~painting by Banksy                                     

My Own

Private

Alcatraz

(For Eric Moreland R.I.P.) 

i

My body is an island.

My skin, a stretch of sand.

My hair a tangled grass in wind.

My eyes, in search of land.

 

My nose, a trained cadaver dog.

My mouth, an unlocked door.

My lips conceal their teeth

like bones beneath a floor.

 

My tongue, a saltwater eel.

My throat, a secret tunnel.

My hands can sink or swim

while my fist can form a muscle.

 

My feet, good for standing ground.

My toes, the first to go.

My mind the next to follow

what my heart already knows.

 

ii

My body is a vessel.

My skin is watertight.

My hair, a signal flare.

My eyes, a glass for sight.

 

My nose keeps its own diary.

My mouth conceals what’s valuable.

My lips remember other smiles

since my own has long grown fallible.

 

My teeth are left to untie knots,

my tongue for tasting brine.

My throat’s now sore from crying out.

My hands best make a sign.

           

My fingers are for letting go.

My feet for flapping foam.

My toes for dipping into water

before braving the sea for home.

 

iii

My body is a lifeboat.

My skin, a watertight hull.

My hair a waving seaweed

reflected in the eye of a gull.

 

My nose reads this world

like a book my mouth recites

with lips wrapped round each word

so as to guide me to new heights.

 

My tongue has now a taste

for a solitude I’d never known.

My hands now ease into their prayers

though I know not where they go.

 

My soul was made for dreaming

with the intention of escape.

The fact that I‘m no longer prisoner  

leaves me free to reshape my fate.

 

5/2/23

 

 

                                       

                                        

                                                       ~painting by J.T. Thompson

The Hidden

Predicament

in the Living

of Every Day

 

“We do not see the world

 as it is, we see it as we are”.

                      ~Anais Nin

 

We pass certain thoughts like stones

most of which are hardly our own,

but instead, some coagulation of

narrative bits curated closer to home.

 

Our thoughts think themselves

with such a narrow sense of purpose,

they’re writ larger than life as they arrive

solely to help their thinker thrive.

 

We counteract mistaking the world

for ourselves by continuously doubting

our conclusions because uncertainty

of anything is to admit our infallibility.

 

In the mind’s effort to parse

the world, it inadvertently severs itself

from the full spectrum of beauty

which by contrast includes all strife,

tensing us from the tenderness of life.

 

Imagine reducing the unitary wholeness

of the vast universe by selecting one

tiny segment of it and calling it “I”

and narrating life in the role of “my”,

 

A delusional gulf gets created

between things as we think they are

and things as they actually are.

I doubt such a view can take us far.

 

Still, off we go mistaking the real world

we’ve made with our own thoughts

for the real world minus personal faults;

some shadows are born to cast a pall,

and the God’s truth is: that’s not all.

 

Evil and dysfunction or obnoxiousness

occur in proportion to how solidly

a person observes that his projections are

correct and aggressively acts toward that effect.

 

And so it goes: I think, therefore

I’m wrong. My wrongness falls on

someone else’s wrong thinking

leaving us both thinking wrongly

and because so few of us can bear

to think without taking action there

and doing only makes things worse,

I offer the following consoling verse:

 

Best to resist our version of others

as insightful as they might be

because we’ve an invisible axe to grind

and are too for or against to see

or not be biased or unentrenched.

 

Our solution is to deny ourselves

the comfort of always being the same;

one who arrived at an answer

some time ago but takes no blame

or has reason or chance to doubt it

because the world is full of sleepers

who eat, walk, and witness life

without a corresponding conscience.

 

 

04/24/23

 

     Cryptic      

(A Tryptic)

 

i

The body remembers

what happened.

A perfect burial ground.

The mind,

not so much,

busy as it is

with self-administering.

The heart grieves

the loss of each moment

only to keep

them suspended 

inside a jar

like so many

pickled eggs.

 

What do you suppose

weighs more?

A moment in 1975

in September

on a Wednesday

afternoon at 4:17

and 11 seconds,

or the one now whizzing

past like a telegraph pole

outside a speeding train?

 

A moment buried

safely in the earth

is a moment

that is sure to grow.

