Ode to Pinot Noir

Sleeping with open eyes and typing fingers
I digest a random Pearl Jam song
And smile fondly before the new echelon.

I consider the what else
How I tripped up, but wouldn't change a thing
And landed in cloudless California.

10.10
s.d.

Friday

My calf is aching
And my brain can't quite process...
Can you repeat that?

9.10
For a friend.
s.d.

Peruvian Incas

Peruvian Incas
seldom suffered heart disease
and loved building stairs

8.10
s.d.

Old Logging Road

The old logging road
An orange salamander
And I realized this couldn't possibly be a haiku
There was too much to say about
The pitiful lizard squatting in the gravel

Bright as a neon sign
Hardly cloaked
Seemingly afraid of our footfall, or curious
Or searching for Stratton Pond
As a dozen more appeared

The old logging road
Looking like the Vegas Strip
Blazing with construction orange
Of thousands of salamanders, the only diversion
From a piercing rainstorm

7.10
s.d.

Ten Ways of Remembering April

Reprieve from February. Tramping through
the Garden State. Played games to pass the time.

Talking of amber in afternoon heat. Walked with a noticeable
limp. Coquettish smile without laughter. Eye noticed
the red velvet cupcake. Pale as a salted cat.

Impermanence is such a beautiful
word. Most days it rained.

2.10
s.d.

Wanderer's Barter

Trundling onto another capsule,
Lugging my shirts and chargers,
I wonder if I'll still smile
Or merely nod in acknowledgment
Upon arrival.

     The wanderer's barter: a few
     Flat snapshots - nothing else
     Captures the confusion,
     The high-water mark etched in
     Adrenaline...

Exhausting pats and attaboys
From glazed-eye acquaintances,
I wonder if this marks an end
Of acknowledging nods among
Checkered-flag friends.

6.10 (revised)
s.d.

longing for home

rising rising in the air

above a world hes left behind

he stares out the window

and sees merely clouds

interspersed with the waves

five miles below

for a few fickle moments

the insipid hum

of the jets siren song

teases/tempts/traps

his fragile spirit

yet he cannot decide

if his ultimate ride

leads him forward or back

puts him on the right track

if it renders him stable

or wholly unable

to face life alone

with a heart full of stone

hes a wizened wayfarer

a will-o-the-wisp

an ancient memory

a human being

a few hours pass and

the jet glides down harshly to the

specked surface of a black tarmac

but the journey is over

for him and he breathes

a sigh of relief

its been an endless

hour/minute/second/lifetime

and hes tired

all the world is aloof

hes almost home now but

he stops short

and wonders where exactly that is

but there is a voice in his conscience

guiding him softly

so he closes his eyes

and forgets everything

before this moment

and smiles because hes home

11.07

I wrote this six years after "desire to travel."

s.d.

desire to travel

early early in the morning

before the trees are even awake

i lean out the window

and focus my eyes

upon some distant spot

at the horizons edge

for a few wafting minutes

a spectacular sight

my eyes behold there no

birds/breeze/butterflies

scatter my attention

yet somehow i know

that if i were to go

to the place im yearning

eyes barely discerning

i still wouldnt find

the calm peace of mind

that slowly unravels

for someone who travels

im a nomad in chains

a vagabond cooped up

a wanderer in a glasshouse

an anchored migrant

soon it is noon and

the sun climbs the stairs to its

regal throne in a sky blue sky

but its sovereign kingdom

seems as inaccessible to me as

the sun itself

its been a lengthy

day/week/month/year

and its late

even the trees are asleep

its almost black now but

for a few stars

and the shades are drawn shut

but there is a lamp on beside me

so i let my eyes adjust

they meet your eyes

and i see my future

and i forget everything

before this moment

11.01

s.d.

Scintillation

The richest diamonds:
Less scintillating than
Naked fingers.

3.10
s.d.

Three Wishes

Wish for something mundane:
A raw fish with little bones, rusty
Drainpipe or sprig of maple.

Wish for something trivial:
A faded washcloth, three-leaf
Clover or miscut postcard.

Wish for something transient:
A whiff of mown grass, rainbow
In drizzle or taillight glimmer.

s.d.

Magnanimous Prometheus

The weakest god and strongest man:
Prometheus, his arm in chains,
Is splayed across a rocky hill
Reliving his recurring fears.
The cog in Zeus’s nasty plan:
A monstrous eagle hungrily tears
His sallow shell and fragile will
Until a writhing fool remains.

An awful fate befalls our prey;
His daily anguish makes me weep...
A single tear. Pajamas on:
I contemplate another day,
Ignite the wood stove; then upon
A cozy bed, I drift to sleep.

s.d.





















(Peter Paul Rubens' "Prometheus Bound")

What I Recall of a Message Delivered at 9:52

Tacitus asserts: “Kindness is welcome to the extent it seems the debt can be paid back. When it goes too far gratitude turns into hatred.”

I.

I’m much stronger than my small frame betrays.
Don’t estimate me by the size of my footprints.
My corrugated lips are not yours to kiss.

Forty-eight hours hence, I’m gliding on silently.
Don’t stuff the dumpster I leave behind with moments we never had.
I may be stubborn, but not as thoughts of air when you are drowning.

IV.

I must leave now; I must find home.
I will lose myself in a wilderness of solitude
To find home in the faces of those who care about me.

An unexpected wind pushes me off a soaring skyscraper; I free-fall.
I brace for impact; I land in a net woven of human beings.
There are a few lost teeth, a few broken bones, and I am home.

s.d.

An Antique Sand King

I mocked the words of a wrinkled traveller
Who met Ozymandias, the sand sculptor,
Beside a lone pedestal in the desert:

     “A wreck of a lifeless heart
     Lies sunk in the vast sands.
     Two things fed its shatter’d remains:
     A bare hand and a colossal despair.
     Those stamp’d passions tell that
     Nothing is boundless in its decay!”

A decay whose command is cold and level?
I stretch my lip in a mighty sneer.
Ozymandias, read well the frown on my visage...
My heart is stone and yet I survive.

s.d.
(Note: All of the words in "An Antique Sand King" are recycled from Shelley's famous sonnet "Ozymandias")

Ozymandias (Percy Bysshe Shelley)

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ekphrasis: The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (Second Iteration)

A (curvilinear) waterline
Disguises the remnants of
A disbanded civilization--
A world that teemed with
Life, progress. Submerged
Below the surface, reversed
Inertia coolly rips apart old
Civil War ammo, the tallest
Building on Wall Street, six
Russian rocket ships and
The Golden Ratio (≈1.618).
In essence, these forms
Acquiesce...Steadfast above
The surface, tranquility
Flatters a barren crag with
Exquisite detail. They fail to
Note the fractured limb, a
Mocking finger, interjects.

s.d.



















(Salvador Dalí's "The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory")

Insolitude

I can sit anywhere,    on a chair.
The squawk of your incessance.
Ears unclogged:
     rivulets
        of cotton.

Today was a two out of ten.    At most--
Among the shards intact: jagged
Capsules of pillowy hope
In bile, swimming    clockwise.

Rapidized pulse, clenchedbreath.
Smothered under a Lincoln Log cabin of
You, until some kid    kicks it in.

If I stand somewhere to think:
Staticky oblivion, just    a headache.
So I intend to retrace, embrace
A quiescent moment,
    I retrace.

This is me.    And until tomorrow,
    anew.

s.d.