Skip to main content

Somtimes A Door Is A Bridge

Come through, there’s
a gnat has jiggered across my nose,
an aeronautic whirligig – a tiny door.
Beware the flying dervish, my friends,

gyre and gimble in the wabe.
With a Jump and a jive and a heave.
“Wilderness is not a luxury…” *

This Tao Way, a wild walk – all mimsy were the tumbles-in,
all lunatic and pickled, these sapiens in the soup.
The tires that squish, the guns that splatter!
Beware the galumphing gentry.

And what a virtual parody, flattening
rain forests into 2D screens.
  “Granma said they was dead people walking around.” **

Three times a day, an orangutan stepped
from its cage into the limelight,
costumed as a clown. Ridiculous the tuxedo
to cover his bruises – the cheers to drown his despair.

Which is stronger faith or fear?
Oh shun, the dunderhead delight chasers.
“And we stand somewhere between the mountain and the Ant.” - ***

Come through, shame has sullied her shadows,
she folds apology into paper cranes,
melts bittersweet across their wings.  
Now rests she by the witch hazel,

anonymous among the tweets and twitters,
her regret naked in the feed. This is a true story.
“Flying insect population in trouble.” ****

You heard about the bull elephant
sentenced to life in chains? Nepal.
No plea of self-defense heard, his crime
laced in ivory. Oh, pachyderm with eyes of flame.

Honest anger to milk your life.
No one mapped his calamity,
“A scar is what happens when a word is made flesh.” *****

We wrap our troubles in plastic,
and oceans stretch downstream like souse meat.
What matters less - to fail or to die?
Give me a loose scarf of squid, alive and breathing,

Give me days to shape us in story arc,
hubris, blunder, crisis, eureka, humility.
“Superman don’t need no seatbelt.” ******

There’s a Colorado warehouse - 1.3 million
seized body parts – rhino feet, polar bear rugs,
leopard heads, bucket of dried seahorses.
it’s a tip of the iceberg, bridge to nowhere!

One, two! One two! And through and through…
What matters more - to run or to stand?
“The heart … broken open …the whole universe.” *******

Here is a robe of Indian Summer.
Here, a hijab of forest song.
The refuge, simple - a scent of cedar, a raven muse.
ball point and paper. Vitality lives here -

the congress of simians, a vestige of frogs.
Every vanished species – an amputation, a ghost limb.
 “Praise the bridge that carried you over." ********

Consider how essential, the gnat and the spider,
then look into the eyes of a kit, fennec fox,
on a short rope, busy market, freshly nabbed –
nay, I stand tongue tied, my dissent tangled in fleas and fur.

“a war against nature … a war against himself.” *********
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son,

…and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!"
* Edward Abbey
** Forrest Carter
*** Oren Lyons
**** David Haskell
***** Leonard Cohen
****** Muhammad Ali
******* Joanna Macy
******** George Coleman
********* Rachel Carson

 Other obvious lines borrowed from The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend

  Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend And life a faithful pillow - a pillow to go flat, a spirit to drift off,  glaciers to melt and raise the sea. The blueprint is clear - Expect a tiny storm of mercy–  full of crows and bottle flies to debride the corpse,  to tithe the land.      And respect the putrid demise - things that fall apart make space for miracles.   Yet there persists the memory of breath rinsed in lavender and salt air. Then the dreams for blood and semen to revive, to metabolize  every tired, sad gospel into a hatch of octopus. Death confesses everything as she conjures her necrosis, as she feigns redemption, fools us with false devotion. She believes our defiance will set her free.   We must let grief to be the thread and needle to darn the rend, renew the cloth. then we can grasp the nascent green of winter wheat in spring.
Post a Comment
Read more

Covid Journal Entry 14

April 4, 2020 Today’s image – Exploring social cohorts. So, on campus now there is a small village of us living together, the remnants of those in residence this year.   We are an international population: seven from the US, six from Vietnam, five from China,   four from Morocco, one from the DR and two dogs/three cats.   We share four large buildings where we live, take our meals, study and exercise, on a five-acre campus. The rest of the two hundred and sixty or seventy odd community members are sheltering in their homes; some of the teachers and administrators dropping by during the week to work in their offices.   We have had little or no contact with them so far.   Our chef and his crew of two come in by rotation to prepare and serve the daily meals, a maintenance duo tend to the essential tasks and repairs, the city services haul away trash and recycling, the postal service, UPS and FedEx still deliver mail and packages.   It’s Iowa and the gove...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tongue

When I was ten, my dad pot-roasted a cow’s tongue. He brought it to the table on a platter, unsliced, open: a chaise lounge, red and velvet, slip of the lip to swallow us whole. The tongue is a door, a bed of confession, zipper to seal the deal. There is a jade plant on my window sill. Its many tongues sip silent molecules: water vapor, nitrogen, cool pool in the Kalahari. Tongue as cave, as conveyor, as flight of brown bats. Tongue holding space between us, gilded and strong with hope and death - a pocket for everything. Last night a snag of locust blew down over chicken wire. Five hens escaped. The snag, a tongue to freedom, to better pickings, a generous ledge. Sometimes a tongue wags, ungenerous, it keens to ten fingers times twenty dangling over a hand-hewn gunnel. There were children in that boat, fleeing with family over turquoise water. Maybe it was the Mediterranean or cold Aegean Sea - a wide tongue to crac...
Post a Comment
Read more