Glass Acuities

 

“Day of Glass” by Erich Heckel

 
sand and ash
plain ideas
made from
granular thought
come to bond
in the heat of
intelligent fire
transformed in
that singular
chalice of bone
conscious crucible
elements changed
intellectual alchemy
purges impurity
giving release from
the sins of obscurity
rendered transparent
no longer a solid
not yet quite a liquid
a slow-moving
pensive deliberate
shapelessness
seeking some nobly
provocative form
ineluctably cooled
into choices of
permanence
ethically clear
artful lenses or
vessels admitting
of light the full
spectrum of truth
able now to be
sharply discerned
and displayed
defined starkly and
wholly accessible
no more excuses or
errors of judgment
but truth must be
handled with care
revelation can startle
and clarity can blind
sand and ash
plain ideas
the mean friable
substance of
unrefined minds
though they undergo
wizardry burned
and then turned
into beautiful glass
brilliant specimens
smoothly well-reasoned
exquisite exhibits of
vitreous wisdom
are evermore fragile
yes those
even those
best and highest
expressions of
artisan minds
can be easily shattered
by the merest
oblivious flick from
a philistine boor

Directions

“Cross and Weather Vane” by Arthur Dove

 

modern turns old

in my verdigris mouth

copper cupola skin

weathers newborn

ideas to deep tarnish

what once was a

smoothly articulate

vane in surmount of

my mind now stands

heedless of thought

bearing winds frozen

rusting in place

pointed permanently

at my cardinal past

 

 

From my books Pieces of Wine and Legacies (vol. 2)

Exotica

“Vanitas Still Life” by Pieter Claesz

 

I am drawn to fabricative vestiges
odd artifacts orphaned by culture
castoff heirlooms of clever-bent candlewax minds

melting visions of handsome arcanum
subliminal beds of mathematics
for whose formulas priests and engineers vie

curious handiworks rigged of small use
save to elevate medieval cells
of profligate mundane cerebral existence

unrepentant assertions of sophists
caught in autocrat teeth by poor students
of Machiavellian critical thinking

decorations I hang from sagged roofbeams
and mount over friable mantels
where they’ll burn when the vanitas torch paints my house

 

 

(originally posted April 2013)

Riverthink

“Im Schatten” by Ute Laum

 

placid headwaters
spill down through conscious cascades
finding confluence
teeming with jumbled language
swirling into coherence

 

 

(originally posted October 2013)

Tabula Rasa

“Muse of Poetry” by Alphonse Mucha

what do I do with

unbearable imminence

certain that some unknown something

will soon spring to mind

when my insolent muse

remains lazy with sleep

sprawling nice as you please

on white sheets of my unmade ideas

unresponsive to prodding

unheeding of all implorations

blind to the easting aura of dawn

deaf to the noise of impatience

ungrateful and willful

as if she could live long

without me

 

 

(originally posted May 2013)

Tuscan Meadows

 

“Tuscan Countryside” by Rosanne Kaloustian

 

 

gold flecks warm subtle umber tones

where sunsets breach copses of cypress

brushing haloes on grainy weaved canvas

wearing portraits of culture reborn

to poets and painters and patrons

civic humanist theories

rear genius from medieval darkness

theological intrigues surround

anatomical ethics ensculpted in

stones of vernacular science

adorning the crenels that crown

philosophic entablature plastering

palaces built amidst commoner masonry

gardened with scholarly grasses

wild-flowered riverbanks channel

swift currents of sparkling ingenious ideas

watering fields of esthetic ambrosia

casting their scent across white marble cities

unhinged of their doors, dismantled of gates

thrown wide open to eagerly hail

intellectual throngs of posterity

 

 

(originally posted May 2013)

Waterfall

“Mountain Waterfall” by Linda Olsen

turgid and tumbled

perpetual flowing

ideas of great men

churn in rapids of history

crash against rocks

of hard validation

rechanneled by judgment

through fine pebbled sluices

that filter impure bits of

unsound reason and

abject presumption

these freshened

clean clarified waters

of potable truth

converge in a cataract

pouring their wisdom

over high ledges

to slowly erode these

last skeptical edges

then plunge headlong down

into deep shaded pools

whose location will

ever be hidden from all

but inquisitive minds

of determined persistence

thirsty for knowledge

*     *

(originally posted May 2013)

Free

 

Photo from flickr.com

 

 

this being a poet
is a lonely affair
a test of survival
in digital wilderness
dense with white
wastelands of words
jumbled piles of scree
language broken with
tumbledown phonemes
and morphemes that block
every inland and littoral route
here no rules of safe syntax
intrude to the rescue
no tools at hand forged
for assisting the mind
that wants passage
from lost to discovered
from chaff to coherence
alone must it labor
relying on bare muscled
fingertip brains for
constructing a bridge
of escape using
concepts as caissons
support for pieced
stone-by-stone
interlock verses that pave
the way back to a
font covered screen
where contented
the mind can leap
free and forever

 

(originally posted January 2014)

Ormolu

Image from pinterest.

(Originally posted June 2013)

thoughts emerge
from secret rooms
using unseen doors
hidden in panels
trimmed by memories
papered with dreams

they enter unbidden
stand in mid-mind
where black ormolu
mirrors can capture them
passing them through
into sensible light

Viscera

“Cosmogenesis #52” by Paul Shapiro

 

words rumble under my ribcage
trapped in thoracic pink spaces
bouncing off organs arranged
between belly and heart
here they’ll probably live till
the coroner’s blade sets them free
but then what would they do in a morgue

unless I can get peristalsis to urge them
through miniscule channels
the riverine lymphatic vessels
up into my arms and then
down through my capillar
fingertips where I would tap them
out onto the keys of my dell

then both you and I
the whole literate world
could all see
just exactly
what they
have been longing
to say