Just wondering...

.....since I don't speak Chinese... what the anonymous posters are saying to me????? I have just been deleting. Figured if they could read and understand my poetry they should be able comment in English.

new Reading

Went to B&N yesterday and bought 3 new books. Should keep me up on my bedtime reading for awhile. I am soooo glad I finally got the right reading glasses!

Rebuilding files

I found some hard copies ( you remember paper?) of some of my lost poetry. A bit of typing but I can get them back in my hard drives. Not all the lost files...but a start. :)

Perspectives

Perspectives

What I call blue, you see green.

What you call bitter, I taste sweet.

Nor even know the truth of it

if there is truth at all.

Blue is a summer sky, loneliness.

Green is young grass, envy.

We wrap our words in our own 

meanings, unwrap each other’s

with our own metaphors.

You said to me

I loved you the first time I saw you,

the way you looked in blue.

Invisible Train

Invisible Train

I never saw the iron horse

whose course stalked mine. I saw

lights flash red in other people’s eyes, heard 

a cold, shrill whistle in the words they spoke.

Wind delivered 

distant wails,

skeletal rattles like the clatter of tracks.

Tickles of smoke stung my nostrils, tremors 

rolled under my feet.  Once

at a crossing I heard

a whine, felt a knife slice air

into ripples across my face 

                             but saw  nothing there- 

the way sun’s light frosts

forest green, pine needles appear to shiver 

though the day is warm,

                             that sort of illusion- 

I thought if I stretched my hand into its path

it would pass right through me. I would feel 

the shake and sway

of boxcars all up my arm

but could draw back uninjured in its wake.

                             The real illusion.

At night by orange vapor lights

anonymous switchmen went about

their silent work, set wheels 

to rails that in time

would bear that thundering

force on our collision course.

I didn’t look. I didn’t see.

Some abstract poster art

Block

Still wishing I could Topple the block. i can't seem to write much new..just rehash old stuff.

An old one:Scenic Routes

Scenic Routes

The children’s teary-eyed complaints       

        Are we lost?

you meet head on

        No, we’re together.

By now I’ve learned that every journey 

includes its share of scenic routes.

Picturesque detours through parking lots,

dead-end alleys.

Sometimes we actually leave the map,

drive across grass,

bumping our way back to where we were.

You drag us on illegal

hikes through construction sites,

daring acts of trespass,

choose sudden, unmarked roads

that turn into footpaths, end

at a stranger’s decrepit barn, populated 

by bats instead of cows.

Wading into rapid streams,

you roll rocks up waterfalls- 

snapshots made without a camera.

Adventure is often a mistaken turn

where blinding views leap up

to hit us right between the eyes.

The unexpected joy of finding 

what we never knew we’d missed.

Are we lost?

        No, we’re on the scenic route.

Cruise out of Seward, Alaska

Botanical Gardens/British Columbia

Poetic Devices

Poetic Devices

I sold my car to become a poet.

Not for money but device-less

originality.

My computer too.

That window without

a view.

In days to come

I shunned my dishwasher,

listening instead to the swoosh 

of suds in the sink.

The squeak of a clean plate

echoed in my voice.

One morning I noticed 

the air conditioner’s drone,

that constant groan of cold air 

had to be cliche.

I traded its roar for tacky ticking--

then I tossed my clock

and bought a sundial.

Always I reached

for what had never been

invented. Further and further back

till there was no written language.

Eventually I had to stop

writing altogether, get myself

a drum. 

the pound of pure sound--

never mind its wordless rendering.

I dream I am chased by a tiger

panting without metaphors

for my fear or here

sitting in my mud house

without a carpet cleaner.

Leavings

Leavings

There is a sense of ruin at low tide--

drowned things surface

like relics unearthed, spiritless.

Thorny spikes of urchins, random wrecks

of shell. You poke broken remains

as if seeking the essence of the thing

as distinguished from its matter.

You hunt for the delicately pleasing

in the difficult diameter of a bone

knowing you’ve no control over

what washes back in and what

stays lost forever.

At high tide, the sea was full,

continuous. Every form within it 

had an interconnected sweetness.

Beached, these twisted strands

of kelp are slimy waste, unlikely links

in survival’s chain. 

You sit on a callous of rock, a painful outcrop 

that wasn’t there 

before the tide swept back

leaving lifeless artifacts behind.

Moon Cove/Sardinia 2001

Moon Cove

But we were there at noon.

From caves sought more for cool than privacy,

we gazed across turquoise glass,

poked at our indifferent lunch

of hard-boiled eggs

and bottled water

imagining moonlight and wine.

We tread the rocky barrier

to the sea wishing we’d brought 

different shoes,

found the water less than warm,

bobbing weightless above its stony bed

as tiny fishes nipped

at our toes.

Up the face of the cliff

that curved above the cave,

rock climbers, 

their ropes strung taut,

kicked off the surface, dropping

down, then pulling up

again in a motion like the surf.

We never saw the stars rise above

the place somebody named Moon Cove.

As we stumbled back toward the pier

our philosopher guide offered simply,

Some years, the sea, she brings us sand,

mounds it up in snowy dunes; some years

she takes the sand away and brings us rocks.

Lost Sea Gulls

Lost Sea Gulls

Where did I get the notion

that anything with wings

knows always where it’s going?

In Reno sea gulls ride the heat

of hotel floodlights,

just circle

and circle seven hundred at a time

as if it were a lighthouse

in the desert.

Newspapers scream stories

of planes that crash

hundreds of miles off course.

Dragonflies persist

diving into the electric shock

of my patio bug zapper.

But any day now,

I trust angels will find us--

our pain among millions--  

       wrapping us in white wings.

Still Waiting

 Still Waiting 

Let me breathe your branches

in October wind,

fall-colored streamers

on chill air.

Let me put my hand inside

your coat, orange with yellow patches,

and lay my face

against your chest.

Because I want to tell you something,

stand still, an autumn tree,

knowing what will likely come

but waiting.

Deconstructionism

Deconstructionism

Worlds wait in a word,

multitudes panting to have

their say.

You might have owned its meaning once

when, held secret in your head,

its other voices eluded detection.

But you have come to know

the spectrum 

can not be glossed over.

Speak and you risk interpretation.

Stay silent and that ,too,

becomes an object of imagination.

You are an actor

in your own life story.

Though you intrigue to steal the scene 

from other players, they add 

the small details that color your role.

The audience fills in the blank lines.

And in the end

no one knows or really cares

what it was you meant to say.

Your love affair with your meaning

lands on the rocks, deconstructed

in dialogue.