“Creation of Man” by Michelangelo – Sistine Chapel
by grace of God
I live and breathe
how well or ill
He leaves to me
From my book Bohemian Scents
Life
All posts tagged Life
“Le Village” by Chaim Soutine
dicing time
nibbling life
busy building
false towers
on leasehold
of somebody
else’s estate
fallow shadows
of kernelstones
germinate waste
stillborn seeds
render naught
from what might
have been save
for misguided
priorities lost
to untended
potential self
sadly subsumed
in malpractice
of pride only
realized too late
one more man
none will care
to remember
From my book Bohemian Scents
“Figures in Motion” by Assadour Bezdikian
time exists to effectuate motion
like a shark undeterred ever forward
it cannot survive at a standstill
life is living and living is time
changing aging advancing inexorably
life is carried on currents of moments
in movements of undulant progress
each moment each instant within it
abandoned by consequent waves
become part of the past swirled in
troughs left to travel behind and
beneath rolling crests of the present
time and motion behave in an inverse
relationship causing all life to comport
itself tuned to precarious clocks
youth racing with ass-over-teakettle
carelessness bumping and tripping
for uncertain unreachable futures
while time crawls along at a maddening
slow young impatience-filled pace
time and motion so highly subjective
possessed of no absolute essence
we long-in-the-tooth live our motions
unhurried our fire for speed long since
snuffed by our time the same time who
accompanies aging accelerates cruelly
flies faster and faster approaching
velocities terminal punishing deadly
time exists to effectuate motion
like a shark undeterred ever forward
it cannot survive at a standstill
life is living and living is time
changing aging advancing inexorably
pushing bones in the churn of its waves
bones we fleshed with our too many days
moving dead for the eye of perspective
the center of everything into its cone
till that endpoint acute sweet oblivion
nothingness lives there our motion our
time and ourselves finally cease to exist
From my books Ephemera and Legacies (vol. 2)
“Abstract Soldier” by Greg Pitts
soldier hearken
give battledress ear
to indelible truths
be alive to the death
all about you hear
murmuring deep from
below troubled ground
dripping caverns that
drain blooded soil
into pools of creation
primordium fluids of
earth calling spirits
to home swirling
mortal red sacrifice
into her molten gold
core casting trophies
and armaments
medals of patriots
oaths and hard victories
up into continents
raising green mountains
and heaving blue seas
making over new life
out of death never
flagging successions her
beating heart pulsing
its wax and wane
phasing of peacetime
and war blended essence
of history annals in
broad rolling overlap
waves when the quiet
and crash of the calm
and the chaos appear
indistinguishable
and while you in your
fealty and flesh are
forever remembered
you sadly will find you
are not always honored
From my books Bullets from Bones and Legacies (vol. 1)
Painting by George Ram
it’s come to pass
the page has turned
the last chapter
stands open
its many ways
ready for
saying goodbye
without matter
to which one
it chooses to use
no writ ending
is needed
to eradicate
all of the tale
that preceded it
already evident
meaninglessness
of the story
the time-taught
ephemeral nature
of flesh and blood books
the snuffed candle
will miss not the light
the read page
not the passionate pen
the heard speech
not the earnest intent
even narratives
sung to a music
exquisite of echoes
will dissipate
faster than memories
where goes the
shadow in darkness
what happens to
careful laid
dust in the wind
who will care
give a damn
for the author
of episodes
worthless outside of
their moments mere
chapters of yesterday
************************************
“She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.”
— Shakespeare, from Macbeth
“Day and Night” by Modern Art Prints
daylight dimensions blaze golden
draw life into relief
against endless darkness of
death in the night
From my book Bohemian Scents
“Winding River” by Mr AMeeBa
The mortuaries for young hopes and dreams
Are built in middle age when first we find
Real obstacles impede the flow of streams
We mapped for navigation in our mind
But callow yearnings for romantic end
Should not be coffin-laid before their time
Such wonder is their power to transcend
The tortured course that challenges our prime
Experience yields choices grown more sage
Less likely to abjure a changing line
We modify our prospects as we age
Through crisis, chance or canny redesign
What matters after all is done and tied
Is did we find the bliss beneath the pride
(originally posted April 2013 – written years earlier)
“Gardens in the Rain” by Kazuya Akimoto
supple days
juvenescent
arrived in a
downpour
of decades
a livening rain
lush of nourish
for an era of
handsome set
muscle and bone
bearing fearless
ambitions the
strength of an ox
all the heady
enchantments
of youth
burst to blooms
in the splashes
of formative
raindrops
a storm made
for making a man
for compelling his
journey through
lightning and
thunder-filled
years of his prime
till that day
the rains stop
and the rivers
climb down
from their time
in regress of their
rise and their
whitewater rush
between flesh
of embankments
exposing erratics
and sentient stones
of a masterful age
settled now in
the flow of a
hoary maturity
memories dwindling
escaping like
disbelieved thoughts
in a personal
petrichor vapor
the scent of a life
disappearing
forgotten by most
yet forever
remembered
by the rain
“Abstract Evolution Series 1018” by Dina Sierra
we were born in damp caves
or perhaps came from
under the sea
before planets had names
or a language for teaching us
how to adore them
our tadpole tails twitched
with momentous intense
metamorphosis
standing us bipedal upright
enabling the reach of our
eyes and our ears to the stars
seeking company somewhere
more noble than we
finding only the echoes
of our own beginnings
as ungrateful stewards in heir
to our own earthen womb
left to struggle with finding
the right way to love her
(originally posted December 2013)
“Man in Black Hat” by David Flam
any white shirt would do
for a black and white stageplay
as long as I got to recite
my lines wearing my old
soft black cowboy hat
crown-pinched and brim-rolled
like pages of scripts my gray
fingers would worry
again and again line-by-line
word-for-word all to memorize
life in the hope that some
slightest applause
might redeem the dull effort
(originally posted December 2013)
Poesy plus Polemics 