By estory
Morning. I'm eating
Monoglycerides, diglycerides,
Sodium phosphate, sodium
Chloride, benzoic acid,
High fructose corn syrup,
Yellow no. 5,
Red no. 4,
Monosodium glutamate.
Plastic
Flowers, paper
Moons, instant
Automatic microwave
Compact disc video game
Program remote
Controlled climate computer
Memory, wireless
Communications.
Pocket calculators.
Answering machines.
.
| Author Notes | This is a poem of alliterations, of rhythms created by assembling language according to mechanical cadences, building a flat, monotone, machine like atmosphere. The emotions get stripped out, and through the machine experience, we are left with a hollow shell of existence. |
By estory
Dream
A moment's pleasure
Like a thin moon
Before sunrise.
Clean, clear,
It's distant light
Rings in your head
Like the sea
In a seashell.
Weightless, you rise
And travel with it
Unnumbered orbits
Until the moon sets,
The tide sweeps out to sea,
The music
Stops.
| Author Notes | I had to post this as a tribute to Luna, who I just found out passed away on March 5. She gave me so much encouragement when I first came back to the site, welcomed me back, and supported many of my poems. She was always someone you could talk to, always upbeat, despite so much tragedy in her life. I can only pray that she is reunited with her beloved son Mickey again. See you in heaven, Jeni! You will be missed on Fanstory. estory |
By estory
Imagine sunflowers
Opening, beginning to dream
Light:
Seeds of the stars,
Roots in the sky,
Aurora on the longest night.
Illume. Illumine. Illuminate
A dance of light,
Until you have stamped the puddles out.
Press your face against the windowpane
And dream you are goose
Flying north to Great Bear Lake,
To days where the sun never sets.
| Author Notes | This is a simple poem about optimism, about hope. The central image is light, and I wanted to make it obtuse enough, abstract enough, for anyone to relate to. We all have those days, those rainy days, where we sit inside moping. Look out of the window at the light, let your spirit take flight. estory |
By estory
Elongate, elaborate
An ellipse
Of eloquence,
An oblong, an oval,
Or embellish, finish
The figure in flight,
Light, life, line, lineage,
Link
Or chain,
Braid, weave
Woven, interwoven
Across
In between
Crosshatch, slingshot,
Wheel, curve,
Circle, orbit
Concentric
Designs inlaid
To kill time,
Create
Share
| Author Notes | This is poem about the creative process, of twisting words into the shapes, sounds, and rhythms of poetry, making something out of nothing, and then letting it go, moving from the effort of making to the gift of sharing. It is an open ended format, discovered on the blank page, and then disappearing into thin air. estory |
By estory
On a sunny day in June, a day long waited for,
We drive out to the strawberry fields with the windows open
Passed clapboard houses and white churches with steeples
That stand as they stood a hundred years ago
When the farmers who built them first settled here.
We walk through their fields, down the long furrows,
Until we forget ourselves in the light and air,
Lost among the plants with their blossoms and fruit,
Thinking of the men who labored in the soil
Time out of mind, until time seems to stand still.
We wish we could live here, away from it all,
Our lives turning to the turns of the seasons,
Determined by sunlight and soil and rain,
Rooted down with the strawberries in the deep, good land.
| Author Notes | This is a poem about escaping the commercially organized, scheduled life, the stores and the delivery systems, and the longing we have for a connection to the past, the land and the climate and the weather, that seems lost today. The strawberry fields out on Long Island are almost gone now, here in North Carolina they are disappearing. With every farm going up for sale, every housing development going up, we seem to be losing the connection with this past, the agricultural way of life in our history, and the skills we used to have to grow our own food. estory |
By estory
I
I walk a shoreline of driftwood,
Seashells, grains of sand
Like dreams, stretching far
As the eye sees.
Coming up from the bottom of the sea.
II
Black skies. White windows.
After sunset, she stands there,
Waiting,
Night after night.
But his boat will never come back.
III
The line goes out
Into the undertow,
Wild, unfathomable,
A seal or porpoise
Changeling
In another element.
