Disgusted at the machinations of The Street?

Coming soon a T for you

Even if you do not wish “to suffer the winds and bear the cold”, you might be interested in the story that herein unfolds -  the words are simple, the scenario strange but not so hard to understand -  the pictures are placed to arouse attention but they are complementary, not the same -  the oozing eye sees differently from the hand-held camera and inverted ecstasy is seldom captured by the pixelated screen - it takes just twenty minutes to leisurely read  - but if you’re really laid back, twenty-five max guaranteed - and then onto www.oozingthemoon.com for more in prose if this appeals

Election 08 - 11/3/08

The election of Barack Hussein Obama

political equivalent of breaking the sound barrier

some thought the plane would shake and shutter

the wings come off and the fuselage shatter

instead Chuck felt a bump 

then sound disappeared calm prevailed

the fear was great but the pilot greater                

Wide Open for the Moon - all photos handheld and unaltered

                  NEW SCOPES FOR THE SKY  - D. Roth 2005-07 © 

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours – To Autumn, John Keats 

 

                

Prelude                                              

 

For millennia night sky and woods

have existed in two separate worlds

“O the moon is beautiful in the trees”

but after that they were oil and water

Heaven and Hell may have been married but

heavens and forest never met up

understandably so for sky was mystery

What are those lights and what do they hold?

Some are fixed while others wander

Are they held in crystalline spheres

circling the center of God’s creation

or is it we who move and perception’s illusion?

What pulls on what and so forth and so on?

All that intruded was unwelcome obstruction

Now that the unknown is steadily receding

and final equations ascend the horizon

there is no more need for such segregation

Trees and sky may safely co-habit

Science secure, imagination claims its share

and carves a place for naked eye seers

to rub, squeeze, and ooze the orbs

with leaves, branches, twigs of trees

and when these ministrations are duly performed

new worlds of transformed light and space unfold

Tree as instrument, light as sound

disappearing photons spinning mind around

building lines and forms of beauty unrivaled

“Space” and “Matter” flip and “Space Forests” form

a dark eye adaptation of uncanny nature

all of these and many more arise

in the tree/sky night woods continuum

But in this realm a new scope is needed

Eyes entranced held firmly loose, melting softly into light

sensing, feeling, molding, merging

imagination unleashed disbelief suspended

Still I do not wish to claim too much

This is not Quantum Physics after all

But it does have its own Indeterminacy Principle

amazing eye evoking wonder

The Curtain of Dawn

 

What is a Space Forest?

 

A Space Forest is not oxymoronic

though it surely sounds to be

but a “real” exotic poetic phenomenon

perhaps experienced by only a few

except maybe thousands of so-named “primals”

who lacked the means to record what they saw

it’s related to oozing the light of the orbs

and followed for me quite closely thereafter

it’s a kind of a trance but full of awareness

permissive of movement and walking around

in which light and matter seem to trade places

“real” trees blacken and donate their glow to interstitial spaces

which, acquiring light, spectrally shine

with the form, the shape, the bark of “trees”

space and matter have seemingly flipped

creating a likeness that is deeply arresting

sometimes to the point of outright deception

there are different “species” of such “forests”

but the great boled looming Temple of Karnak

named for its hulking pillar-like trunks

is certainly the most awesome and inspiring

all are beautiful, strange, and ephemeral

a glory of night woods light conception

 

Moon Time

 

There was a time when I said “many moons ago”

in ironic imitation of false Amerindian speak

but that is more than six months ago

for that is how I really reckon time

 

Six months now since I re-met the Moon

the Moon I bayed at as a toddler

forcing my parents to cage me in a crib

or the warm summer Moon of years ago

when I walked my streets in a wondering daze

searching for porch light to pluck and squeeze

in the near darkness of my light-controlled neighborhood

 

Then I left her until last October

as I lay on a bench in a wooded grove

and saw how she could ooze through leaves and branches

and make music of a kind I had never heard before -

music that enraptured and stilled me like no other

 

And so it has gone for six Moons now

the wheel of this internal clock turning slowly

making time stretch out sidereally

This morning I go to the greet the Gibbous

 

On the Beam

 

Teeter totter maya maker

and night light fancy slaker

illuminator of the early morning woods awaker

that’s what they call this Moon

 

She’ll raise up a ridge and perch atop it

then slowly drop it before dumbstruck eyes

she’ll lift up the watcher to a parallel berth

and so back and forth it goes

 

All manner of landscapes she can make

from plain to farm to woodland and ravine

with just some trees and a wandering dream

and her own little tectonic shake

 

