poem

Short Poems

Bob, , , 12 Comments

“Nothing is more glorious than the full moon to those who ride or walk under its beams. But whoso goes out of doors expressly to see it returns disappointed.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Selected Journals 1820-1842

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Uncertainty –

As a way of generating income for poets.

Daydream-

A species of butterfly which are also suitcases for angels.

Greetings-

We wave, like photons,
Particularly, an imaginary tree in a picture book.

A Metaphysics-

Without corners
Without terms
A harrowing rescue of afternoon sky
For ideology

Listen-

An elbow at dawn.

Half the pages missing.

The immediate
Vicinity.

The Bicycle of a Poet-

The moon of empty miles, parched as the street painted lines.
All they will find is dusk amongst the thickets and x-ray trees.

Spring Tramping

Bob, , , 24 Comments

The cosmic roughhouse
Of yellow flowers

Purple fingerprints
On UFOs

Verse barreled
Over Niagara Falls

I don’t want anything
Just unkempt astonishment

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The mote in the sunbeam is sovereign of the unknowable

Like probability
The number of insects in the field

A point has no circumference

A slim chance of dusk on the city roofs
The electrical towers sing your name

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Afterward, it’s a bath then a long walk, I think of joints
Smoked in the parking lots of abandoned retail giants,
At dusk. The abstract laundry to hang,

Or how flowers touch the imperceptive steadiness of being
When the spring moon is null.

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He knew the dead ends, where the chain link is pulled from its post,
How the moon transforms into feral words, across fields, a moon chased down
By sidewalk chalk verses. The ambler on the first day of spring
Must always in a few uncertain words puzzle us all.

everything.

Bob, , 19 Comments

puddles, bicycles, the cosmic microwave background, the holidays of stolen shoes barefoot in the spring, summer halos on poet vandals, of black marker epigrams on railroad trestles, of barbwire thistled with dandelions, the biceps of imaginary trees, the forehead of chicory dusk, the trance of knuckled stars, and sidewalks rapt with chalk operas,

the unavoidable cosmic, here in chance and outward in venture, the notes wrung of cascading rivers, the numbers in the pockets of ghosts, the turmoil of stars blistering with joy, the epiphanies that know the difference between one and one,

the waist of the moon summed in countless seconds standing with distant crows, to struggle these steps bright towards the arriving moments, the versified shoulders turning home at last, departing through stellar doors, and on these paths string the words for what the spring wind is good for,

These Walks

Bob, , , 24 Comments

Beauty stuck in the throat, like a throttled moon
Vanguarding over the cut-out cityscape.

Summed in vastness, put to the feet, over and over
On pavement, down alleys, along railroad tracks,
Passing through railway yards, soliciting abandoned fields.

Ringing along the barbwire fences, and seeing graffiti hold its
Breath as the city curls up into dusk, into dark, blinks
Over the edge of stars.

A timelessness between time, a door where there is no proof.

Such beauty could pinch together an event horizon.
These solitary meanderings of star-stuffed pockets.

A Poet’s Style

Bob, , 20 Comments

Tattoos-

A lawn chair
On the forearm.

On the shoulder, the
Murmuring
Of birds.

Melody for a toy piano
On the dorsal of the hands.

Clothes-

No shoes
But the idea of shoes.

Appetite-

A table crowded with empty bowls.

Metaphysics-

The cosmos on the lips,
I breath it in through nostrils,
Pull its lint out of my belly button.

In Conclusion-

These poems that are intolerable
Improbable poems in yellow pants
At dusk in a ruined shirt staring at the future.

All That is Left

Bob, , 19 Comments

The rain. The dusk. The lone bassoonist. Sacked by a summer wind.

Brought home a sandwich of lost sidewalks. Out of a job, yet bookishly good looking.

If I was ever to the point, it was not in this poem.

If ever there was a point, it was not me that made it.

All that is left
Is chance,

Impossible
Solemn chance.

And love is

Your underwear on backwards. When it’s on at all.

Everyday Details

Bob, , 13 Comments

My socks
Are damaged
Clouds,

Especially
The more
Ruined end
Of the couch.

~

I spent all morning
With
A trilogy of daises,

The
Galaxy
In my ears.

~

Dusk is a thing
Like a fiction,
More reel than painted lines.

~

The cat sleeps
Like ordered food,

The prettiest
Vandalism,

Unexplained
Quotation marks.

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Final Will and Testament

A backflip, a bowl of apples, a solar flare,
A cape, a rectangle, a box
Of matches enjambed, a traditional dance,
The microns of data of a butterfly,
The moon over the garage.

A Form is a Form is Not a Form

Bob, , 10 Comments

The rattled poets swing
From jumbled words coarse with uneasy beauty.

Scanning vast unleashed dogged utterances.

Breathe is huge. Everything is true.

A strange exclamation. A brief current of eternity.
That is somehow forever
Like a soul.

That there is no soul
But there is forever.

That is enough of that. And poems for lunch.

This should be absurd and it’s not.

Calamity is a simple game. Mastered
By no one.

And if this ditty sings, biographies of musical chairs.

Here’s an Idea

Bob, , 21 Comments

A trampoline being trampled.
A yawning angel.

A carpool of nudists
In a traffic jam.

The plans
For an imaginary
Tiger.

Ghosts are ambidextrous.
How absence
Leans
But who can tell.

Childhood, for instance.
It’s ramshackle centeredness,
And hostility to interpretation.

The wind eases out of its typeface.
Henceforward, imaginary birds
Branch on solitary meanderings.

Somehow it matters
The picturesque.