Twain

“Mark Twain” by Steve Penley

humor with an admix of salt
floats down cynical rivers
through heartlands where
whitewash and mud paint
colloquial idioms raucous
with satire of innocent foibles
and deeper cut flaws of a
galloping history peccant
with self-indulged characters
countrified mise-en-scene
dreamscapes of Camelot
paupers and shot-laden frogs
here is America rendered
with mastery argot so deftly
employed to amuse the most
pompous of old Europe ears

 

 

From my book Pieces of Wine

Vision

“Luminous Vision”
Painting by Constantin Galceava
From etsy.com

vision is not of the eyes

it assembles itself in the mind

where glaucoma can’t reach it

an unseen but seeable imagery

poets and thinkers rely on

a figurative comprehension

imaginative within realm

of the possible given belief

that all concepts are possible

sight is not insight for insight

requires understanding

beyond what mere percepts

present incompletely to senses

in habit of being misled by

the physical features defining

the world while neglecting the

rich metaphysics the aura

philosophers recognize glowing

invisibly splendid in all that exists

or might ever yet come to exist