carpe poem #6

does art point to something? or can there be art for art's sake? there can almost be, for an artist who finds something beautiful or exceedingly terrible and does her best to plaster a patina of nice words to say things she doesn't really mean. if art didn't point to truth or beauty, or some ideal, why would someone make art? art isn't practical; art is ideal. And even if it was practical, like a hammer, that would only prove that it was made for something: hammering.

here is another poem. please take and eat like a scone.

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Aware

The sunrise splashes magma on the night

and I gaze to glean some light

as I drive on the thoroughfare,

this is prayer.

Frosted freckling on the glittering ground

crunch as I hear the sound

of cars turning with care, 

this is prayer.

My breath, like incense, white and heavy,

hovers by the Mr. Coffee, 

and the cream and sugar I prepare,

this, too, is prayer.

Now I sit at open table,

listing all I'm able

to do in this day's affair,

this is prayer.

And the approaching rush of self-rebukes,

of all my fakery and flukes,

strip me strengthless bare,

this is prayer.

Then comes distraction of distant fantasy, 

admired by fictive company,

doing that which I would not dare,

this is prayer.

Fidget of my chair and under watch by my boss, 

my legs I cross and recross,

I take a deep breath of air,

this is prayer.

This is prayer, to begin in foothills rough,

this is prayer in daily stuff,

in wherever I am made aware,

this is prayer.

carpe poem #5

I admit I have been slowing down. I've been distracted lately. It sometimes takes too much to try to write a poem, and it sometimes comes pouring out as easily as spilling water. Here is a poem I had worked on before. Thanks for reading.

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Worm

I was sorry

to disturb the pale

body as I raked 

the overdue leaves.

Having made its bed

in the wet dark,

it had snacked on earth in secret

and earth, passing, covered it.  

Imagine its surprise

in being suddenly illuminated,

gasping like a root

green-shooted and denuded

to the unbearable atmosphere

that I commanded with my task. 

Imagine my surprise

in being thus discovered,

my appetite raked

up by His gardening work,

breathlessly squirming under

the saturated sky. 

Disposed to disposal, 

as dust is to dust,

in what earthen vessel

could I compost a most

fertile burrow while He, bending 

down, knuckles like mountains,

bowed His sun-face into my horizon,

and divined the number of my segments?

carpe poem #4

A happy new year to you all. Thanks for reading.

---

Scope

My father gifted me

with a microscope 

when I was young and curious,

the kind that used a mirror to shoot

light up through the slide and eyepiece

illuminating small letters of life

into galactic epigrams:

the bristles on the cricket leg:

a grove of trees after the snow has melted.

The vascularity of an oak leaf:

a cartographer's conundrum.

The glinting scale of a goldfish:

the gilded shields of a phalanx.

Little did he know, as did I,

that I was learning poetry

which I later studied by looking

at sonnet-slides under microscope

where a single line was a city,

a single word a home, 

and a single line break

the universe. 

But before I had studied,

while I was still bright-eyed, 

a friend graciously let me squint

through her telescope

one bright evening

this time at things which were so large

they gave off their own light

illuminating lens and my eyes

and this world,

breath-taking to see 

the numinous so near

fitting into the cradle of my palm

the abstract condensed with personality,

a star perched like a bird on a manger.

And when I wrote, and when I write,

I have one eye in the telescope

and the other in the microscope,

which explains why poetry at times

feels like vertigo, rising and falling, 

and trying to step away from this observatory,

I take a walk, muttering half-madly

into the wind that 

poetry is life

and life is a word.