Category Archives: Experimental
Just Before We Met (A Love Song in Terza Rima Key of C)
Ignoring your past, being born anew,
in replica of lake’s new fallen snow,
from my heart, I dreamed. Was it untrue?
Whizzing through the clouds, passing through rain drops
as crystal hail, sputtering and bouncing off my umbrella;
splattering above my shoes, on wet sidewalk.
How could I have caught you with all my faults?
I stretched out open palms to break your fall;
stinging hands, melting, absorbed into salt.
I dropped you. I almost had you in flight.
I go by the place where you had fallen;
to introduce myself, for that lost night.
To say that we both come from the same place,
from the same space, just before we met.
Written with clenched hands in spring clouds.
Seeking what I had lost;
miss-understanding the meaning of love
—as just a common heart, that is always lost.
Edit8: This is ,a revision dob 2013 piece …in an attempt to write in “terza rima”, w/ a twist on-line 14 and an epilogue, oops! 😊
Notes That Started The Morning Fire.
I burnt my breakfast with brown butter and garlic.
It rose above the perfumed oiled scent of progress;
—creeping through the cracks of my window sills
wafting silently, carrying the day’s
chain-linked smog…breaking in with
—my paycheck’s upcoming arena.
Oops, I meant, aroma.
For a moment I choose to linger
asking for only a cherry tree.
I welcome the reservation that you
have set aside for me.
No need to build me a fence—
I am locked inside.
~~~~~
Do I talk to myself? Me and him?
Of course! Who else would listen?
How would I know when to stoke the wood stove
and make coffee, home fries, and scramble eggs?
I always tell myself what to do.
I am vetted by my soul,
Me:
The web, trickling inadvertently behind me, as I walk through space
Connects me to another square that I had left!
Never touching the ground, I wait with patience
in silk expectation —for a life, now to be defined.
Him:
The thread of your existence is never behind!
Nor could it manufacture a web to connect
to illusive time!
Shake off that wiggle… trickling inadvertently behind!
Hey! Anyone up for coffee, home fries, and scramble eggs?
Notes Found On The Refrigerator August 24, 2017
As an intelligent, compassionate person I cover all the bases of the perceived truths— Before I discover my reality without bias of mind or heart but within my soul— Then, I can begin an argument —open for discussion for covering all our bases— with the illusions of what we have seen.
i have sifted through sand
tripped on stones
slipped on pine needles
have lost my balance on occasion
a few times— falling
—but never has my path
been more appealing
than the steps before
i am who I’ve been
I certainly am not
who I was— as dust in the wind
as scent in the pines
as tomorrow is in each day
as yesterday—
is unable to hold time.
*****
Notes Found On The Refrigerator July 2017
A Melancholy song
Songs are hidden in the words we speak. —sometimes in harmony
with the background hum of those we did not
know or ever meet.
Our melody can sometimes be disheartening
as well as our belly aching, vomiting
between the screeching cacophonous dominant notes
we may have perceived.
My music repetitively keeps playing yesterday’s Rock & Roll songs,
Rhythm & Blues songs, gospel’s black and white songs
—they are all fine—
But, go to the window and lift the shade
and hum them—
as you look at the sun and the future of rain.
Sing off-key if you must —loud and unalarmed.
Sing the songs that are hidden in the conscience that spoke without a word-
putting you in music unharmed.
Hum the song for unity in freedom
that has morally and musically given us;
without disrespect to life in the words
or thoughts written in our songs.
Or, what we sing.
*****
The Banjo Player
I was talking to an old banjo player, pushing a 103 yrs old the other day. I asked him how his band was doing. “Well,” he said, wiping his face with one hand. “It’s over. There were four of us. One is dead, which left three of us unable to play his part and ours at the same time. Besides that, one is as Cuckoo as a broken string. The other young fella, in his late eighties, besides losing his hair has also, seemingly, lost the beat. Towards the end, we realized we were all playing different tunes insisting the other guy was messing up… and looking at each other with the stare of “each of us had better catch-up”. And, what was worst, when we were all on the same song, forgetting the words, we would automatically pick people out in the audience and break out into “Happy Birthday, to You…”.
We still keep in touch…”’
There was a moment of silence, thinking he was reminiscing when he suddenly blurted out, “Now where was I? Oh ya! That was quite a box of good cigars”, sitting back in his chair with a great big smile.
*****
Oh sea glass greening
Passing through low and high tides
Speckling at my feet
*****
The path once well-worn
Through the passing of my youth
Is now overgrown
****
[Many scenes of consciousness with eight characters; One narrator, a Table of six Judges, (three Cyclops, three Angels) and one defendant.]
I Will Have The Last Word
(a scene)
Narrator:
In equal seats at the round table, each with a voice on the scale of justice,
Sat three Cyclops in disguise; wearing sunglass monocle and
Red tinted bald head rubber caps.
On the opposite side, three Angels sat with pleated wings of sea-gull feathers,
Waiting to argue for him but feeling queasy and unable.
Table:
All speaking in unison, “You have only a few words before the ultimate gavel
Echoes you, to a sentence of silence.”
“Do you understand? You only have a few words”,
Repeated one of them, Under their breath
With a voice of compassion.
Defendant:
Everything that was bad or good,
Smiles and cries, and all those moments in-between,
Became reams of litigation suspended in litter.
Bound for this uncomfortable meeting,
I showed up wearing only a t-shirt,
Unshaven and a few items in a half empty paper bag.
