Seaweed

In the push and pull of forces
you can be like seaweed on the tide.
The fascinating dance
in tidepools at the turn,
of flotsam rocked
by something greater nearing,
declares your power to be satisfied
for once
with where you're taken.

December 20 2014

Hanging Lights

I will hang these lights above the porch
and curse the cold
though God knows I should speak more joyfully.
Put aside the question of his birth;
to be here on the earth
with those indoors
is cause enough for constant celebration.

December 20 2014

12 Surprising Ways

 
12 surprising ways 

you may be hastening universal heat death.

Try this one simple trick 
to wipe out existential dread.
5 tips empty commmercialism experts
don't want you to know about. Like our declining 
moral integrity Facebook page. How long can your inmost spirit 
conceal this amazing secret? Are you at risk for 
despair?A brilliant way to pay off your 
karmic debt.Humankind seeks solace in emotional wasteland; 
you won't believe what happens next!the truth about 
unfulfilled yearningwhat noble virtue are you?
I got selflessness7heartbreakingcelebrityconfessionsof
futilitytruthisinforashockingsurprisestopwhatyou'redoing
andwatchthisvideo:

Man loses hope, stranger finds and returns it

and then



December 19 2014

Repost: Zen Poan

     
       
     

(What is the truth of a poem without words?)

December 14 2014

A Poem Charles Dickens Could Have Written If Only He Had Preferred Free Verse

If I can bear
but a touch of Your hand
here, upon my heart,
I shall be upheld
in all of this.

December 12 2014

Update for Bruce:

If I can bear
but a touch of Your hand
upon my heart,
I shall be upheld
in all of this.

December 19 2014

Prospective Return

This is a place I could yearn to come back to.
This narrow wasteland
of shattered board on rounded rock,
these sunken channels filled with the last of daylight:
It is nothing but the storm's great draining board,
the place where land gives up the fight,
but in the season others leave behind,
it is his and mine.

November 23 2014

Working at Home

God strokes the cat-like back
of my crouching house with rain,
while I sit in its lamplit interior
warm, and feeling like a breathing heart.

November 18 2014

Vacationers

They're all talking about going to Florida.
Actually, shouting is more like it;
the whole neighborhood's a racket.
Ostentatious.
Uncalled-for.
Go.
See if I care.

Damn birds.

November 10 2014

A First Concert

If only I could tell enough the joy
oh my heart it filled
no spaces left not one because
you sat among the music.

November 4 2014

Accounting

The lights are on outside of houses now
when we go out.
The beach is a roaring battlefield
for scavenger gulls that seek the dead.
The morning lies in submission to a dreadful orbit;
we pay the price of Spring
and Summer's bill is in the mail.

October 2 2014

Soap

For some reason dwindling soap steals my courage.
From abundance to a dying sliver
there's mortality in my shower.
Then death turns the corner into life;
new hope is born from a cardboard box
and I join the old and new
in a whole that won't last forever
but cleanses me today.

October 1 2014

Prophets

Red Cassandras of the season stand alone
but will not stop foretelling.
Worse, they gain believers, till the roads are mad
with fleeing followers in millions
who leave the trees forsaken. 

September 26 2014

The Revolution: Its Origin and Growth

Although its roots probably reach much farther back, the revolution can be said to have begun in earnest in the early years of the 21st century. Like many revolutions, it probably started so quietly that no one was at first aware of what was happening. Once it reached a critical point, however, it quickly "went viral," as the saying was at that period.

The first manifestation of the movement was--not surprisingly, given the level of technology then extant--in video footage produced by amateurs. Two main groups produced these videos:

• Terrorist groups, notably Al Qaeda and ISIS, published videos, often horrific in nature, whose purpose was to encourage movement members or to document acts of extreme violence, with the aim of creating fear and showing defiance toward enemy regimes such as the old United States of America.
• At the same time, perhaps as an unconscious response to terrorist videos, individuals around the world began publishing optimistic videos in such venues as Facebook, a popular "social networking" application of the time. These videos typically portrayed people performing spontaneous acts of kindness for other people or animals, or giving striking artistic performances.

