Fogbank

Fog rolls in across an empty plain
Visible from far before it comes,
Composed of droplets not unlike to rain,
But joined together softly - and it thrums
With cold, damp energy. The layered folds
Sweep in slow motion, first seeming like dust
While the terrain itself obliquely molds
Their ponderous passage; then a sudden gust
Of wind made visible by water hung,
Pushes it up and over, so the sky
Is liquid, and I find myself among
The drops, no longer dusty dry
But palpably moist. So too love rolls
Across the heart, and inundates our souls.

Pathos

Drops of dripping drenching rain downpour
Onto an oily surface rainbow-slick
With water washing what was once before
As dry as dust, save where oil would lick
Across the surface, hydrophobic, balled;
Now all is water, and the world is drowned,
The dust is all incontinently mauled,
And weighed into the once so thirsty ground.
Like to the earth, liquid-deprived and cracked,
Eager to feel, and to absorb, the rain
Ere it can swirl itself into a drain,
I too knew all too well the thing I lacked
Before; and now I too am soaked full through
With what I missed: the love I get from you.

Petrarch

There is a garden utterly untilled
In which bloom flowers lovely past compare;
The nightengale as well has sojourned there
And with her voice the air is nightly filled.
There every creature does what it has willed
And none are subject to vicious despair,
Lingering pain or undeservéd care,
While all disturbance is obliquely stilled.
Though I were lying there in all its charms,
Surrounded by its beauty and its bliss,
I would, for one soft touch of her light kiss,
Or one embrace of her so tender arms
Leave such delights and wander where she would
And think that this exchange did me but good.

Wyatt

There is a deer that flies before my eyes
Far from the outcry of the chasing pack
Who seem not to have found her hidden track
But wander after self-inflicted lies.
Yet still she races, as if some surprise
Has floated to her on the wind's new tack,
And turning ever forward and then back,
Zigzags across the wood, and ever flies.
I know her well, for we have met before,
And I have felt her nuzzle in my hand;
I would not call her tame unto command,
But neither would I call her wild therefore.
She has her head, and I will let her run
In trust that she'll return when she is done.

Subfluity of Words

It's hard to write of love that has succeeded;
It sounds too much like boasting, or self-praise.
Some other register of speech is needed
That puts aside that worry, and allays
The fear of seeming sappy, trite, or dull.
I cannot seem to perfectly define
What it should be - but I forever mull
The question, since just such a love is mine:
I am delighted every day with her,
And cannot smile without her in my mind;
If I'm not with her, then I wish I were;
By this, and such like thoughts, love is defined.
But even these grow stale with use, and I
Find little left to write except a sigh.

Bare Bones

Time is relative to what we need
Or rather, what we want; it dawdles on
When expectations gang up to exceed
Our mere reality, but it is gone
Faster than wished for when desire is such
As makes necessity of a delay.
I therefore do not trust in time too much,
Although I love it in my own small way,
Relying on its passage to achieve
Accomplishments I cannot do alone:
Extinguishing the pain for which I grieve,
Or sprouting seeds I long ago had sown.
If it were absolute, I'd trust it more
Since what's to come would mirror the before.

Memoriam

There are some wounds that are recalled with joy;
There are some losses that return with gain;
There are some hurts, whose purpose can alloy
The price, and leave a surplus to remain.
Yet all these are but physic to mask pain;
The loss is felt no matter what its good.
The back that breaks is not helped by the strain
Nor by pretending that it ever could.
Yet this itself is false, and falser too;
The soldier is not merely flesh and bone,
But knows himself, and knows what he must do:
The sacrifice he makes is of his own.
Therefore the loss, though terrible and steep
Must make us happy too - although we weep.

