Unbowed

the fields of grass sway

under rush of morning breeze

long blades bow deeper

we walk a narrow pathway

inhaling the victory

Why You Cut Up Your Poem ~ An Explanation of the Calder Form in Verse

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......................I ................................................................don't understand........................................know .............................................why...................you ..................................................................................cut .................................................................up your.......................... ............................... ...............................................................................poem ...........................................................why..............................................."cut"... . .........................................................................................meaning ......................................why...............your............... .....................................................poem?..............................................what? so horribly. ............................................>.Command Z . Poetry, regardless of how seriously it is written should be taken with a smile and a grain of salt. The world doesn't really make a good deal of sense to us, that's why we write poems. We seek to establish an order to our minds, not the world around us.

Sage ~ A Haibun

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We've planted a sage.

Light rain graces the flowers,

amethyst petals

Those who observed saw the world around her burst into color. She could not be darkened. In her house, every room was a different vibrant hue. In the front room was a sharp aquamarine; the hall, a deep rose madder; where she ate, a brilliant cadmium lemon. She was only tempered by candle and silhouette on the amethyst curtains and walls.

.

Remember Earth? ~ A Tritina

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The glint of the sun is sharper than the wing

as it cuts the tufted blue troposphere of earth.

She is smaller, yet grander than I remember.

The patchwork, field and farm, I remember,

the forests, and the lakes under a steady wing,

the lift and the drag, and the consent of earth.

A man once, but his luggage is there, on earth.

Now aerial and feathered, will she remember,

as I vault the empyrean, turning on a wing?

A bird, wind over wing, I have left the earth. Remember?

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You Hear A Blackbird ~ Parallelismus Membrorum

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You hear the blackbird;

tune out rough twitter.

The river runs chill;

embrace the assault.

Follow mountain rising;

don't carry the dead.

Climb an open sky;

remember the night.

Blackbird by a river;

gather some berries.

.

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To Care for a Dog with Two Legs

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Once she was a circle of yellow,
herding us along the beach.
Now she looks up at me,
from the sling around her hips,
a yellow lump of dog
walking on her front legs.
Do I detect gratitude? Or was that
"How much longer are you
going to make me do this?"
She is still beautiful.
She will not recover. She is old.
She whines all night.
Somehow, she is less yellow,
but seems more like a circle.

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Red Sky ~ A Calder

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The

..........................red

.

garden..................sky is...............................full

.....of redbirds..............returning,

.........earthbound.....................................hands, earth

...........observe

.................................a

................................redbird

........................................................returning

................................. to.......................us,

.............................................................................................to

....................................................................................earth

For Ann and James

Sonnet?....I'm on it! ~ A Silly Italian Sonnet

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Would you like it from a box? Would you like it wearing sox?

Italian Sonnet songs I say, they're really not my thing.

Should I write about a king? Or a mystic sacred ring?

Should I write about little girl and a crafty fox?

Hey!, maybe I could write about Paul Bunion and his ox!

No, …How about deep out in space - the evil ruler Ming?

Ahhh, this sonnet thing I tell you…I might as well grow wings.

It’s big and ugly, scary too; Upon me it’s a pox, ...I swear, ............It’s like a bag of rocks!

Oh, ye of little tiny faith, Wouldst that thou would cool thy jets!

"Old English" speak I have no doubt, could surely rescue thee.

But if you don’t include that phrase, you’ll greatly feel regrets

- you know you could write anything and call it "Sonnet", see?

Break out your pipe and slippers boy, your wit will soon be whet!

The poem you write will as good as cacio sui maccheroni be!

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Conflagration: Peshtigo, Wisconsin 1871 ~ A Villanelle

.

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Smoke blocked out the sun, and the moon rose red,

the wood and the heavens all set ablaze.

The firestorm raged o'er the bless'd and the dead.

Long drought and sawdust, the demons were fed,

refuge was sought in the maelstrom fire maze.

Smoke blocked out the sun and the moon rose red.

Through cinder and ash, the silence of dread,

no town to withstand this power to raze.

The firestorm raged o'er the bless'd and the dead.

In rivers we boiled as we bobbed our heads,

a fate to be feared by any who pray.

Smoke blocked the sun and the moon rose red.

From Green Bay reborn, the half-drowned were led,

city of ash in the north burned for days.

The firestorm raged o'er the bless'd and the dead.

Faith ignited, and by the lucky shed,

legend now hides them 'neath smoldering haze.

Smoke blocked out the sun and the moon rose red.

The firestorm raged o'er the bless'd and the dead.

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Arctic Zion ~ A Double Helix Abecedarian

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Arctic Zone:

Beyond Your

Crystal Xylophones,

Desert White

Erases Value.

Fire Under

Glass, These

Hibernal Seascapes

Ignite Rarified

Jewels, Quicksilver

Kaleidoscopes, Pale

Lunar Opulence!

Men Need

Never More

Only Love

Perennial Kingdoms,

Quiet Jungles,

Rainforest Islands

See How

Timeless Glaciers

Unfold Forever,

Vaulting Ethereal

While Diving

Xemes Careen

Yearning. Below:

Zion Alone

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First Clown ~ A Rime Couee

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Ribbons, balloons are red and rife.

Shock locks and beak ball tell of strife.

Those shoes could cruise a lake!

With covert threat upon my life,

He cuts at me his carving knife,

and says “You want some cake?”

.

~dedicated to evil clowns everywhere

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Bird Game ~ Fibonacci

Bird
game
She/He
He saw her.
She saw him seeing.
He felt her seeing was something.
She knew his feeling was something she wanted to grow.
He took flight as the air between them grew thick with knowing that she saw something in him.

Pictures of The Long Bien Bridge

If I thought about him much,

I'd have wondered if he was alive.

I thought for sure he would end up

at the bottom of some bridge,

having jumped off, or maybe asleep in a box.

He was a friend among other friends,

but the part that I saw

of myself in him, was drowning.

He was wilder, and more dangerous,

and that is saying a lot.

When he left he wasn't turning

from the razor's edge, he was cutting

his way across, one bloody step at a time

like it was the last bridge on earth

across the dark river.

It is strange the currents we choose

and the places we are taken,

thinking we are swept away

in rough tidewater,

unable to swim

or navigate the deluge.

Maybe sometimes we know,

deeply from the mud and the silt,

that the floodplain can scrub

the surface that refuses

to be anything but intolerable.

We were just hoping to come up

someplace for air.

Last night he came up

in a conversation

across The Long Bien Bridge.

He has a new life on dry land,

anchored in the floodplains of Hanoi.

I saw his photographs and I knew.

~ for an old friend who built a fantastic life on the floodplain.