On the other side.
IV
Mainland. An island.
One stands on the edge of shorelines,
Thinking.
Where am I now?
What lies on the other side?
| Author Notes | This is a poem about separations and efforts to bridge them, in life. There are elements of dreams versus reality, death juxtaposed with life, the spiritual versus the physical, and beginnings and endings, and the journeys between all these various points. The rhythm is meant to kind of emulate that rising and falling of the sea. The images of the sea and land, coming together at the shoreline, are the underlying metaphor for all these separations and confluences going on in this poem. estory |
By estory
Newport. Nantucket. Sag Harbor. Greenport.
The names remind you of the sea, the ships,
The faces of the men who sailed in them
From one end of the world to the other.
Haul up the mainsail. Let down the rudder.
Feel the wind pull the line in your hand tight.
Out passed Block Island and Martha's Vineyard,
The wind rises, the water opens up.
That well known edge of land curves out of sight,
And you follow gulls into the open ocean.
Unfamiliar stars. Uncharted islands.
The endless rise and fall of bow and stern.
And like the Yankees who went before you,
You leave the land behind. You don't go back.
| Author Notes | This is in a loose sonnet like framework, a ten syllable meter, set more like the rocking of a boat than the roll of iambic pentameter. The rhymes are off and subtle too, hints of rhyme, rather than proper rhymes, creating echoing effects through the poem. The images are meant to be mysterious and beckoning, things from the past, and the unknown. This was influenced by Seamus Heaney and his Glanmore Sonnets series from Field Work. I was always impressed by Heaney's conversational style, and his subtle rhymes, his finesse of traditional forms like sonnets. estory |
By estory
I
Red sky at night.
I watch them work,
Unmoored, drifting
Into the dark,
The only light
A distant point
Over their shoulders
As the sea rises
And falls.
Nothing they can do
But wait.
II
Their hands seem easy
On the rods,
The reels, unlatched,
Pay the lines out
Into slack,
Hook, line and sinker
Going down passed
The boat's shadows.
You don't see him,
But you know he's there.
Somewhere, and if you're patient
You'll see the line
Pull tight, hear
The ratchet's turning.
Watch them haul him in,
All fins and scales,
Lidless eyes
Never quite lifeless.
Deeper than their own.
III
I watch them work,
Feet in the water,
Heads in the clouds
Drifting off
Port to starboard,
As they sit still
Reaching down
Into heavy pails
Of water and clams.
Again and again
Quick hands
Passed down
From mother to daughter
Empty the pails
As soon as they are filled
Or until the pails come back
Empty.
The soft, pale
Meat inside
Is what they're after.
Baked, or fried,
It makes good food
And the ceaseless demand
Gives them something to do.
Earns them a living.
IV
Sometimes, at dawn,
When the sky is water
And the water is sky,
The bay almost seems
What it used to be,
Once. Wide, dark, alive,
It runs out to sea
Without ends
Or beginnings
Like some god,
Opening his hands
To offer you clams
For no good reason.
You're tempted to throw some back
As a good will offering.
| Author Notes | This poem comes from my Long Island roots, and is about the fishing industry, and the ties between mankind and the sea. there are images of the fishers, on their boat on the ocean, tied back to the land only by the glimpse of the lighthouse behind them, the mysterious dance between hunted and hunter as the fish gets caught, the work the clam shuckers do as they earn their living, and the image of the bay itself, in the morning, eternal, beautiful, full of promise, at the end. It was written some time ago, earlier in my development as a poet, and readers will recognize the influence of Seamus Heaney, particularily his poem "Lough Neagh Sequence". estory |
By estory
I watched my father absorbed in his work,
Bringing the dead wood back to life.
I handed him tools as he called for them:
Straight edges, hammers, drills, saws.
There wasn't much to say,
This was the work of hands
That could find their own way in the dark,
Feel the run of grain in unplaned boards,
Draw a saw blade like a violin bow,
Drill an eye through a solid piece of wood.
