Poetic prose | poemimage

Category: Poetic prose

It is Not a Willow Green but Empty

It is not a willow green but empty cascading

the lady

pausing to catch her breath

pulls aside her buggy bulging with groceries

so I can pass chest deep in freezing waters

wearing a necklace of antelope teeth.

It is not a willow green but empty crouched like guardian stalactites

the lady said we all make one big mistake

look at me now

I cannot walk to the store

mountains of ice destroy the great cities.

It is not a willow green but empty burning like a sacred candle nine minutes north

I brush my hand against green leaves

on the less-dignified bush mere shrubbery

encroaching upon the sidewalk & bleeding on strangers

I said green arrives each spring

in oceans of hope

the heart balances the head

one wonders why.

It is not a willow green but empty shimmering like a waterfall

aiming directed breath like a mastodon

she inhales tottering

she said the shadow words green but empty…

I reach my hand into the city bush green but empty…

stretch my fingers into spaces large enough to fill a universe

stems, twisted branches and shadows

impersonate an atom

a pearl in deep space.

It is not a willow green but empty looking straight ahead like a god

we dance at each other stomping

I cast shadows over the sidewalk

my heart balancing my head

are you a poet

in cave language her shadow replies

I say only it is the truth

pulling her buggy into a mist made of pearls

pulling

one big mistake.

2 Comments

This is the Scene

This is the scene

where I follow the animal

into the forest.

This could be a bird.

A Cubist experiments

with wind

and Morse Code.

‘I Know’

‘Do you need a ride home?’

‘Yes, I just arrived.’

‘Where will you be staying?’

‘Wherever they will have me and speak the truth.’

‘Have you heard of television?’

‘I have read The Little Box poems by Vasko Popa.’

‘Those are two different things.’

‘I know.’

this is…synchronicity

This is a painted mask.

This is also a painted mask.

This is a complimentary cookie in a wax paper bag stapled to a brown paper bag.

I posted a few days ago about the cow in the time machine

a few minutes later

I sat outside a cafe on a bench waiting for take-out food.

I read about a cow in the book I grabbed on the way out

then again on the previous page

then I looked to see the title of the chapter.

This is…synchronicity.

3 Comments

It Was a Secret

Giotto painted the stars bleeding out his fingertips.

Caroline Coon did a painting of Christine Keeler

As did Pauline Boty.

I fell into the world without a shaman

Somewhere the world is not yet what it will become.

I rented a tiny apartment next door to the girl in white shorts

whose brother, or maybe step-father, has a hook for a hand.

I wake to the sound of birds.

My mother worked near a famous intersection during the war –

music in the nightclubs vibrated echoes all night long.

Somebody said he remembered her –

in a flat boat gliding through the reeds.

Oak trees cast shadows across divided pools

designed in the curvilinear shapes of a Celtic eagle’s head –

I remember fish in deep water

I didn’t want to fall in –

going home from Eddie’s house.

Eddie spread catsup on white bread and smoothed it with a butter knife.

The architect said it was a secret.

4 Comments

I saw a concealed camera. The building owner said, ‘Keep this to yourself. I can give you a better deal.’ They were trying to catch whoever pulled the fire alarms. I took a two-year lease on a bright, spacious studio. New owners took over. My lease expired. They showed me an abandoned studio containing a four-foot high plaster bust of John F. Kennedy. I wrote the artist a letter. His uncle took me to a basement apartment in Brampton. The artist had been living in his mother’s house. Dishes filled the drainer beside the sink. His thin leather coat hung, buttoned, on a wire hanger. Augustin Filipovic won the Mayor of Rome’s Award. His art embellished the cover of Canada’s Centennial Book. Augustin looked like a movie star, wearing a tuxedo & waltzing in the spotlight with a pretty girl in white.

from my book Meme-Noir (2019)

April 24, 2022

Mirror Mirrors

2 Comments

March 24, 2022

2 GIFs

I went to bed with one sock on.

Walt Whitman decided to bury the sparrow.

A suggestion of Janus, before & forever following

the ignition of neural pathways.

A suggestion of Raven dipping her beak

in the soldered inkwell

casting a spell, perhaps.

Been drinking coffee like a chain smoker

this moment crashes into the next.

7 Comments

Image | April 30, 2021

I have been slowly working my way through Marina Tsvetaeva’s ‘Art in the Light of Conscience – Eight Essays on Poetry’ and read yesterday about Zhukovsky’s translation of Goethe’s Erlking. There is a child, on a horse, held in his father’s arms… All new to me. I borrowed the image and added that bit about ‘the only city’ and related the child’s emotions to String Theory. To not do justice to Tsvetaeva’s essay titled Two Forest Kings I’ll just call it mesmerizing.

7 Comments

March 16, 2021

Guardian Spirit

His appearance gnarled & guardian spirit-like. Or she. Or it. My first blog posting since the computer crash left me with an uncooperative faded & dated tablet to work with. I found a recommended refurbished MAC store, across town, near where where I once walked the dog. The dog I haven’t seen in a long time. Circumstances change and life continues marching. Or standing there throughout four seasons with wooden round owlish eyes. Or sinking into the underground, the underworld, gnarled roots entertaining coincidence and circumstance. Blooming & shedding the bloom. Alarmed. Observant. Older. Amused. Walking the dog and not walking the dog.

4 Comments

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Category: Poetic prose

August 26, 2022

It is Not a Willow Green but Empty

August 21, 2022