Expect

a new shoot

any day,

followed by a blossom

foreordained to flower.

 

Welcome to the garden

of buried delights,

each seed a holy relic,

a holographic snippet

containing the whole

of a life in

a negative image

of a positive moment

in time. Or vice versa,

as both will have

aged to perfection.

 

Just as a life well-lived

transpires from

grape to raisin to wine,

there’s a glory in the cellar

waiting to be imbibed.

By watering

what’s in stone

with our tears

we bring

back to life

hours made

of minutes 

and stand them upright

like turgid statues

to perform the play

of those we loved.

 

ii

 

Yes, a sanctuary

lies beneath us.

Or I should say: within.

Our bones form the cross

we see through stained-glass eyes.

Below that, a crypt

full of unused altars,

while no worshiping

they abide,

only prayers unfurled

from folded hands

anxious as a dream.

But don’t forget:

remembering is a discipline

and memory itself

a cathedral in miniature

recalled via one's

mental masonry.

 

iii

 

Where else will you find

a steeple underground?

A belfry beneath

where gather all

one cherishes and holds dear.

So, unsheathe the crowds

of cloaked

stone statues

inside this darkened room.

Tucked in a corner

sits an alabaster urn

ringed with celebratory dancers,

and inside that urn

the radiant smile

of imperfect youth. 

04/4/23

 

Poetry as the Soul’s Self-Diagnosis

“We write to taste life twice,

 in the moment and in retrospect.”

                                 ~Anais Nin

Rumi once wrote:

Sell your cleverness

and buy bewilderment.

I think I know why.

 

Yesterday on the television

a tornado

destroyed everything

in its path

as it meandered

willy-nilly

through Rolling Fork,

Mississippi.

Did you see

how objects

held out

no safety?

 

Inside the hospital

I, too,

am an object

ill at ease

in my body,

illogical in

my dreams.

My mind, its own

round the clock

news on channel 5.

 

Had it been possible

to be this strong

if my heart

had not been broken

in innumerable places;

a smashed clock

thrown against the wall

of youth,

or am I meant

to decipher

the timeless

with my own 

two hands?

 

This nose bleed

would like to

return me

to the sea.

Why keep

my blood

to myself

in so red

a world?

If everything flows

downward

toward

what's left

behind,

then why

all this

clamoring

uphill?

 

When my body

betrays me,

and it will,

I intend to

be my own

medicine.

Either way,

I am best

in small doses,

diluted

by intervals

of silence.

 

Meanwhile,

to the doctors

who misspend

days on end

trying to reconcile

the mystery of

my soul’s reveries,

I leave

this poem

at the edge

of a ruin.

 

03/28/23

 

 

                                                      Painting by Salvadore Dali

Confessions in the Sand

 

Marooned on the island of this moment

I sift through the debris of what came before,

artifacts buffed smooth by a million waves.

 

Here, poems brew like storm clouds on the horizon

despite beginning life in an empty sky, they are

determined to use this beach for their SOS.

 

This shore won’t keep my letters alive for long.

I know because I’ve seen things come and go,

so many true tries and false starts

blown open like pages of a diary in the sand.

 

It is an art making use

of the detritus of the departed.

I fashion a wire coat hanger

into a makeshift antenna

and try to contact the living.

Come in, Mother.

Do you read me?

 

Racked with a survivor’s irony,

I’m reluctant to covet a sole souvenir,

doubting as I do

that anything ever

belonged to me.

 

Island life is not without its pleasures

though joy is a rare sighting,

I cling to my grief because of its buoyancy;

the only logical response

to all I’ve left behind.

 

Dreams are now my source of travel.

Every dream is a foreign country, and

it’s true, they do things differently there.

 

I've learned to speak a language

made of rubble, shards of sea glass

and desire strewn like broken bric-a-brac

longing to be reborn

and take up life anew.

 

This moment’s island culture

is a microcosm

where prayer is still

preferable to sleep.

 

Will I ever get out of here?

Where else is there to go?

I will have to work to wake.

 

And so, I’m doing my pushups

on the beach until it hurts.

This is how I’m making

myself stronger.

