A quantum vinaigrette over lightly mixed greens

With its sinuous green edge and its delicately
decorative white venation this dewy cress laid
on a fine crystal platter would fit well next to that
chunk of cement facade ensconced in a vitrine
at the Art Institute’s new Louis Sullivan exhibition
There’s little cause to wonder why these particular
atoms once afloat on inchoate seas and awash
in the hummed mumbles of humble vibrations
chose to decohere into this one captivating pattern
from among an infinite variety of mattered schemes
even limiting their choicest range to those paired
colors A tree frog for example its narrow lime toes
suctioned on a broad leaf and its watchful pearl
eyes misconfigured with a blind spot too soon
exploited by a beak spouted peril Or the gallant rider
in uniform myrtle and mounted atop an albino steed
who at a mirthless gallop through routed troops
delivers this message Mother I am so far away
from everything They’re oddly jarred couplings but
with any choice whether slapdash had or carefully
considered what’s our guarantee it will live up to
the iron of romantically clad expectations I have
heard It’s always the salad that gets you in the end

---

This week at Big Tent Poetry, Jill Crammond-Wickham suggested we gather up words from our everyday lives. I'm not much of an eavesdropper, but I did borrow vocabulary from some diverse sources: Wired magazine (decoherence, humble vibrations, vitrine, and inchoate); The New Yorker (slapdash and It's always the salad that gets you in the end); a cereal box (our guarantee); and Werner Herzog's film Kasper Hauser (tree frog, gallant rider, cress, and Mother I feel so far from everything). To see what words captured the attention of the other poets at BTP, click here.

The degradation (and uplift) of advancing technology

It has every right to bare
this clenched fist of a grudge
embittered by techno-Jovian
whims and base transformations

Once delicately formed— two
tips pressed en pointe, three
others elegantly tucked— it
danced with a golden shaft
pulling indigo pirouettes
across a swept ivory stage

Then came the re-pose: a claw’s
arched looming. Unhappiness
fell as five wilted stems,
beggar mouths forced to fumble
toward those impoverished
humps of white-on-black glyph

The other hand is left
complimentary, richly gripped
by understudy glee, being
drawn from a hapless margin

---

Carolee Sherwood's prompt at Big Tent Poetry this week is to take a "hands-on" approach. I did a comparative study of my hand at work penciling a sketch versus pecking at the keyboard, and this is what resulted. The days of hand-writing poems are long gone, and there may be a wee metaphor in the retelling of the demise. Check out what the hands of the other BTP poets were doing this week here.

celebrating the superficiality of all things being made equal

let us join hands
you and i
and tramp down this falling away
road new paved with over-baked schemes
and the shattered
windshield glass from a dream car
we left for dead many miles back
every tire including the spare had blown
and they still hiss their casual tunes
while popped-out
flesh-tone hoses
dangle and sprinkle
a rainbow gloss on black-rimmed puddles
it’s a cause for deepening joy
these shallows won’t
dry up in either of our weened lifetimes
moisten your lips dear
and make that pineapple-sweet whistle
i love to taste
when i dare to plant my tongue there
the food’s long gone
and pots are now for banging
we’ve lost our way
and maps are made for shredding
into playfully themed streamers
we’ll tie in our hair
as we dance off the waning
silky heat of a too-late summer
the sun’s dial is flipping
and bound by those zeros
we’ve gotta go but it’s best
we’re brought low together

---

This week's Big Tent Poetry prompt is a wordle, that jumbled confection of vocabulary you can see pictured at right. It's a bit of a secret mash-up; the words were taken from an unrevealed but "well-regarded" poet's published poems, so check back in to the BTP site to find out who that was. I'm sure they'd be surprised to see their words put to this particular use :^).

Possession

What’s mine is
yours what isn’t
all his possessed cheap
and passed on
needle deeds to pour out
the thimbles-
full fitting
nimbly in the shallow
dimples of
a love’s distressed palm.

Its clutch of fare-
well will break
hers down to
beggared bits
so nebulous ours
can’t keep from
advancing
matters and oh how
theirs gets circulated
energetically.

