Imagine

 

“Language of Stone” by M F Husain

 
imagine a million
angry hurt poets
avengers with brickbats
blunt weapons of words
raining down artful blows
upon philistine brows
raising consciousness
striking again and again
against biased indifference
to stanza and verse

patience fairly exhausted
with readers consumed
by that barbarous prose
overweening and rude
semi-literate wits
disinclined to appreciate
nights-on-end struggles
to pull from the muse
just a single apt phrase
in conveyance of mood

imagine a million
angry hurt poets
a virtual army
enlisted by passion
in liege to Apollo
their salvos of song
drowning dissonance
vanquishing language
complacent and lazily
scribbled by boors

would the world then
be better for metaphors
intercourse carried by
fluent rhetorical tropes
allegorical truth in the
place of the prosaic lie
while the poem is a challenge
the poet is honest
minds better informed
by the heart than the spleen

Incommunicado

“Solitary Dreamer” by Gordon Meggison

 

prose is a conversation
whereas poetry is prayer
tongue-tied masses left
mute in the cold

 

 

From my book Pieces of Wine

Evolution

Image from pinterest.com

 

Finger paints, crayons and chalk sticks:
tools for untutored expression
of the wonders erupting around me
back when I first learned to see

Erasers and number two pencils:
tools for practicing alphabets
each letter a germinant seed
back when I first learned to read

Fountain pens, inkwells and blotters:
tools for incipient authorship
compositions committed to ink
back when I first learned to think

Clicking ballpoints and felted tip pens:
tools for the custom of politesse
conveying the feelings I wanted
back when I first corresponded

Mechanical gauged leaded pencils:
tools for apprentice architects
rendering visions with craft
back when I first learned to draft

Typewriters, ribbons and white-out:
tools of up-all-night scholarship
dissertations born of caffeine
back when I first pleased a dean

Mimeographs and copy-type pools:
tools of the white collar trade
where ambition started to burn
back when I first learned to earn

Dictaphones, shorthand stenographers:
tools for the budding professional
memos composed in my head
back when I first climbed ahead

Broad stroking roller ball pens:
tools by which bosses authorize
signing my bold imprimatur
back when ambition grew hotter

Computers, e-mail and spreadsheets:
tools of the corporate officer
scaling the ladder with speed
back when I learned to succeed

PDA’s and private secretaries:
tools for the senior executive
standing astride the cap of the wall
back when I thought that I had it all

Portable laptops, the blogosphere:
tools for quite different fulfillment
reluctant to damp the old fire
back when I learned to retire

It’s odd how one great arcing circle
evolves from one linear life:
my grandchildren’s Crayola crayons
my scratchpad for doodles to play on
my plump Mont Blanc Meisterstück pen
bring me back to old pleasures again

 

 

(originally posted April 2013 – written years earlier)

Art of the Letter

“Woman Writing a Letter” by Rupert Shephard

lamenting lost art

one on one

undistracted

exquisite exchange

of most personal

sentiments

open heart honesty

joined by an elegant

intimate touching

of pen upon paper

bestowing its

private ink kiss

correspondence

conceived with

one person in mind

a devotion of

disciplined thoughts

to but one set of eyes

quiet coupling

of language unhasty

each word given

thoughtful reflection

before being

carefully tenderly

drawn across pages

of candid expression

Inamorata

“Tuscany Arches” by Marcia Baldwin

 

we gave birth to each other
presenting ourselves
to galleries of wisdom
hungrily scooping experience
piled at their feet
our puppy paws tenderly padded
anxious for callouses
needed to journey
the masonry distance
through arches of decades
across ancient tongues
learning unspoken phrases
of voluble silence

Elegance Gone

“Beyond Language” by Pablo Saborio

a language diminished

reduced to a shorthand

electrons emoticons acronyms

standing in stilted expression

neat linear litter on paperless tablets

the heart’s vast emotional catalog

coldly compressed into

thumbs full of symbols

new wooden-like words for

new grammarless speech

an impassive indifferent

inelegant age

in which intimacies

are remotely experienced

feelings confined to a

narrowly channeled dry jargon

attending coarse intercourse

leaving the poet evicted

a cultural oddity

fondly remembered

but no longer worshipped

Poetry of Pain

Detail from Lascaux Cave Painting

the poetry of pain
wants to agonize
words wants to
rage on a page
sharp abstractions
to sever the mind
from the brainstem
like chemical knives
of the pharmacist
cut through loud
neurotransmissions
to give madding
minutes of rarefied
mind-altered peace

it’s been known
since the caves
of Lascaux that
art drawn from
savage experience
comes to acquire
chary reverence
we suffering poets
articulate wails in
our resonant caves
huddled inside the
echoes aspiring to
quiver the igneous
marrow of mountains

 

From my book Music of Scars

One Way to Look at It

Painting by Karen Mathison Schmidt
From karenmathisonschmidtgallery.blogspot.com

the heart of a poet
bleeds incongruous ink
beats avant-garde tempo
distinctly unique lingual
grammar and syntax
a personal canon
expressive of character
warmed by the ardor
inflaming its host
here is center
this prodigy organ
possessed of first principles
liquescent art
pumped through finger veins
arteries carrying words
in a fluid suspension
to body parts
known to communicate
swelled by a beautiful plasma
tumescent and ripe
for the spilling
the writing
the telling
the touching
of other hearts
poorly sustained by
prosaic derivative authorship
ready receptive
and needing of nourish
a vital esthetic enrichment
by riveting verse

Incommunicado

“Solitary Thoughts”
Painting by Jia Lu
From visionsfineart.com

 

prose is a conversation
whereas poetry is prayer
tongue-tied masses left
mute in the cold

Handcraft

Student at Marcel Marceau Mime School
Photo from globerove.com

penstrokes and pantomime
silently shouted expressions
paper and airspace
performance art
narratives told to the eyes
for the voice is a coward
whose history landed
too often on ill-disposed ears
so they essay their stories
in scribbles and gestures
Italians are good with words
made by our fingers despite
my retreat into generalizations
but truth is the truth
hands will sign what they
want you to know
at worn desks or on portable
pedestals placed in town squares
either way they convey ideas
visibly sometimes profound
make you think laugh or cry
communicate gravitas lighten
your heart quiet dialogues
dialed with message and magic
unless you’re deliberately blind