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A stranger in your house of thoughts, I dwell in your experiences, walk your halls and spiral stairs to rummage through your sundry rooms with shock or curiosity. I rove in hopes to sense your mind in anything you left behind: the roll-top desk now halfway jammed, a calendar extinct for years, one musty mix of memories:
From here I cannot grasp your rhyme, your nature, hatred, loves, or heart, much less your science, song, or art.
I must be you and not your things, espouse your atoms to the last, absorb your stories, live your past, breathe in your voice, dismiss myself, endure your scars, your every choice, envelop nothing but the whole if I presume to know your soul.
Still Here Let earthquakes rage and rivers rush, volcanoes blaze and comets crush. Let stars – all time – go disappear. My love for you would still be here.
Perhaps in time, I'll land on you and see life from your point of view.
The Unpaved Road The Unpaved Road Unevenly, that's me. I go careening left or right or low above rough hills or mountaintops by rivers, timber, sudden drops, and, if it rains, I turn to mud and laugh when wheels spin and scud. No signs to speak of, fancy rails, or lights at night, just winding trails, to roam however long I like. I'm often crossed on foot or bike. Most city cars get lost out here, beside the squirrels, beavers, deer, and rush on through before the dark demands they slow down or they park, endure an evening without sleep as owls screech and shadows leap beneath a moon waxed
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why I prefer to rove so coarse, or why my closest friend's a horse, or why I must not be refined, or how it is I'm so resigned to lend no sense of here or there and might as well lead anywhere except the place you'd rather be. I go my way, with nature, free.
When death's no end, how does one spend the countless lives which lie ahead? What comes of such eternity if all I am is merely me?
I sense new purpose must be found in each beginning coming round: to not repeat what went before, but rather become something more than death and life made to repeat or progress lost with each retreat. I should grow stronger with each fall, retain some wisdom after all, fly higher, further, which each burn, and from my ashes always learn. Perfection being God's alone, yet there are truths I could have known and many things I should refine before the next time I resign. When resurrecting, may I free myself from what I used to be
and elevate in every way, in body, mind, and...
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Hidden in Plain Sight Most secrets of the universe stand up before our very eyes and wave with both hands every day in hopes someone may look their way. But few among us lean to see so closely as to realize those meanings leaping from each leaf or where a stone provokes belief,
Wide Angle Lens At first, I see the scenes through me refract in ego's glassy walls (pure light furled into selfish bands, the icy edges of those panes dividing up my muddled sight in facets of vague vanity) – but then I blink, begin to think of anything outside my lens, what waits beyond my inward eyes, and once again I realize how little senses have perceived, what clarity could be received if I would focus further still, exploring broader panoramas –mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, the skyline where a new day breaks, the unknown moments, hours, years, untraveled miles and frontiers– and
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Art of Diversity The art exhibit helps us see how much we need diversity: the sundry brushwork, angles, hues, perspectives framing varied views, the untold styles one might find as subjects run from mind to mind. How specially each work portrays a common thing in striking ways or offers a familiar scene to manifest the unforeseen between the abstract and concrete. No works alike, yet none compete because the canvas fits it all and makes a window of a wall, a doorway through a stranger's face, or course across some time or space, where worlds and wonders stun, surprise, and plead we see beyond
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Your spirit, it still teaches me beyond the forests, all I see, provoking growth and memory of everything you said to me: face hunger, risks, the bitter cold with honor, humbled although bold when dangers prey, or to survive – then I must roar with claws and thrive yet ever be at peace with life, to never saunter into strife but guard the pride, my hide and soul, remaining calmer, in control, not giving in to instinct's dare or provocations anywhere – though not to be completely tame now I bear forth your noble name. I journey as one not alone among the mountains, bones, and stone. However
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who could endure this wild land with wisdom so to understand there comes a time for flight or fight and that the fire's not the light. Your morals guide me through the night, revealing might begins with sight, then steadiness through changing days. I'll meet the world along my ways through jungles, deserts, any cave, and fear no evil. I am brave!
