Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Hiking

Perhaps it is today that totals all meaning of life, a
roundabout progression of time. Perhaps,
like celery, time is good for you.

Stars creep up in their stately way.  Forgetting
to breathe in the night air, one had best forge
expectations in the daytime.
And another lover waits for you at the Sycamore.

Did we figure we'd be this far ahead?
Let's not lose the trail.
Ours is a recessive trait.

Portrait

It lives in the lungs,
is buried and harsh--
bound to travel and
want. It cannot hear you.
It hardly wants to. And
outside the ground lay silent,
feeding the troposphere
with rising smoke.

How To


If the world appears large it is merely
by contrast.
We sat for hours in the anesthetic
silence, keeping our
words to ourselves,
sharing space, forging a relationship
with the idea of one another.

And really the effort was short-lived,
the results divergent yet calming.
Then someone opened a window
and, slowly, the morning fell in.

Please Realize

We grow up learning boundaries, and there
are deadlines, too.
Cushioned as a great aunt's fine china
might be on the last day of the move.
Someday we'll learn to hold broken glass
without getting cut. We melt
crayons on the hot pavement,
desiring a blending of the hues.
Finalized by this action, and wild, we know:
a true believer.
And coming home is a bird, wings extended
in triumph of the day.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

And now for something a little different.

Two short pieces from another class, inspired by and created around found lines:

1. (connecting three lines of found text)
Playing the sister of a brother imaged lost at sea;
she knew he must be out there somewhere, this
figment.  She looked for him on every island they
passed.  She heard him in the crushing ocean waves
and the cry of the salty seagulls.  And at night she
would go out on deck, the moon big and bright,
reflecting off the calmed ocean,
water like glass unbroken, silent stream.
He would probably be gazing at the same moon,
wishing it were a compass to lead him home. He
would be shivering just then in the darkened waves,
bobbing like a cork in a wineglass.  His hopes reached
her in her dreams, this imagined brother.  He was alone.
she was alone.  He did not want to be alone.


2. (connecting two lines of found text and three pictures)
It started in Ezra's lungs, just like that.  A spiny,
troubling sort of feeling that stayed with him for days at a time.
Sometimes he felt as though his breath would never escape and
he held it unwillingly hostage.  This feeling began to creep into
his limbs and he started wondering what was happening to him.
A sluggishness, a lack of clarity in thought and speech.  He had
loved to run and now he was troubled even to climb stairs.
He felt--old.
A thought began to brew in his head.
He knew medicine and science, he knew
the information and building blocks were out there
to solve his mysterious feelings so he began looking.
He brewed and searched and boiled beakers of colored
liquid, and often he would burn himself or cut his finger
on glass broken in his unsteady grasp, and the blood would
spread out on the counter, scarlet as the fever that settled in his heart.

In the Remake,

legendary for its vanity and egotism
still fine and shallow, like tiny theories.  Centuries
inside stopped blinking--and the train pulled in.
He looked at her but she was familiar only in the 
fields of his desire.
His heart slowed.
He nodded at Pedro and walked to the truck.