A few Haikus

Yes, it is that time again.  I've amassed quite a lot of possum haikus--I keep forgetting to bring in my car notebook so they keep piling up.

Onward, for the cause!


Possum near my house
it seems you have strayed too near
my humble abode.


Nearly flat possum
you're lucky my brakes are good
or you would be dead.


Possum rank and vile--
the smell of your body as
it hits my tire.


Fast running possum,
Olympian of your breed;
I'd give you the gold.


So well-bred possum--
dainty foot held in the air.
A picture of poise.

Plethora of Possums

And you know what that means--

More Possum Haikus!


Little Possum rush--
you have things to do tonight,
like not getting killed.


I slow for possum
he reverses direction
I must wait longer.


Possum foraging--
have you found anything good
that you want to eat?


Slink away Possum
into the tall grass and hide
from the death that drives.

Possum Haiku (again)

Is it my fault there
are so many possums to
write haikus about?

hee.

I nearly hit you
Possum on the right road side.
Good thing you turned back.

Poem: Room

Room
is there room for all the flowers and sunlight
filling everything so full you'd swear there isn't room for breathing anymore.
Let alone dying.
Because in some strange way dying takes up more space than living.
Dying doubles you.  There's your body
lying in the sunlight strewn with
broken flowers and shattered pots and
drip drip dripping water
soaking through your favorite shirt
and you can see it all because you're on the outside now.
Taking up more space than before because now
your body doesn't have you anymore.
And you don't have your body.
So you can watch
the flowers falling and
the water dripping and
the sunlight easing its way into all the crevices between the shadows.
And it all feels so tight, you understand?
All so tight because there isn't enough space
for you and your body and all that sunlight.
It's even tighter than it was a moment ago
when your chest condensed in pain and you thought
nothing could be worse than this.
You were right, and you were wrong.
Nothing could be worse than that--
than dying among the flowers and the sunlight.
But then nothing could be worse than what happens next.
What does happen next?
After the sun goes down and the flowers wilt and brown what happens next?

Haiku and Moon

Haiku for a Less Creepy Possum

Less Creepy Possum,
What is so interesting
That you are sniffing?



I saw the moon today as big as glory and as thin as a sliver of ice.  A star danced just out of reach as clouds tried to hide them.  It was beautiful.

Wednesday Words

Today I don't have just one word to share with you.  Today is one of those days where one word just won't do it.

Let me first tell you a short story.

My Bubby is 101 (coming up on 102) years old.  I love spending time with her because the wealth of her knowledge about the past and the nature of humanity is impossible to find anywhere else.  I remember hearing her stories about our family since I was very young.  I remember all the pictures in her apartment and could tell you all the stories about them.

But one day not too long ago I noticed something in her bedroom that I somehow had never noticed in all my years of visiting with her: a poster.  It was nicely framed and had a lot of words in it--but somehow I'd never 'seen' it in all this time.  A little bit surprised at myself, I stood and read what it had to say, never dreaming that what the words were saying would be even more surprising.

Here is what it says:

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

I was pole-axed.  I had been living these words already for so many years but here they were written down in a beautifully clear form.  

I give them to you today as they were given to me: my Bubby had bought this poster nearly 80 years ago.  Today when I told her how much I admired it she told me I should take it home with me, that it was far better that I should own it because I valued it and could appreciate it.

Like me you may wonder who wrote these words and where they came from.  The Internet is a beautiful thing.  :)  

It was a man named Max Ehrmann who wrote this prose poem entitled Desiderata; meaning 'desired things' in Latin.  It was possibly written in 1927, and was only discovered years later.  I hope it gives you as much meaning as it does to me.

Poem: End of Destination

This was first written in my Senior year during my Classical literature class.  I'd be paying enough attention to my teacher but at the same time I'd feel so urgent about something--who knows what sort of something, I don't--and I always feel better when I externalize my unknowable emotions into words/poems.  So it's a bit odd, even for me.  :)  A couple years later now I've reworked it and edited it down to something a little better.  Thoughts?

End of Destination

I defy poetry as words. 

I’ve traded up for

faltering phrases to snag

your inner landscape and make it stick to mine. 

