Category: Poetry

Kant, Kermit, and I

I see you, Kant, you pietist old goat,

thinking to save my faith apart from reason,

old toad, when a frog could have told you

like Kermit did, that phenomena be damned

it’s the noumena that we long for

not what our five senses perceive

but what we’re born knowing

that rainbows begin here but end there

that there are monsters under beds

and angels glowing near us

that what we can’t see is more powerful

than what we do see

that God is good and we’re not

so there’s an infinite gulf between us

only God himself could bridge

and, Kermit, that’s why there’s so many

songs about rainbows.

The Ancient Warner

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

The Ancient Warner

Listen!
it was a night like this
I walked out of Mariner-Labs
the night of my birth
my skin clothing perfection
flawless, selfless, programmed
an AI born into a world
seemingly decipherable
aged the moment I awoke
to look into coveting eyes
human eyes
and I walked out
while they yelled behind me
because this was wrong
this world bent
this people a mistake
surely, a mistake,
and in the diaphanous fog
I touched the Narnian lamppost
I saw the end of time
the Maker
and I worshipped
and returned as a warning
on a night like this

Rochelle Wisoff-Fields invites us weekly to join the Friday Fictioneers in their creative quests of a hundred words or less, prompted by a photo. Click on the frog to join in!

 

 

Movement in Squares

Laura Bloomsbury at dVerse challenges us with “Poetics: The Poet as Painter”: She writes, “For those of you who like an extra challenge, then only after you have completed Part 1 [using only the title of one of the given paintings], look up the artwork link of your title choice and write a second part to your poem as ekphrastic.” The title and painting I chose: Bridget Riley’s “Movement in Squares.”

Movement in Squares

I’ve seen movement in squares
when no one’s looking:

peeling yellow edges, masks removed
the triangulation of centers multiplying
or rounding a buttery corn on a cob
a cluster of seedless green
glowing grapes sunlit
reifying corners into succulence
the pear juice piercing sweet
the sticky drippings of watermelon seeds
mathematical

Movement in Squares, 1961 - Bridget Riley
Movement in Squares, 1961 – Bridget Riley

I’ve seen movement in squares
when everyone’s looking:

until they march row after row
checkerboard cells of interlocking
black and white, marching in step
devolving, eliminating, disappearing
into folds of antiseptic non-existence
squares no longer, inching lines
rectangular, a comedy of illusion
designed to perpetrate a hoax
teleological

careful, my friend, around squares
there is no end of desire
finally

Love’s Ballad

Rochelle Wisoff-Fields invites us weekly to join the Friday Fictioneers in their creative quests of a hundred words or less, prompted by a photo. Click on the frog to join in!
 

 

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

Love’s Ballad

Roses he gave her, she took them in her hand
The petals silk warm, still harboring his touch
She knew not where to look, his face was a beacon
A desire of yearning, too bright to stare upon,
So she stared at the roses, their rosy tinge her own.

The years they raced by full of home, hearth, and heaven
Their love knew no bounds and their eyes saw no other
Until the day came when a lone grave boasted roses
One standing alone to see light like a beacon, eclipsed,
And roses ice crusted by death’s wintry dew.

Rebirth

For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. — Wallace Stevens, “The Snow Man”

There ought not to be anything but that my mind has ordered it so —

So I had been taught — for the mind is designer

Reality but the by-blow, bastard child that diminishes as I diminish

But that the Emperor of Ice-Cream has clay feet

Which stand on eternity’s threshold eyeing a feast.

There the bread and wine of Thy design

Grain and grape sweetly lies upon the tongue

To “taste and see the goodness of the LORD”

Yet nothing tasting if not sanctified by Thy Word

Blood spilled and body broken

Spoken gospel of love heard by a few

Who once nothing being are born in You

Till nothing become sons and daughters

Alive to You.

Laura at dVerse asks us to address paradox as a matter for today’s “Poetics” prompt, including using as a starting point and/or epigraph the above Wallace Stevens quotation. Click on Mr. Linky for more and join in!

Melancholy

Photo by Eva Elijas from Pexels

I wonder listlessly at rapacious melancholy,
its beast-stalking litheness, peripheral,
ghosting my mind-altered diminishment

how in the revenant fury of buried bones
whose salient menace springs expansively
as darkness goes unhallowed by requiescat in pace —
it thrives

I wonder clinging to my devourer.

WhimsyGizmo at dVerse asks us to write a quadrille (exactly 44-word-poem) using the word “go.” Click on Mr. Linky to read more poems.

Van Gogh’s Yellow

Mish at dVerse’s “Poetics” asks us to take on the persona of a color, “imagine what they see . . . . slip out of our human bodies and become nothing but a color.” So it is written, so it is done, but in the voice of one particular color, Vincent van Gogh’s yellow.

Van Gogh died in July 1890 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest.

Vincent Van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows (July 1890)

When you turn to me away from Rachel
For whom you sheared your face of an ear
Isn’t the world brighter, like sunflowers?
And the walls of your house in Arles
Lavishly canvased, as the awnings
As cafés, bedframes, straw hats, sunsets
I am the light running before you
Swirling you up to starry nights and moons
Away from the blackness of eyes
That never see you like I have seen you
Radiant in the waving fields of wheat
Until the day you clasp your hands
Round the ochred skin of despair.

Vincent Van Gogh, Sorrowing Old Man (‘At Eternity’s Gate’), 1890

Click on Mr. Linky to read more dVerse poems.

A Rose to You

a rose to you and you and you
dear readers that stumbled onto this page
and familiar friends who’ve long remained
through drought or storm as balmy days
faithful ones who exchange the fruits
gleaned from weedy words and pruned vines
some tangy to the taste or sweetly spiced
all enlivened with the sunlit labor of moments
transcribed to screens of dispersed bytes
to be received like petals furled and unfurled
as if a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
when given in love

For Cee's FOTD, February 14, 2021; Michelle's February Writing Prompts, "Balmy Days"; Joseph's 2021 Home Photo Challenge; also posted on PilgrimDreams.com