The Spaces Inside Your Brain

A dangerous thing, poetry–
the occasional timeout

is proof, just listen:
you can hear the bad ones

mumbling softly, rebelliously–
I will not say bone, I will not say stone,

Until the mother-poet comes to let them out.
She always takes what she will:

misplaced syllable here, alveolar click there–
like death, she waits,

disguised as the young mother,
bringing even the old to the breast

to taste their own demise.
Look for her, at times, in the spaces

the squirrels leave inside your brain
after nesting;

yes, the soft hole is what they want,
for outside it is raining again,

and down below, well,
there are rivers to travel

with just the right orchestral feeling
to make it all seem so swell.

Have you remembered
to click for her?

The squirrels will love you for it,
and when you feel them staring

at the barely visible zipper
around your neckline,

remember to sing a carol or two
and drink a glass of wine,

remember not to touch it,
even though you need to–

so desperate is your desire–
remember not to say it,

for above you they are waiting,
they are listening closely

for any sign of weakness:
what matters

is not what goes in,
but what comes out.

Antiquity as Birthright Juxtaposed by Experience

     . . . And there is whale song in your ears. Unlikely as it may seem, we should study their songs and learn not to take from them but give in to this music, add meaningful notes, and discover how to think of language as something beyond the cerebral, the communicative, the citation on experience. The ancient act of symbol, movement of stars and the act of creation, even procreation, speak beyond the limits of perception. Language can be the spleen of experience, our minds sifting through the images we take and create, antiquity itself juxtaposed with our present lives in this constant interchange. Think, antiquity my lineage, my beauty, my poem, and the spleen begins to filter: I give you the color blue, and you give me 

the curved outline of earth adjusted with prayer; 

I give you my anxious heartbeat, and you give me 

my father’s eyes lit by green leaves and sawdust; 

I give you cold whale song, and you give me

a wee word in the tide of baptismal water, the ocean, birth.

     We were born for exploitation and exchange, born to art, wed to creation. A sacrament of touching pen to paper is not a taking but simply beingness, synthesis, song.  

The Smallest Detail Gives Rise to Insight and Nourishment

     There are people who can turn a system upside down. They are artists really, working on the palette of the American landscape.

     The concept of a free refill at a fast food joint comes to my mind. Here is how it works. The establishment offers a free refill. Only some people take them up on it. The rest are timid and lame for not even taking this simple freedom as their own. However, out on the fringes of fast food artistry, there are consumer artists who take it to a whole new level. They return weeks later with the same cup, and simply request what is theirs: A free refill, only delayed. Possibly months have passed: a new war has started, people have died, a new cancer has begun to fester and then be cured.

    The poet works with the same delayed refill as a starting point. Life is lived and then memory begins to work its games with the mind. The poet, when filling the palette, is essentially asking for a refill of experience. Emotion refilled in tranquility. Take it now, they say. No, the poet says, I will be back in few months. I need to walk my dog. Welcome a new child into the world. Stare at a cloud. Catch a fish. Later, when it is time to ask for the refill, the words are charged with the flavors of time itself.