Category Archives: poetry

Opalescence

The shape of all is empty
I learned with fresh fragile lips
Kindred vessel myself, thirsty
Each concept drunk in growing sips.

I learned with fresh fragile lips
How vast the void and those opposed
Each, concept drunk in growing sips
From isolated fonts hidden in repose.

How vast the void and those opposed
The passive retreating the aggressor
From isolated fonts hidden in repose
A deluge consuming the progenitor.

The passive retreating the aggressor
Stage set for a great and flowing legacy
A deluge consuming the progenitor
Ingesting what I can of their supremacy.

Stage set for a great and flowing legacy
A kindred vessel, myself thirsty
Ingesting what I can of their supremacy;
The shape of all is empty.

Stone v Sand

Today a task was sent, urgent request
for a house built of stone, marble, or lime
where I, and all that I love can find rest,
and an hourglass was set, throat choked with time.

Enough to savour these days I’ll soon miss,
where I can stretch myself out on the lawn,
eyes closed, body exposed to sun’s slow kiss,
deadlines, due dates- synonyms for a con.

Plenty room remains for these joy filled days,
why, instead, mire myself in misery,
let these tasks, like wolves, feast on malaise,
when I could enjoy this brief history?

At last, the hourglass holds one grain of sand,
not enough for what any home demands.

Body Works

Bound to the creative, a specimen caught in a display case
rising to the occasion, ambition devouring empathy,
emboldened by the grating- unrelenting desire, clawing to be unique
not among many; but a singularity of identity and zeitgeist,
destined to ignite curious tinder in dormant minds
old kindling of artifact, made genuine fire in spite of artifice;
neglecting the self to etch adventurous tales into the glass.

Emaciated

The biting hollow space throttles my sense of up/down
seeking a soft oasis hidden in this deserted place,
where its teeth can pierce and gnash until sated.

I, pressed against the swelling dark, lumpy and tragic with discontent
relentless against any solid surface, driving unto its end;
slick glass reflections, become coarse approximations,
then settle into the gritty sands of nothing.

Time nibbles on the nerves, prickly with inaction
stuck within a brittle plastic sense of false.
Am I to be the refuse, the water, or the dry bed?
Do I move, remain,
or let the world carve me into its own design?

Reflections on a Vial

I am full and beautiful thus.
Full, I am purpose attained,
remembered not for what I am,
but by what I contain,
the service I provide.

I will not be discarded.

I am used, half gone now and somber.
Used, I am shaped by the void left behind,
thought of not for what I provide,
but for how little of me remains,
lingering on the coming regret.

I will not last long.

I am empty and bitter of the absence.
Empty, I am fragile with sharp secrets,
avoided not for the squandered potential,
but the risk inherent in things that shatter,
broken even when intact.

I will hold your reflection, still.

Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ (written by Brendon Behlke and Pablo Ramon)

Spotlight; me:
peace starved,
hunger met by darkness,
Not sated –
            stoked.
Become bullish fire,
horns of flame,
eager to gore
an audience of errant toreadors.

Stage Direction:
“Destroy”
“Murder,”
Scene – Infinity,
enter: monster (me).
Raze the set to rubble,
fade to black.

House lights on,
Reveal: Wreckage,
horror,
me.
Not the fiend –
but the human takes a bow,
for all the vindicated matadors,
dead eyed, slack jawed,
red with the weight of requital,
as thick curtains fall,
secreting away every
                        exit;

I leave, but linger,
haunting the now dimming theater,
where shadows stretch and merge,
a figure lost in canvas.
seeking peace,
and forever unseen.

A Haunting

It’s not my house,
not my place,
yet still I insist.

Here,
beyond threshold,
like a curse uttered under breath,
breaching pursed lips,
that would condemn if pressed,
I dissipate into the darkness,
ears strained – eyes starving.

I hear the nothing,
pull back, stretch taut,
and snap with the sound of a house aging,
then reset – repeat, snap again.
My heart follows the rhythm,
and still plummets a counter melody.

From room to room,
with echoed steps of borrowed time,
I agonize like winter wounds bleeding,
chasing ends that defy coagulation,
surpassing cold with warm history,
but in the end settling
for a conclusion in between.

Every corner hides nothing,
but I feel something –
and comprehend neither.

Truancy

Shrug away the saddle of gravity,
and float free through this reality,
unearth the joy of a liberated view.

Up dissolves, always retreating,
down wrestles, always pulling,
Neither are accountable to you.

Forward insists on forging a destination,
while all else is mired in hesitation,
and, as need arises, can be made anew.

Hold fast to your curious nature,
be bold with choices that bring you favor,
in the variety of forwards to pursue.

I know the weight of that pressure,
but nothing can hold you down,
even when you feel the most tethered
don’t be so shook as not to look around,
find your forward and push through.

12 Years a Fish

Proud was I to be one amongst many,
the tireless river and we, the fish.
A school of us united against any,
through life, intent, and fellowship nourished,
various desires but the same wish.
Until the day that place was robbed from me,
poached from a healthier reality,
swimming where they were sedately floating,
casting lures that shattered serenity,
passing in boats with muffled gloating.