Moon Tunnel

 

Brought low by an arboreal trance

she lay at the bottom of a dark tunnel

scintillating and permutating like no earthly being

but even then my mind reeled for the switch

seemed far too much to explain

 

She beckoned on and my eyes eagerly followed

“reason less feel more I’ll be kind do not fear”

so I heard her calming voice prevail

and then as I readied to take the plunge

that seasonal tickle grew strong and clear

 

I chided the air but there was no use

and so the spell was explosively broken

then I heard a voice on high declaim

“Try again Señor you’re no Orpheus

but you just might be okay”

Oozing the Moon

 

Lightning Bugged

 

Fireflies sure can look like airplane lights

flying low to the ground

when you’re trancing out

on the oozing embers of an orange moon

 

Though it’s the end of June

I had forgotten about these little woodland sprites

their sudden appearance caused

a temporary confusion of a kind

 

That almost always turns to laughing revelation

only the night woods

and the transformational moon

can fool so felicitously

 

Siddhi Seer   

 

My only Siddhi is of a specious kind

I can see through space forests to the sky behind

orbs and airplanes that should be blocked

are clearly visible beyond the trees chock-a-block

it’s purely illusion, it’s all a trance you say

do it just once and you’ll want to play

 

With a little lumen, perhaps, lost in the sky

but through a space tree it will transfix the eye

this form of strange matter seizes small light

ramps up the voltage to make it shine bright

it has something to do with contrast, I claim

and also the tree trunk which gives it a frame

 

When all these conditions are aligned just so

the star acquires a mysterious glow

emerging out of an indeterminate ground

paces away in the close surround

the paradox of seeming both there and here

what’s known as far yet seen as near

 

More or Less a Mirage

 

You really did it to me today, Luna

you pushed the Space Forest envelope

farther than I thought it could be pushed

for a few seconds there you really had me thinking

that those space trees were for real

 

So I had just risen after looking

at you and your creations

but had somehow lost my bearings

because the “trees” had lost all marks of illusion -

“Oh, so the real ones are back now” -

 

Yet within a minute they had vanished

from eyes still clinging to their solidity

try me again tomorrow

you’re making this interesting

do you think you could help me see the reverse? 

 

Solstice Morning

 

Sitting on the bench

just before the dawn

when an interfoliated gleam

held me fast and tight

 

almost oozing like a star

something must be up I knew

and there it was for sure

competing with the sun

 

a ghostly row of space trees

transparent but with form

not mere scrims or cellulose

but a little ridge of corm

So in Love

 

Full Moon 

 

Daughter of illusion luminous yet empty

in the woods among the branches and leaves

your cool lubricity, ever moving, transforms

into phantasms of surpassing strangeness and beauty

 

Self-proclaimed well-announced sleights of mind

have made your intentions clear

so that’s why you have always beguiled

poet and prophet and all those fallen under your spell

 

Old Moon

 

Imagine how carefully the Ancients

must have scrutinized the marks

of the Moon without aid of scope or glass

through cloudless unsullied vault lit skies

 

For evidence of wetness or dryness

reflection or effulgence

celestial or terrestrial

seas or vapors

 

Although knowing she is but a rock of congealed dust

I, too, regard her with Babylonian eyes

without scope or glass

through sullied skies cleansed by trees and branches

 

But not for signs of origin or nature

but for beauty, revelation, and self-nature

 

Phoenix Moon

 

Slow slow

even slower now

down to only a few photons

hold on hold on

the best are last

less is more more is less

except when you go double

which is almost always

two eyes two heads

two forms two anythings

better than one

in the light of your woods

in the woods of your light

 

                               Closer

 

Sometimes the moon will squeeze her way through

          and emblazon herself on some leaves

                like an heraldic symbol of old

                    that’s when she comes

                             the closest

 

                   Except when enraptured

                         she emblazons

                             the mind   

                                   O

          

                                   O

                             the mind

                         she emblazons

                   Except when enraptured

 

                            the closest

                    that’s when she comes

               like an heraldic symbol of old

        and am emblazon herself on some leaves

 Sometimes the moon will squeeze her way through

 

                                Closer

Moon Goddess Looks Down

 

Earthscaper

 

O magic ridge maker

and overall general earth shaker

you uplift and drop me

on your cliffs, ravines, and gorges

 

What is the power of your light

that it can accomplish this?

What is the trickery you perform?

Do you control the tides of mind?

 

Later

 

Perhaps it is just a passing fancy

but you seem to have made

these trees come closer

can you still conjure even when

 

You have not yet risen and the sun still shines

maybe it is just the stillness that has settled

over these later afternoon woods

but could you have made this silence too?