---

This week at Big Tent Poetry, Cynthia Short invites us to think about our possessions. I've been making a concerted effort to lesson my hold on physical matter, and this piece is an abstraction on possession rather than a focus on any one thing I may "own."

It's merely evilution, my dears

that gurgling brown hunger you feel deep down it wasn’t you
god knows who put it there no it’s only natural it was she
who planted the initial seed grown up into a succulent leaf
frowning nature abhors a vacuum and she wouldn’t couldn’t
endear herself any more if you sustained such a saddeningly
blank space she’s given you the device for devising wickedly
clever ways of consuming it would be a godless shame
to leave the engine idling now what you eat doesn’t mean
as much as the act of eating itself actively naming god’s
creatures great small may not give you dominion or merit
ownership but ingesting them sure does dainty fingered
sentimentality lost her privileged place when steely
eyed invention serendipitously shoved a crappy cushion
throne up to your table’s edge it’s a divine and kingly right
to take your fill with hands nimbly fashioned for taking
all that’s managed eon after eon to crawl out of a world
engendering slime until there’s nothing left but the awful
runny pallid mucous you’ll sneak back to sated at last

---

This week at Big Tent Poetry, Deb Scott suggests stretching different poetic muscles. I tried to go "against type" (for me) with this unpunctuated, second-person, prosaic block of text. It's inspired by an article I read (The Scales Fall by Elizabeth Kolbert) about the collapse of fisheries in our oceans due to overconsumption. We're at the dawning of what biologist Daniel Pauly describes as the Myxocene epoch in which the seas will give forth only inedible slime.

Lessons in allocentrism

Into our fun house of mirror neurons,
a favorite Fellini character strides
distorted perhaps,
but reflected clearly enough,
none the lesser for our wear.

Who is it? Which one?
It’s truly hard to decide.

It could be that brute Zampanò,
his chain unpopped,
and as ever demanding our attention...

Or the cypher, Steiner,
teetering on edge
to tell us his secrets...

Or a voluptuous
la Saraghina,
reveling in our riveted eyes...

Or gentle Giulietta,
chasing her voices,
their whispers that echo ours.

It doesn’t matter who, in the end.
Better yet, let’s take them all,
and crowd them close in.

What matters is,
we ask they try
a seeming simple task—
touching tongue to nose,
or elbow to chin—
and we watch
their attempts, together.

Strive and fail.
Strive and fail.
Strive and fail.

These are the Sisyphean rhythms
we’ll need to learn.

We have our limits,
but empathy is endless.

---

In this week's Big Tent Poetry prompt, Jill Crammond-Wickham asks us to imagine pop culture icons in a mundane setting. I'm sure what I find iconic might not measure up as "pop" and my mundane is always quite mental, but Fellini and a fun house seemed a natural fit for exploring some neurological concepts.

Saint Nicholas

How do they call you,
those who’ve passed through unmarked
twin doors for the shy
side of one century?

Is it as Nicholas
of Myra,
or of Bari,
or as an unlocated saint,
working wonders in
this home of trim white-stone
block, with three tiers of black-
arches, frowning up at
the merciless
grids behind?

Rows, rows, rows, they float
on glassy, steel-blue oceans,
and these oceans will fall in
violent,
cascading,
millennial
waves unlike any with foam
caps that once lapped
the rocky coast of lost Lycia--
your see
our maps don’t contain,
and our licit hosannas won’t reach.

Who are they?
Who pray here?
Bakers,
sailors,
bankers,
all whose sighs
rise with the torrent of immigrant chants
liaison rafters
fracture in echo-song,
the old coinage that plies your favor.

To which patron can they turn
when your cross crowns not
the work of masons
but one day’s
rubble,
a tongueless bell,
the charred
relics of unnameable acts?

---

This week at Big Tent Poetry, Carolee Sherwood suggests we use a favorite poem. Often, when I get stuck, I'll return to a work I admire for inspiration and perhaps an idea on how to move forward. That was the case for the above piece, which is the second of three that I hope to recite at a friend's upcoming art exhibition. The poem that helped me with it was The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot.