Memorial Day

There's something in a poem that can bring
A memory to life. That's why today
The statuses of many simply sing.
The songs bring back the many dead that they
Were written for, or of, and make us feel
The pain of loss, the pride of what they saved;
Conjure it all up again as real,
Requiring us, as though they were engraved
In our own souls (as some of them still are)
To mourn their deaths, and thank those who have paid
That last full measure which exceeds by far
All other proofs - whether from British raid,
Or minie ball, machine gun, AK, tank:
These are our dead, and they are ours to thank.

Daybreak

Daybreak is an artificial time
Invented by mere nature to awe fools.
Why should I care when sunlight starts to climb
Into the sky? Or why obey their rules?
I make the day the times I want to wake
And let the sun and what it bids go hang.
It does not matter that the sky may take
A different hue, or that a rooster sang;
The day is not begun if I'm asleep,
Nor will it 'til I rise - at least for me.
No more will I be counted with the sheep
Who blindly follow for eternity.
Rather I choose - and choosing is the point
That keeps my sense of time not out of joint.

Simplicity

Life is a simpler thing when she is near;
Not less exciting, interesting, or tense,
But less excruciating. Every fear
Is minimized, though it had been immense,
And all the good that I have done or seen
Comes flooding back into my memory
As lively as at first, as fresh, as green.
My worries and my insecurity
Can be expunged by her most potent smile,
And with her touch my heart becomes most light.
When she is here I think I float the while,
While no disturbance can approach my sight.
Such joy it is, and all from knowing her:
Though she's not always here, I wish she were.

Green Sky

The trees today are really very pretty.
They hang green leaves against a clear blue sky
And ornament the splendor of the city
In which their soul of nature yet must vie
With man's invention, and its heart of steel
Which pumps its warm blood out in steam and smoke
These, by contrast, merely stand. They seal
The mind off from the dangers that would choke
It up; they bring back joy, and cast
Bright shadows on men's souls. They knit
Us all together in our awe, bind fast
Our eyes and hearts. It is most fit
That we look up for God - since doing so
We see the beauty of his forests grow.

Onstage

All others love the heat; so do not I,
Who under wraps must spend my precious sweat
Until I feel the loss shall make me die.
So every person I so far have met
Cries out in joy I wish I could forget
To feel the air concocted with this heat.
They do not have to spend the evening wet
With self-bestaining fluid, nor to greet
The morning in exhaustion, incomplete
And dehydrated. No, they will not be
A heap of cinders. They pronounce it sweet,
And wonderful to have the warmth. To me
It is a torture - oh, for cold and rain
To rid me of this unrelenting pain.

Bean

A single coffee bean can make a day
Seem fresh and clear, that was not so before.
It will clear out the cobwebs that can stray
Into the mind, and let that mind ignore
The primal, base frustration that creeps in
With waking at a time when it would sleep.
A single bean can make the heart begin
To pump, the limbs begin to more than creep,
The breath come faster to the lungs. All this
With but a single source, such a small thing,
Yet something therefore terrible to miss,
For all the benefits that it can bring.
What can I say therefore, in praise of you
That are to me not one bean, but a slew?

Mantra

I need to let it go

I need to let it be

I need to take it slow

I need to patiently

Accept what I can't change

And what is not my role;

Be quiet and arrange

Myself in self-control.

Be calm and full of ease

Breathe deep and let it out;

Don't let my anger seize

My heart and make me shout.

I must be quiet now

I just wish I knew how.

Chicago Whispers

The day is clear and ought to be quite warm;
Still there's Chicago's crisp wind in the air
Which seems to take an almost human form
And whisper to me softly "don't you dare.
Don't get too comfortable, do not relax;
Nothing can be as easy as it seems.
Those who are at their easy become too lax
And fall into the stupor of daydreams
While those I touch, who feel the shiver deep
Within their bones, although their skin is clean,
They stay alert, refuse to fall asleep
And in that state remain both taut and lean.
Be sure, be sure, the day will come quite soon
When you'll be glad of this cold afternoon."

Spin States

Time in an empty room

Still passes just as fast

Whether to joy or doom

Who knows, 'til it is past?

