Pardon, Me.

Pardon me my confusion,

You see, I'm feeling lost.

First it was the time coiled up in a net.

Then it was my mind hanging on a string, and yet,

Totally tangled, jangled,

Nothing worth the cost:

          Pardon me, I'm lost.

Perspective

This is something I wrote several years ago. I'm reposting it for Poets United. I've always loved concrete poetry.

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all    

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

in memory

you stand

an abstraction

of sensuous delight

however

reverie out

of all proportion

with grim reality

does not withstand

a detailed scrutiny

i write to invent

not re-create

therefore

i must

state

you

are

a matter

of perspective

-->

dancing with the sad bear

dancing with the sad bear


in happy town
where the girls
are teddy bears
boxing
and the boys
are shirtless
fur
there's home
brewing
in the basement
there's cigar
teeth
and cycle
knees
there's yard
apes
corn and creeks
there's you
dancing with
the saddest bear
in the cage
by the road

Weight of Memory

Weight of Memory

On the shelf
of the thrift store,
amid detritus
of other lives,
a teacup,
cracked and lined,
and I am in
another time
when she was likely
as young as I
am now, and I was
hardly old enough
to climb
onto the chair alone.

We drank tea from
flowered cups.

She gave me little gloves
she kept in a drawer
of the hutch.

Lace and buttons.
Tea in flowered cups.
My knotty hand
can hardly lift it up,
it weighs that much.

Solitaire

Solitaire


The power has been out here
Twice already.

I know I should be writing
While there's light.

I know I should be writing.
I never find the time to,

But still, I waste
A solitary night.

I turn the cards and shuffle,
Smack them down while thinking,

I know I should be writing
While there's time.

When Grandma lay here dying,
I used to hear her playing,

Shuffling through the night
Until she'd gone.

I know I should be writing.
I harbor no illusions;

I shuffle, and I play
This game alone.

And you, Dear Reader, shimmer,
Figment of my Fancy,

You shake your head 
At each cliche I own.

I harbor no illusions,
That my words somehow matter,

Witness to things
I think or feel.

Solitary writer,
I sit here in the darkness.

I sit here in the darkness,
And I deal.

False Faces

Happy Halloween, everyone.

















False faces

False faces,
they called them
when I was a child --
the masks we wore
for trick-or-treat.

I picture still
the piggy face,
my silky hair
appropriately,
in pigtails.

That was it;
that was my disguise.

If that was me,
that anthropomorphic thing,
I don't recall the choice --
choosing for myself
to be a happy little pig.

Perhaps I did,
but that's the thing
about memory --
it makes false faces
of the past.

I don't recall a voice
back then,
but that is not to say
I wouldn't, if asked today,
disguise myself
exactly that same way.


Karen






- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

going home

You can’t go home again, Thomas,

You can't go home again.

Too many things are at end, Thomas,

Too many days and too many nights,

Too many hills we’ve had to climb

And too many times descend.

We’ve too many stories lived and told

Then placed up on the shelves;

Crossed too many windows and too many doors

To go back where we were before --

You can go home again, my love,

You can, of course you can!

The apple tree’s grown bigger now,

With branches spread for reading;

The berries bear the scars of birds,

And grapes boast in their swinging.

The childhood circled magic ring

Stands open as it did;

The little house where we first met –

And yet,

Too much has fled our grasp, Thomas,

Too many things have gone.

Too many days and too many nights,

Too many lives and too many doors

Are ashes of what went before.

You can't go home again, Thomas,

For all your words can say.

No matter that it breaks our hearts,

That life has passed away.

Shadow Blossom Memories

Beside the gate,

a girl, caught in sun

that halos round her head

like dandelion blooms,

squints up her eyes.

Beneath the dress

that tulips when she stoops,

small toes plow paths

of prints in

fertile earth.

Beyond our view,

in silent still salute,

the master’s hand drops

shadow blossom memories

at our feet.

The Old Wound

The old wound pulls

me back and back,

tugs me a salt-filled ache

into the blood and mud

and mist, the smell of sulfur

and the blueblack metal dark,

always the dark.

I turn away my eyes,

turn my eyes away

unto the hills where comes

no peace, no peace I find,

only a scar, a darker lore,

extraordinary passions

and the wound.

perspective

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

in memory

you stand

an abstraction

of sensuous delight

however

reverie out

of all proportion

with grim reality

does not withstand

a detailed scrutiny

i write to invent

not re-create

therefore

i must

state

you

are

a matter

of perspective