He could tell you pine from oak, redwood from cherry;
Make chairs to sit on, tables, bureaus,
Dove tailed drawers fitting together beautifully,
Smooth sanded finishes gleaming like mirrors.
He stood there, working, waiting for me to follow him,
To pick up those tools and learn their rough language,
Their magic of wordless construction.
But no matter how long I watched,
I never got it.
But in watching and listening, much more at home,
Caught up in the rhythms of hand and arm,
I dreamed of making things of my own,
Things that would catch my father's eye,
Fill the space that ballooned between us.
Years later, now, I compare my poetry with his.
Though silent, the wooden things work, serving their purpose.
Unable to support you, hold clothes, or bar doorways,
The written words can speak.
| Author Notes | This is a father's day tribute to my dad, who is now 93. He was trained as a cabinet maker, and always immersed himself in making things, probably because of the relationship he had with his dad. He was a hard working man who tried to make a better life for his kids, working at his small business with his brother sometimes 70 hours a week. I think he was always a little disappointed that I never went into woodworking, or mechanics, following in his footsteps, I suppose in the way all father's dream of their sons. But he gave me that love of making things, also the love of music, and I went on to making music in language with poetry. So this poem has all those complicated elements of love, disappointment, distance, and reaching out that you see in relationships. estory |
By estory
I
Depths. Echoes.
Long fathoms
Down, pearl
And coral beds
Harden in my ears,
While light,
Airborn, weaves patterns
Above me.
Beyond me.
II
Night.
I become the undercurrents of
Ocean dreams.
Ocean dreams:
Sunlight and water
Moving without form
Over the surface of waters.
Clear waters.
Deep down,
A dark shape
Rising from below.
III
Long, white
Scrimshawed bone
Dream
Of women in long dresses
Sitting at windows embroidering
Doves
Flying to the men
On the open ocean.
A lady's face.
A moonless night.
A widowed woman.
IV
Always, I return to the sea.
Salt and water,
Thick as blood,
Deep as the mind
Lidded in sleep
Follows moon
And tide
In its migrations.
Inland, I follow turtle tracks
Down from a hilltop
Into the water.
One day, I will not come back.
| Author Notes | Coming from Long Island, I have deeply ingrained love of the sea, its rhythms and music seem to constantly rise and fall in my soul, and the pull of the moon on the ocean, forming the tides, seems like an underlying force in my spirit. This poem speaks of the subconscious, the desires and fears lurking in it, the distances in life, between lovers, and the earth shaking magnetic pull of these forces in life. The ocean stands as a metaphor for these forces, and the rhythm of waves underpins the rhythm of the language here. I think the sea is a big part of our subconscious, probably having to do with the dimly remembered breathing of our mothers when we were in the womb, which the rising and falling sound of the waves on the shore, in their rhythmic constancy, seems to emulate. It has a calming effect on us, and we can't get enough of it. estory |
By estory
I
Her dress
Plain black,
Pinned tight
At the collar
And hair
Tied up
Above her ears,
She sits, stiff,
Cold, quiet, patient
With the patience
Of those who wait out
Long winters
Pale, tight lipped,
Eyes like black buttons.
II
He is not here.
Rather, standing
On a shoreline,
His eyes the distant islands
Of Texel, Juist, Pellworm, Zeist,
His forehead stretched
Thin and bleached
Like the weathered
Canvass of ships
At sea, off
With cargos fast
And all sails set.
He is watching the sky.
Praying for wind.
III
Quicker
Than your hands,
These eyes are
Slip knots
Or polished
Scale pans,
Staring you down
Over the table,
Ready to clinch the bargain.
IV
Rembrandt himself.
Older, wiser,
A man of the world,
Not quick to words,
He stands in a corner
Watching the crowd
Come to see his work.
Everywhere you go,
You feel those eyes,
Looking right through you.
