I looked a long time at this praying mantis
She seemed to draw my gaze
Into the five eyes of her alien head
Into the slender shivering of her reeds
Having lived invisible to presence
She now presents her miracle as visible
Month: February 2022
Glassworks Blowout
Of course there’s atmosphere
And compatibility
Preheating and melting points
Rolling and necking
Rods and reamers
Nippers and honeycombs
Balls and blowing
Frigging and forking
Grinding and humpen
Edging and drilling
Wrythen and tooling
Flaring and soaking
Hot fingers and imploding
Some annealing at the bench
Even paddles and punti
For people of that kiln
Fault Lines
Slave camps under the flag of freedom
Fanatics of freedom freedom fighters
Freedom blockades and freedom occupiers
Freedom of speech and religion
Born free but crying freedom
We can barely get through a door
Without contradicting ourselves
Let alone navigate
The narrowest straits between words
We shatter every mirror of hypocrisy
Before admitting to a fault line
It’s in the interstices the poison oozes
From the cracks in consonance
Exudes the grief called humankind
Our free will has free rein
Live free or die in chains
The chemistry of words contain
The toxins that destroy us
As long as we’re not free to print money
But others are free to get out of jail
Awake or Dreaming
I won’t know if I’m awake or dreaming.
I’ll be carried by water
A long way out into the open.
I’ll feel what the birds feel
When they plunge into the cold.
My bones will never be addressed again,
My ashes will cease all communication
With faith or doubt.
A star will alight on a leaf.
I’ll be at the birth of time,
The beginning of music.
The natal universe will embody me.
Clear Glass Demijohn
This large transparent globe
Drinks the liquid of the sun.
This vessel that contains
The elements of thought.
This horizon within an orb.
This spirit lamp of level light.
It floats on the vastness of presence
Like the stillness of the spherical.
A solar urn, a bubble of heat
Flaring into semi-permanence.
The air gone out of our lungs
Takes the shape of the unsaid.
Snooker Fluke
The player of a snooker frame
Asked to play without a name.
How a ball cued to its target
Supports evidence for kismet.
Spheres attend to a dimension
Of answers without questions,
Opposing their own direction,
Uncommitted to their motion.
What a difference a kiss makes
To the aftermath a miss takes.
If the shot maker is appalled
The audience is unresolved
Having witnessed chance
Careen chaos across remembrance.
Machete
“Maybe there is a beast, maybe it’s only us.”
William Golding, Lord of the Flies
With that buried machete
We became conquerors
We slashed at the sunset
Hacked at the stream bed
And bled rust into water
Slowly the steel began to show
A sacrificial lamb was prepared
Field grasses lay down their weapons
Against the piracy of our find
We avenged our families
And crossed swords with the moon
All that slashing
Let the stars flood through our gashes
In our most savage dreams
We cut to the bone
Scaled our catch
Deforested the earth
And carved a path to the grave
Salvatore Ala 