(Poem #284 on new numbering scheme)
As hopes proclaim their roots and sprouts, each tendril rashly curled, the ordinary blooms of need unfold across the world.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #284 on new numbering scheme)
As hopes proclaim their roots and sprouts, each tendril rashly curled, the ordinary blooms of need unfold across the world.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #283 on new numbering scheme)
This speck of dust did not attempt to cross the gulf that yawned between my window's dirty sill and all the world beyond.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #282 on new numbering scheme)
The spirits bodied forth on walls, incarnate desires swarmed all into crevices and cracks with mutant, feral forms.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #281 on new numbering scheme)
Sometimes I try explaining things; I am misunderstood. I still digress and divagate my words a trackless wood.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #280 on new numbering scheme)
An incantory angel's wings, with luminescent plumes, descend upon your muse, like snow, disguise what she assumes.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #279 on new numbering scheme)
The bird shoves time out from its nest; it, stone-like, falls and sighs. Tic-toc, tic-toc - it spins and flaps, until at last it flies.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
I invented this tongue-twister. It's not the twistiest possible tongue-twister, but it's twistedly topical.
The dems don't doubt the Donald's debauched douchebaggery, disregarding his diligent but dubious denials of dinosaurian demogoguery.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
(Poem #278 on new numbering scheme)
The clouds adopted purple robes, brought early summer's night, began to shred the stars' bright flesh, dispersed gems into white.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #277 on new numbering scheme)
The ziggurats began to watch as humans dueled with saints and on clay tablets, scribes took notes about their blows and feints.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #276 on new numbering scheme)
Today is Buddha's birthday, but I bet he doesn't care; and if he cared I think that then there'd be no Buddha there.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #275 on new numbering scheme)
The sun has captured trees and bugs and set them all abuzz. The solstice looms and skies get wide, forget what winter was.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #274 on new numbering scheme)
My head is full of nonsense words. In fact, I like it so. They swirl around and cluster up, and spill out, fast and slow.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #273 on new numbering scheme)
Each passing face displays its own interiorities. One can imagine that inside are sad calamities.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #272 on new numbering scheme)
The ball lamented (so alone), abandoned by those kids, beset by weeds and springtime blooms: a sphere's life... on the skids.
(Poem #271 on new numbering scheme)
A jar was falling: with a clank it plunged and hit the floor. I dodged it with a quick side step: unbroken... still I swore.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #270 on new numbering scheme)
You get a little ways through spring, and then a strange day comes: the air blows chill, and tastes of fall, the fragile bloom succumbs.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #269 on new numbering scheme)
She wrote and asked about that stone: "So it's set in its ways? Perhaps a stone will dream its past - its former glory days?"
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #268 on new numbering scheme)
A dog will dream about his walks, and cats will dream in schemes, the trees will dream of growing tall, but stones... they have no dreams.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #267 on new numbering scheme)
Our world... she chants a magic-filled but apophenic song; in truth... it's arbitrariness that thrusts this orb along.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #266 on new numbering scheme)
The dragons don't consider facts, the unicorns demur; those mythic beasts will never care because their hearts are pure.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #265 on new numbering scheme)
I start by looking for some words in space's vast darkness but finding none, I turn instead to my own brain's grim mess.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #264 on new numbering scheme)
The cactuses have sown dissent debating cats at talks, whose doubts are drawn entangled from Schroedinger's litter box.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #263 on new numbering scheme)
The words just shivered on the page, The verbs in disrepair. The pronouns were disconsolate, The nouns limp with despair.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #262 on new numbering scheme)
"Philosophical zombie" is a concept you may know. I'd like to now propose a twist to how those stories go. Most typically these zombies are like strange automata. They act like people, react too - but it is just data. So nothing's felt and nothing's hoped; there is no inner spark. These zombies might seem like humans, but their sad minds are dark. Now here's the change I'd like to make: let's add a soul inside, but not connected to the flesh - it will only reside. Like those sad paralytics who stare helpless and afraid, this second mind lacks any link, must wait for any aid. So here's the first, with agency, the second with the why, together they must walk the earth, as we do, you and I.
– six quatrains in ballad meter – an essay on phenomenology in six stanzas.
(Poem #261 on new numbering scheme)
The future will be subject to inspection here and now. Please heed this declaration, kids - this rule you must allow.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #260 on new numbering scheme)
Con chupe de pescado, pues, soñaba sin querer. Al despertar, me estremecí ¿cómo pude saber?
This is my second attempt at a quatrain using English ballad meter, but in Spanish – for which ballad meter is quite awkward. Still, this more or less works, except how it reverts to trochees in the last line. Don’t ask me what it means, exactly. A prose paraphrase: about fish chowder, then, [I] dreamed without wanting to. Upon waking up, I shivered – how could I know?
This is actually a dream I woke up from this morning: nothing complicated or surreal – I was just eating Peruvian style chupe de pescado at a certain Peruvian restaurant in Newport Beach, down the road from where I used to work in 2005-2006. I used to go there for lunch with coworkers fairly often. That fish soup is some of the most memorable food in my life, for some reason. I’m sure if I had it now, it would seem a poor shadow of its former glory – but that would be because of the changes to my own physiology of taste, post cancer.
(Poem #259 on new numbering scheme)
A flowering, dystopian land is found at empire's edge: the north looks south; the south looks north; near Ilsan, there's time's ledge.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #258 on new numbering scheme)
The language sings itself alone with writhing contours bared, emerges into empty rooms its inclinations shared.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #257 on new numbering scheme)
By vortices we wend across the demon-strewn collage, with useless metaphors in hand, lamenting: c'est domage.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #256 on new numbering scheme)
A moon's orangeness scaled the night and trailed the mere dark disks of recollected memories and contemplated risks.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #255 on new numbering scheme)
The trees are all in blossom now - it seems that spring's arrived. Each year the best I'll say for spring: "At least I have survived."
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #254 on new numbering scheme)
The space just at the edges, where my vision shades to blue, there dwell the ghosts of angels, who attempt to speak what's true.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
(Poem #253 on new numbering scheme)
Two stones sat down with plans to talk beside a path. The grass tried listening and bent its blades alert like kids in class.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.