Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category

alone, at first resentful
as the scotch escapes, but
effortlessly ensnared by a glass,
while distant once (possibly magnetic) imprints echo
their clapping at sounds long gone
But that Still resonate not from quality, no
but in emptiness and vulnerability

a night of television cloaked in life’s dreams
protest futile
and pointless                                        it’d be just as empty otherwise

later a familiar tugging
the corner of a darkroom easel                         (long gone)
the long-absent knock of now-pregnant companions
letters from forgotten (long neglected, perhaps) text beckon
Cummings whines and Toad wails
I am Still, a hack.                                             (but still better than you)

Washington, D.C.
It’s paradise to me
It’s not because it is the grand old seat
Of precious freedom and democracy
No, no, no
It’s not the greenery turning gold in fall
The scenery circling the Mall
It’s just that’s where Mesa wants me
That’s all.

This doesn’t necessarily mean a whole lot, since training takes so long. It’s entirely possible I could get awarded JFK or or ORD before I’m done with training and I’d never have to actually see DC. But I won’t hold my breath either way.

If your city centre is all that I saw
I’d think your business was usually law
What with the dark blue designer suits
By shops displaying Italian made boots
Polluting the air with pricey cologne
Retracting antennae of cellular phones
Storefronts that advertise costly Swiss watches
Available only to those in the very top notches
Whilst the only presence of untidy feet
Are the blue collar workers paving the street

Beyond art museums in all of their glory
Past quite trendy shops lies a much different story
Walk a few blocks and the streets will now sing
Of blackened brick buildings, cheap high-rise housing
Chimneys like monuments point to the sky
Proclaiming industry of days gone by
Do workers still toil in rain mixed with sweat
Knives in their pockets to settle a debt?
O, city of weaving, as you rose you may fall
To the relentless advance of more urban sprawl

How do you draw water? Not from a well with a bucket but with a pen? how do you capture light on paper? do you chisel away at negative space like a sculptor with a block of stone, knocking off everything that doesn’t look like it? Do you use white paint? Thin lines of it?

How do you draw water? Not out of a river but into paper? How do you capture its movement, fluidity, its flux? How do you reflect reflections? how do you record what’s not really there? How do you put down the glistening ripples behind a female mallard and double consort swimming madly downstream? how do you chronicle the triangle of backwash beyond a bridge pylon? how do you remember the explosion of reflexions that occurs when a boat goes by?

And how do you tell your foot to wake up when its been sat on all this time. Ouch.