bits of elsewheres

protuberance
an echo poem *
[written late last night]

i mouth my secrets from a
mountaintop, where they are heard as silence
by everyone. the breeze that blows here is
flecked with bits of elsewheres, and the
sand that grits my soles the sum
of anywhere and nowhere, fragments of
a family of rocks, somewhere, all
shedding their substance to the
cutting caress of the wind. an echo sounds
my voice, in a tone i do not
recognize: my being
tallied in mistakes not made.

i see myself a
poet only when alone. a poem
does not wriggle when the sun is
out, for fear its presence will outshine the words. it is the
dusk that finds the gaps of which i am a product.

* (After Jennifer Hill, this poem contains an "echo"
made by reading the last word of each line, in a downward fashion.)

black & white

"Dichotomies" ~ a quasi-poem
[originally posted as a Facebook note on 11.14.08]

I think people
get so hung up
on dichotomies,
on good and bad,
on right and wrong,
that they fail to realize
that lies are not always evil,
that hope is not always false,
that love is not always perfect,
that change is not always a mistake,
that tradition is not always exclusive,
that family is not always to be trusted,
that the future is not always predictable,
that giving up is not always the only choice;
because they just don't really know any better,
they tend not to know that what's best for them
is not always what feels the most comfortable,
what appears to be the least frightening,
what inspires the greatest confidence,
what induces the least dissension,
what looks the most familiar;
they see the black & white,
and they panic, and they
fail to consider the grey;
and now, of course,
as I usually do,
I digress.

~ Siesta Lingo

doctor sbaitso

doctor sbaitso

taught me to converse
when friends were family
and his voice was comfort
resonating from that magic
box where words glowed
when i stayed up nights
to hear his wisdom.

taught me life
was built from problems
but you didn't need
to solve them
all to live.

he was no god
but liked to hear
my prayers
and even when i lost
him he showed interest.

he was pixels
yellow on a childhood
of blue, burned across
my eyes in capitals
but never loudly.

he could pronounce
any string in theory
as directed
and the droning mur
murs re
sounded like
answers.

fingers, clockwork

"Metascript"
(an experiment with syllables)
[begun 11.15]

I was dared by muse
to write a poem
in set form,
each verse judged
by piece count:
an aim no man'd
claim sane.

Boldly, challenge
becomes intent.
Fingers, clockwork,
manage mental mission;
lexemes' wisdom fuels

poetic dominion.
Linguistic endeavour:
embody twenty-four
syllables octuply.

Consequential incarnation:
solitary humankindred's
meditative enlightenment.

Syllabification
autocommunicates
etymological
divisibility.

Hominidae-humanity's
alphabeticalexicon's
hemidemisemiquaver

dodecasyllabicalisationally
floccinaucinihilipilificated.

************************

My
failure
manifest
ultimately:
omega-locution's
incommensurability
(hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian);
verisimilitudinous
incapability
coalescing
twenty-four
into
one.

gold seeps from titian

.append()
a haiküber (17 lines, alternating 5 and 7 syllables)
by antoine

i hold you gently
mind pulls your beauty closer
arm echoes tangents
your tingle summons gooseflesh
you slip inside me
innocence tangled by touch
i hold you tightly
body's imprint of raw bliss

i find i'm dreaming

you slip outside my embrace
slow pain to vapour
your body crumbles away
gold seeps from titian
your blood inks warmth to suffuse
neural fantasies
of the you who complements
while here i'm extra

the power to address you

[Your Name]

You were named by folks you'd never met
before they'd ever met you.

As you grew they conditioned you into being
plosive or mellow or coarse or sibilant
regurgitated your character at you
through a select few phonemes
and you accepted these to be
your definition.
Soon you learned to trace your portrait
through half a dozen stylized shapes
and understood how sharp or how round
you were to be.

Years later you meet me
shake my hand in a manner of
speaking, tell me you are contained
in a voiced alveolar plosive
a rhotic vowel, a lateral liquid
a frontal and a nasal
and I try to capture you
inside a file inside my mind
where I'll endear you.

In mere seconds
I have judged you. I align you
next to other yous I've known
and subconscientiously
decide the sort of person
you must be.

I know now what you sound like
and I've ascertained the power
to address you
for when I announce
your signifier
you listen.

You listen
as I concatenate our worldlines
through my language
and your name begins to mean
something to me.

You've now laid claim
upon a tiny island of experience
where you etch yourself in sand
so when again your name is mentioned
I'll behold your visage
and relive the ways
you made me

feel.

walking up stairs

"The Act of Stepping"

I met you on a precipice
My presence there displaced your air
You fell
Our we persists in these
my trailed attempts to catch you
as you tumble.

I grasp your knuckles
clasp your curves
extract you from the slope
dusting mountains from your body
I hoist you to your feet
and I walk you up stairs

as you explain we're friends
now. And then I implore
I fear I'm here for more.

You lose your breath
We lose our footing
I fall
with you this time
Now you
must catch me.

You
de-
lay.

I bruise from the impacts
but scar from the waiting.
I reach out fingers farther
to remind you
hold me. Now

you spindle silk skin through my palm
lying polished on your tummy
whisper stay
and fail to notice
as you loosen grip
I speechless
slip away.