My own interests require me

to tell you that this

is a wild fire in the curls of brainy-matter

stuffed in cornered crevices, pulsing

out in thoughtful moments

the compressed

under-sternum-panic Beat. 

I bid the beat. 

It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair, it never gets old how

it just isn’t fair the lies

are neither here nor there, the fresh the old the

sensatory drowning pull

Down—

pressure flying behind it all it pushes me forward,

give me no-nothing

I wish begging wasn’t so undignified what use is pride—

all pride is keeping world from moving on too quick and leaving me behind

I ask that you acknowledge

I’m deceiving you/me

we-heap

It takes more than unknowable statements

(I say whimsical profundity) to fill a bucket

with a hole in the bottom.

Frequently washes the sailor his cloth,

the sailor his cloth, the sailor his

hands. 

I’ve only got one. 

Only got one in my

lead covered net I

only spasm for lung-air blood-breath to shake my head

You might as well keep

pulling on that string, something

larger

will come out of the hole and you don’t want to miss it. 

Regret to inform loss-duck.  Lurch-luck. 

I falling height.  Drinking

time is only blinding, compacting in a

garbage compactor, extractor compactor half

adrift half

sane half

afraid half

here half

ear brink edge, level six on the kitchen aid—

mechanical scream whirring cream to whipped cream creaming sugar and butter before

adding flour. 

Have I lost you/me yet? 

Have I lost the peculiar

doubling

of ideas-impossibilities both true both

here-gone

would you mind if we had a moment of silence

Did you mind?

Suction from the back of the eyeball gives no brain fluid

I hope you know it only shows how much you pissed your life away

your potentialities

by sitting like a lump on your one tone ass with your one tone voice—

kill-shot kick to the head. 

I’m in the throes of foes, handed over to

those immortality sickened and I

am catching it left handed sort of way. 

Hate me, I’m learning

to hate me,

learning from everyone else who withers with their mouths

false-trues that once upheld

souls from mangling. 

But the worn out gears of machined gunned clock

tower factories we-heap. 

Oh we-heap.

This is good and bad, you understand.  At least pretend—

I’m pretending too

since I don’t really have a mind to think with, you understand,

at least pretend you

understand I need a crack-less cavern

solitudinous bubble shaped

for convenience of no entrances. 

And they say keep it open to the sun to the moon to the stars to me to them to wind to dirt

to world

to flagrant invasion insipid morrocans, or do

I mean those things in your hands filled with sand a stone shaking

in a five-year-old’s hands at a teacher’s discretion. 

We-heap,

oh, we-heap.

I’ve tried to word over world

In search of a little vindication

Taking part in twisting your arm—

Metaphorically speaking vindictive

But only by reason of loss

Perceived, received, deceived

In a way that crippled my

Sensibilities of the younger me

Who was told that being odd

Was a sort of death and

Didn’t I want to be immortal?

Pardon me if I am bitter

It’s only the words I learned to chew

But never swallow.  Never eat

Heave all unnecessary baggage water-ward

I promise sir, you won’t need this,

It’s only one light lie I need-believe—

Well I believe you told it to a child

And tried to teach a price

That makes you feel all safe inside

All comfy-headed cushion-souled

Now that magic sold itself to pay the bills

That weren’t existent yesterday,

The day before that saw perpetuation of a lie

I tried hard not to hear.

Ode to a Chiropractor and My Future Car

Oh Chiropractor, my chiropractor,
You make me feel so wonderful.
You crack my back in different ways
So that I don't feel any pain.

Oh Chiropractor, my chiropractor,
Without you life would be so hard.
I'd never sleep or walk or move
Without saying, 'Oh Aargh arrgh--'

Oh Chiropractor, my chiropractor,
I wrote this ode with you in mind.
For though I'm glad that you exist
I wish you were less arrogant.

Oh Chiropractor, my chiropractor,
I found a song which sounds like you.
So I thought I'd give you compliments
Before I showed all your defects.

Oh Chiropractor, my chiropractor,
I hope you are not too offended.
Because I really need your expertise
Even if my back is not the only thing that needs adjusting.

But in all honesty, I really do like my new chiropractor.  He's very very good at what he does and I'm very grateful that I won't be experiencing spine-crushing pain every so often.

