Upon A Cloud

Today’s poem from quarantine is suggested by the word pondering. Next in a series of poems suggested by words gathered from my friends and family.

“Upon A Cloud”

Lumbering. Perhaps: Burdensome.
That’s what it feels like right now.
It should be light, I guess. Even: whimsical,
made for summer days:
sweet breezes and birds chirping.
But this feels as delicate as…
…as the thunder of elephants.
Perhaps that comes from the word itself:
PONDERING. Sounds like PONDEROUS.
Maybe I’m letting too much me in.
I need to breathe out, let the spring wind
cleanse the baffles, excise the PONDERATION
like so much exhalation.

That’s better.

What? That cloud there?

Looks like an elephant to me.

Ponder too long and now it’s a dog.

Oh? Me?

I’m just pondering the nature of a cloud
and letting all else be.

Extremes

Today I also wrote two poems. These showcase the mental extremes I have been bouncing between since this pandemic isolation occurred. The first poem is based on the word antediluvian

“Antediluvian”

“Apres moi, le deluge!”
I shout, in abject narcissism.
Nay, I am less important
But I fear, nonetheless, a flood
Mounting, rising, looming westward,
Desperate to snuff my idealistic world,
This antediluvian paradise in which I breathe.
Oh! That it would not crash
And like some far-off tsunami
Wash away my humble home under-hill.
But may it pass me by
And like some vanquished kaiju
Slink off into nothingness unspent.
This my supplication, sent from knee to heaven.
May some o’ershadowing Eru hear
And grant to me the mercy of ages.
Still stand I on sand-swept shores
Awaiting Morgoth’s doom,
Which seems must fall.

And then, based on the word lasagna

“A Snack”

Garfield?!
Where is that darn cat?
I have but recently sat
A great baked pasta that
When eaten will show what
Great culinary legerdemain (caveat:
Perhaps I cook not so well. A feat-)
Hark! What orange-d fur streaks past!
Garfield!!
That twice-darned cat!!
He scarfed my lasagna! Drat!

I do hope you enjoy.

Poetic Two-Step

I am writing poems, in this viral seclusion we all face, that are based on words given to me by friends and family on the facebook. I forgot to post yesterday, and for that I apologize. I wrote two poems then and here they are.

First up, a poem based on the word lachrymal

“Lachrymal”

Do not fear to cry
In uncertain times.

Unleashing the dam
Often provides a cleaning
Like you’ve seldom felt.

In fact: Gandalf said tears are good,
A briny catharsis for the soul.

I think, then, that lachrymal therapy
Is prescribed.

And a double haiku, based on tiger

“Tiger”

Orangeblack stripes gleam,
Tiger sees no cage-no bars:
Free beneath bright stars.

If you, in contrast,
Feel trammeled inside today:
Embrace the tiger!

I hope you enjoy.

The Stillness

I have embarked on a new writing project. I asked friends on facebook to submit single words. I am writing a poem every day based on those words. It is a way for me to pass the time and stay busy during this social isolation of the pandemic.

I offer now the first of these poems, based on the word stillness.

(it comes before)

Brain
Electrically firing thoughts
Heart
Anxiously quivering blood
Soul
Painfully breathing oxygen

(it lingers after)

Leaves
Rustling against wind
Pup
Sighing in sleep
Tail
Twitching behind squirrel

(offering its peace)

Check back tomorrow for a new poem. Thanks!

Covid-19

We are great ones for rushing
where angels fear to tread.
Although now I suppose
they are afraid to infect heaven
with our earthly woes.
Which is why Abram still awaits
his three messengers.
Even in the desert, disease spreads
like so many locusts on the breeze.

I keep hearing about distancing:
one meter, or three feet,
to avoid being walking vectors;
you know, to flatten the curve?
Since when did the news
sound like geometry class?
Ironically, school is out for spring
and possibly summer, too.
All the kid’s dreams are the nightmare.

I read the news, and read my friend’s
faces for hope. All I hear is fear.
My own is so loud it’s a wonder
I can even make out that of a planet
crying for alleviation.
We are all in the same galactic boat,
sailing on black waters.
So, stay in your bunk, and I’ll sway in mine.
Together we’ll arrive at journey’s end.