Arranging you on canvass.
| Author Notes | This poem was inspired by a show of Rembrandt's work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York some time ago, which I attended with my father. I was very impressed with Rembrandt's ability to capture elements of a person's character and personality in his portraits of merchants, wives, sea captains. And himself. The most riveting picture was his self portrait, and those eyes, boring into your soul as you walked passed or looked at the picture, sizing you up, looking into your soul to prepare for another portrait. The poem is very reminiscent of Heaney's style, a great influence on me at that time. The actions depicted by the words create the rhythm and music of the free verse in this kind of poetry. |
By estory
I
Put pen
To paper
And watch it curve,
Open, unfold, imagine
Worlds of places
Carrying you away
Off the flat and rectangular;
Day dreaming yourself
Into rainbows of colors,
Shapes shifting across the spectrum,
The wide open expanse
Of possibilities reaching out
II
From within.
Discover
The shapes come clean,
After some pain;
Prodigal sons and daughters
Torn from their portraits,
Lost in the newspapers,
In the news reels on television sets,
Becoming caricatures of dreams,
Masks of feelings
Glimpsed in the mirrors
Of the tilted canvas.
III
The paper
Folds hands
Folding paper dolls
Holding hands
Describing love and desire
Like braille speaking in tongues
In the silence of the streets
Where faces in the crowd
Ask questions with their eyes.
IV
Somewhere in the Yukon
Or Northwest Territories,
Beyond many rivers,
In uninhabited mountains,
Where fields of wildflowers
Still bloom, untouched.
I could stand here forever.
Sometimes I don't want to leave.
| Author Notes | This is a poem of the creative process, of making poems, or art, out of imagination, feelings, relationships, and a longing for peace. The fragmented format speaks of the fragmented nature of life, the pieces that seem to add up to something, an abstraction of experience. estory |
By estory
I
No longer real,
More like a dream,
A large vase of flowers
Picked yesterday,
Or the day before that,
When the sky cleared
After rain
And she walked
Through forget-me-nots
Or impatiens,
Sometime
Around sunset,
With perhaps someone
Playing harpsichord music...
II
The young dancer,
Solitaire,
Her hands the light
Between branches
Overhead, her feet
The flowers blooming
Across the stage,
Seems enchanted
By the light in the windowpane,
A face glimpsed in the audience,
Worlds away from here.
| Author Notes | In this little poem, I tried to capture the sense of impressionism that artists like Renoir created; a world neither quite here nor there, yesterday or today; a dream world of glimpses of moments that disappear as soon as they are experienced. An abstraction of experience, an emotion rather than action. estory |
By estory
Maps unfold across tables
Taking us away to all kinds of places.
For instance, while I'm sitting here at the window,
The name Arkhangelsk shimmers like snow
On a January morning when people are walking
With their hands in their coats
While the spire of the cathedral points out the moon
Fading like a dream from the night before,
Music and laughter and tea from a samovar.
Then there's Bordeaux, the smell of fresh baguettes,
Coffee and pastry under the glittering glass
Of the cafe in the old stone house along the cobblestone street
Where the old ladies dressed in black
Finger their rosaries on the way to church,
Remembering the names on the headstones in the churchyard.