And when one is alone

The room may not be void,

But still it is a zone

Like Schroedinger destroyed

Where that inside knows not

What that outside will do

And what is there begot

The outside never knew.

But two, ah, two can know

And they are better so.

Self-owing

I always have ideas, although I know
They're often bad, and shouldn't have been thought;
Yet still I find I cannot let them go,
Even those that came to me unsought,
But must express them, write them, let them see
The light of day, if only for a second,
That they, like I, may dream eternity,
Refuse to let reality to be reckoned
And stare into the infinite abyss
That is our own mortality and end;
I somehow feel that I might owe them this
That am their thinker and their only friend.
So I will ramble on and on and on
Until the thoughts I owe this to are gone.

Wounds

There are some wounds that pierce beneath the skin
But leave no surface mark to show their passing.
I do not mean the catologue of sin,
Whose hurt is mortal and begins amassing
Before the child is born; nor do I mean
The little inconveniences that scrape
Against souls's grain and muddle what was clean,
From which no living men ever escape,
But rather wounds like fishhooks in the heart
That draw the soul away from holding flesh.
The call to love, to take another's part
And join it with your own so that you mesh
And flow together in a union: these
Wounds do not leave scars. Instead they please.

Prides

I am quite proud
Of her I love
And shout aloud
I am proud of
The work she's done
(And still will do)
What she's begun
And how she grew.
All which she does
Without me there
(I wish I was
And it's not fair)
I show, therefore
My pride the more.

Northwest Chicago

Half-proximal is nearly worse than gone;
To be in arms-reach, yet still past the hand!
Like in the west Chicago's false orange dawn,
Which seems to signal daylight, yet must stand
Opposed to it in every way, I find
Your almost nearness highlights that you are
So far from me in flesh if not in mind
And emphasizes that continual bar
Between us. Were you gone and far away
I'd notice, but prepare my soul for that;
But you are near and far at once, like day
Whose brightness comes (though terminally flat)
Before his truth. The difference is stark
Between that glow and your true sunlike spark.

Romeo's Hours

The hours are not empty with her gone;
The day, nor night, is not a void of time.
Indeed, each evening welcomes in the dawn
And sees me waking through the sun's low climb
For I spend almost every absent hour
In contemplation of her missing face,
And, held within my adoration's power,
Fill up within my mind her absent place
With conversation via other means
And fond imagination as its aid;
Adding unto the commerce of our screens
The promises we have already made
Of love; and linger in this halfway state:
Time filled, but strangely, at a weird cut rate.

Scav Retrospectus

There are four days (but four) within the year
In which the madness may be loosed and free;
The rest are, in that sense, but dull and drear,
No matter what their other contents be,
Since there is nothing else can possibly
Equal the craze only unleashed therein;
This is no lie, no vile calumny,
But simple, honest truth. What we begin
And end within those days is, lose or win,
The ultimate in merry weirdness; they
Who judge care not for moral good or sin,
But only weird insanity. Make hay
And take the pleasure other days can't have:
It is the genius of our madcap Scav.

Dam

A flood, dammed up by beavers or by man,
Must let a space still (narrow though it be)
Where water can flow openly and free,
Lest that the water (as we know it can)
Burst through and wreck the dam's initial plan,
Ripping apart the seams we cannot see
That water infiltrates perpetually,
And sends the center spinning from the span.
But when harsh time insists I may not write,
Or stern technology decrees the same,
They let no words bypass my utter plight,
And put great stress on the resulting frame.
Thus when restrained I quickly burst quite through
Wrecking restraint to write my love of you.

Re Verse

The presence of my love is nothing new,
Nor its expression in this sort of verse;
Indeed, I'm sure 'tis tedious to rehearse
The frequency with which I madly strew
This space with words declaring what we knew
Before: I love, and love can be a curse
To those who wish my illness not get worse
(I mean my logorrhea). This is true.
But every day this old theme freshly springs
Anew within my heart, and bids me write;
And even when, from business, I spite
That urge, it but compounds, so each morn brings
A double, treble need to write; and I
Must of my love once more reversify.

