The trucks on the expressway zoom along tires sing their song on rock - gray gravel kicked around all day
– an englyn penfyr
Category: Book 2
Caveat: Poem #1166 “Reduction”
A chill drizzle touched my neck, a ghost's hand prodding me, and sought to wreck my work, reduced to a speck.
– an englyn penfyr
Caveat: Poem #1165 “Procession”
The morning's light disburses in fragments: day's integuments, night's verses, like introspective hearses.
– an englyn penfyr
Caveat: Poem #1164 “The systematic advance of winter”
The first frost of the season kissed the earth, betraying mirth, fighting sun, limning puddles one by one.
– an englyn penfyr
Caveat: Poem #1163 “The sins of slugs”
The slugs climb the gravel stairs, all fearless, but confess to the bears that pass with glowering stares their sins and their weary cares
– an englyn in Robertson Davies’ style
Caveat: Poem #1162 “In conclusion”
the striated days scored with time and fallen leaves present their endings
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1161 “Offerings”
Not yet dawn, it rains. There's the river-like whooshing: the sky's offering.
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1160 “A shambolic shaman”
I chant at the ground, but magic doesn't happen - the plants watch, wary.
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1159 “As stones will do”
stones are embedded in the earth but constantly jump up and escape
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1158 “Transubstantiation”
Specific unrealities surge, emerge from apophenic thoughts, caught in virtual gazes, await capture by minds, wind through fields like birds, heard like the wind, in your hair where we sleep.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Poem #1157 “More paper”
I make maps of dreams. The dreams pile up like paper: discarded fragments
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1156 “The infilling”
and the hole was filled quite gradually with stones and with dirt and clay
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1155 “As trucks will do”
a truck rumbled by the sounds of metal scraping the thunk-thunk of tires
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1154 “The waiting earth”
the earth and stones heaped the sun drew tendrils of steam they rolled and waited
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1153 “A possible failure to live up to the cliché”
the bones bode winter if they live up to cliche but they don't - just bones
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1152 “Inscriptions”
with optimism and bold copper traceries the symbols spilled out
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1151 “Inertia as a kind of superpower”
With my inertia, which is a superpower, I can stop moving
– some a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1150 “We counsel patience”
while the trampling clouds declare their allegiances we can only wait
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1149 “A one-sided but earnest conversation”
Rain! You, me... we should talk. I'm just trying to get something done out here under the clouds but you keep interrupting forcing your damp fingers at me full of naturalistic hubris.
– a reverse nonnet
Caveat: Poem #1148 “An effort to structure time”
So... Sunday. The thing is... the days, they blur... a string of mornings, awoken out of dreams, undifferentiated. Then the calendar lays guidelines, steers thoughts away from simple being.
– a reverse nonnet
Caveat: Poem #1147 “Extinction”
I'm wide awake, middle of the night. With an aggressive staccato, the rain perforates the air while I watch the darkness. I consider shapes. The night crawls by. It dissolves into dreams.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Poem #1146 “A poem hostile to the reader”
lines displace surfaces manifesting into abstractions and hypotheticals painting obscure paradigms which distort representations and make you want to stop reading this
– a reverse nonnet
Caveat: Poem #1145 “A typical day in nether Commonia”
I saw there were strange things on the map: mysterious towns and highways, inconsistent land-uses, geographic glitches, unknowable lakes, hazy outlines, lost cities, portals, holes.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Poem #1144 “Luna’s dissolute moods”
Just at dawn the moon gazes downward. She turns her bright eye to the trees. The clouds thin and part for her. The rocks reveal their dreams. The sea is bashful. She watches birds. She tastes air. She slumps. Pale.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Poem #1143 “Unperceived”
outside the rain fell inside I installed software and time passed like stones
– a pseudo-haiku
Caveat: Poem #1142 “The day’s prelude”
at some point before the sun comes up, before the looming fog brightens, above the waiting forest, behind the slate gray sky, with eagles' assent, but bears' surprise, it begins: purple light
– a nonnet
Caveat: Poem #1141 “The origins of meaning”
pain expressed like desire internal states with utterances perturbations in air or glyphs projected with light hopeful, vain intentions to use an apparatus known as language
– a reverse nonnet
Caveat: Poem #1140 “The philosopher in the wilderness”
worried thoughts bold plans internal doubts
early dusk
optimistic words verbal hesitations pertinent questions
black caterpillars
long pauses happy suggestions convoluted rationalizations
aimless slugs
they might
hope
to change
minds
and nevertheless
we remain
obdurate
looming fog still forest patient spider
irresolute conversation
– a quennet
Caveat: Poem #1139 “A speculative solipsism”
A speculative solipsism: I imagined being a bear. The world was an endless verb. All objects were nameless. Feelings thrummed through me. The seasons changed. The trees drooped. Leaves fell. Bare.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Poem #1138 “A fiction emerges from and disappears into nothingness”
"True," she said. She sat down and looked around. "The gods can't see us." He just listened, musing. "Perhaps when the sun comes out..." A deer poked its head out at them. The clouds made the sky a dull, gray slate. He stood, restlessly, pacing the ground. The deer, now startled, disappeared. Droplets of water scattered. "What if we..." he began. He gazed mountainward. She shook her head. "There's nothing." He slumped. Wept.
– a reverse nonnet followed by a nonnet, an effort to tell a compact (and fictional) story
Caveat: Poem #1137 “The dock arch’s denizens”
The cormorant sits on the dock's arch, but it maintains a sidelong gaze as if unsure where to look. Other times, two ravens, or some gray seagulls, socialize there. Mostly, though, no birds sit.
– a nonnet
Caveat: Poem #1136 “Well”
Pipes arrayed in efforts to control things providing pathways to distribute water pulled deep from under the ground cool and calmly indifferent meeting the world after long dark years
– a reverse nonnet
Caveat: Poem #1135 “On fear”
Fear cleans out your veins: the sea surges with silver... your day in a boat
– a pseudo-haiku