Look: many have passed into what awaits.
Many more will, too, before this ends.
We never were guaranteed the next sunrise.
It may this that sends us away.
It may be another 70 years before that great
migration of soul and spirit, that grim bus
careening through metaphysical streets reaping.
Continue to look both ways before street crossing.
Lather, rinse, repeat until it’s your time to say goodbye.

So, bring this home…
…which is where we all are anyway.
Where’s the hope, the good news,
the twinkle in the eye to show the mirth?
Is it clear skies and nature’s rebirth,
a global spring in the step
of them what survive?
Maybe. I rather think it’s the small
acts of service and love that will save us all.

Mourning

Tonight
I am mourning
the death of dreams.

I set them away
from the light of day;
I laid them to rest
in a back alley –
discarded pieces.

I’m done with these dreams.
I no longer need them to lull
me away with sweet lullabies.

It doesn’t mean I won’t miss them,
that I didn’t feel
the crunch of disassembled bricks,
that the separations didn’t
reek of screams.

Tonight, a dream died, crying
“Save me”
And I whispered
“No”
Crying.

I’m selling off my LEGO collection. I’m moving in different artistic directions, and my LEGO collection no longer meets my main interests or fulfills me as it once did. I’m saying goodbye to my dreams of building custom LEGO creations. It’s a sad day, and I think appropriately so. It doesn’t mean that I’m making an incorrect decision; there is no right or wrong here. But letting something meaningful go is a death. It’s a separation, an ending. And it is right to mourn such things, to see them off. That’s what this poem is all about: laying dreams to Rest In Peace.

All our lives we are told to chase dreams, and encouraged to achieve them at all costs. We are never told how to lay aside dreams that don’t serve us, or that aren’t achievable. We aren’t taught to mourn the passage of important things in this way, and to reorient ourselves towards what is better, or next. That is a failing. Life is always in motion, and them what can’t move with it are doomed to bitterness. Better to taste the sweetness of what is now, and to be ready to lay it aside for what is next in eagerness, than to chase something you can’t catch.

Today I am watching one dream die, and tonight I will sleep, and see what dreams may come.

Confluence

Just beyond the fence,
where I dump the dog shit,
there is a little ravine.
And beyond that:
railroad tracks.

One goes nowhere,
except down to fertilize;
and the other goes
everywhere out of sight
in either direction.

I like the confluence
of dog shit and railroads.
One is meant for reclamation;
the other about the same,
spray-painted with “ANUS FARTS”.

Eventually we all end up
wasting into the ground
to be reborn into something.
And where the railroad ends?
There the train starts anew.

A Note on Thoughts

A note about the previous post, a poem called “Thoughts”:

Depression is a black bastard and isn’t kind. Even when everything is, otherwise, great and I am celebrating an anniversary with my wife, it is coiled around my heart and has sunk claws into my soul. I can’t escape it. Sometimes all I can do is exercise the demon and express what I’m feeling. The catharsis doesn’t exorcise the demon, unfortunately, but that’s the life I live. Sometimes the petals are rotten and black and the thorns poisoned on the roses I stop to smell, but that’s the life I live.

Actually, sometimes I think I live two lives, one foot in black depression, one foot in the light of normal life, and my heart, soul, and mind split in between the two, forever vacillating. Sometimes I think the light side is really me and the depression the aberration. Sometimes the dark side is completely my life and the light a cruel disease.

At any rate, I am always weary of the struggle. But that’s the life I live.

Hence the poem.

Thoughts

Sitting in the semi
dark, music pumping
in the skulls, I think

(Wish for the same old
same old, same old…)

black thoughts. Rage simmers deep
for all that I’ve gained
for all that I’ve lost.

It’s all the same to me.

I’m older now, and that means
nothing that it should.

My sword rusts from slaying
mist daemons born in
the same acidic rain
that burns through my brain
melting memory and ‘motions.

I’m at the end of myself,
but judging from the rotten
laughing clowns,
maggot faced monsters-
I’m still here,
where I’ve never wanted to be:

sitting with my thoughts.

Rainfall in Winter

I love the smell of rainfall
in winter.
The cold, wet, loaminess;
growth happening
beneath dampening dirt.
Little sprigs of green
between grey snow drifts,
melting drop by drop.
And little shining orbs:
rainwater on fallen leaves
from autumn past.

I breathe deep,
satisfied in my soul.
Rooted deep to earth
through sight, smell
and the mystery of life,
growing gently
in the winter rain.