Tag Archives: i-poetry

i- ruins poem

A Promise Died

Up on Oly’s westside

Down the rural, wooded

blind-corner stretch of Cooper Point

there grows a lot of goldenrod

and grass up to the knees.

 

In amongst what used to be

that backwoods brush beneath the trees

on 14 Avenue, you’ll see

a labyrinth of empty streets

and lonely lamps that never light

 

The ghosts of all that could have been: a man

who steps out just to drive to work

and walk his dog just once a day

never looking up to say hello

 

Houses, I say, not homes

windows dark, tall trees

bushes growing all around

just enough space between the leaves to spy

on unsuspicious passerby.

 

And lawns are always neatly trimmed

to show and tell, but not let in

for secrets live in empty closets

look at them, their eyes are haunted.

 

All the perfect, hidden houses

All those inside wants to his own

Every one looks just the same–

Just another John Malone.

 

I see these people wash their cars

In driveways that were never there.

 

The end of the Boom Decade:

houses eat the woods aplenty

and scattered up from earth in droves

all the cheapest land, like this, ate up

 

Some of them were red or blue,

every one the same.

 

Need it be said that it all fell apart?

 

Too many houses, too little space

A modern-day Gold Rush, it was a race

then the Great Bubble popped, and in this case,

the Ghosts of Excess stare you

dead in the face.

 

So much promise, now empty and rotten

this place has long since been forgotten

two years, three years, four years, five

and never a single house in sight

Crumbling roads, broken lamps

–the symbol of a promise died.

 

i– untitled work-in-progress poem

I just need some time to

rest my weary bones

waking up at the end of a rough night

I would rather stay at home

 

I wake up and find too many

books upon the floor,

notes to take and life to scrape

I will never find the door.

 

I just need five minutes to

rest my weary bones

Then i will wake up and jump into

gear and into my unknown

 

I wake up and too many things

left undone last night, unsaid

nothing here when the Robin sings,

in the morning I am dead.

 

 

I-another Blake rev

Experience

Randomly stabbed in the back of the thigh

I wonder why she does not call to me instead

All these ghosts in sailboats

are the reason I have cried.

 

To me, she says “I’m almost there”

but she was always standing there

“Seize him? no reason”

and so my spirit died.

 

But I often tend to be overdramatic–

there are no monsters in the attic

I’m just a little hesitant

is all.

I- Blake response rev

Innocence

If it pleaseth thee, I shall aid

as not much progress hath thee made

awakening thine “antiself,”

but gesturing toward an empty sky

 

Through the corner of thine eye,

watch the angels whisking by

and listen to the whispers

floating out from underneath their wings

 

Watch them dancing, watch them sing

and unto thee, they’ll comfort bring

then in my footsteps follow

if this is what you wish.

__________

I find it hard to mystify

just from reading books–

I guess I have to realize

The sky is not as empty as it looks.

 

 

I am the Wind

What does it mean that I saw myself in the wind?

A horned beast in the Grass, and Christ in a Cow?

How can it be that Thought sounds like Love,

that Heart equals Mind, Snow has an eye,

and Water plus one is Eternity?

 

These things are somehow true;

the voice of Meaning drowns them.

Our words grow dry and empty

as eyes look through, not at them.

They point us to the world inside,

but Outside points to us.

 

The Wind has never ceased to listen.

Self Portrait in Wind

I and Ai is Change

I thought I knew what Love is;

it sounded like my Eye, and I

told you how I Love so much I couldn’t tell you Why.

But the moment I belie Wo’ Ai,

you have another Eye:

A coiled Thought like Buddha sitting

claims the label “I”.

I thought I was Love, but Love is Ai.  (I know for sure Wo’ Ai)

But what of I?  It can’t be “E”,

because Sun and Moon make “E”.

The Sun and Moon make Change in me,

and lizards in my mind,

but I and Ai, I still can’t see–

 

which one of them is mine?

I is for Blood

Ink is the blood of the Art of Calligraphy:

The Chinese language wriggles and writhes

under the constraints of an ordered civilization;

If it grows stale with history, the Art breaks it free:

calligraphers summon the soul of a word,

know it, love it

and breathe new life into it,

a delicate transfusion from old to new bodies.

The word appears ike an old friend in new clothing,

years later living a new life,

but still carrying the same essence,

the same character.

Love Breaking Free From Open Circle (with Ripples)