Retrospect

There are a few things that I'd rather do
Than write - though very few, there still are some,
And most of all the things that then imbue
My later writing with their sense, that come
With feelings packaged in them or expressed
Which I, in later moments of reflection
Will take, and being by their presence blessed,
Turn into verse with some small redirection.
Such have I done ere now, and so now I
Freed from the doing to the being done
Half-turn my face from that now-setting sun
And write my heart against the black half-sky:
I love her dearly who just left me, and
More time than was will be hers to command.

Scav, Interrupted

Hours hours
Nothing left
No more powers
All bereft
Weary, drooping
Feeling slow
Mind self-looping
Letting go
Every feeling
Seeping out
Senses reeling
In a rout
And in sum
Halfway numb.

Slowdance

One step forward, two steps back
Is a formal kind of dance
Fit for fitful, shy romance,
Burdened by a certain lack;
Dances ought to be more slack,
Open to the sudden chance
When emotions quickly lance
Through the heart and make it crack.
This pavan is far too stately
Love should swing and syncopate;
I adore such dancing greatly
Bent and swaying, not held straight.
So I turn and turn and swirl
Ever forward in my whirl.

Bandersnatch

So many poems in a little brain
Explode with violence sometimes. I find
I overwhelm the corners of my mind
With syllables and beats. The constant stain
Of words within is a delightful strain
But still a strain on where it is confined.
No matter how I try to hold or bind
The thoughts will flow. As easy stop the main
Or bid the sun depart as urge me to
Cease writing - or cease thinking what I write.
It is a source of pleasure and delight,
Of course, but even so what can I do?
Forced pleasure is still pleasure, but not just;
I write for joy - but also since I must.

Wait Times

Should I, like classic lovers, subdivide
My minutes into hours, and those long,
And claim that in those hours there could hide
As many minutes more, I would be wrong.
Likewise, if I pretended there could be,
Within a day of missing you, a year,
Or stretch that year into infinity
The truth and I would never then be near.
That's not to say poetical excess
Has no place left within the lover's heart,
But that I have no need to thus digress
From simple truth to read my lover's part:
The days I miss you are but days - but still
Too long a time for love to lack its will.

Coffee

Ideas can come in flashes
And go again as quickly
They tear up massive gashes
Within a brain that's sickly
But in a mind that's wise
And ready for the truth
They come as no surprise
As symptoms of their youth
No matter what their age
In calendars may be
Their mind can still engage
Thus intuitively
And so I sit and drink
In hope that I will think.

Extra

I have within a quantity of joy
That overflows the bounds that it contains;
Therefore, lest uncontrolled it spill and cloy,
I jar it up in sonnets, which explains
Why such a flux of flowing, liquid bliss
Should find itself encased in antique lines;
It would have spoiled in advance of this
Were it not laid within these harsh confines.
By placing it herein I find it grows
And takes new life from being out of me;
So with each poem more and more it flows,
Until it overwhelms the poetry
And that's left is me, joyfully light
Screaming ecstatic lines into the night.

Stormy Weather

You can tell a lot of things about a person
By whether they were ready for the rain
And then, when that rainfall begins to worsen
How they react to that peculiar strain.
Were they prepared already with their coat
Triply-forged proof against the drizzly threat?
Or was their dressing done by simple rote
And everything about them hangs all wet?
Or were they in the mediocre range
Between the two extremes, umbrella-clad
Or rain-resistant, uttering new strange
Curses when the thunderstorm gets bad?
Each of these is a type: but these types hide
The wisest sort, that watch it from inside.