 

I say a man’s sorrow

can move mountains

because the heart

is a muscle

that needs to ache

or better yet break

before it's made able.

 

03/03/23

 

 

 

A Psalm

for the

Discontented

 

"Let this darkness be a bell

 tower and you the bell. As

 you ring, what batters you becomes

 your strength."

                          ~Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Here lieth

the language

of the unsaid,

where trees

grow green

remedies

and medicines

from fruits

are bred.

 

The fact that

repetition always

forms a rut,

it’s best

to cleanse

your lens

of ways

as aches

and pains

that come

with age

can and do

build up.

 

The days

of the week

might have been

fashioned by men

in pitch black robes,

but to keep repeating

these ghostly

demarcations

is like being tethered

to a rope.

 

If weeds 

be heartier

than the flowers,

perhaps the garden

not be pruned.

Being caretakers

of our own environs

can be like being

put in charge of

an amaranthine

ruin.

Thank goodness

what's no longer useful

eventually falls away.

Just be careful

you don't burn bridges

as the moat

seems here to stay.

If you can

learn to tell

the time without

glancing at a clock,

then don't you feel

it may be time

to find freedom

from the flock.

 

Nothing outside us

can satisfy

if the self

can’t step aside.

Discontent is an angel

whose breath blows

far and wide.

Let this prayer

blow through you

like a reed

not letting

one judgment

go unchecked.

Though everyone

is doing

their best

despite being

a veritable wreck.

 

From here on out

take notice of sleep

when shopping

at the market

or walking

the street,

or even when

coming back.

Your dreams

have a verdant vitality;

a primal life

that can break through

the cracks.

 

If the ego

should go sour

inside the owner’s

mouth,

don't blame it.

It’s only the mind

that conquers

and divides 

by cleaving

North from South.

 

To know

what someone’s

going to say

before they

even say it

is consciousness

turned on its head.

This prayer

is for them,

so why

not pray it

just before

going to bed.

 

Some say that God

after lending us his

very breath

ends by deigning

to take the fifth.

Rescinding on

his agency

as if it’d

been a myth,

so that from

here on out

we walk

and breathe

as if apart and

on our own,

as wellbeing is

a participatory sport

and never ours alone.

2/20/23

 

Attack of

the Colossal

50 Foot

Feelings

 

“Feelings, nothing more than feelings.”

                                   ~Morris Albert

 

Holed up in a darkened bedroom,

I’m forced to eat flowers to survive.

 

The feelings (or creatures) are known

for taking infinite forms.

 

Last night I wrapped my heart

in an ace bandage to stifle its beating.

 

Now, here, in this moment

within an hour of a day,

all that’s left and all

that ever was are the feelings.

I know I must preserve them

despite their attempt to devour me.

If they die, I shall too.

Aye, there's the rub.

 

My friends have all succumbed.

Whether from trying not to feel,

being unable to feel,

or feeling too much,

I can only pray they win the battle.

I fear that most are hiding the truth:

that the feelings have taken over

their bodies and are controlling

their thoughts. This is how they

swarm in mass and procreate.

Sparking off each other like

firecrackers setting off fireworks.

They live by knee-jerk reactions

and their desire to live more fully.

 

Our dilemma is complicated

because the feelings

which live on emotional triggers

are engendered by our own sensitivities.

We are their gun powder.

 

Joy will cost you.

Pain, on the other hand,

is free, but highly contagious.

Grief is quite sticky.

Fear tends to flood.

Jealousy is a fire.

Hurt leaves a wound.

Love, well love

leads to rehabilitation

by making the ego helpless,

therefore, vulnerable to disease.

More than once

have I relearned to walk,

speak, and even weep.

 

Hate is a quake.

Sadness, a collapsing.

Anger an explosive.

Disappointment, a detonation.

Horror is a contraction.

Disgust, a spitting out.

Awe expands the mine field.

Longing baits the hook.

Loneliness cannot see

any beauty in itself.

Frustration is a hunger.

Confusion circles the wagons.

Admiration, opens a wound.

 

Last night I wore a pain patch over my heart

because the feelings are coming.

God help you.

 

2/13/23