Ominous luminosity
Nearby outside, a dark
electricity filled night
jarred us with
thunderous raging lightning.
Saint Elmo’s fire
danced and filled our cockpit
with ominous luminosity
from Palpatine,
to our fearless distress.
Look both ways for distress travels any direction.
Mind the gaps as you let the force be with you.
Note: Palpatine (Darth Sidious) was the name of the Emperor in the Star Wars movies.
Now or Never
Sometimes, I thoughtlessly
sit down, grab my pen or something,
and dash one off.
Without thought, form, or plan,
I’ve lost control.
No time for provocative,
deep thoughts.
It’s just me in my do it now mode.
There’s no stream or flow of consciousness,
it happens without reservation,
absent of awareness,
I’ve no muse’s prompt.
When I’m done,
I turn the page.
Look both ways and write it fast, get it down,
save the insane. Mind the gaps and traps of the mind.
Poets’ Lexicon.
One must have lexicon to poem.
Language to arrange words right.
Poet’s lingo contains abundant terms
shared with the world of writing
like style, voice, or tone. Words,
as Mary Oliver said, “If words were only words…”
We need to learn vernacular and forms;
The Rules of the Dance, poetry handbooks to
comprehend values of meter: monometer,
pentameter, and octameter.
Toeless feet with iamb, trochee, and dactyl.
How often does one see a spondee running free?
Books by Packard, Turco, Oliver,
and more for poetics.
Look both ways as you dip you pen into the poet’s ink.
Mind the gaps as there is so much to learn about the plethora of poetry terms.
Adverbial Alliteration
Advisedly, we’re normally explanatorily told not to
write clichéd adverbial conquests, but to eschew such modifications
faithfully as frivolously fast fingers freely flow creatively composing
craftily constructed compositions, purportedly passing on poorly
penned prepositional phrases padded with mystery.
Reality rudely reeks seeking adjunct, conjunct, disjunct, or just plain junk.
To prepare perfectly pedestrian, speciously deceptive poems and prose,
paint in some opposition of affirmation.
Look both ways crossing artful Grammar Ave. Mind the gaps that set the traps.
No, no, no.
She didn’t know,
she couldn’t see my loss,
drained of outward expression,
emotionally spent, I sat — still,
a heartless, brainless mannequin,
my skin ripped by her words.
I was not, as she accused,
an automaton. I loved her.
My brain and heart were not sapped,
but hope seemed impossible.
Suicide seemed the only answer,
an escape from daily pain, the way home,
to bring order to irreversible chaos.
My mind: bleak, grim, sullen:
I walked to window,
I cried, broken, never again to be me.
Look both ways.
Reality isn’t always as it seems.
Mind the gaps, nothing is perfect.
Into every life, some sadness, some love, some hope, some loss.
Make it So
Kitchen? check!
Hot oven? check.
fixin’s? double-check.
recipes, bowls?
Got ‘em to go.
bakin’ pans
yeah boss!!
ready to roll!
gots crunchie munchies.
pack a bowl, pizza’s comin’.
“Hey, you gunna bogart
that stash all night?”
Look both ways when you pass the bong.
Mind the gaps and lower the lights.
What Am I, Popeye?
An assemblage of contradictions
unified with random masses of cosmic protoplasm,
launched unwilling into life,
pretentiously posing upon past
protoplanetary disks.
I am a self-contradictory collection of word gestures,
influences, and impulses dancing to dialectically
distracting, consistent capriciousness, and
categorically confused morphing emotions.
Wish for sameness but anticipate reality.
I’m muddled by me without constraint.
Look both ways into the reflection of lefts and rights,
ups and downs, love and loss.
Mind the gaps of unshakeable faith and wander through Sagan’s Cosmos.
***
“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” …. “Extinction is the rule.” (Carl Sagan, 1934-1996)
Gloss: A protoplanetary disk is a rotating circumstellar disc of dense gas and dust surrounding a young newly formed star.
Taboo to Torched
Frightened by arrogant kens against freedom,
shocked by hubris karens of hyperbole,
flummoxed by fiddling fascist Boards,
saddened as lone librarians dodge discovery,
humbled by youth’s perseverance;
I ponder and cry, with my personal pride,
I stand wondering why, ready to satirize.
Look both ways as you war against the lunacy of banned books.
Mind the gaps and detest book burning and the dark side of religious fanaticism.
Now Dance
I can almost see in my memory
when mother was proud of me
for those first sobering steps,
my cheerful run. Later,
I saw and heard mine;
Billy, then Steven, finally
Julie taking first frantic steps of life,
another charge without
casual saunter. We learn
to run, then we slow down.
Look both ways as we walk, run, or saunter through life.
Mind the gaps, do the best you can, and have fun.
It’s a one-way ticket.
***
And now, a 1980s fun rock as Dire Straits teaches us about the “Walk Of Life.” (Hilarious)
Science or The Anemoi
Navigators knew this before Magellan,
south of Polaris’ north star,
only north of Neptune’s equator,
sailors, worthy old salts,
aviators not spiraling
down, widdershins,
meteorologically,
that wind at my back,
meant low pressure
to my left.
By gods of cyclogenesis,
dancing to Coriolis,
or Thor’s twisted moods
of stormy anger and foul weather.
Counterclockwise wind
blows and grows around lows.
While tailwinds are fine for
cruising and sailings, they’re unwanted
blasts for takeoffs and landings.
Look both ways before you turn, either way. Mind the gaps for anyway the wind blows.
Gloss:
Our Literary Journey 