erbiage

The far end of feelings

Spilling my magnetic poetic bowl of alphabet soup all over the floor

Realme is silent, behind the door

Hiding wordlessly. Have I ever known

The natural subsiding of an emotion?

One not squelched by the limiting label.

Gone too far, said too much

20201019

https://dversepoets.com/2020/10/19/quadrille-114-poetical-magnetism/

erbiage

PopPop rides the bus

One by one friends and family
Get off the bus
Faceless Strangers take their seats
Until I’m the only one
Not unknown, the only one with a face
Can they even see my face?
Would they, without faces of their own,
Recognize mine for what it is?
Or is facelessness inescapable?
So few of them will know my seat
The last one on the bus. They’ll
Get off before that stop. It’s the only
Way to avoid my condition. Last
One on the bus. Last familiar face.
I stare out the window.
How can I remain concerned
About the doings in the bus?
I am already half ghost
When it reaches the next stop.
I may as well get off…

20201006
Dedicated to my grandfather, who outlived everyone he ever knew. Eddie van Halen died today.

erbiage

Anthropo Scenery

People in 1918 will wonder (ironically)

How we got here.

How we could accept our affronts

To personal liberty.

They haven’t looked very far ahead yet.

Will we look to our Odoacer as a hero?

Welcome that insurrection as if it is

Springtime? Or have those daffodils

Sprouting in December like that,

Perish, frozen in time while gazing enamored?

Huh? Me? Oh well I don’t know if all that

Is really a problem. I’m safe in my PIP*

With its hot and cold running culture

And my video games, and

The sportsball broadcasts come in fine

20200928
For earthweal, and added to open link night at diverse https://dversepoets.com/2020/10/01/open-link-night-275/

https://earthweal.com/2020/09/28/earthweal-weekly-challenge-an-anthropocene-michaelmas/

erbiage

Small things

We concern ourselves with small things

Latecomers to the earth, this model of

Heaven, we make models smaller still.

My soul got into my body, to move around

Earth. Now my body gets into a car.

Many of us put our whole lives into cars,

Building them, fixing them, restoring old ones,

My neighbors yard is beautiful

Greensward lawn about the house

Flowers shrubs and trees lounge

In mulched beds. When she moves on

By economics, inability or death

The weeds will return rapidly. They

Won’t know or care the reason that

Her care was withdrawn. It won’t take a year for her life’s work to be veiled

In a few more, only obfuscated traces

Will remain, followed by oblivion as

The trees who remember the touch

Of her hands follow her to the grave.

To the grave is where we are going

Like Rome, all roads lead there.

Who was it that first sunk

Their thumbs into the muck

In the clayey bank of the river

And baked bricks and built

Temples from them? They knew

Something. Do you know that too?

Or do you sit there with your

Plastic building toy, and build

Models of what other people

Have imagined and made into movies?

The temple is a model of heaven

The brick is a model of a soul

Toys are models of models.

Which we use to make models still.

Everything we find or make is

Matryoshka dolls inside matryoshka dolls.

Their nested versions of themselves

Yet another model. Do you understand

What you are giving to your children?

What do you find important?

What is it that occupies your

Time? What did Covid show you

About necessity? Do you remember how

Deliciously quiet it was on September 12?

Did you even go outside?

Or were you hunkered down in your

Makeshift bunker, allowing fear to pour

Into your mind from the tv/radio?

That tree growing on the hillside

It’s branches reach over me

the earth, the moon. The entire

Universe is sheltered there

Under the living wood. Look

Pinwheel galaxys are spinning there

look closer!

There under those branches are all the

stars, and planets, and those vast

Spaces between them.

Look closer!

Pluto, Jupiter! Saturn! And there!

Earth!

And there, on that more of dirt

Are oceans and mountains

( models of vastness)

Deserts, jungles, wilderness

And cities. Look closer, here

Are lives that turn and buzz and hum

With a vascillation between hate and

Love. (Do you hear it?)

And there, on a certain hillside, is me

Standing, my finger in my navel,

Looking at that tree

At once, both small and large,

That tree reveals the illusion

That small and large are different.

The structure of the world is evident

In any piece or part of it. Can you see that?

There is not one bit that is expendable

There is no action without cost (nor inaction). You can sit by the river

It will tell you if you just

Listen

20200921:

In response to the prompt at https://earthweal.com/2020/09/21/earthweal-weekly-challenge-mentors-for-a-changed-world/

erbiage

How can they know what I do not show

It’s true I don’t know what it’s like to be a black man
And I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman
At least, not in this world, not in this lifetime
You don’t know what it’s like to be a cop
Today, your job is to get shot at.
So here’s the thing:
I do know what it’s like
to be around people
that don’t know what it’s like
to be me
but if I’m in that place
It’s because I haven’t shown up.

20200909