Category: A Daily Poem

(Poem #342 on new numbering scheme)

moss on dirt, under trees:
sudden greenness; summer rain
licks at the gray air.

[daily log: walking, 8km]

(Poem #341 on new numbering scheme)

Collected colors, named and counted now,
and various important types of lines,
arrayed on screens or paper so that when
it all is fit together, you see worlds.

(Poem #340 on new numbering scheme)

It breaks my heart to have students so smart
begin to show such weak but obstinate
resistance: they've decided not to work
and lost their interest in learning things.
Perhaps instead I failed to reach their minds.

(Poem #339 on new numbering scheme)

inanimate things
take on life when abandoned:
a chair in the grass.

(Poem #338 on new numbering scheme)

The contrast medium went in
injected by the nurse.
The fluid flowed, wine-bright and hot,
into my veins, and worse.

(Poem #337 on new numbering scheme)

Arranging words like little particles
of light that bound through space like hunted prey
that hope to flee those ravenous weird beasts
imagined, I decide to take a break.

(Poem #336 on new numbering scheme)

The rain arrived. Each year's monsoon
Begins about this time.
The sky becomes a vacant gray.
A gust finds some wind chime.

(Poem #335 on new numbering scheme)

The people were distributing their souls
across the city, traveling by train
through tunnels and among the buildings strewn
around the elevated tracks like toys.

[daily log: walking, 9km]

(Poem #334 on new numbering scheme)

Representations will unfold.
Then, mirroring moon's dusky gold,
they hover with laconic tones
until clouds can press them on stones.

(Poem #333 on new numbering scheme)

A tangled moon was weaving rough black cloth.
The poets noted this, with their swift pens,
but all their exploitations of the fact...
they failed to yield a single line of verse.

(Poem #332 on new numbering scheme)

I saw a solitude in startled stance
it stared at me across a gulf of space.
But nothing more ocurred. Its silence forced
my devolution into emptiness.

(Poem #331 on new numbering scheme)

There is a kind of microclimate
amid the dawn redwoods that grow
along the pedestrian
pathways I walk to work,
in the neighborhood,
amid apartments
and children.
The air:
cool.

(Poem #330 on new numbering scheme)

A single line across a blank page makes
a line alone, which demarcates nothing
But many lines together start to form
a representation which shows the world.

(Poem #329 on new numbering scheme)

The angel polychromatic will come
down rainbows, seeking to convey the host,
in all its numbers, under kingdoms dark,
until they fecklessly arrive in Oz.

[daily log: walking, 1km]

(Poem #327 on new numbering scheme)

The cat was jumping in the shrubs and grass
that occupied the edges of the path.
No one was seeing it, which set it free,
just like a tree that falls in the forest.

(Poem #326 on new numbering scheme)

I have this inventory: broken things,
non-functioning, old things - not problems, just
invitations to live more simply, so
my ancient television only asks
that I not watch it. How can I resist?

(Poem #325 on new numbering scheme)

The sky like tarnished silver overlooks
a world replete with immaterial
digressions which the philosophers speak,
until at last the night consumes it all.

(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.