Weightiness

Since time before the time I can recall
I've always just assumed the best would come
While simultaneously doing all
I could to beat a pessimistic drum.
Now some of you believe this to be dumb,
And think my inward and my outward should
Be unified: and I'll admit there's some
Apparent truth in that, and it seems good,
But I know me, and therefore know I would
Be too complacent (see above: my trust
In best results is great) if I e'er should
Allow myself to say I think it must
All come out in the wash. Saying the worst
Wakes up the wish that was complacent first.

Things

There are so many things I'd like to do
And yet it feels like I've said that before
And will again, perhaps forevermore,
Since it's the point I always come back to:
I like to do things, 'specially with you,
So even though I'm saying it once more
In terms that can't be new, please don't ignore
The fact that when I say it, it's still true.
Banality is sinful only when
It's used in substitution for real thought;
And I can say that isn't what I sought
In saying so: I thought it through again
And mean it, too: I'd like to do so much
With you, and we could start with just a touch.

Ancient Prayer

Dost thou see?
Dost thou hear?
If, to me,
Thou giv'st ear,
Listen here
To my cries
And the tear
In my eyes;
Hear the lies
That whirl 'round
And despise
Their harsh sound.
Let them cease;
Give me peace.

Episodic

I hear the strains of Star Wars through the wall
And so I think of you. Why should this be?
You weren't among those sitting next to me
When I first saw it; I can well recall
I saw them all before you, knew them all
And every recollected memory
Is missing you in it. Why should I see
You in my eyelids then, or hear your call
When I hear Williams? Oh, alas, I know:
Your love for it is deeper in my own
And so my love for you has deeply sown
Your image there, so as those old chords grow
I cannot help but think of you, and grope
Within my heart for you with some New Hope.

On Tropes: Why

A topic that has recently become of interest to me - or rather, recently returned to interesting me - is that of the trope, or standard form of expression, in poetry. This may perhaps be obvious from my immediately previous poems on Cupid, but those are only part of the reason this has bubbled up in my consciousness of late, and they might indeed be better thought of as an effect than a cause. I am interested in three things in this post: why we use tropes, how they work, and what effect they have on the poem. Clearly these are deeply interrelated, but I will treat them as separate questions at least formally, for the sake of organization. As I like shorter posts, I will split these apart: this is the post on why.

Why do we use tropes?

Tropes can be a sign of laziness: they are easy, they are shorthand, they are simple. But that can also mean efficiency: evoking a trope conjures up all sorts of things in the reader that would otherwise take up more space, more imagination, more effort, all of which could be spent (potentially) more productively on developing whatever the trope is supposed to bring with it than with duplicating the effect of the trope itself.
Tropes are also a form of cultural connectedness, of communal memory. I see a trope, and I recognize it, either from specific poems, songs, or other art, or from a general cultural and social awareness. This cannot be duplicated: Cupid has echoes that nothing else has, because he/it has accumulated them over years, generations, millennia of people using that term to express meaning. No original invention brings that baggage with it, for good or ill.

Tropes also enmesh us in historical connections; poems that rely on tropes can call on hosts of other poems that have also relied on the same tropes, can play off of them, give homage to them, or reject them, but always have access to them in a way that a poem that eschewed that trope - or chose another - cannot. A poet wishing to engage, either positively or negatively, with what has come before can hardly avoid the temptation to use a trope to do so.

There are many more reasons, I'm sure, that could be introduced here. I will suggest a final one before moving on to the next installment in this discussion: we use tropes because tropes developed for a reason. They are effective, moving, and deeply embedded in if not our psyches then our cultural memory. A trope can be an extremely useful tool for expressing what it wants to express; not only are they catchphrases, shorthand, or an engagement with the past, but they are also the image that they are, and that image is often extremely powerful in and of itself.

