Listen
1.
What can be described is best left for others.
You can observe their variations.
What is left unsaid is personal.

The accident with too many witnesses
That elaborate their life experiences
Into a compartment of fear.

I've looked at the trees in the yard.
In stillness, and with storm approaching.
I see the straining to go on, to move

In this known world as long
As we all can,
See the giving in.

2.
There is movement outward,
Empty trills amidst static of humming
Lights and quiet stills

That glow as you enter,
Wills you to pay close attention, count
The chills that cat-walk your back.

The music is always there,
Though we are not always attentive.
The forest and trees rise,

And fall in silence's hearing.
Close no avenues on the journey home.
Look for the wind you do not see.

The Paraclete and the Dove

Ashes to ever. I stain the sheets
with you. Almond eyes that you
bring to the shadows lighten our efforts.
We join, taxing the reserve
that luxuriates our limbs.

Afterwards the dryness is gone.
The rumpled mess created is pillaged
time well spent. The air singes
my brow and wisps at the papers discarded
on the table, chairs, whatevers, cares.

The Big Picture

I have reached the wrong conclusion once again.
The couple standing in the supermarket parking lot
were not discussing a movie, or coupons
expired as I imagined, since she pulled
a pistol and shot him, abruptly
ending my pleasant version of their discourse.

Have you ever stood in an art gallery
and devised an explanation for the paintings
at hand only to overhear some critic
go on about the angst of postmodernism
or the artist's dyslexia, thus removing
your placid take on green,
and its ramifications in a pastoral setting?

It does not matter, eventually what you bring
to the meaning holds its place
in the scheme of things. She left
for reasons long misinterpreted,
and going over the minutiae
of the long lead-up will never
change the big picture.

test pattern

there is no guidance,
says the wolf
watching t.v.
clearing his throat

only aspirations
of others elsewhere
pulling the levers.
hello, herd.

gather the little ones
to me & I will rest
on my haunches
licking your lips for you.

from The Suspicious Humanist Vol.2, No.2

Conversation

I talk to still the voice inside
Talking at me.

Talking at me, you continue to talk at me
Even though I've left.

Even though I've left, the silence
Between us is a conversation.

Between us is a conversation of nuances.
We already know all the words.

Examination of Experiences

Include everything and you leave
out the essence. Leaving out all things
such as emotions of any note make it appear clear,
colorless as it is turned over.

Hurrying to this thought,
putting away the tasks to hear
the transient trains that glide by the screen
is a way of collecting our parts:

The photographic memory that holds
the numbers on the boxcars, undifferentiated,
of equal value. Place them here,
pebbles found at a beach

examined for their mystery.
We put them in a drawer.
Years later they will be as they are,
aged meaning remembered down a long avenue
cleansed by rain, by our tears.

at the Zen Supermarket

no waiting
on check stand zero

for no items
or less

At the Beginning of a New Beginning

Sometimes the exact science of knowing
is left in the desert with no way out.

Daybreak is here with the possibility
of being more than a measurement.

Beasts, food and foes, come and go
as we, learning to call the things we see

grapple with intangible life:
when in the beginning all words

were shaped in the mouth for the first time,
and we danced to hear the air sing.

De Chirico's Returning

The layered approach has backed us
Into a bombast of resolute portions
Culled from the passing days.
Oh, the campers loved the trip

And, oh the taxis always arrived
Eventually in rain and sometimes gaiety
Held forth for a fortnight 'til the train
Returned huffing and puffing into the tiny station

Where summer's remnants with their memorabilia
Waited to bustle onto the corrugated platform,
Wave to those lucky enough to stay.
The calm of desolate, wooden winter,

A meditation on stillness, a clouded sky
Garrulously rushes up full of gentle foreboding.
The newspaper on the tracks
Turns, and turns: goodbye, goodbye.

The Idea in Poetry

There in the background
in this very room

is the ashtray full.
It is being bronzed

even as we speak.

William Cowan