Collision Course

Wipe away that image of
beating butterfly wings

and the currents they send across
great continents.
See instead, you and me

arranged on the same vast
plate — two irregular green peas
rolling around the nucleus of a split pod.

Even if we don’t meet here and now —
snagged by an intervening fork,
set off course by rivulets of gravy,
separated by marbled slabs of meat,
or consumed by a gravity-defying, black-
holed gob — somewhere
on parallel, fine-clothed
tables, we’ll savor the joy of
big-banged, trajectory-altering collisions.

---

At Big Tent Poetry this week, Nathan Landau suggested we dabble in steganography. Mine isn't a very challenging code to break. Each stanza represents a word. Each line contains one letter in the word, and the line's number indicates where to look for the letter (counting from the left, and ignoring spaces and punctuation). I wouldn't have made a very good cryptologist.

Putting an end to this bad pun, There’s no I in steam

I like to visualize my death
not as a grand moment
fraught with TV-script intimations
at sudden illumination
while I’m encircled by a non-weepy
sprinkling of the usual types:
one surviving relative
curious to see what I’ve got
left to inherit; one forgotten
friend dubious I hadn’t
died quite some time ago;
and one vengeful stranger
anxious for the shock
when I hear her unmask.
No, I envision my death simply
as the lonely release
of a hardly noticeable puff,
its minute droplets lifting
to mix with every other
ever breathed, and bid adieu
to my residue of befuddling
puddles flecked with unresolved bits.

---

This week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry takes inspiration from The Love-Hat Relationship by Aaron Belz, asking us to take a common phrase and make it "go a little sideways." There's no better cliché to send off-track than a sports cliché.

Knowing

I don't know
where we were headed,
but the sidewalk did,
and its smells had been
liberated by a hot summer rinse.

You grabbed at my pendulum
arm, and jerked
me back before
the gap grew us
out of being a couple.

My penance was
a hair-shirt stare
and a smack with that saw:
"Life's about the journey,
not the destination."

"Sure," I said, "but the end's
a crappy cul-de-sac.
I wanna see what I can
before we smash
against it."

You summed me up,
mouthing the three letters
you drew on my chest,
still not-chastened:
"A-D-D, Humming bird."

"There's no deficit
of attention here, Old Crow.
It's just this
plugged-up world's got
a surplus of stimuli."

It was one week
later you left,
taking a whole
slew of savory inputs
to the blank without you.

"Everything
happens for a reason,"
you'd tell me.
Knowing the cause,
never changes my effects.

---

This week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry suggests writing a "Conversation Poem." I cobbled together this anecdote of imaginary call and response.

Slippery words spew, and I can't stop their flow

I want to paint it
this plaint
I've worded
one thousand
unrecorded instants
only to see both
the deep and tinny
syllables I thought
vibrantly tinted
dissolve into
pale, gooey-bottomed wails

I should pitch it
this paste
to patch an unfrocked
eye searching
puffy tears for atoms
escaped within
abandoned margins
as narrow as
the difference between
my white canvas
and an emptying hand

I have to plug it
this post hole
bored by my frantic
inattentions
and stencil a sign:
bold letters below
a starched cuff,
its pulseless finger
pointing out
there's one way
round sniveling sounds

---

In this week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry Carolee Sherwood asks us to fill in the blank "I want to write about _______, but I don't know how." My poem is more about that blank, than what fills it.

Poorly sketched comedy meets creation myth

First a disclaimer:
My god is not
necessarily
yours, but she is
undeniably
hungry for a comfort-food
snack of peanut butter
and Fluff brand
whipped marshmallow spread.

(Yeah, I know,
nasty stuff, yet
every god has her quirks)

She's actually
more demiurge,
needy and enduring
a dangerously dull day
ideating at the office
that gets worse when
she opens the gripe-box
to unfold a complaint
pasted in ransom-note letters:

"Too stingy with praise.
Resent the ego stroking
going one way."