 

A Few More in Summer

 

At the risk of being thought

five cards short of a straight

there are a few more sights

to be seen in the night woods

 

Meditating into a light trance

and darkening the scene

a translucent space tree arises

which then slowly decays

 

Leaving a residue that draws near

and catches hold of the breath

illuminating it like winter’s condensation

puzzling in its beauty and strangeness

 

Or a trance-dependent vortex breaks off

from the background and approaches

proceeding like a pendulum

to move hypnotically in perfect tick tock rhythm

 

But best of all, perhaps, and

least subject to doubts of capacity

is just the gradual increase of light

which periodically clarifies into a new picture

 

Space Invasion                                                                                    

 

Trancing on the Planet Rouge

between some open leaves

when down down down it came

giving me a fright

 

So it hovered there a bit

looking close at hand

and suddenly up it shot

like a ship at launch

 

Up up up it climbed

back to its rightful place

then my Mars Invasion was done

at least until tonight

 

Dying Embers       

 

Dying with the dying embers

of the oozing moon

would be my nightingale farewell

when the time has come

and if the circumstances are right

could I replay it in my mind

and make it my own reality?

not yet I think

 

So moon after moon

I return to these woods

to watch as she becomes an exploding star

disappearing shard by shard

into her own roseate vortex

nothing else is so beautiful

nothing else tells me

going out could be so good 

Moon Narcissus

 

The Sunrise Nearing Moon           

 

The sunrise nearing moon

moves better more fluidly

dancing with her devotee

to and fro, it seems

 

It must be her peaking brightness

in the pale blue

which slides her through

the quick-silvered ether

 

That brightness that her consort

so willingly bestows just at this time

without any diminishment

of her nocturnal luster

 

Her diamonds sparkle her seas deepen

her marble glistens

her mirror reflects perfectly

that light that soon will overcome her

 

Forest Landlord         

 

The Moon is an inspired landlord

who knows how to make use of space

she divides and subdivides her tenants

into rooms of gloom and glow

jerry-built, chock-a-block, confusing

and endlessly back and side

 

She runs a mysterious strange-lit flop

for here no leases are ever given

and the rooms are constantly changing

but there’s always an eager waiting list

ready to pay the rent

or just to stand around and gawk

 

Lunar Anthem         

 

I saw a Golden Apple of the Hesperides

hovering right in front

I thought I might reach out and touch it

but didn’t for fear I would affront

 

Someday someone might see the Grail

though I’m not worthy of that

but for the pure of heart and brave of mind

the moon might just do that

 

For her light is truly magical

and with her friends the trees

she can make almost anything

for those the spirits please

 

And so I come here each new month

to see what she might do

and like that famous bovine leaper

to softly mutter moooon

 

Glow Worm Hole  

 

There was a glowworm on the path today

which never before had I seen

at first I thought it was a low light spirit

and then a harbinger of something new

for upon arrival at my favorite spot

there was another right next to the bench

with a gleam that lit up its small patch of night

 

I wanted to stare at it fixedly

but had some meditating to do

so splitting the difference I went to and fro

until at a moment of happy transition

when the light increased up above

and then after seconds of puzzling delay

its grounded extension came on

 

Ah! what a marvelous trick this seemed

for it was as if I had slowed down its speed

I heard Albert laugh and turn with glee

“this cannot happen it just cannot be

unless in a Glow Worm Hole’s Singularity”

then to top it all off lights all over the grove went on

as a car turned around in the dark

 

Vice Versa              

 

Sound is light

light is sound

in the starlit vaulted night

orb will move tree will squeeze

it takes just two or is it three

to make this empyreal ecstasy

 

Merely change the times change the rounds

be willing to lie on bench or ground

suffer the winds and bear the cold

unless your home is Elysium

otherwise bundle up hunker down

and hold on for a celestial ride

 

The Moonlight Concerto       

 

Twinkle twinkle quarter moon

up above the sky so high

I wonder how you do it?

 

Squeezed and shattered by the leaves

blown and fluttered by an early fall breeze

entranced and doubled by a duff-lying gaze

Ah, then what music you can play!