I took my seat on a steel-gray folding chair
Without the cushion of a good history;
Braced with the events that allowed this chance, to convene.
Then, they began to strip-mine my life, looking and digging
Into the ground of my relatives, mentioning buried outlaws;
Ancestors still connected to my bones.
All my errors descended into a million pieces of recycled confetti.
They dismissed every excuse to free me.
They found nothing of value, stating, they were unable to release me.
They discounted everything I had borrowed,
Insisting on their uselessness when I returned them.
I shouted above my ignorance:
“Dance, dance, dance you Cyclops, around my mistakes.
Fuel your caldron with distasteful acknowledgement,
Envy the situation that is not present.
And you! Preen your Angel feathers without dissent
With the oil of penance.”
(another scene)
Narrator:
Peering across the table, with silver cups in front of everyone
Except in front of him, he noticed in the center of the table,
A scarred brown plastic tray, sat one tin cup.
He grabbed it, banging the empty cup for their same drink
Insisting for a better portion and perhaps
forget this nightmare and let him go.
Let him go home.
Table:
“What is it now, that everything is drunk?” Spoke one Angel.
“What is it now that you can savor?” Said one Cyclops,
Sipping his cup, on the opposite side of the table.
They all replied, in a confident anthem:
“We are all of the same dust. We are unbound, released from gravity
Without offense. Unlike you, sitting, fidgeting, now bound guilty
Before judgment.”
Defendant:
From this agenda, this torture
I squealed, I rat-ed out and rolled on my ego.
Confessing to be, in mind, an accomplice without heart.
I pleaded “mercy” to the table exclaiming, “guilty!”
I swooned, I almost fainted. I felt the floor roll beneath me
Like silt in a receding tide.
Standing, grasping what became actually visible.
I kicked my chair from the table, sent it flying behind me.
I swept my space clean.
Narrator:
An empty cup pinged to the floor spilling fear where it belonged.
The echo, stretched, crawling unsuccessfully to find the exit door.
Defendant:
Who am I now, as I try to rise above this table,
Trying to escape the infinite loop that leaves the measure of me to others?
Where swearing and praying becomes a side bar for approval or complaint.
They sit across from each other, saying the same things in redundancy;
Syllable after syllable, arriving at the same conclusion, using different words.
(another scene)
Narrator:
He quietly sat down across wingless angels and puffy black-eyed Cyclops.
Humbly took his assigned seat at a long aluminum rectangular table,
In the State, prison dining hall.
He placed his scarred brown plastic tray carrying a milk carton
And his scooped up meal.
Today is his first day; his first spoon towards a year and a day.
(One thousand and ninety-seven left).
Saturday night: he eats folded white bread dipped in beans
Savoring the franks. He will probably eat smelt on Fridays.
Defendant:
I see the end recoiling back, hiding in this cosmic dust
Of breath and conscience death, .Each moment for me is mine
Within a circle without chairs of decision or indecision,
Where forgiveness, atonement and contentment has to begin.
“I am not afraid.”
Narrator:
Those were his last words
Before the gavel burst into unconsciousness.
Notes Found On The Refrigerator February 2017
The Internal Seed
I never did pretend very well.
Truth was perception—
Dismissing objective proof,
For the answer to the basic question
“How does popcorn pop”?
Mistakes, miss-judgments, funneled into the mind
Of tornadoes swirling heart-popping roofs off conjecture.
How long can one pretend to believe you can be received?
Gently through the bluster of ignorance?
And, yes, I am not the person I am.
I am the one inside of you
That never does pretend, very well.
“Wake up!” Said, the knife and fork to the spoon.
*****
I have lost many memories that I often find in my heart.
*****
Go home and simply be honest
To your lover and rekindle
The one action you forgot.
Notes Found On The Refrigerator: Autumn 2016
Don’t run away, unless you know where you are going.
Everyone should have an acceptance, and, an exit plan.
*****
Bottom Of The Glass:
…as long as I could see the bottom of the glass,
I would pour myself another drink;
Seeing my reflection
At the bottom of the glass
Sometimes dithered me though.
So, at some point,
I would leave the glass half-full.
*****
Love’s Encouragement:
(Inhale)
It is time we move on
from where we met
to where we were suppose
(exhale)
to meet.
(Breath)
Hold my hand, we’ll search our memory,
and find our way.
(Inhale)
It is time we move on
from where we met
to where we were suppose
(exhale)
to meet.
*****
Enlightenment’s Rock And Roll:
Often,
Silence is a noise we try to avoid.
Whether in conversation, in loneliness,
Or worst, when we are bored.
Yet,
When it is present, it opens the windows
With no mind. To a space quietly making music
To no one, in no place, for nothing.
So, before accepting it,
We kiss our mind gently good-bye;
And escape through the window, with our soul,
To join the dance, to the music of enlightenment’s
Rock and Roll.
Companion
We are (all) personal care attendants
Attending to each other—
But, most of all,
In that relationship—
We become companions.
Perhaps that is what happens—
After love’s personal illusions
Dissipate—
As we accept
Mutual understanding.
Maybe we can just skip the step of love
And go right into companionship!
Ms. Holly complains after eating pizza,
Which, she thoroughly enjoys.
“Too much salt!
I can feel my legs swelling up,
And it hurts to walk.”
I tell her to put her feet up,
She does not have to talk—
I remind her,
That I, cannot remember
what I forgot.
–It takes awhile
Before we turn to each other
Returning discreet smile—
Accepting what we do
And what we do not.
Companion: Notes on a Paper Bag
ZoralinQ 