Category: Book 2

omphaloskeptic
autobiographical
communication

– a pseudo-haiku.

dots on the water
ducks floating in formation
and diving for snacks

– a pseudo-haiku.

A part of every day just writing:
The sky is gray and raindrops hang;
How is a life like this exciting?
Oh wait, a bird unseen just sang.

Unfinished tasks remain regretted;
So forests' moods persist, abetted.
And still a thought will come along:
No fish will come; no time is wrong.

Despairing then, perhaps I wondered...
Preparing rows of trees or words
On paper or on wings of birds-
Exactly ten times, by a hundred -

Momentous thoughts and aimless streams
Suspend what's real. Behold the dreams.

– a sonnet in iambic pentameter.

That maze of highways wound around points,
demarcating geographies
and perpetuating myths
with a singular goal
which is foreordained:
to indicate
where our deeds
become
words.

– a nonnet.

Bits of time slip past
unused and unusable:
snow on the still beach

– a pseudo-haiku.

some snow on branches
gives the birds their new topic
spring comes, stuttering

– a pseudo-haiku

birds
announce
intentions
in coded ways
that might just reveal
eligibility
for springtime relationships
with other birds known and unknown
who might be lurking in nearby trees.

– a reverse nonnet.

the rain's broad, pattering sounds
reverberate, and wind blinds
the trees, hiding their deep wounds
with grasping earth at roots' ends.

– some kind of englyn, but I can’t figure out which.

ㅁ
in lines of glass or wood or concrete
horizons drawn in golds and blacks
a grid, a geographic spreadsheet
dead trees on hills like painted cracks

the cityscape reveals confusion
amid its planless, hot profusion
of means of movement, high and low
of will to commerce, fast and slow

the hearts of people all inventing
a way to make their neighbors slaves
or if not that, then find their graves
and likewise... stepwise... too preventing

our nature's hoped-for forceful claim
against our blind hubristic shame

– a sonnet in a defective iambic tetrameter.

ㅁ
The equinox past,
the light lingers, delinquent.
Soon: summer's solstice.

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
the future arrives
each day as if coming home
while the past decamps

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
when waiting, small things
slide by oddly unnoticed
the wind pushes by

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
the atoms around
tumble and collide with me
but I am too big

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
the overcast is bright
because of the moon's clawing
digging down in hunt

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
with lost inertia
and awoken too early
the night betrayed me

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
I greet a slow stone
and begin to contemplate
its comminution

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
A cup of coffee
A window with a blue sky
The calm water waits

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
In philosophical discourses
the trees and ravens have their say,
while solitary thinking forces
the passing meditative day.

The churning mind can seem so fragile
and its surroundings strong and agile:
a soul made up of colored glass
and tangled in a vague morass.

The mental gaze can just distinguish
a cloud enclosed in blue and gold,
but all the world spins, gray and old,
that simple words will not extinguish -

instead, imbrute the thinker's skull:
a cloud up close is broad and dull.

– a sonnet in a tetrameter.

ㅁ
I'll take some time now, meditating:
my strange relationship to rain,
which often boils down to waiting -
you'd think it feels somewhat mundane -

but no, in fact it's more like soothing
and letting clouds present their smoothing,
on-flowing torrents for the trees
to drink. This flow of water frees

not just the pebbles from the seething
and urgent earth, but also thoughts,
which surge and dodge life's random lots,
but then are loosened from their wreathing

constraints to fly against the dark
and overarching sky's gray arc.

– a sonnet in a tetrameter.

ㅁ
back in Alaska
it rains as if to welcome
it rains and it rains

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
Waiting for airplanes
is easier than sitting
in the airplane seats

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
straight lines on hillsides
sketch out a daily hubris;
ravens supervise

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
A day in tropics...
then there's a long airplane trip...
rain turning to snow.

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
the sea stares outward
into space like a great eye
noticing the moon

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
...and we were stuck in Cairns for just a day
and walking from some mall where time was killed
and crickets sang and rain made rivulets
and randomly my spirit sister waved
and stopped her car and turned around quite quick
and said hello. We told our little tale.
She laughed and grinned and drove away again.

– seven lines of blank verse (iambic pentameter).

ㅁ
a wallaby watched
waiting, wondering, weirdly wild
then it hopped away

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
They swarmed: a cloud of tiny bugs that -
distilling atmosphere with wings -
as if hyped up and stoned on drugs that
impelled orbits more than stings.

The green of trees and breeze-bent grasses
made better views than bug-strewn glasses.
In water standing by the road
they buzzed beside a flattened toad.

Unreadable unlike books' pages,
the path unfolded asphalt planes
and hiding mother earth's hot veins,
concealing geologic ages.

I stopped to take a picture then
and waved my hand around again.

– a sonnet.

ㅁ
a continuous monologue runs
sending negative messages
criticizing behavior
changing self perception
raising false idols
self-directed
punishing
angry
words

– a nonnet.

ㅁ
I walked down the hill.
There was a really big rock.
The river was full.

– a pseudo-haiku.

ㅁ
All the lights went out.
Lightning purpled the night sky.
Wet wallabies woke.

– a pseudo-haiku.