Chicago! roars like the wind, like the Sears building
Catching the reflection of Lake Michigan
And the clouds that seem to come from far away
Casting their shadows on the people sitting on the park benches
Eating their lunch, while the wind takes the sandwich wrappers away
In Dublin, late at night, you look into a pub
And listen to the music, you drink a pint of Guinness
Until you are reeling with the music,
You can't remember where you came from,
You can't remember where you are going to,
Whether you have a flight to Edinburgh, Florence, Geneva
Or Honolulu, somewhere on the other side of the world,
Somewhere you can't get to from anywhere else, like
Ithaca, standing amidst its ruins,
Jakarta, overlooking its island,
Kerala inspiring its Buddhist disciples
While someone in Los Angeles shoots a movie
About someone in London who pulls off a robbery
And escapes to La Paz and hides out in the desert
As the citizens of Madrid enjoy their siesta,
Sitting under the palm trees sipping sangria
Imagining how nice it would be to vacation in Nice,
Eating seafood in a restaurant right on the beach,
Watching the yachts sail off for
New York, New London, New Zealand and
Oslo, where the air smells of white pine,
And the grass looks like snow,
And the gingerbread houses nestled together
Look like Christmas trees lit up in the night
Of the midnight sun. From here, you can fly to
Peking, with its Forbidden City, where the courtesans and bureaucrats
And palaces and gardens are always forbidden,
And we can't wait to escape on the flight of a plane
To Paris, the city of light, the city of endless refugee camps
Brooding under the Eifel tower where the tourists drink champagne
And watch the traffic along the Champs Elysee
Driving in circles around the Arc De Triumph
And the Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral
on the island of Montmartre,
The lights reaching out across the Atlantic
To Quebec, neither Paris nor Boston,
Nor Sidney Australia on the edge of the dust storms
That blow in from the outback
Like a blizzard of cinnamon
Nor Rio de Janeiro either at carnival time
When the revelers march down the avenues
Half naked and more than half drunk,
Forgetting about church and forgetting about obligations
Until the sun rises over the statue of Christ on its mountain
As the sun rises in Tokyo, and all the commuters
Find their way into the office buildings
With their business plans and computer presentations
And proposals for building a factory in Upsalla,
A kiosk in Vienna, across the street from the Opera House
While we fly over Washington, noticing its monuments,
That white house along Pennsylvania Avenue
That always seems so much like a museum
Where some hero lived a long time ago
Wishing we were going instead to Xanadu,
On top of its mountains,
Or Yerevan, high up in the mountains overlooking the sea
And far away from the politics
And who could forget Zurich?
What about all that chocolate?
| Author Notes | This poem is meant to be a fun journey of imagination into all kinds of corners of the globe, a journey sparked by the reading of the names of cities on a map of the world. It is more maybe in the vein of prose poetry as constructed by Jack Anderson than anything else. estory |
By estory
I
These sunflower dreams
Clipped and cut out of the garden
Arranged and rearranged
On the plain table
Whisper like voices
Speaking of love, hope, pain, death,
Faces of eyes
Staring and staring
Across the endlessness of time
And the unarticulated colors
Bleeding within.
II
Painting green cobblestones,
Red tables and chairs,
Becomes the faceless figures
And yellow windows
Of the sidewalk café
At midnight.
Those farmers and shopkeepers
Finish their drinks.
Never ask:
"What is he doing, there?"
III
Late August. I stand in fields
Of golden, sunlit corn
Stretching out of sight,
Uncounted ears
Ready for harvest.
But then, the crows are coming.
Soundless. Black.
IV
Alone at last, you stand still
As cypress trees
In the moonlight,
Savoring the moment.
Open air, darkness,
Immeasurable distance;
The curves of mountains
And a sky strewn with stars.
| Author Notes | The four paintings articulated here are of course: Sunflowers, The sidewalk café at midnight, Crows in the cornfield, and Starry night. I wanted to dig into the feelings born of Van Gogh's masterful expressionism; the pain and depression of the mental illness that haunted him; the loneliness that is at the root of the artist's observance of the life around him; the moments of despair, of shattered dreams; and the hope of and promise of the eternal, the transformational quality of acceptance of one's place in nature. Hopefully I did his amazing work some justice. estory |
By estory
Just look. This window is illuminated
By the light of television sets,
And the faces jumping around on them,
Each tuned into a different channel,
Each one a different picture size
So that in one, a head looms larger than life,
In another, as small as your fingernail.
Another window is full of rolls of Indian fabric,
In all the colors of the rainbow,
Every pattern you could think of.
There are Spanish leather jackets,
Egyptian cotton shirts, Persian rugs,
Shoes from Italy, t-shirts made in Taiwan,
Hand painted English porcelain.
There's a window full of Christmas decorations,
A window decorated for Halloween.
There are windows full of maniquins of girls
Wearing evening gowns and stockings and pearls,
Windows of telephones, gloves, scented soap, candles,
Lighting fixtures, coffee makers,
Stuffed animals that stand on their hind legs and talk,
Windows of gold fish swimming in aquariums,
Maniquins of men wearing jackets and ties.