I just get the feeling sometimes that his ego is very very large and he thinks of himself as a 'man's man' who likes manly things.

Not that I have anything against manly things.  I do lots of them.  But I do them because they are fun and I'm good at them--not because they are 'manly things' and I want to be 'manly.'  Or be seen as 'manly.'

So it's pretty minor overall--no real complaints to speak of.  He just reminded me of that song a bit.

Fun song!

(fun fact about song--the first time I remember hearing it was during a Supernatural episode--season 4 episode 17--where it's playing over alternate-Dean's morning routine.  I fell in love with that song as well as the entire episode.  One of my favorites.  :)  )



Now onto my new car!

Not that Roger's doing badly--he's still a picture of health, as much as a car with over 210,000 miles on it can be.

But my future car isn't being produced yet so I still have some time to give Roger a natural death before I get a new one.

This one!

They're going to start re-releasing Deloreans!  And they're making them electric!  Who on earth doesn't want one of these?!?

(link)

So yeah.  Future car here I come!

I'm riding an Antelope

I'm Riding An Antelope
(or, Ode to Shel Silverstein)

I'm riding an Antelope into the sky
I wonder I wonder if we'll truly fly.
Or maybe we'll bound from hill to hill
Forgetting our homes and lives until
My Antelope says, 'I'm done for the day.'
And both of us sleep on top of some hay.

Remove

Awakened sunlight streaming roses into cheeks pale with sleep.
A heavy head holds down a pillow.
Inhaled by darkness, golden breath frees dust motes to dance--
Dance.

Curl your arm around your head and dream no more of opened eyes and clothing spread upon a chair where mingled shadows urge duality--sleep/wake.  Sleep Wake.

Poem: Bite

Although I enjoy owning an iTouch, I have to admit that the feature I most appreciate on it (aside from holding all my music--correction, holding some of my music, grr 16 gigs) is the notepad.  Not only do I use it for writing down songs I hear on the radio I want to remember, or fabrics I might want to buy at the store, or random thoughts and words I don't want to forget--but I adore using it for spontaneous poetry. 

I've already featured a couple poems that I wrote using my iTouch.  There's just something about it that makes writing poems easy and fun.  You can write one while waiting in line at the DMV, doctor's office, mechanic's, and on and on and on.  Poetry for everyone!

This one is especially the product of my having taken poetry classes with Mark Stevick that amazing professor I had in college.  The rhythmic qualities, the repeated words and word sounds: all are things I learned from him.  Yay good teachers!

Bite

Gnashing hairs in an itching reaction
Disatisfaction attendant on
Ease
Easing into unease
Please
I'm really not as calm as I appear
It's only a not-so-latent fear of being
Misplaced
By those who swore they'd never lose me
Every time that four letter word--
you know the one,
Begins with l and ends in safe--
Was said.
Tell me if you can feel a hovering
Where my heart lived

Cursed with an infatuation residing
In points all around,
I'm fed up with calm--
I guess you could say I've reached saturation
Been water-logged to the point
I'm considering suffocation as inevitability
Instead of possibility
It's really impossible to say how much
My lungs ache knowing
Doom Wyrd Fate
Stuck a needle in my soul
Long ago
Sewing prick-pin stitches 
In the shape of a fool who happens
(Very much)
To look like me

Wednesday Words: Haiku

Instead of the usual single word post, I have decided to write haikus in honor of several of today's famous birthdays.

Congrats Michael Caine

On your distinguished career.

Please don’t ever die.

To Billie Crystal

On his 64^th birthday:

The Oscars were fun.

Jamie Bell, so young,

I wish you the very best

And a long career.

Michael Caine is 79 this year.  I think we all need to start putting in a bid for his immortality.  I don't know what we'll do without him.

And just how bad were those haikus?  Pretty bad, I'm thinking.  I don't have much practice with them, so I guess it's normal that they're not very good.  I just felt like I had to really express my happy birthday wishes.  :)

And to everyone trying to remember what Haikus are all about, here's the wiki page. 

The rest of you may now argue over whether or not I should have attempted to cite a real definitive website, or if a wiki is good enough.    Enjoy.

