My Flourescent Persona

February 2001, Narrative Verse

Having just returned from the grocery store, I am with my friends, entering the house from the north side. He begins passing as we unlatch the door, taking note of a florescent orange scrap which lies on the ground. Everybody knows him, he passes the house many times a day. He’s mostly referred to as the guy with the Barbie tucked into his football helmet or the guy that walks like this.

Today he is wearing the usual bright colors, layers of vividly striped shirts, on and wrapped around his waist where he fastens his pink bunny along with other items, trinkets of his personality. The left pant-leg of his faded blue jeans is securely pegged at the knee. Loose tennis shoes chase his feet and his selected headgear is a boxy, brandless, florescent-green cap over a paisley forest-green bandana disguised in more attached finds and an array of ballpoint pens wedged into the band of his swimming goggles. All this set off with a silver-laced smile.

Our eyes meet, though, as this makes our intentions vulnerable we quickly look back to our respective paths. I wonder his name… My friends are already heading downstairs toward the kitchen. I hold back, curious, peering out the small window on the door as it closes. His walk, confident, brisk with a hint of athleticism, exhibits a pause. He turns back toward the florescent orange scrap lying exposed, approaches and stands in observation for a moment. Decided, he reaches down, gathers and houses the treasure alongside his waist, as if he has found a piece of himself.

An Onslaught of Caterpillars to an Air-Conditioned Building in Florida

November 2003, Italian Sonnet, Take 2

A million footprints far away from branch
Abandoned, why? No parachutes or silk
String routes, pre-made cocoons or juice or milk
Await, yet still they fall as an avalanche
May hurry down. They flex their glands, crash land
Dismiss their guilt, reorient and bilk
The prey and predators they stilt—full tilt,
And like an arrow, make for the entrance.

From solitaire and lazy window gaze,
Through hall to patio, a cool demise.
The door hydraulically slows down to aid
A million feet beneath a glow of eyes.
What does it matter who will win the race?
They will not be tomorrow’s butterflies.

Temporal to the White Sea (As told by a critter to his kind)

October 2003, Blank Verse

The sea was blue for gravity, appeased,
Had pulled the blood of sky unto her depths,
With cold hand, tucking every tide between
The sands, as space calmly skipped asteroids
Across her breadth. In step with time, she took
A breath, nevertheless, quite hydrokinetic
And asymmetric—just this once. It’s said

Her shadows housed red fire—a vein between
The trenches and mountaintops, aloft, embraced
In nimbostratus—plentiful and racing
At a catastrophic alien pace.
The breeze, She held a sip of mist, permit a taste—
A tease of seasons, nonetheless, displaced—
Then hopped a hill to quench the groves who grew
As tides unto thus high. And as an eye
Who never winks, our clearing fathomed fate
At hand. Her lush grass grasped in fist of soil,
An offering to tempt the wave to land.

Now sea aside and trees asunder, close
We sit in history’s cold wake, the dark
Blue skyline silenced by a cumulous
Rouge silhouette with solar eclipse drawn
Upon—her lunar awning from folklore
And myth, eons beyond this campfire pit.

Much Thanks to Wild Boars

Shades of gray pervade
The night; 6:10 dark orange, true orange
Yellow, green, cyan forms
A defining light, shadows vague
She tromps ambitiously in plaid.
Contrails streak, contrails torn
Wispful, coyoteful, adorned
Sunlight, day, the colors fade…

Twisting away lampu-like
As so am I? And so as I,
Begins the day lamp bulb bright.
Bed we’ve emptied, cab arranged
And she romps vividly in plaid.

* italicized words deserve French pronunciation.

The Valiant Turtle Metaphor

October 2003, Non-metrical split couplet

Run little turtle, run for me
Swim little turtle, swim to freedom
And little turtle, when you’re free
Dance little turtle, dance for me.
~the people on the hill

The sand cracks, I take a peek,
Sneak
A whiff of a world I’ll only frequent
A minute.
Sun ringing, crisp air, cool sand tickling my nose—I tremble
Like a finger without thimble,
Exposed. I struggle forth, amazed with the beauty, the birds.
An urge
Overtakes me to slip from the shore. Oh, look! Not far,
There are
A whole lot of me budding and shuffling toward the sea.
The low frequency
In the wind spins whirlwinds, the colors are so bright.
So different than last night.
I inhale, my palate explodes, the scent of seaweed
Sweet,
So neat, there are no roads! A gust upon my face
Gracefully
Unfolds an air lift with a twist,
Brisk
As gold. It’s a great day for a dip, I’ll explore
Offshore,
As a form crosses the sun and circles once more—a goodfella,
Hello.
Wow! So quick, oh, he’s dive-bombing now.
I look around.
And why are those people up on the hill yelling,
Arms waving,
As if they’re suggesting I move?

