Category: Book 1

(Poem #324 on new numbering scheme)

This morning tasted just like cancer. Well,
you might just wonder: what does that taste like?
It tastes just like most other mornings do,
except your gut is filled with burning, fierce
desires to keep breathing and stay alive.

(Poem #323 on new numbering scheme)

She murdered monkeys by proxy
by crafting tales of woe
the monkeys didn't know their fate
because she was a pro.

– this quatrain in ballad meter is about a certain student I have, who makes up rather gruesome stories about my little toy monkeys that come with me to class.

(Poem #322 on new numbering scheme)

I am not rational. I lack the type
of psychiatric infrastructure that
provides the kind of commonplace support
that normal people seem to have in spades.

(Poem #321 on new numbering scheme)

The architect denied the thing's
existence. Then he said
"The shapes create a volume which
is only in your head."

– a return to ballad meter.

(Poem #320 on new numbering scheme)

The planet kept on spinning like a plate
that someone threw down on the floor, and still
it kept on spinning, rolling in a curve,
an aimless helix, then it flopped down, still.

(Poem #319 on new numbering scheme)

The sea was reaching long arms through the rifts
of green, wet valleys; grasping at the peaks
of mountains with her cloud-hands; fine-grained snow
was falling on the beach in steady clumps;
the eyes of all the world were blinking, each
a ghost that watched the other ghosts alone.

– this poem may be related to another poem I wrote long ago. In any event, the setting is Mahhalian.

(Poem #318 on new numbering scheme)

A house of infinite extent unfolds
across the level plains of consciousness,
inhabited by many ghosts that drift
amid a bestiary rife with dreams.

(Poem #316 on new numbering scheme)

So has the Linux O/S ever been
included in a quatrain of blank verse?
I wondered this as I ran some updates
and wrote this stupid poem while at work.

(Poem #315 on new numbering scheme)

So are we doomed? Do we plummet down, toward
some kind of anodyne apocalypse?
Or are we all just victims who a fate
has blinded by perceptions hinting truths?

[daily log: walking, 1km]

(Poem #314 on new numbering scheme)

A strong wind had helped push away the smog
but nevertheless moods were dark at work.
I walked home under the peach colored moon
and wondered what strange thing would happen next.

(Poem #313 on new numbering scheme)

In summer's light
concrete turns white;
the city might
fade into smoke.
Ants feel no mirth:
the grains of earth
have their own worth;
trails turn baroque.
So as time goes,
a full moon glows;
a damp wind flows.
Then the clouds broke.

– this is a Welsh form called rhupunt. I’m not sure I like it – the rhyme scheme is pretty demanding and with the short lines, it ends up too singsongy.

(Poem #312 on new numbering scheme)

To find success, you might try just to change
what that word means. It then will come quite fast.
If we allow those other people rights
to choose our goals, they choose our failure too.

– Lately these haven’t been so “random” – mostly I’ve been doing quatrains in blank verse (unrhymed pentameter). But I already did quatrains in a different style, so that name is taken. I guess I’ll keep calling them “Random Poems.” Anyway I get to keep the freedom to change my mind about what format to use, then. I define my own success.

(Poem #311 on new numbering scheme)

The corpses of long expectations dwelt
against the broken earth like homeless men.
Dark green mosses grew fierce among the stones
but nothing moved; only falling raindrops.

(Poem #310 on new numbering scheme)

The holiday fell like rain
all around my Tuesday;
I kept watch inside my brain,
but everything was gray.

(Poem #309 on new numbering scheme)

It's hard to know why he kept fighting them;
they were just spinning windmills after all;
but he announced they were demonic beasts,
and battled them till they, bewildered, fled.

(Poem #308 on new numbering scheme)

An escalator carried me below,
where I met ghosts who haunted subway trains;
their writhing nothingnesses captured me
and caused my eyes to droop in naked sleep.

[daily log: walking 2.5km]

(Poem #307 on new numbering scheme)

An algebraical theology
perhaps makes possible reflective thoughts
of strange and doubtful meanings all arrayed
in rows of figures bending into night.

(Poem #306 on new numbering scheme)

By means of time small people take on weights
they would not otherwise begin to bear
and understanding each year's progress till
at last the heaviest thing buries them.

– this is my first ever effort at blank verse, which is arguably English’s most important poetic meter.

(Poem #305 on new numbering scheme)

The free spirits of mountains,
of ephemeral cities
lacking well-conceived futures,
of unnamed rivers and lakes
shimmering on horizons,
of towers spiraling up,
asymptotic to time's lines,
these spirits will not speak, but
loiter on the pale edges
of maps, of dreams, of stories.

(Poem #304 on new numbering scheme)

I don't like the sun
it makes me feel tired

(Poem #303 on new numbering scheme)

The man's moped was his cathedral,
where he could sit, watch people,
make deliveries,
or just smoke.
He had three smartphones -
a kind of makeshift dashboard -
attached at the front with bungee cords.

– this poem is completely random.

(Poem #302 on new numbering scheme)

The fading sun made aimless grasps against
the window such that glass became purple
illumination without shape.
I bent over my book with my neck tensed
because the tiny lamp's lighted circle
denied me its narrow landscape.

This is not a quatrain. I don’t know what it is – I guess it’s a sestet, and it’s got some kind of metrical thing going on. But I think I’m not going to weld myself to a specific form, for now. I thus will just call them poems, and we’ll see what happens if I make one every day. I had been intending to change over to some continuing series of poems that were thematically (as opposed to structurally) unified, when I got to around 100 quatrains, but I didn’t. So now I am dropping the quatrains, but I still don’t have a theme worked out. So I’ll just post whatever, I guess, for now. Or forever.