Sunday, June 24, 2018

Weekend Poem

Apoptosis

When a cell suddenly dies it’s called apoptosis.  
No one knows why; it’s a secret knowledge,
A microscopic biological gnosis,
A screeching stoppage.


Maybe we’re all programmed to just croak
According to inscrutable cosmic algorithms
Each and every cell in on the joke
Songs clang out of tune, drums lose the rhythm. 


Our cell membranes were always just a temporary redoubt,
Fragile molecules arranged in aqueous oval orbs.
The killer never comes from without;
It was always a destructive directive from the inner core.


The lines drawn were always contingent.
One day they suddenly wobble,
Waver like highway apparitions in summer heat
Before a final fading oblivion.
This enclosed space was never a real dominion.
(It was a gift, it was luck)
Form dissolves into the surrounding solution;
Ribosomes, nuclei spontaneously deconstruct.

x

Soon all the cells around you will go quiet;
The humming machinery of life stalls.
Does the silence distill a cold sweat,
Do you wake up soaking wet?
A sleeping sickness spreads like osmosis,
Last one left adrift in currents, untethered.
This then is the one time for fear,
Surrounded by silence, by formlessness
Underwater drifting with eyes closed
Not knowing what begins in this unmarked frontier.


Will you run out of time
To crack this code
Before your own scripted de-quickening?


Will we rise when we lose the lines that limit us,
Or does the meager space between the confines define us?
Do lines and spaces forever inhibit us?

When we fade and become formless
What remains may be the gist of another.
Primordial stew of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen
Driven to new patterns and connections by a quiet narration
We've always heard but now are expected to confess.
The timer always resets:
Another countdown, another secret expiration

6/22/18

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Father's Day Weekend Poem

Search History


After we read and say goodnight I see your chromebook glows
It glows so I sit for a moment at your little desk
I click and I click and this is what worried daddies do in the dark
When their little girls go to bed


Do boys like tomgirrls or girllygirls
Do boys like shy girls?
Talking when boys talk when boys are funny
How do I get flat firm my tummy
Exercises for flat bellies
Short girls are pretty girls too?
Short girls or funny girls
Diets for girls healthy and good for you
Pretty girls popular girls
Straight hair or wavy curls?
How do I grow and when will i be the right size?
How to be poppular and pretty
Pretty hair and pretty eyes


And I sit and the light glows
The rest of the room quiet and dark
(She always falls asleep so quick)
Wedged in a small chair in a little girls room
And I type and I type
To guide her search, to shine a light


You are a beautiful girl
You are kind and sweet and nice
And all I ever wished
A little girl my little girl would be
And the world is lucky
And the world is here
In your luck and your good
And you're here
And the world needs more
Of you here
For too much lurching and wanting and hate
More of you here before it's too late
For your nice and your kind
And your smile and your sweet and your just as you are.
And I will be here in the glow of your light
My strong little girl
My beautiful girl


I leave these tabs open
For the history that gets saved
A history of searches for answers
To the questions we only ask ourselves,
Questions afraid of the light.


I’d say to her in the morning (mourning it won't matter):
Beware of the answers lurking behind silences,
The instant answers that appear on screens
When silence itself is a kind of an answer.

For there will always be questions
Unpaired from answers
That I know I can’t stop from you from asking.


You have find them out yourself

Without asking

As you go on living

As you grow and you love and you live

In the light of the day
In the unanswerable darkness.

6/15/18


Sunday, June 3, 2018

Weekend Poem

Poem, #2

The first draft was about a resilient oak that stands its ground
Despite tornadoes and storms:
Though branches be whipped and shed their leaves
Though the trunk may sway and creak in the torrents of wind
The blossoms will bloom in May again…”
And anodyne drivel of that form.


But my interest in the tree and its leaves soon waned.
Who really gives a damn about them?
The tree can go straight to hell.
Let it get snapped in half by a good-hearted gale


I wanted to know what happens to the roots below.
What happens underground when the tree hollows out dead?
What happens when I plunge a spade into the ruined earth?
Does the blade strike gnarled hardness of desperate thirst?
Is the soil snarled with the sinews of foolish youthful forays,
Into an impassable latticed bulwark?
Or does the woody root soften as it decays?


Is there a sliver of space for another translucent root?
Those are the real questions;
All else is moot.
A tree is a thing that falls down and dies.
The cyclic bloomings are the bromides
We tell the frightened children at night.


A poem is not the tree with blossoms and leaves
Nor the broken thing that crashes to the forest floor.
But now is the time to let your own tree fall,
Let it crack where it once was strong.
A poem is the hidden treasure left over
Long after the roots dissolve into soil.
Stand ready with your shovel and rest, rest.
Wait, wait for the right moment;
And then dig, and then dig
And then yes and then yes

6/4/18