We will get there, you and I
While I ride, you have other ideas
I feel yours as well as mine
It seems we are working against
Each other – You pull, I hold on
You seem to be doing all the work
Yet, I am the one who tires
Conscious, out of sinc with unconscious
Mind in disharmony with feeling
Home, at odds with occupations, associations
“If you have a bold and more self-confident temperament, you may be inclined to act too quickly, to be hasty and overcritical of others.
“While you are not inclined to talk about your feelings to just anyone, you do not evade them in yourself.
You need common-sense answers now that can be applied directly,” she said.
The image called for the language of hysteria, as stranded
The ship is sinking. Holding on to my child means certain death
If I throw him over perhaps the lifeboats will catch him
The picture is a solitary girl, unable, she does not know why,
To move. Legs cemented in place, Can anyone tell?
A familiar, winding steep snake hill leads toward home
There are no pictures, no image called for when there
Is no place to go. A vague reality only noticeable for its
Apparent lack of language – common sense, or otherwise.
My adopted fish’s
Name is Poseidon
He dances when
I stand alongside him
He cruises when
I am far away
He prefers to eat
At each end of the day
This paradise floats
On the kitchen counter
A Shangri-La
A musical of water
Touched in my heart by a definition of fame
In grief for Michael Jackson seems
Like Elvis and Gable, Diana and Marilyn
An extreme sought and often denied
Fame, like wealth, exhilaration, but a route
Fame, someone explained, is a thing
Few understand – Some who gain it believe
I deserve it – destroys them in time.
Another, high pinnacles the culmination
Of which – Unworthiness stalks every scene
Aghast, we aren’t meant to perceive
Celebrity, merciless, crushes this life.
Fame is a channel so few realize
What it is – a Tool bright and rare.
If the infrequent guest of the mighty – thin – air
Understands he is God’s means to reflect -
Perceives she is deity’s mirror,
Will pipe to the world a fast sense of honor
Contrarily, fame a mere death
(June 29, 2009)
I am Anastasia
Sick with anticipation,
Plucked, like a strawberry in sunlight,
Wind of unpredictable email, or, predictive as truth.
If I’d been bold in my mind
I would have dreamed of this,
I might have prepared my response.
The thing is I did know, if he spoke when
“life was out..that yours and mine, could be,” What?
Oh, Never mind
No point aimed for
I looked at it a lot
Ecstasy is that there be,
While my silly heart persists
While this bumping, swinging basket, Life
Now sits, lolling hours, days as fateful as text.
(March 2007)
(quote from Emily Dickinson poem no. 706, Franklin)
It could probably not have happened any other way
Not given to long-term commitments in those days
Grief destroyed every bit of endurance
The saddest part is the blindness
Toward inescapable needs
None can choose where else blindness reaches
It will hurt the ones thought to be in need of protecting.
When to chose limitation in a desire for purity
Search for the light. Blindness toward
We do not want to see, will grow malevolent -
Because unseen things grow in the dark.
In one of my first memories, I knew I didn’t like anyone -
Later, from things I said, I knew I didn’t like myself -
This kind of living went on for a long time -
I journeyed far from Home and farther from
Whatever it was – those wired happenstances
Before the truth bares its teeth – When I was
Too young even to ask a question, One day after Distances
Had well-established Their walls, their fences
I discovered that a single Breath is made of two parts
I verified the hypothesis by counting as I inhaled
And then continuing to count – air entered supposed lung
Came out again at the count Of two. Or, more to the point,
Double count – inhale, exhale One and one. one, one -
As two – two is a second breath. One day after repeating this
Experiment many times, even Up to ten -ten, inhale – exhale
Where still a single Breath Is All, one day I recognized
A feeling, and, I knew It was the feeling Love.
“I have fallen in Love with my own breath,”
I said. Then, one day years later I was watching some
People acting as though They believed something.
That day I recognized A feeling, and I knew
It was love. I said, “I have fallen in
Love with people.”
Payback -
If it fit the Crime, the crime Was terrible Indeed
Mentor -
If he showed The way, the way Is terrible Indeed
Alive -
If it requires Suffering, this suffering Is terrible Indeed
If I had a million dollars
If I had all the days with you I want
I’d be so crazy with plenty
I’d be so drunk with choice
I’d be so full of glory and stories
I’d never narrow my mind
I’d never know what next to do
This is the first edition of Netpoem. Based on my belief that poetry gives its readers a slight edge to cut the hard surfaces of life.
Life in Iran right now has the world riveted by the courage and defiance of many and the self-imposed blindness of others.
Listening to the news out of Iran and seeing the images, http://www.flickr.com/photos/fhashemi/sets/72157619758530748/ reminds of this poem by Emily Dickinson. It encourages me to balance my fear for the fate of the demonstrators with reverence for the intrinsic instincts for freedom that they display.
The Way to know the Bobolink
From every other Bird
Precisely as the Joy of him —
Obliged to be inferred.
Of impudent Habiliment
Attired to defy,
Impertinence subordinate
At times to Majesty —
Of Sentiments seditious
Amenable to Law —
As Heresies of Transport
Or Puck’s Apostacy —
Extrinsic to Attention
Too intimate with Joy —
He compliments Existence
Until allured away
By Seasons or his Children —
Adult and urgent grown —
Or unforeseen Aggrandizement
Or, happily, Renown —
By Contrast certifying
The Bird of Birds is gone —
How nullified the Meadow —
Her Sorcerer withdrawn