Tell Them the Whole Truth Don't prettify our history! Don't select, neglect to mention, or forget a single thing. When children ask about the world, what things were like before their birth, how situations came to be, or why we choose to live like this, don't mythicize, romanticize, or euphemize, or summarize, or minimize, or sell them lies. Don't try to bleach the bloody past, the stains of war, of genocides, of hatred waged on difference, the ink of writs injustice penned with quills dipped into crimson pools of those who perished needlessly. Please tell the children EVERYTHING:
the lynchings, riots, old crusades, the segregations, slaveries, the slaughtering in names of gods, the torturing and inquisitions, the gas chambers, the branded backs, the Holocaust, internment camps, the many forms of terrorism, the colonists, iconoclasts, deniers of objective facts, imposters and the hypocrites, the purchasers of influence, betrayers of democracy, exploiters and extremist foes, the xenophobes, supremacists, the flaming crosses, nooses, knives, the drownings, poisons, guillotines, the napalm, bombs, the casualties, the crudest cruelest epithets, the treachery of patriots,
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prejudices everywhere. And speak of all the better things: discoveries, inventions, love, compassion, caring, empathy, advancements, what was overcome, of sacrifices, small and large, the artists, cultures, music, dancing, the nonconformists, righteous rebels, revolutions of good cause, the mastery of elements, our symbols, myths, antique beliefs, the architectures of the ages, agriculture, gatherers, sciences and scholarship, enlightenment, imagination, the poetries of everyone, the curing and the nurturing, the fallen tyrants, toppled walls, the peace once gained, to be regained, defenders
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the champion someone could be, the beauty of diversity, the questions of profundity, integrity, the bond of trust, our bravery to face unknowns and hopefulness for what must come. Do tell the children everything. Let honesty relieve us from repeating tragic past mistakes. Let history inform our need to teach the children everything because y...
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Withstanding Amid the rubble, marble hands, ten fingers firmly interlocked, the arms broke off from figures crushed in struggles of another age. Not much remains, but this is all one needs to see when wondering if love could bear the savage wrath of weather, war, and centuries. No magnitude of havoc has undone that clutch, that fierce embrace of soul mates I can almost see, their gaze cemented, eyes to eyes, no words about to part their kiss because their touch is voice enough to vouch how love withstands a fall and nothing shall erase it all.
times a landing clears my mind to glimpse above a floor or fall and know (behind your door) no wall keeps ever afters from this dream where higher inclines often seem
to draw me toward that wish to be the destination where you're free to cross the threshold of old eyes without a need to grieve goodbyes.
Emblazon Your eyes light my horizon, love: my days arise within your sight, and, when you gaze away, that’s night. How you’ve become my alphabet, a part of every word I breathe, essential to my meaning now. You’re like the bible of my faith, the genesis of testaments, the truth of revelations. You press on my piano heart releasing music from my soul: those melodies but we compose. Inside your mind, beyond all math, I find the one, the sum of us, equation past infinity. Our galleries of memories make moments into works of art: a beauty framed in timelessness. In truth, you move my
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I must be you and not your things, espouse your atoms to the last, absorb your stories, live your past, breathe in your voice, dismiss myself, endure your scars, your every choice, envelop nothing but the whole if I presume to know your soul.
“to contemplate life vicariously through the perspective of another person, location, idea, or object – all with the hope of gaining a clearer and deeper understanding of that someone, somewhere, or something.”
With an open mind, the Vicarium could be a creative or educational tool that has some potential of teaching us more about ourselves, each other, and all that surrounds us, physically and conceptually. How wonderful it would be if our capacities for tolerance, compassion, equality, and justice could increase as we engage more viewpoints, enter more regularly into the experiences of others, and extend our awareness and our concerns well beyond ourselves.
Each poet makes choices for reasons we may never wholly grasp. I completely respect that and recognize how rich and varied those choices help to make the geography of poetry’s world wonderfully varied and fascinating. How tedious it would be if everyone wrote the same, and utterly plainly so, in a verbal flatland of vapid verse.
