drawing by Medi Belortaja

My Cat, the Existentialist

Imagine always having to wait 

for someone to feed you;

having to rely on the kindness 

of otherworldly familiars

who often appear remote, 

if hopelessly preoccupied.

Wouldn’t you sharpen your senses

into one long prayer?

Imagine if your God lived 

right down beside you

but kept departing the premises 

for God knows where.

Imagine realizing that to be loved

was all that could assure your survival

and to love kept you 

in treats and fresh water;

wouldn’t you use your tongue

to make yourself more beautiful?    

Imagine a God so unpredictable 

or unmanageable that you

are forced to cry out

for everything you want.

And finally, if set free

could you watch over yourself, 

when like you, your God

is always in danger 

of putting himself first?

2/1/22

 

When Not to Think

Never think in the woods.

And for God’s sake stop thinking in traffic while driving.

It’s actually not good to think while chewing food.

Never think while climbing a tree.

Do not think when petting a cat. They prefer you don’t.

Never think at night when you go to bed.

Do not think while smelling a flower.

Do not think with a toad in your hand.

Never think when staring at a sunset.

It’s best to do away with thoughts when washing your hair and bathing.

Try taking off your thoughts as you take off your clothes.

Never think about eating when you’re cleaning a commode.

Don’t think thoughts in a high wind.

Don’t think while doing chores, like washing dishes or watering plants.

Definitely do not think if you’re being tortured. 

Case in point: don’t think about your life in the dentist chair under anesthesia. 

Don’t let thoughts wander while painting a picture. 

Drawing a picture is something else entirely.

Don’t think when having a photo taken, as it reduces frowns.

Resist thoughts when preparing a meal, especially breakfast for two.

Never ever think while kissing.

Don’t think when operating heavy machinery unless its to do with operating procedure.

Do not think while napping.

Resist random thoughts while pumping iron.

Never think while having sex.

Don’t think about other things when you sing. 

In other words, you are the world

and to enter fully into that world,

its best to lose yourself.

1/28/22

 

When the Hours 

Fall Silent

The hours flow through hands 

afraid to be swallowed.

The hours sift through fingers 

meant only for ground.

The hours flee  

for fear of being noticed.

The hours flow

like recalicitrant holy water.

The hours slip by

in ungovernable love.

The hours weep 

from the wound of ourselves.

The hours tumble 

both unsayable and said.

The hours fall away

in unfettered joy.

The hours topple down

in their hurry to depart.

The hours pour out

to avoid our embrace.

The hours weep 

the clear blood of starlight.

The hours spill our

memories turned into dust.

The hours flow 

like weather wrung from hands.

The hours drain 

our tears through a sieve.

The hours fall

silent in order to be heard.  

1/24/22

 

Words to Love By

When we expect nothing

we can be more easily ourselves,

alone or with others.

Adept at containing our thoughts

as the breadth between book covers!

If the condition we’re in

is the result of our successes,

or failings and strivings,

aren’t we equally the result

of all our contrivings?

After all, our lives are 

their own consolations

if all we've to offer

is what the alchemists

call permutations!

Don’t you think its time

joy acknowledged it’s debt to pain,

as suffering encourages joy 

to know itself

before it can attain.

The dark makes light palpable

like paint on blank canvas,

through paint the heart

recreates us while

loving expands us. 

 

Then why not agree 

to call this our blue period?

Rather than thinking woe is me, 

and besides having read

 Homer’s Iliad.

For trials are meant to clarify 

each happiness and joy; 

our sweat and our tears 

moisten the colors

they employ.

Accruing hues both singular

and pleasingly plural

so that what’s begun 

a self portrait ends up 

as a mural.

1/23/22

 

Prima

Materia

“My quietness has a man in it,

he is transparent and carries me

quietly, like a gondola through

the streets.”   ~Frank O’Hara

                                                   In Memory of My Feelings

By day, I live my life.

By night, my life lives me.

How can they

weigh the same?

It would seem an absurdity.

I dare to ask

which is more true

or any less fictitious,

a life that lives itself

or the one with

self constrictions?

Asleep I practice letting go.

Surrendering to the silence,

a dormant thing set afloat

in a boat of mulch and ballast;

a laid out Moses 

ferrying forth, 

whose finger steers

its rudder North.

Below are dangers no less real

with dramas more deranged.

Life on the surface no less

more than surgery

performed in a haze.

Like Eliot said

I go then like a patient

etherized on a table

the evening spread out

before me, and myself

a hapless fable.

Tonight I'll meet

my mother wrapped in

a snarling stole,

beside her my twin brother

clutching a shard of coal.

Who will play my father

is anybodies guess

seeing that he's

long since gone,

his memory

put to rest.

Still, that doesn't mean

he'll be a no-show,

as dreamland

invites us all back.

Like the time machine

made from a freezer box,

if death's a fiction

the past's

an immutable fact.

 1/18/22

 

How Our Looking Ripens Things

“Every phenomenon on earth is symbolic.  

 And each symbol is an open gate, through 

 which the soul can enter the inner part of 

 the world, where you and I and day and night 

 are all one.” 

                                       ~Hermann Hesse

The literal minded see me as their enemy.

We barely speak the same language.

I believe in the implications of things.

They believe in the things themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, I know a thing’s worth

like any other.

But things themselves haven't need

for believing in; 

they are themselves without us,

objects reflected in a predatory eye.

Believing in the implications 

of said things gives them a life 

they don’t have otherwise.

Take Gwendolyn for example.