Poem: Elemental

I wrote this poem a long time ago, and it's one of the ones I'm most proud of.  It's awkward, word choice is sometimes poor, and rhythm...well, I wrote this before I had ever taken a poetry class.  Let me tell you, taking a poetry class was really good for my writing.  As were the two classes on Shakespeare, Master of All.  (We should really start referring to him like that.)  Do you realize just how much of a genius he was?  I mean, I could go on an don and on about how wonderful Shakespeare is.  (and I don't mean Robert Deniro's whoopsie pirate)  I could probably fill a post with--

~please, don't fill a whole post talking about Shakespeare, I'm begging you.

What?  Why not, Snark?

~If I have to hear you go on and on about him again, I really might do something drastic.

!Don't worry!  I love Shakespeare!  I think you should write a whole post about him!  He's wonderful!

~See?  This is why I didn't want you to talk about him.  It makes Enthusiasm get all...gooey.

--Gooey is the natural state of Enthusiasm.

~And now Mr. Logical has come to stick his nose in the picture.

--It is incorrect to label me as 'male,' as I am only a manifestation of our decidedly female--

~Shut up, Mr. Logical.  You're as male as I am.

!I'm a girl!

~Yes.  We know.  All the dumb sections are.

--That is highly chauvinistic and completely incorrect--

~So you're admitting I'm male?

--I beg your pardon?

~It's not chauvinism if I'm not male.  So you admit--

_You know, Snark, you really shouldn't make statements like that.

~uh-oh...

_The rest of us get offended when you say hurtful things.  And there really are more of us than you.

~You threatening me, Calm?  Who died and made you king?  

--Actually, it would be Queen, if we were continuing our gender theme--

~Shut up.

_Be nice, Snark.  We need him.  

~That's what you always say.

--It's quite true, you always do.  I would offer gratitude, but I'm not equipped for it.

!Hi Calm!  I like you even though I never see you much!  Why don't we ever see each other much?!

_We are opposites, Enthusiasm.  We can't both occur at the same time--or at least, it is very difficult.

!But I like you!

_Thank you.

~Hold all that touchy feely nonsense, Calm.  I've still got a bone to pick with you--

_Some other time, Snark.  Now we must give way to what is intended to happen.

~Oooh, now she's all cryptic and mystical--

--I believe she is talking about the post, Snark.  We've interrupted it for quite a while.

~'grumble grumble'

!Poems!  Shakespeare!

~Don't you start that again!

Ah, well.  Back to business. 

Elemental

Give me a kiss, said the star

And I will give you the sky.

You will fly like a bird

and shine like the sun

But no one will know of your name.

Give me your dreams said the world

And I will give you the earth.

You will live like a king

And do what you please

But first you must give up the sky.

Tell me the truth, said I.

Must I give up the earth and the sky?

If I walk the long road

Where nobody goes

And no one has ever returned.

They never replied, so I went to the sea

For it always remembered my name.

And the path I shall take

I will never regret

For in giving my life, I am free.

Poem: Wrought

Wrought

Beyond physicality and flesh

There waits the ever dying dream

Alive to death and living absent lies

Repairing forceful quests of yesterday

While sacrificing future breath

To keep on breathing smoke—

Ahhhhhhh—

And again

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh—

Bitter lunged and aching aching

Faking pain and peace together one

In super-human-ficial prayer

Raging in the reason floods have counted

Treason pestilential

Full of splitted flesh and rot—

Rot of the soul

The never-dying facing fact

Begun when all was laughter—

Finding good in poverty alone forever

Filling foreign dust with absence underdone

Disgust discussed this once

And found it good to seem mere halves of everything permitted.

Monday Musing: Truth

Today, we do something differently.  Instead of the standard Monday Musing that is written in a prose form, this topic felt like it should be expressed in poetry.  It’s not complete, and I’m sure I’ll work on it some more, but it’s a topic I firmly believe in and it’s a question I wish I could ask everyone. 

Do you know what the truth sounds like?

It requires soul-price

The sacrifice of uncertainty to gain the surety of loss.

