Posts for June 4, 2023 (page 11)

Amazing all the ways the world
is ending. The ice caps melting
at the poles, sea levels threatening
Venice, Jakarta, New Orleans—
will they still have Mardi Gras
when Bourbon Street’s underwater?
Oil spills, wildfires, trains derailing.
Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen. Bodies in the streets.
Don’t say gay in Florida or be it in Uganda.
The smart move is keep your mouth shut
& have your epitaph ready. Even some mornings
when it feels like things aren’t so bad after all,
you catch a glimpse of your reflection
in your smartphone screen & Morgan
Freeman’s voice says Hope is a dangerous thing
& you prepare for the worst & forget
the other part. Even when you turn off
your phone off for the night & close your eyes,
you can still see the screen glowing in the dark,
beaming every bad tiding in your direction—
cops swinging batons, kids jumping off bridges,  
killer bees swarming, Burmese pythons
breeding in the Everglades, alligators
creeping from the lake. 

we sat in the valley of the Carina Nebula

surrounded by mountains in space,
                    glittering bright,
In awe of the universe, a humbling sight
so stellar a nursery, where stars are thrust
playfully they swirl within cosmic gas and dust

a colorful canvas, a sight to behold,
a celestial masterpiece, millions of years old,
we see new stars emerge, so bright and vast
as a dying stars light dims; far into the past

The Southern Ring Nebula and its infinites of chance

your will was law, until you became a prisoner to fate and circumstance
you had both experiences of being a god and barely existing in a deterministic world, in which you could not advance
some infinities are larger than others, you feel under chance

The Successions and Separations in Stephan’s Quintet 

You don’t always get back what you put in
I felt depression when it pulled away a friend
you can follow in succession, i’d love to see you again
the gravity of its suggestion as it whispered in the wind
but it’s a wonderful life I questioned;
staring at the cut marks on his skin
you were alive against stupendous odds but felt oppression;
I wish your time we could extend
most people who could exist to see the sunset do not,
sadly in the end

the Pillars of Creation and the drear of existence 

Falling from a great height is one of my biggest fears;
but I fall year after year
gravity you brought me here, do you look at me and jeer?
our existence is a relation I experience with drear
we are two aspects of the same process, that inevitably cohere
you lock me in a sphere
you hold me so severe
gravity, are you always so insincere?

earthworm tells his crush
he is an astronomer
who studies wormholes

lower me

      back down to

                   the land,

                      put

                     another bottle

                      in

                  my

           hand.

     disor

ientated

        see

            the blue

               lights?

speckled      spots

                        gone from

                                 my eyes.

                      maybe

                      if

                 i

             just

stayed

        inside

              i could have

                                s

                                  obered up

                      alright.

     big black eyes

like

        ink filled bal

                           loons

                              getting drunk

                                     again

               its only noon.

change or feel
change in mind

change feeling close
change over time

is Kentucky women’s weaponry.  

Sarcasm veiled
behind lost scripture  

I misunderstand
meaning and smile.  

Not until years
later do I hear sincerity
in a phrase I’ve never
heard before:  

I hate that for you.

Palm trees click and clack in the yard
“I’m in love with my attorney Bernie”
She sings along to Frischberg
I walk through the kitchen and she wants to dance
“To that? It’s 10AM for god’s sake and 88 in the shade”
I wiggle away and she puts on a samba
When I pass back through I’m caught in her arms
Sand on the floor, sand in the sheets
Just another day at the shore

a farm dog’s freedom
to porpoise through cut corn fields
after the harvest

I memorize you in moonlight,
blue silver shine,
whirling to the Grateful Dead
high as the proverbial kite,
leading us to the bed
legs long as Tennessee …

What I mean to say,
after all this time, 
I still haven’t turned the horses out
but confined them to their stalls —
they watch through lean and dangerous eyes 
and paw the hay from insanity.