These department store windows sparkle with jewelry,
Watches, bottles of cologne, mirrors,
Handbags, lingerie, high heeled shoes,
Swimwear, sun tan lotion, sunglasses.
You look in window after window,
Without buying anything. You never buy anything.
You never come to buy anything.
Then why do you come?
| Author Notes | This poem is very much in the style of Jack Anderson, the great New York poet who pioneered prose poetry, and who influenced me so much when I read his book, The Clouds of That Country. It is very much in the vein of Magnets, Cafeterias, Meditation on a Christian Science Reading Room and The Mysterious Sound. In a personal sense, this poem is meant to question the underlying psychology of window shopping. What is it that we are really looking for, when we go out and buy things for ourselves, or look in all these windows? What is missing from our lives? China, or silverware? or something else? |
By estory
Curved
White china porcelain
Mondscheinsonat
Wind on water
Or moonlight mirage
Object d'art
Of frescoes, chiazzatura,
Marbled mosaic
Figure eight
Throw double axle
Pirrouette
Of paper mache
Pantomimes
| Author Notes | This is a poem of fragmented images that flash in sequence, like photos in an album, adding up to a collage of beauty, an image of beauty. Alliterations and patterns of rhythms and echoing effects make up the music here. estory |
By estory
Pick any number.
Multiply it by itself.
Divide the multiple in half.
Subtract the divisor.
Add the number that preceeds the number
That you picked first.
In this way, can you determine why you picked it?
What exactly does a number stand for?
What do the answers of these equations mean?
Where did numbers begin?
How high can you count?
Are numbers infinite?
The thing about numbers is that they are definite.
They do not change. If you asked them to line up
They'd line up each time exactly the same.
They do not care how you feel
Or what it is that you are after.
Yet so much of our lives depend on numbers.
Exchanges of money involve arithmetic.
Time itself is a mathematical system.
If it weren't for the laws of physics, we'd float off the world.
The world we live on is a geometric shape.
A geometric shape in the space/time continue-um
In which everything is relative.
Nothing else matters.
But even to say the word 'nothing' invokes mathematics.
| Author Notes | This is a simple play on words piece, in which the world is reduced to the meaning of words, and their connotations. At the time this was written, I was heavily influenced by the poetry of Jack Anderson, and this is very much in the vein of poems of his like The Mysterious Sound and Cafeterias. It is a type of poetry that is very dependent on images, and their ability to take you away through various interpretations into all kinds of worlds and possibilities. Here, there is a somewhat sarcastic look at the rigidity of mathematics, juxtaposed with the more fluid soul inside of us that interprets hopes and dreams and possibilities very differently. estory |
By estory
Turn on the television. Sit back. Relax.
You don't have to leave your chair
To travel through Brazil or China,
Dance in a discoteque,
Watch a baseball game,
Go shopping,
Even go to church.
You can record things
To play back at your leisure,
Stopping the action with the pause/still button
When you see something you like,
Or make the volume as loud as you want,
Scan through the channels in a matter of seconds
In order to get to where you want to go.
You can't wait to get home
To watch your favorite shows,
See what's on the news,
Or what's going on with the weather
In between all those commercials.
You sit there watching,
Hour after hour,
Your eyes the light
Of far away places
Like a chair wanting to be an electric light,
Or an airplane or that man
Kissing that girl in that black and white movie.
| Author Notes | This is a prose poetry piece very much in the style of Jack Anderson, who influenced me in that time while this was written. It also contains elements of Seamus Heaney's exploration of the relationship of the music of words with the actions they represent. In the end, it is reliant on images to create the atmosphere of wishing you were somewhere else. estory |
By estory
Enter underground platforms
Of turnstiles, walls, lines
Uptown, downtown,
Local, express
Connections, interchanges,
Figures, faces
In the windows
Of the cars
On the rails
In the tunnels
Underground stations
Along the lines
Uptown, downtown,
Walls, rails,
The wheels of cars,
Newspapers, tickets,
The face of the ticket taker,
Muzak, graffiti,
Faces in the lights,
Windows on the dark
Tunnels underneath
The streets
People
Sitting in the seats
With their coats
And their bags
On the cars
Along the lines
Uptown, downtown
Local, express
Connections, interchanges
In between the stations
And the platforms,
Walls, stairs,
Lights
Rails
The wheels of cars,
Newspapers, tickets,
The face of the ticket taker
Empty platforms,
Stations, turnstiles,
Stairs, walls.