How else to pay the cost when now you know—

Bedrock bottom heartbeat of the earth itself

Surrounded by black black black

Only allowed to look at stars—

You know it now

You know your truth and their truth and all truth

And it sounds like

Bells resounding at dawn and

Summer breeze in a hammock and

Light

--oh, the Light sings triumph and height

Far height in this tower against the dark

Blaze and burn and forfeit all else to the Light

--oh, the Light.

I can’t even breathe when the light calls

And is it majesty or fear bursting in my chest?

Every time.

I choose the light every time

The summer breeze and the bells

I choose them every time

And wish I could have been a tree instead

Arched and always breathing in

No choice required, no price

Just the light, the light, the dark, the day, the night, the sun, the stars, the heat, the cold,

The length and breadth of days numbered—even so numbered

And given unto death and all its endings.

Trees have no need for choosing.

What is there to choose when all you are is

Truth rampant on a field of black

Arched and always breathing in?

I cannot choose to be a tree

I was made for other things—as are we all.

Traveling on lonely paths made urgent by desperation for the next intersection,

where maybe—

Mabye—we can grab someone and make them walk our path behind us.

That which is unobserved doesn’t truly exist.

Science said that and made us all afraid that when we close our eyes

—between the heartbeats—this truth would find us.

Grieve—all of you!

Grieve because this lie has broken us.

It has stolen our paths and forced the abomination of truth.

Grieve, because we have no one to blame but ourselves.

We have been pulled from our purpose and pulled others from theirs

We have become lost in the intersection of all paths

Trapped in the mockery of The Lie.

It laughs.  We were made to choose one thing only—the simplest choice.

This abundance is poison and we follow other’s paths just so we are not alone.

It laughs.

What perfect revenge.

What brilliant marring.

What an impossible future.

We were made for choice?  How now?  Do we still want to choose?

I do as I always do.

There are bells calling me home

A summer breeze in a hammock

And under it all the silent song showing me only one path

One choice.

And I must bear the burden of knowing that I chose it

My price

Because I saw all the other paths—

Knew where they would take me—

Wanted them to take me,

And I wish—

But the truth is rising in me

It is so loud, so loud

It shakes my bones, twists my lungs and I explode into

Truth.  I am only Truth

One moment.  

All that’s given is one moment to hear

The soul-resonance

The building calm

The one note hum.

Only one moment to console yourself on the lonely path

Walking beside trees that have no need of choosing.

But this is the Lie too.

We are not alone on our lonely paths. 

We are surrounded on all sides by seekers and dreamers

Hopers and doubters, lovers and haters—

Each of us with our own truth to follow,

Our only path to fulfill what we were made to be

The truth that leads us to where all the parallel paths end in the Light

--oh, the Light. 

Poem: Windcore

Away, Away
My mind cries to be free
The river of my soul
Leads to the sea
Where crashing waves and seagulls cry
Away, Away
To the Sea!

Poem

I am the uncomfortable middle
The child's dream
The in between riddle pull-pushing myself
In the breaks between wishes
Into clothes too large--
A gift to grow in to, no need to repay
They say

Forgetting the implications
I'm swinging my arms, my legs
Wide, wide, wide,
Constricted in everything but time

Today you get a poem

Because I was super busy this morning and couldn't write anything so I'm sorry.  

And happy birthday Jon Lasseter!  Yay Pixar!  Pixar Forever!  (I think 'Pixar' would make a great battle cry.  I mean, it's got that special something that makes it easy to yell at the top of your lungs, and it's even intimidating because it ends on 'arrrrr!!'  and if someone is running toward you with pointy weapons while shouting something you can't quite hear but ends in 'aaarrrrr!!!' you're going to be pretty freaked.  Just saying.  Oh, right, back to poem)

Big Top

Formed in a freefall moment of inattention
The wire-walker desired a change to occur
Spontaneously
Heart-spiked in dramatic tension
Like he used to feel under his toes,
A flexing farce for children
Who cannot know how safe
This is
This act of all pretend to gasp
While the wire-walker
Transporting immortality to earth
Cannot keep a quotient for himself
How fair how fair how fair fair fair
The fairy tales that no one wrote but should have read to us
Explaining why a high dive is inappropriate behavior in the circus.