"Can't stroke what you ain't got,"
she cracks, tipping back
a cold glass of froth-topped milk.

The bubbling laughter
seizes her
mid-swallow, and
caught up by
a soul-clearing cough,
stars spray out speckling
black tile in a no-longer dark
part of the universe
we call home.

---

This week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry is another wordle (see the image at right). The wordle vocabulary was borrowed from Dangerous Astronomy by Sherman Alexie.

The voices in my head speak with perfect accents (POW Prompt 7)

Chi sono io?

My i strayed from its o
(divorziato)
decades before the sperm and egg had wed,
hatching me to a self-soaking
tub where the immigrant
pigments of Ermano e Rosa
were twice removed.

Quando dormo
gli antenati stanno sempre
sussurando indicazioni

Rosa e Ermano each descend
(spaesato)
on separate planks plunked down to greasy
rock by proverbial boats.
When they do, Emma Lazarus doesn't
warn them the Lady's "give me"
comes with a take.

Provo a sentire
le due parole dolci
ma non posso

Ermano e Rosa each find
(inamorato)
American spouses, have American kids
who sprout to twist a native tongue
till an ill-fit, its tang is
left in must and un-dusted
just for periodic trips back.

Ripeto, Chi sono io?
E nel questo sogno
i voci mi dicono di nuovo...

Let's skip the unplugged generation's gap
(collegato)
to where my i reacquaints with its o,
but their made-up past makes
a tenuous tether, so together
Rosa e Ermano drift on

the whispers of a forgotten song.

Non dimenticar

---

This week's Poetry on Wednesday Prompt asks us to "sprinkle" some Italian into our poetry. Since that's my linguistic heritage, I may have gone a little overboard with the spicing. Here is a translation of the Italian lines:

Who am I?
*
(divorced)
*
When I sleep
the ancestors are always
whispering hints
*
(lost)
*
I try to hear
the two soft words
but I can't
*
(in love)
*
I repeat, Who am I?
And in this dream
the voices tell me again...
*
(connected)
*
Don't forget

Pantoum to an Aging Father

Let's offer up our prayers to a finicky Father
who sits in his segregated heaven, rocking
away senility on that rickety chair
with a spare, tall back wrapped in striped wool blankets.

Who sits in his segregated heaven, rocking?
Our Father, keeping his heart warm against the gusts.
With a spare, tall back wrapped in striped wool blankets
perfectly square (but too small to share with others),

our Father's keeping his heart warm. Against the gusts
and idling time, again he stays busy carving figures
perfectly square but too small to share. With others,
these tokens will help the faithful remain fertile

and idling. Time again, he keeps busy carving figures
on the edges of a pesky map. Mad for expansion,
these tokens will help the faithful. "Remain fertile!"
Father cautions, as he watches a big screen TV.

On the edges of a pesky map mad for expansion,
many errant souls who wander are unable to hear
Father's cautions. As he watches a big screen TV,
the devil's slipping him a low-ball offer to buy

many errant souls. Who wander are unable to hear
news heaven's economy is still struggling, and
the devil's slipping him. A low-ball offer to buy,
our aging Father mulls over hot oatmeal and tea.

---

In this week's prompt at Big Tent Poetry Deb Scott asks us to channel our anger through the poetic form of a pantoum. Whatever anger there was dissipated in the process of writing this, and even its original subject matter was transformed into something completely different.

Hair in unwanted places

More wiry weeds than hair, they grow
coarse black and at a heightened clip
from ear-top follicles suddenly fertile
after decades of smooth-flesh dormancy.

Add to that a stubborn snout intent
on lengthening and willful fingers bent
on becoming gnarled claws. The horror
signs indicate a slo-mo transition

from man to wolf, but don't let that put
you off your supper. We're all made to fall
apart. Creep on over. I'll take a little
nibble, and we'll howl at forever's moon

together.

---

This poem is written for Big Tent Poetry's Week 5 Prompt and Jill Crammond-Wickham's suggestion to poetically "join the ranks of the wild and crazy."