Exits
| Author Notes | This is a poem about the subways of New York City. It is in many ways, I think, a metaphore for the engineered, isolated lives that we live sometimes today. In this underground, artificial world, endlessly repeating, meaningless images flash past in brief glimpses, where strangers sit with their bags and coats and never speak to each other. It is truly a rat race in a man made maze of tunnels and rails, and yet there are still those brief glimpses of faces in it, those transitory moments of light and the promise of escape [the exits} that give us the hope we need to live on. The R Train is a subway line, and I used it because of the repeating 'r' sounds, the grinding feel of the language, like the subway cars grinding on along the rails. estory |
By estory
Let's say we were talking about something.
Let's say we were talking about
Something about what
Someone thought we said
When we said
What we thought we were saying
When we said something
About what someone else said.
About what we were talking about.
What were we talking about?
Were we talking about
Talking about
Talking
About
Talking about
Talking about what
We were talking about
What we were talking about.
What were we talking about?
We were talking about something
We said that we were saying
When we said someone thought we said
Something about someone who thought
We were saying something
About what someone else said
We thought we were saying
About what we thought we were saying
When we said we thought
We were saying something about
What we said we were saying when we thought we said
Something about something about something
| Author Notes | This is another minimalist piece, in which the music of the language revolves around a few sounds, these 'w' 's' 't' and 'ing' sounds, repeating in different patterns and different rhythms throughout the piece. The poem unrolls in some parts, winds in on itself in others, and then explodes out into 'something' out there, an endless space and time that could go on forever, like an echo. I love this idea of poems bursting open like seeds, and then unfolding out, like kites, and then floating off into the sky, going beyond the reach of hand and eye, or in the case, ear. It could also be a comment on idle gossip, the meaningless repetitions of rumors and hearsay. I wanted it to be obtuse enough, abstract enough, to be different things to different people. estory |
By estory
One by one
The stars appear
In the constellations
Across the skies
In the signs of the zodiac
Across the plane of the ecliptic,
The stars appear
One by one
Across the skies
Of stars in galaxies
Within constellations of stars
Across galaxies of constellations
Of stars in galaxies
Of stars across skies
Within galaxies in constellations
Of stars in galaxies
Across skies of stars
In galaxies within contellations
Of stars in galaxies
In constellations of stars
Novas, supernovas, pulsars, quasars
Moving away from us in Doppler shifts
That red shift the light as they move farther away from us
With all of their stars
In binary star systems
Within galaxies of clusters of stars
Across skies of constellations
Of clusters of star systems
In galaxies of stars
In binary star systems
Across galaxies of constellations
Of clusters of star systems
And star clusters of binary star systems
| Author Notes | This is a poem that went through many rewrites. During its evolution, I sought to make it denser and denser, with repeating patterns of sound and images to create an effect of a star studded sky. It is a simple image, a simple piece of music, meant to be enjoyed as a piece of music. I write poetry from the premise 'poetry is the art of making music with language', in its most general definition. And I like to create new forms of making music with language sometimes, stretching beyond or reaching beyond the traditional forms of rhyme schemes in iambic pentameter. We live now in a world of computers and machines, like it or not, and this is a form that I think is relevant in this world, and captures the look and feel of it. estory |
By estory
Pearl white clouds in an azure sky
Drifting over the emerald sea
Beyond the purple mountain majesty
Of sage, crimson, goldenrod
Across the lavender fields
Alive with roses planted by mother
Of pearl white topaz
Amethyst emerald
Green blue aquamarine
Magenta, mauve, orange amber
Orange amber orange green
Emerald, turquoise, scarlet
Silver green yellow
Red blue green red blue orange
Yellow orange scarlet
Mother of pearl, onyx, topaz, amethyst
Emerald green blue orange yellow green
Gold, sapphire, violet, emerald green
Blue pink yellow orange amber
Orange red blue green
Red blue yellow
Red blue orange
Yellow
| Author Notes | This poem is not really about colors, of course, but music. The repeating patterns of the adjectives, the alliterations, the rhythm of the patterns, creates the music of the language of this abstract piece, and the adjectives make this pure color, more like Jackson Pollock's Full Fathom Five or William de Koonig's Blue Poles or the art of Piet Mondrien than Realism, or even impressionism. Here the world of form and figure melt into pure colors, a metaphor for this physical world melting into the spiritual world of heaven estory |
By estory
Turn around. Close your eyes. Forget.
