Category Archives: Poetry

what is abode?

1,
What is abode but the transformation of
    bother   what is hark but
           the banter of the few   what is
    bother but the
           rose badly translated   what is
           given   who
           chose   why
    bother?
2,
The streak of the butterfly
    has found its
    moth
    its
      rest   the sun will now learn to speak

the meaning of flight

If I fly
    will the ground of
    morning be meaning
    again?   will the material
    world wag its

Finger at
    me?   would knowing
    wear its loss to forget?
    will the fear of flight
    settle & would

Remnants of chirp air their unhinged crimson?

the four silences

When the poem stops its breath for
lack of want   it will
        shut out the four corners of earth &
        wander,
        restrained –

When the poem tears its luck out of
lack of want   it will
        dance to the tune of the four
        silences,
        restrained –

severance of dawn

Some night precludes dawn
    in its severance   in its
    walled

Temper, the
    stare of morning touches the ball of night –
    whisper then   we sing to the hum of
                this bee which lets
                your night become
    my wall

Poet as genesis

It took an hour
to make song   another hour
for stone        the river
& stone are conjugate verbs
acting together
       to make the verdict of song
       ring true
—
“I have always had the sense of Armageddon and it was much stronger in those days, the sense of living on the edge of chaos. Not just personally, but on the world level. That we were dying, that we were killing our world — that sense had always been with me. That whatever I was doing, whatever we were doing that was creative and right, functioned to hold us from going over the edge. That this was the most we could do while we constructed some saner future.” – Audre Lorde recalling when she had heard of Martin Luther King’s killing.