Oh, God! He just ate one of me! Yellow mouth vice
Not nice—
Bad. Oh, jeez, six or eight out of one-twenty, reduced
By two,
Four, sixty, two—a handful. What luck,
Stuck Here,
I survived the selection. I survived the waves.
Now droves
Of jackals, wild pigs—insane. This is quite rare,
Where
Is my mom? I’ll take refuge in this rusty can.
Oh man,
Not for long. I must drag myself to the sea. Go fast.
At last,
A foot less, I’m so slow. No, fast, I will go
Straight as the crow,
Eyes! He pecked out one of me’s eyes! Oh dear,
So near
Keep plugging just twenty-five more years.
Tears,
They’re blocking my view. No accumulated salt
Yet, just the thought
Of the blue. Now quick, flip by flip, gosh, I’m so slow.
Flowing
Trickles of aid wrap soft like a handkerchief
On my ankle.
And why are those people still up there,
Dumb stares,
I could’ve used a little help you know!

Ahh, it seems my sight has improved.
I’m moved
By the undertow, swirled and shoed.
Glued
To a worry in the back of my mind, yellow beaks,
Tusks, cheeks
Munching the orange-peel soft carapace
Inside.
Snazzy, if I move my flipper like this, I glide.
No need for a guide,
I’m quite alive. Whoops, by surprise I’m tossed
Lost,
The sun, obstructed again, casts a long
Shadow and is gone.
What’s that figure? It grows. A big fish,
No, a shark!
Not this again. Go! Paddle fast as a galley
Two, three
Gunpowder’s incentive if you ask me,
Free
At home, yikes, what’s this? SWISH…

Ha hah, missed!
Look mom, I can survive on
My own.
As I come up for air, their cheers blare
Social welfare,
Jeers and suggestions of what I should know,
So,
I yell back, I’m not impaired!
Aware
However, that I am little and my culture is different… they probably don’t
understand.

Little Friedrich & Uncle Sam

Take 3

When I was a kid I had a few questions
Like how to walk and how to kick
Was I conceived in liberty?
What’s the use of knowledge in society?

At first I queried then I poked
Amazed and leary, brimmed and stoked
Then Uncle Sam took my hand
And said, “You’re looking stellar you mild Fabian.”

While he justified his grip
I pulled away and ran from him
To the Privatseminar and on
To some coffee house, here’s what I saw:

People communicating
The universe, the kosmos mating
An organic compound of benzol rings
The lattice of a crystal’s strings

I saw order
Spontaneous order
Hey Sam, get your visible hand off me.

I gasped aloud yet Sam grabbed my arm
And insisted that I don’t be alarmed
He said there could be competition
He said he calculated with precision

“There’s no taxis in these galaxies
The wind carries us quite happily,”
I said, “No Sam, competition is a discovery procedure!”

He did not understand. Of course
I tried to explain, however, verbose.
The double negative, after all
Has yet to be banned by federal law.

With a firm hand on my shoulder
Sam showed me his campaign hats and price controls
He offered to subsidize my thoughts
As I pulled a way again, he looked shocked

I want order
Spontaneous order
Hey Sam, get your visible hand off me.

I ran, I fled his crooked stare
Until I stumbled upon Ms. Lacy Faire
As fine a form as one need see
To be free to choose, and choose to be free

Lacy and I chose to get together
With a few good ideas and a few good friends.
Amongst us all and amongst us some
She’s who embraces our decisions.

As Sam carried on down the road to serfdom
I found myself in Switzerland
Between the firm, the market and the law
On the shores of Lake Geneva, here’s what I saw

People communicating
The universe, the kosmos mating
An organic compound of benzol rings
The lattice of a crystal’s strings

I saw order
Spontaneous order
Hey Sam, get your visible hand off me

Casual Tunes (Lauren’s Closet Poem)

Paths cross on the lawn, under tree, in the shade
With no path yet past fascinates and arranges the day.
A pair of swimsuits, a handfull of notions
Like geysers in showrooms or spoken explosions
To once again soak me
And you.

Tucked in an enclave, a pocket of sun
From short stories to a contraption that clunks
After the Fairmont the rain fell in lumps
Until the shelter of the Rep and a tale called ‘True Love’
That you asked that I read
To you

I won’t define well defined casual tunes
For the songs that I sing are the songs that grow old
Though the tales that I tell are the tales that I’ll tell
Again and again and again

Hidden in few - two tents, cookware and steed
Seeds, flower books mesmerize, marvel and feed
Your quaint mind mapping ‘tography photons with reeds
On your fingers whom dance on a stringed hollow-shaped tree
That once sung for me
I remember