Dot Matrix

It's strange to miss that little bright green dot
That always makes me smile at my screen;
Sometime's it's red, or orange, but that spot
Is what I treasure - when it is not seen
I don't know what to do. It's very odd.
I want to conjure it - to conjure you.
And even though I know, and give the nod,
To why you're missing, I can hardly do
Without that little harbinger of joy
That brightens up my day with its small light;
You'd think that happiness would quickly cloy,
But my heart searches for it every night.
I'm sure it will return, and I know when,
And oh how happy I will be again.

Karenina

A pleasure is a pleasure anywhere
But every pain feels local, and specific.
Pain is the nearby lake - lies only there;
The sea of joy is large as the Pacific.
Yet human minds are strange: this very thought
Excuses us deriding joy and pleasure
As being too diffuse to be well-wrought,
And focusing on pain in greater measure.
Like hipsters all, we value only that
Which seems unique and local just to us
While that which is more general falls flat
And is a reason to fidget and fuss.
Therefore a swift solution I suggest:
Reject our inner Tolstoy, for the best.

Cupiditas

Then greedy Cupid, looking to expand
Th'apartments he had built within our hearts
Caused us to come together hand in hand
That he might pulverize us with more darts.
And doing so, endeavored to increase
Our great degree of love, and make us touch;
The which, I think, though his efforts should cease
Would have unaided worked itself as much.
And we became a union out of two
So he, expansive, might in double room
Putter about and do what he must do.
But oh, poor Cupid, for he made his doom:
When we embrace his exits sealed him tight
And he is trapped within us every night.

Second Stage

But Cupid, not contented with a home
So small, so petty, as my own poor heart
Began again, in search of lands, to roam
And see what real estate lay on the mart.
Being aware - as how could he not be? -
Of where and how he'd struck my heart before,
He went with secret curiosity
To see the idol that I would adore.
But there a sudden snap of second cold
Drove him to buy a double residence
Adding another room unto the old
Within her bosom, for his own defense.
Yet in his restless youth he would not stay
But lives in both of us for everyday.

Migratory Birds

Cupid, declaring that the Gulf Stream was
Too hot for him that generated heat
Crossed over the Atlantic, as one does,
To find new lands and make new lovers meet.
There he discovered winters colder still
Than any he had ever know before
And in a bleak December took a chill
That burned in him, tormenting him full sore.
He strove to find a shelter for his head
Since frostbite threatened his still naked form;
He hurried in the snow with growing dread
For fear that nobody would keep him warm.
But I looked out, and into me he sprung
Filling with love my ever-speaking tongue.

Timon

Man's comfort comes from friendship truly given
Not bought, not owed, not exercised by right,
Simply self-wrung from hearts that would be riven
Did they not give their free love in delight.
If this is sun, then forcéd love is night,
Dark and obscure, half-lit by mere reflection,
Feigning to be a substitute for light,
But only serving by a misdirection.
Only the blind mistake for true affection
Such a deceit, and every soul has eyes
With which to see, and offer up correction
To those whose hearts love only in such wise.
Therefore I joy, whose friends give in my need
Not out of duty, but from love indeed.

Spend

No matter how long everything may take
We have the time. Oh, do not worry, dear,
Banish every minimus of fear,
And be thus certain: we can always make
The time sometime. A time to bake,
A time to wander, time to peer
At strange new things, a time to veer
Wherever we may wish, to sleep or wake.
In all this time we need not ever be
Aware of passing hours or the clock
For whatever we do, whether ad hoc
Or planned, we can do with impunity.
We have the time, and it is ours to spend
To any purpose and for any end.

<>

Empty parameters don't signify
Despite their best intention to so do;
They touch only themselves, self-modify,
And doing such, never create anew.
Rather they feed on their own flesh, and taste
The bitter mockery of self-deceit
Pretending that they have not been a waste
Pretending they consume some other meat.
I see them void and wish it were not so,
And therefore seek to give them aught to touch;
For touching others, they begin to know
Their own true purpose, and because of such
Cease to be cannibals, and join the system
Of words and other symbols, that have missed 'em.