Stray Eros

Aphrodite's kid
could've handled this
if eons ago
he hadn't wandered off
pining for his precious Psyche.

Where that leaves you and me
today is exploring
the grocery store aisles.

Oysters, sure.

Dark chocolate,
even if it's not.

Saffron would,
at minimum,
put my nose in the mood
for some
hay-scented rolling.

Celery? Really,
it doesn't do much for me,
but whatever
floats your dote, dear.

Treats unsacked, we may grasp
that the chemical boost's
no ha-ha joke
but romantic love could be
based on such practical tricks
to keep our DNA churning.

---

This poem is written for Big Tent Poetry's Week 4 Prompt, taking the aphrodisiac as its subject matter. It's always struck me as strange that someone would need an assist from food to get in the mood, because if you're not motivated by love then truly what's the point (except procreation).

Mix me a fixer upper

He's part artist, part alchemist,
but a full-on con, self-professed with post-
graduate degrees in mixology
and the god-given sense to know which
smoldering home remedies will catch fire
(give or take an occasional legal glitch).

His healing pitch is grifted on the easy
comparison of queasily lowered brows to
their indistinctly raised betters. You'll doff
the scoffing face as he pulls back a masking
caparison, and your fever gallops hotly
hoof-in-mouth with an uncontrollable itch.

Tinctures, colloids, salves and potions,
they all have twisty caps, blithe boxes
bubbling over with hypnotic patterns
fashioned to cure your urge to avoid
his futility. First'll come the fondle, then
the crumple followed by purse strings loosening.

Don't consider it capitulation.
His assortment of fluid manipulations
bear a singular branding at 100 proof,
and after the recommended daily dosing
(two jiggers with each meal), you'll feel
you're homo erectus made sapient.

---

This poem is written for Big Tent Poetry's Week 3 Prompt, and marks the return of the beloved "Wordle" — that jumble of challenging vocabulary you see pictured at right. I managed to get all the words into the narrative.

Infinite potential of a finite mind

Sidestepping shadow-plays
boxed in bonus-sized portions
for garden-varietal religions,
I've had these scuzzy intimations
great big (voids) lie behind
most altruistic inclinations
and the biggest news is,
we're still expanding
with-in-exhaustible potentials
to be eternally filled greater.

Now I'll admit to being
hampered in my cognitive
capacity for meaningful
pattern recognition
by my debilitating
predisposition toward
concentrated forms of myopia,
ergo, I can't shape
a formless mess into anything
but incoherent flimflam.

I've tried alleviating this
condition with meditative
concoctions and palliatives
of sensory deprivation,
yet I fear I'll need
a silicon-chip-enhanced head
before I can glimpse
the cosmic legerdemain spinning
its paradoxes of endless
surfaces but no top.

If I finally do, I'll smile big
as a great-white gull winning
his first demonstration hand at
the three-card monte of not-to-be
reconciled contradictions.

---

This poem is written for Big Tent Poetry's Week 2 Prompt, and was inspired by the March 7 episode of Philosophy Talk on Infinity. The suggestion was to only use three to six words overheard, but I think I ended up using as many as a dozen here. I'm a philosophy nerd.

Bred to a Circus, I'm not

From that moment the mouthy man in the middle,
top hat in hand, barks and waves our three floodlit rings
into motion with a flourish of brassy blasts,
the big top gets turvy and my stomach's all nerves
making the bushel of peanuts I just munched feel
like broken glass chewed by my friend the tattooed geek.

Martha says, Elephants are supposed to be more
dignified... don't mope! It is hard to grasp for her
tail day after daisy-chained day when I'm holding
this bouquet of forget-me-not rubber-banded
by a grudge. I tell her, The real indignity's
being dressed in a rhinestone-studded satin cape.

---

This poem was written in response to the new site Big Tent Poetry's Prompt #1. Keeping with the Big Tent theme, we were supposed to write a persona poem based on the circus. I'm a sucker for misfits and animals.