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Filed under: Poems, Words, jon hassell, sounds, trophallaxis | Tags: death, Dream time, earth, fish, flamingo, night, photo, poetry, taste, trophallaxis, Words
outside
there is a stone
the color of the evening sky
it disappears into the night
as the sound of rain
stretches into the future
a bird
a heron is fishing for his dinner
seeing through reflections
brighter than he is
for that sustaining pulse
the heartbeat
that feeds the stomach
the surgeon of the night sky
restores dead things
with the power of sound
Filed under: Images, Mind, Words | Tags: home, monkey mind, poetry, trophallaxis, Words
Like a marble rolling down a hill
I found the place I’ve settled in
I’m here, but easily dislodged
by vibration
the temporary home I see
walls at times folding in
as good a place as any
but not what conjures rest
or reflection, or comfort
flavor bud living
as Captain. B once said
but then again,
if this roll was too cozy
I might fall asleep, again
I brought you unstructured ornaments
that could not be repeated
no matter how much I wanted to
rendered insubstantial
by their irreproducability
where was my follow-up?
where was the framework?
I had never been here before
a monkey at my typewriter
this is what my new home will look like
something I’ve never seen
but familiar
diamond?
don’t mind me.
what lasts?
the rectory?
the foundary?
the rubble of cities?
change is it.
the living.
the thing that moves.
the thing that gets out of the way.
the thing that is in the way.
the thing in time.
a many faced thing.
an echo in the dark.
aura of an ancient tree.
roots long gone.
thus I waited by the bus depot
in another country
hoping to catch a glimpse
of your smile
-this I told her
the customs were similar
although I was toasted at the stake
for committing a faux pas
I thought I had been dancing
-I had taken lessons and everything
there’s no point standing on ceremony
yet that’s where I had been standing
in the middle of the Oslo Day Parade
the cold wind was pushing in from the river
-and I was developing a taste for funnel cakes
meanwhile, back on earth
burried deep in the ground
the thing that lasts
moves very slowly
erase me
you sweet erasable you
from the snowdrifts
in the back yard
from hemorrhagic trips
down the firelane
for dear life
as we witness unmoved
the cheap destruction
of what was held dear
remembering
refrigerator magnets
the whimsical devotions
to nothing sacred
tempered by
a passive cruelty
the failure
to acknowledge
tenderness
in the scheme of things
encase me
with a shrug
and the drop of a hat
as you are consumed
by fruit flies
that were also drawn
by the rank possibility
of starting something new
Filed under: Poems, Uncategorized | Tags: flab, middle age, naivete, poetry
tenderness is never wasted
even on philistines
who seek to slaughter
unborn hope
like me
if I have taken away
without giving back
it is only because
I was trying to
teach you a lesson
that I have yet to learn
in the hope that
you would someday
break it to me gently
how could I have ever expected
that you would call my bluff
that I would wear the egg
long after it had hatched
and thus be so wrong
as to be right
for all the wrong reasons
a clinical example
of futility
how is it
that I think that
I can understand you
when I am just foaming
at the mouth
rabid in my belief
of right and wrong
when what passes between us
is so nuanced as to be indecipherable
when will it be enough
just to love and be loved
and not look for some other sign
that you are
who you think you are
Filed under: Poems, Uncategorized | Tags: consumerism, illusion, lost in the supermarket, poetry, religion
I have failed
I have vomited forth
the scope of my beliefs
the essence of my religion
lost it in the industrial swamp
through the din of the status quo
met with silence or worse
I have whispered with oblique reference
the hopes closest to my soul
while hammering home the most trivial
of hackneyed cliches
spelling out the names
of my favorite ball players
like a pantheon of saints
I have been angry at the wrong things
Used my rage ineffectively
to destroy myself
to ensure failure
I have put my trust in shiny objects
to dazzle myself into submission
to aspire to become part of the great beast
the fire that once
kept me up at night
has been doused, stirred
covered in ashes and mud
as I come to accept my fate
a puppet of artifice
longing to belong
Filed under: Phenomena, Poems, Uncategorized | Tags: earth, Frank Waters, gravity, memory, poetry
the only reason there is memory
is because we are here.
it never happened,
only in so much as it is happening now.
i am alive
ruled by gravity
my every thought and action
carried out according to the clock
the micropulsations of the sphere
north to south and back again
vibrate though the portal
at the top of my skull
pass though me
fanning out, then
funneling back again
to the place of beginning
i am grounded
only in so much as I can feel
the origin from whence it comes
the pull to earth
When first taste
my tongue did touch
so entangled with the scent
of blossoms ripe and telluric
transfixed within the sweet
intoxication of new worlds
until a dissonant piquance
did sour my hunger
and orient my sense
towards a bitter resolve
riding flamingos to the moon
my joy is momentary
we asphyxiate in the vacuum of space
what ever made me think that this was possible?
an abiding faith in the benevolence of the universe?
I don’t often go out on a limb
but I find myself there more often than not
a fateful paradox…
assuming we were ever on a similar wavelength
which I know now seems unfathomable
now that I have scared you up in your tree
and you can only gesture in rote semaphore
as we sometimes do
the tunes of desperate but deliberate survival
and from within the comfort of living rooms
that long dreaded feeling of safety emerges
A tale of green and purple
of growth and decay
pulsing and turning in darkness
becoming all that is
transforming into dust
the heart’s yearnings
stormy movements of heaven and earth
touching all too briefly
a flash of light
a drop of water
and then a season of ice
we forget …
With hands most guided, seldom letting go
seldom with abandon to the other
We rarely visited
that place in-between where there is neither me nor you
where some other light shines through
and bathes us in its glow
That is where it wanted us to go.
