or so languages
Makes her happy
So she buys
A carton of oranges at
A corner
Then 3 streets later
Realizes the fruit
Weighs a ton given
How many
More streets there are to go.


Shimmer

Human insides
Never rest;
Marrow
Always making cells
And so forth;

When it comes
Down to it
Nothing ever rests:
Electrons
Shimmer if only our

Touch weren't so far
Away--awash--
Wide open--spice-
Petal starred portal;

Beauty is mortal:
Even mountains die;
Some day seasons
As known now will
Stop working;

Will swallows still wing
Their bodies to
San Juan Capistrano?
Will humans grow wings?
No we'll be breathless;

Perhaps deathless
Will become a
Human possibility;
Death is
Necessary;

I'd be very
Pleased to meet
An orca;
I'd say 'hey Uncle Sam'
After Elizabeth
Bishop's toucan!

Getting a tan
Sipping a colada
I'd be sublime;
The palm fronds
Clack like pelicans' beaks;

A freshening of rain falls--speaks
Rainbow like the salsa
Brightening my nibbles;
Being a president
Seems like it'd be embarrassing.



Currently Untitled

At the center of a whirling--the electrons--there is a godess;
Grain-colored locks wave about like foliage; her plaits
Are almost the shape of banana leaves; eye shadow the hue of
Newly sprouted grain lines brows plucked like a lute by
The hands of an expert player; the key to life
Is learning how to play the piano and desegregating;
I cannot touch the goddess--only pray--try to partake in the whirling.