It is this latter group that was key to the revolution. Motivated by the increasingly violent nature of terrorist videos (and actual acts), a surge of optimist videos appeared in a short time, and the movement quickly evolved into a kind of competition, in which participants vied to show ever more striking instances of positive human behaviors. This competition naturally depended on the actual performance of positive acts. What began as more or less accidental capture of good deeds on video rapidly became an active search for such deeds, and by natural extension, the deliberate performance of good deeds for the purpose of recording them.

Thus, in a short time, kindness and charity became highly desirable behaviors. While at first many people were motivated primarily by a desire for fame or praise, it was not long before the inherent pleasure of altruism became the major stimulus. Under that guiding force, what began as an "internet" phenomenon spread to other areas of life. No longer was it necessary to receive recognition for good deeds; much as an athlete experiences an endorphin thrill, individuals began to experience what we know today as the uprush, and did more good deeds to experience it again.

This phenomenon did not, of course, immediately lead to the disappearance of terrorism, or of negative impulses such as hatred, contempt, or selfishness. Rather, terrorists found their base of adherents gradually eroding away, as more and more individuals were influenced by the example of others to replace the ideology of fundamentalism with positivism. Similarly, individuals who engaged in destructive behaviors found their moral base weakened and were led, almost despite themselves, to embrace the Golden Rule.

It may seem strange, even disconcerting, to think that the philosophy now so central to our planetary cultures had its origin in a meme that could easily have passed away like so many others before and since, and whose existence depended on a passing technology that is all but forgotten today. But after all, it is not so surprising, when we reflect that this meme was a true and unfiltered expression of the noblest aspect of our humanity.  To a global society in desperate need of healing, it was the unexpected medicine from within that allowed humanity to finally cure itself.

September 17 2014

Evangelical

The street is possessed by heathen scents.
We can't walk up or down it.
Always he's a missionary there,
but his howling zealotry alienates
any possible converts
to his way of eating.

September 16 2014

Empty

All day long the skies were so empty.
I hurried home to you under them
at a strange and early hour,
looking up through the windshield
at nothing, which had never before
and has never since
seemed so full
of everything.

September 12 2014

Arriving

Odd, that sensation of the coming season.
Like it or not, the senses thrill.
The trees are chattering again;
memory, as always, supplants the present;
and the same blue sky is different.
A thought about picking apples has arrived.

September 8 2014

Leaving II

When she pours out her abundance
down the living lines of branches
in such floods of fruit,
I can almost forgive her
for leaving.

September 6 2014

Leaving

I found the first of the season's leaving
on the seat of the car
whose windows I had forgotten to close:
One red drop.
Thank God it isn't winter.

August 28 2014

Comfort in Tiles

I was in a state contiguous to wakefulness
far longer than I really understood.
The science test seemed mostly made of wood
I had mismeasured,
and I had no ruler to help me with the answers.
Long after I should have 
I staggered from my bed to find relief
(ha ha)
in the lighted island bathroom
where the tiles were reassuring.
We are so solid, they said;
you don't need to fear those phantoms.
Take Tylenol. Soon you will sleep
and the test will be taken by someone else--
more competent, perhaps, but you at least
will be in dark, and happy.

August 23 2014

Revolution

The hips are red as new blood on the thorny branch.
The leaves show their silver armor to the harrying wind.
This morning: Canada geese, on maneuvers.
The heat maintains its hostile occupation,
but drumming rain beats a call to independence.
Mutinous rumbles --
rumble


    rumble
rumble
-- precede the fall of Summer
and the ragtag rise of Fall.

August 18 2014

Puppet

If I'm a puppet
dancing on strings that I hold,
at least it's my show.

August 8 2014

Lo, I Am Given

Lo, I am given a family,
and like a cup it holds me,
uplifting and forgiving me,
and like a cup I lift it up,
for giving me this family
is like a cup running over.

August 5 2014

Where the Rain Had Gone

Yes, I wanted to understand
where the rain had gone.
Yes. Everything seemed so real:
Bumpers on cars, expected emails,
and mowers needing gas and walking.
No respite; no empty spaces for my soul to fill.
Precipitation's a cliche; okay,
but anything, just anything, 
easier than sunlight,
quiet as a stain,
transient but leaving something,
something to retain.

July 27 2014

Found Composition: Concrete and Paint II

Found Composition: Concrete and Paint