gardens

prisoners, slaves, we compose

our meager gardens sown and cultured on cubicle shelves;

invisible to those who see them as a trinket-hoard, 

piled souvenirs. these gardens speak for us
our weak resistance to overwhelming Fate.

so i, from a deforested desk, proclaim 

in dull-formed words and unread poems

reprimanding Earth: you waste me here, and others everywhere!

we unhappy majority, a great dragging mass

yearn for the field, the stream, for dirt ground into our hands,

for time when we knew purpose.

and, so cruelly lacking, we now compose 

these bitter gardens: gaudy, plastic, childish things

gathered and arranged--our only resistance 

to the well-factoried career, so full of function, devoid 

of meaning: a blanche 

upon our ancient memories.

Feb 2012

massive

i lose myself in narrow verticals,

upright horizons drawn small

and the pinpoint caverns air-cut 

into a close wall's tile grout.

so lost, i become much:

a molecular cave-dweller, whose ragged tribe

ekes out a careful living on these sheer cliffs

(which stagger unimaginably above, and below)

huddled in our shallow caves with children,

meager camp fires, survival's camaraderie.

loftily perched i salute my giant self-opposite

which, though huge and omnipotent

lacks this: my impoverished, desperate tribe,

possessing nothing, ragged, loved, and free.

and i, massive to that small self,

long to be so powerless and amazed.

Feb 24, 2012

moleculerance.

i find little tolerance for--or from--a mental culture that can believe in molecules, but not in God.

encyclopeadic

i've written on transhumanism--the idea that technology will make humanity more than, and ergo no longer, human. i sat at the window yesterday and wondered if glasses, cars on superhighways, and a morning of reading uselessly informative internet biographies make me already far less human than my grandfather.

this creates very awkward questions for poetry, such as, "is poetry dead?" to which my subconscious once wrote, "poetry, as she lay dying..." and perhaps this means that we are no longer human, and poetry really has died, or at least very nearly so.and i wonder if we will miss poems, or humans.

such few remain

i see in your watercolor sky

images of lonely childhood

the hermitage of youth, aloof:

a naive story, intentfully so.

your pencil-line hair is a challenge and mystery

to my seedy cynicism sown careless and material,

in which i wrap my frothy knowledge of the world.

what pain and hesitance begot you,

solemn slender soul unbound

by all around, and what's below

or deep within: what origins inspired

such careful, constant eyes

or taught this listening mouth?

well--i neither comprehend nor wish to change

your different heart, 

nor linger long at this cracked-open door;

your rare innocence, a beauty undiscovered,

shall remain unsoiled in pastel skies

merely remarked by we,

the dirt-bound passersby.

2/15/2012

i haven't written a poem in months.  i wrote this in response to people i met through a training class at work, who reminded me of the long-lost innocent-minded friends i had in college, freshman year, 2003.