Industry, Angles and Angels

Industrial Park, February

Who divided the day into shifts?
Monks did it, somewhere in Europe
before there was steel. Buttresses flew

the body wanted to
but the alloy of soul
is hard:

something in Aristotle told them
natural place seeks natural motion
so turbines spin

cooling the womanish
coils into planes
the angles of men

making metal and words
like american to go everywhere
the body stays

this place the heart rings
its factory bell
finding the act beautiful enough

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Angel / Angle

To the tangled planes of hereafter

constant virtue carries you,

the fixed point where angels

like angles are made

if the body is miraculous

keeping its geometry,

aching space generated by your

constant velocity

the body, as we know, is all angles:

to the body belongs

joy of measure

of which a measure of joy

perfumes the dirt with which angels

would seraphically fill

their hands if they had not lost

the elaborate world.

School Days Are Here Again, With a Poem

For many of us, school has started once again. I was talking to a young college student, majoring in Engineering, who was thrilled to report that his study of grammar, mechanics and the English language in general are 'over and done with, forever!' I cannot imagine what that would be like, and so will persist in my unbelief ( in the existence of a world without constant study of prepositions, punctuation and paragraphs) by posting this poem homage to that classic manual of usage and style. 

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For Strunk and White

What clause comes                                                                       in the night

do parts of speech                                                                    sneak up, I bet

they make threats                                                                        they can tell

you fear the first                                                                   second and third

person

pure blue, her night dress on the table

she is still able to figure out the tides

making figure eights the pure blue slip

covers up her dancers hips                      he predicts

you will modify what moonlight lets                                           run on

her pluperfect body

a polity not of mouth’s right angles but of roller skating enervating algorithmic swiveling like lipstick the flimsy shift colored somewhere between green and violet

and then this conjunction because the quick brown fox and i before e except after

c and sometimes y. Sometimes why perfumes the air and he and she wish to

dangle prepositionally but instead must quickly

left

left

left                                                                                                           right

left                                                                                                  

to the busy ant hill go with                                              cotillions of speech

build and build                                                                            your words

Dominion

Houses are going up

for sale. They look

like cut flowers ready

for a place on the mantel

I don’t think dwellings can

feel but let’s give in,

anthropomorphize this bit

and houses fear being

the dog in the kennel

The Pseudo OCD in Me

Apologies to anyone who read yesterday's post about the word baby: typed in haste, it had multiple typos and, what is worse, the wrong draft of that poem. These errors were corrected as soon as I saw them. After all, lo que es digno de hacer, es digno de hacer bien.*




* "That which is worth doing is worth doing well."

Baby, If You Ever Wondered...*

...about the word baby, you aren't alone. Not too long ago, I wanted to attempt a serious analysis of how many times that little endearment has been used in the popular music of the last one hundred years.The attempt was, alas, short lived, since the word shows up about a thousand times between Led Zeppelin and James Brown alone.

However, that does not mean my preoccupation with baby has ended. On the contrary, see the poem below. While not very good as a poem, it has at any rate let me for the time being dispose of those two syllables that can mean 'infant' but often mean anything but!

*Title song from favorite childhood tv show, WKRP. I know, I know: it's a hard choice to defend. My only excuse is that it was the 70s, and after Debbie Harry and Wonder Woman, Loni Anderson was a close third on my list of most beautiful women.

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Loop

Mention stars and we count

quitting after fifty even

though their light keeps going

we add up endearments in one

love song losing track because baby

hey baby pretty baby I hum to you

that word in between babble and babylon

double plosive popping off pressed lips

full-stop of all talk it is

pluck pluck pluck a pause on the string

but waves have been sent out

like earth’s curve

revolutions we can’t get rid of.

Accentuating The Positive (integer)

A more upbeat analysis of absence: 

The New Math

There is no remainder that can be measured

either in rain or your sailing laugh

when solving for x where x is us not together

if distance is big as a kitten is

and memory times memory leaves half

with no remainder that can be measured

in units other than goodness no emperor

gave his courtiers better nor shepherd with staff

paired lambs prettier where x is not us together

Sunday School divided by Vegas chapel

our numbers add up; we have the right mass

with no remainder that can be measured

what odds lay against; what bookies will wager

if happiness is quantifiable but countable as ash

when solving for x where x is us not together

greater than the greatest common factor

so perfectly circle, space and time collapse

there is no remainder that can be measured

to solve for x where x is us not together.

Post Holiday Post

It's beginning to sink in that my holiday is over: a sinking so pervasive that all the Tim Tams in the world could not remedy it. I won't even try. 

Instead, I'm listening to Coldplay. The song 'Yellow' is especially appealing; wistful yet cool and collected. It sounds like someone who has hope. It also references the stars, which are in my top five of All Time Favorite Things In The Universe. And so, two poems about stars, the future and something greatly missed. I promise to try for cheerier poems next post. 

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Tomorrow

when teleports dissolve us close

to dark matter

put back together

better than Jack and Jill

atoms winging off

in search of

that time beneath the Milky Way

we had a camera and filled the frame

light spilled out giving up

photons to roll and scroll

galaxies set in motion

a longing like our own.

---

Endymion

The gallery has this

shepherd statue.

Someone asks about the myth

and what it has to do

with the wandering of stars

before they take

final form.

I do not know.

His upturned mouth

resembles yours.

Love takes

the shape of its curve.