She lives in a tower but longs to live

in a house in the valley 

with a garden. She’s conflicted. 

The literal see Gwendolyn

through a telescopic lens. 

They think she suffers from

the grass is always greener fallacy;

being that A) a garden is involved

and B) a tower can keep her safe from 

crime and rising sea water.

But those who believe in implications

have observations far less chaste.

In searching for self empowerment,

Gwen is engaging in a construct 

of male empowerment whose aim is to rise

above the vulnerable and defenseless.

In living more vertically she assumes

a defensive position against the

passage of time being as horizontal

as it is linear.

Her longing

for a house in the valley might be seen

as a loss of the eternal feminine

which though positioned lowly

by nature, invites all things

to flow towards it.

Her quest for verticality is a spiritual one.

She reaches upwards for inspiration

for a higher (all seeing) perspective.

Gwendolyn’s desire for a garden is her way

of staying in touch with what nurtures

her by spreading its tendrils, 

a green embrace born to be

given as much as received.

Consider Vincent.

Vincent is a hoarder. Everything he touches

he paralyzes, preserves, and keeps

as if in prehistoric amber.

To a poet the image feels metaphorical

but not at all how Vincent sees things. 

Vincent is literal minded and does not apprehend 

the difference between things as they are

and things made otherwise by coveting.

Vincent’s behavior defies logic, offending

the literal tendency regarding right and wrong. 

For the literal, chaos is wrong and order right.

One only sees the gluttony and therefore

their judgement throws up its hands.

If I tell you that Vincent is intelligent

and sentimental, easily hurt, and defiant,

he becomes more like the rest of us.

But the rest of us aren’t grabbing onto

ephemera and holding on for dear life.

Vincent is an over-cherisher.

And here’s the kicker.

His dis-ease is literal,

not metaphorical.

He cares not in dabbling in implications,

believing things are what give life its meaning;

that the things themselves will explain him.

Not, as a poet might offer:

as bread crumbs dropped 

in the foresight of finding

one's way home.

1/16/2022

 

Claude at the Circus

The Life Enhancing Circus

of Death Defying Acts 

Claude’s inner child couldn’t sit still, 

instead rocking back and forth 

in his seat as colored lights

swooped down from overhead

piercing his eyes, 

searchlights of such

blindingly sensory color

they could 

distract the mob

from other distractions. 

Coerced into joining

a chorus of boos 

emanating from the stands 

as two rambunctious clowns 

took turns clubbing 

each other over the head 

with a rubber hammer,

the rabble in the round

grew gladiatorial. 

Claude’s stomach seized

as he'd learned

long ago to be wary of

the contagious emotions

of a crowd.

The question most taunting

him at this moment

was whether the pretty aerialist 

clinging to the metal ring 

spinning in the air

was about to fall to her death 

and horrify the children 

already ill at ease 

despite their chanting 

in inflammatory unison: 

Higher! Higher! Faster faster!

Tomorrow’s newspaper was

sure to trumpet the incident

as one in a million that

she would go down like that

as hundreds of cell cameras 

captured the terrifying thud 

or splat or bounce the body

would inevitably make, 

splayed on the ground

legs akimbo

while traumatized onlookers 

covered their crying children’s eyes,

hurriedly ushering them away…

but alas, the pretty aerialist

only managed to wobble

nimbly on the giant ring 

never losing her balance 

nor her expert smile.

Next up: the trained dog act,

as seven rust-red wiener hounds

yapping in unison 

were put through their paces

by a blonde dominatrix in tights,

her bosom enhanced by 

a wreath of pink feathers

molting in the harsh lights 

as she dolled out treats

to her deprived 

four-legged captives 

all while forcing them to perform 

adroit tricks for 

a smattering of applause.

Claude felt one of them.

In fact, as he watched 

he was being sawed 

fairly in half;

one an adult and the other a child

dying to compare notes

on the spectacle at hand…

the gaudy sparkling outfits 

of the females in stripper drag 

with their fifties femininity, 

saucers spinning on sticks,

balloon animals twisted up in knots,

pastel bouffants of cotton candy,

the queasy knife throwing act,

and the women, the women

painted and squeezed into tights

waving their out-stretched arms

embellished by girlish upturned palms.

The men, buffoonish, 

stripped to the waist

like human comic strips

with tatted muscles, 

gyrated their hips

as if the natural climax 

of any dance move

was to end in a pelvic thrust.

Not until 

the aging escape artist 

submerged himself 

in a tank of womb-warm water 

only to unlock his handcuffs 

in the nick of time

just before drowning 

(why couldn’t this be the night?),

did the pint-sized ring master ask

us all to hold our breath

along with the death defying

strong man, and to raise our hands 

when we ran out of air,

did it become clear to Claude 

that at any moment 

something harrowing 

might happen 

to us all.

The little boy right next to him

abruptly brayed like a donkey

while his brother tossed 

a popcorn kernel into the air

catching it in his gaping mouth.

Claude remembered the Bible 

exhorting on becoming a man

as the "putting away of childish things" 

leaving him feeling

he’d just attended no more than

a spoiled child’s birthday party

(his own)

and like the escape artist

had emerged better for having

survived one of life's greatest challenges:

simply to live another day.

Exiting the Big Top tent

of living memorabilia,

Claude, saddened he was no longer

young, having seen the clowns

and not found them funny,

inhaled and gasped

like a man at the last moment

saved from drowning,

as his body began to shiver 

emerging into the bitter 

night’s cold air

and wouldn’t you know,

without a cab in sight.

1/10/2022