Put your ear to the windowpane
And listen. Someone is saying:
"I make all things new again!
"I am the end and the beginning.
The bright, morning star!"
And look. New stems come up
From the dead roots,
Just like the water was turned into wine.
The days are getting longer than the nights.
| Author Notes | This is a simple little poem that I thought I would post for Easter, written probably around 30 years ago when I was returning to my faith. It is a poem that speaks of Jesus at work in the present, His spirit like the spirit of spring, renewing the world, and life, after winter, and death. Spring is a powerful metaphor of the resurrection, so I decided to title this March, that month when winter releases the power of spring, and rebirth. a time of change. estory |
By estory
I remember
Your face
Like a window
On the other side of the street.
Each morning,
Your footsteps
Left no tracks
Into elevated trains.
I can remember
Patterns on the wallpaper
In rooms where we watched television
Instead of the things I wanted to tell you
Mornings, when the apartment
Windows filled with
Light,
Your silhouette
Watching the traffic
Headlights on the bridges
Suspended over Manhattan Island.
| Author Notes | Right now I'm working on new pieces of fiction and poetry so I'm posting this older piece, that really belongs in the collection Word Games, in the meanwhile. Those poems were written in a period after I graduated from college from 1985-1995, while I was finding my voice and experimenting with free verse forms developed by poets like Seamus Heaney and Jack Anderson, as well as coming up with my first minimalist pieces. This one was inspired by the broken relationship with my uncle who lived in Manhattan, and my vague memories of him when I was a child, the scant connections I was able to make with him. But I tried to write it as obtuse as I could to make it something lots of people in the public could relate to from experiences in their own lives. estory |
By estory
Everyone has their hands in their pockets.
Nobody turns their back.
Nobody sits down.
Nobody asks where you came from.
Instead, you stand under a streetlight
Until its late
Enough
And listen.
No stopping. No standing.
Do not disturb.
Closed.
Keep off the grass.
What's next? I don't know.
Sit tight.
Light a cigarette.
Write on the windows.
| Author Notes | This is another poem from Word Games, one of the earliest pieces I wrote while I was still in college. It was inspired from moments spent waiting in cues for the bus to school, those moments when we keep to ourselves and fail to make connections to the people around us, keeping to the societal protocols of 'mind your business' that leads to the frustration with sharing your feelings. Structurally, it was influenced by poetry of DH Lawrence and the modernists I was studying at the time. estory |
By estory
Stop. Stand still. Listen. Somewhere
Passed your reach,
Where waves light the surface
Above the continental shelf,
Shapes are lost
In canyons of consciousness.
The sound
Eludes.
The music
Keeps its secrets.
| Author Notes | This is another of those early poems from Word Games, an exploration of free verse and the possibilities of images and rhythm in language. I wanted to capture something of the sound effects of the waves on the shore, with all those 's' sounds repeating, and the steady repeating rhythm of the waves. Also something of the mysterious soul of poetry, its elusive meanings flowing under the surface of the cerebral. Heaney and Levertov were big influences on me at that time. estory |
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