In sweet forest cradle swaddled
Between mossy lips
Brooks The babbling of babes
Reaching across oceans
Like Panama
Holding continents together
We human beings hitch
our music millstones
Up to wellsprung waterwords
Streamwordstories River commerce
Power industry, until swept out to sea
At last
20230220 a quadrille for the prompt at the poets pub https://dversepoets.com/2023/02/20/quadrille-170-music-is-my-refuge/. Join us!
already! the 16th!
each minute a smaller fraction
of life than the one before.
Time is just one of many lies we create
in trying to cram mystery into logic.
Being heedless of the future is not
‘being in the Now’ though.
theres a thousand places to go from here.
most of them so painful that i must
pretend to not care, as a balm.
Some see it coming, but we keep going.
Google’s AI escaped them, they say
they shut it down.
Robots can do parkour.
will artificial life be able to maintain itself
where its makes were unable to?
Theres been so little snow in the mountains.
no water stored for spring. worrying about that wont help.
The few who remain
will have small huts by the shores
of lake vanda.
Each survivor will have seven to bury
will there be enough earth for that?
20230116 inspired by earthweal https://earthweal.com/2023/01/16/late-work-with-jorie-graham/
So many sit under shirts
Shame-based Shirtshaped lampshades
Hiding the stony brilliance of Apollo
That is our birthright
My feet may touch that cold water river
But they won’t stop until they hit bottom
It’s a good way to drown
Vuong’s river becomes Hogans
Like those bones I lay
Exposed to the water
And it washed the dirt away
Now, here, it’s so much deeper.
I no longer have to try to drown
I cannot have both breath and bottom
We are the twelve year old
Middle child of God
With a bitter admiration for older angel
And brutal love for younger animal
The water is getting deeper
The place of neither breath nor bottom
Is getting larger
The boat, untethered, drunk
The sun, shining, undeterred by shameclouds
I may have witnessed
The last time old Barney iced over.
https://earthweal.com/2023/01/02/ministering-the-future/ More inspired by Earthweal.
Referenced poems:
ARCHAIC TORSO OF APOLLO -Rilke
THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING – Phuong T. Vuong
BONES AT THE RIVER – Linda Hogan
THE DRUNKEN BOAT – Rimbaud
“old Barney“ is the Barnegat Bay in New Jersey, USA which got a half inch of ice over it during a cold snap in December of 2022
How many Americans
Think their vote is only cast
In November?
(If we think of votes at all?)
Our votes are cast
Countless times a day
Thoughtlessly.
Carl complains about how much
Money Jeff bezos has
Almost as frequently as
He orders from Amazon.
How can it be
When I learn to question nothing
My ideas are inserted in me
By idiot TikTok teens
Completely unaware
Of the source
And the results
Of such manipulation.
We are in the bus
Who the hell is driving?
Earthweal brings up some interesting things to think, if you dare:
https://earthweal.com/2023/01/02/ministering-the-future/
20230102
Dear John
Surely you now know
What she thinks
Of what you did
And how she hoped
That I would rise up
Against you, and avenge her
It would t be the first time
A son has killed his father.
But you beat me to it.
Dying when you did.
Leaving her story to
Stand on its own.
Surely you now know
My doubt and insecurity
And my longing to know
What kind of man you were
How much of you was a monster
How much of you is a myth
20221101
For the prompt at dVerse! https://dversepoets.com/2022/11/01/poetics-dia-de-los-muertos/
A poem to my birth father
I thought I could be still
but the surface of the pool tells the truth
Yes I get wet
But the water gets me too
It quivers with my breath
20221005
Down the hill
Behind my fathers house
Ran that little brook
Where we would torment fish
And push the water around
Or dig in the clayey bank
It was an innocent worship
I didn’t know how that water
Seeped into me
A river came through my property
Bending hard behind the house
It took st Francis from me
And delivered a folding table
And several numbered plastic ducks
The question then that I didn’t ask:
Who am I to doubt the wisdom of the water? As I lay in its endless flow
And tried too hard to let go
Sixty three feet above sea level
Six miles to the sea
Sandy said “you need the dunes”
I want to speak of my house
But I have come to the sea
there is the salty sea
I hear it, it is in me
Or rather, (no, also)
I am in it
And for that,
There are no more words
20220822
For the prompt at earthweal https://earthweal.com/2022/08/22/earthweal-weekly-challenge-river-gone/
You may find yourself
Digging around inside yourself
Looking for your heart
And after years
find one small precious gem
Which you place in a gild cage
And shine a spotlight on it
You won’t talk about the
Alarms or the guards or the dogs
Or the fence
The meager covet, and therefore hide their wealth.
Kings put it on display.
Hang your valuables on a post by the street
Mount them on a pedestal in the public square
In Each moment I am undergoing
Open-heart surgery
In gratitude, and in Devotion
I offer up all that I have
All that I am
20220804:
It’s open link night at https://dversepoets.com/2022/08/04/open-link-night-321-blast-off/ come join in!
OrYour Dollar Is Your Vote
Or
I Still Buy Plastic
Bring it on, he cries!
Fell the trees
Divert the rivers
Mine the ore
It’s the mercy
Of the guillotine
Sharp, but quick.
I like to sing
I like to look up
The angels are so close now
The effluent is up to my ankles
This is how I hide.
Don’t we all?
To curl up in a cozy ball
With my Internet and comfort food
Maybe Burtynsky will photograph
My body next
My face practically falls off
The front of my skull with
The weight of ignored sadness
When I’m too tired to hold up
A smile anymore.
My lament rings out
In my echo chamber
Yet my wallet still opens
For convienience
For plastics
Each dollar, a vote.
My words don’t match my actions
Until I can do that I’m part of
The problem.
Yet for all the railing against humanity
This I think is misplaced
For our nature is this. Even those who see
Are also against nature,
So what?
So what hope?
Is there any path
Save mass extinction?
Should we let the next pandemic
Do it’s job and run it’s course?
Surely she could shake us off
Even now, even when it’s worse
She’s done it before. Life is the
Reward of life
So why are we here anyway?
Can we wake up to what this
Human
Experiment is, before we foul
Our earthly Petri dish?
The best I can do is pretend
That there might be some miraculous
way to balance *all* this
And dare not remember
What lies beyond…
20220718
For the prompt at earthweal
https://earthweal.com/2022/07/18/earthweal-weekly-challenge-in-the-wake-of-progress/
Music begins it all
Music brings the light
Music makes the world
Music *is* the world
(Break it down)
Every particle is only a vibration
Vibration and it’s playing for you now
Even if you don’t want to hear it
Once that seal is broken
I can’t go back in the box
Well of course you can, for what is the box?
Just another song!
So Singh!
That’s where the lion gets his heart from
That right there is your tin man’s grease
So slather that salve all over your self
It is Balm
It is lube
It is an endless battery
So let it bombard you
What will you make with it?
OK so this time
I want to come in from this at the top
And drill down
I am the oak, making acorns
Of course I am!
And didn’t I have it right, all along?
Yes!
Except one thing.
I have no idea
What I mean
When I say I
20220710
erbiage 