 

Off and on up and down the rows

pop pop doolebop

begins the morning show

 

And now with eyes held quite fast

the sidewise sparks of symphonic stars

are just as much exciting

 

The wind dies down

the trees are still 

no need to leave

another round is coming

 

Tricks of the Full Moon Trade   

 

Moon, your leaves have the habit

of hovering in air

they catch the light

while the stems disappear

but I know what you’re doing

 

You say you can make space trees

thirty minutes before sunrise

while I’m walking the paved path to the lake

you’re full of it, Moon

no way those aren’t real ones up ahead

 

Whoops! I eat my words

they’re moon made for sure

and now they’re gone

you really tricked me this time

but that is what you are for

Moon and Satellite

Keyboard in the Sky         

 

With the right space and just enough leaves

Orion and Sirius will put on a show

Sirius with her brightness is hard to snuff out

and then when she wanes her double breaks through

squeezing and oozing the filaments of light

 

Orion, of course, is a whole constellation

with Betelgeuse and Rigel to name just a few

but the three who hold up his trousers so well

are the ones who can really belt out a tune

 

one flicks off and two stay on

two stay on and one flicks off

all three flick off and then all three flick on

and that’s the way it goes with this keyboard in the sky

then for a coda one will stick just so and come

at you like a laser beam and pop right in your face

 

Walking the Moon     

 

You need the trees to walk the moon

you need their parallax to get her to groove

for all by herself she’s perched on high

but in the woods she’ll strut on by

 

So off you go two by two

hand in hand metaphorically speaking

weaving in and out among the leaves

exchanging glances, a flirtatious tease

 

 If I Ran The Sky By Zeus

 

Jupiter, Arcturus, and the Moon

once again we’re a perfect equilateral cartoon

I thought this was just a one-time deal

but we’re a periodic constellation of lasting appeal

 

So I think I’ll change the ecliptic

so we can always be really near

and become the Three Amigos

and constantly reappear

 

I know The Fates will be unhappy

with what I decree right here

but let them take a flying leap

for my mortals need some cheer

 

Upon the night with their mouths agape

they’ll dance beneath the stars

they’ll go bacchanalian those wild rapscallions

and salute us with the Dionysian Grape

 

Saturnalia           

 

Saturn ran his rings around me

getting into a groove

 

Up and down and around he went

in tranceformational ooze

 

His secrets I thought he would disclose

the sights they were supreme

 

Instead he sent me a shooting star

that knocked me off my beam

 

For when one is lying on the ground

in an entrancing state

 

A sudden flash of intense light

will open Heaven’s Gate

Crystal Ball Moon

 

Second Nature    

 

The moon can create a second nature

if she’s looked upon just right

through the lens of an evergreen holly

or other leaf that’s tight

 

In in in she folds

as the light begins to fade

closer and closer and closer she comes

preparing her little charade

 

There on the cusp of extinction

on the verge of projective surprise

is a darkly glowing landscape

that outwits the skeptic surmise

 

It could be an evening river view

seen through a glass that’s pale

and the moonlight itself is there of course

a bright bank past which the viewer sails

 

Oozing Anthem         

 

Why just look at Orion’s Belt

when you can see its stars melt

into the veil of leaves

put up by November’s trees

 

A soundsight most ineffable

musically inexpressible

worthy of a Keats

and a starry ‘Gale

 

Had I a voice more used

I might have waked this wondrous muse

but I know the ground

which plays its sound

 

It’s always out there

wherever tree and orb collide

or past each other slowly slide

entrancing ear and teasing eye

 

Whence Cometh the Space Forest?               

 

Whence cometh the Space Forest?

from those who see the flip sides of light and matter

who ooze the moon and stop and stare

or do whatever it takes

to upset the quotidian order of vision

who believe in the E=mc²                 

of entranced night sky and woods perception

who suspend disbelief and are suspended in turn

who give thanks to the night

from which dreams are born

 

Or when an orb is oozed and a space forest rises

sometimes it’s like a piece of exposed photo paper

placed in a bath of developing fluid

where it gradually forms and thickens

and when it’s time to go

it fades like that paper struck by light

because there is no permanent “fixer” here

as there is no permanent fixer anywhere

you just have to go back night by night

and be exposed all over again

 

For it is more than mirage

an evanescent illusion

terms far too limiting and constrained

but the great spirit Eros

Diotima explains to Socrates

love, yearning and “birth in beauty”

these are the parents

not simply staring at a spot

neither a necessary

nor a sufficient condition

 

Trompe Royal      

 

Is it “negative” space becoming positive matter

or positive space becoming “negative” matter

either way it doesn’t matter

for whatever the formulation

it is one of nature’s most trancendental

verified again this morning lying on the ground

as a holly oozed the Lemon Slice

conjuring a magnificent Space Forest

then an all-encircling Big Top

through which shone the Moon

and, to baffled wonderment, the members of the Dipper

as if painted on the canvas hide of a Great Lodge

by the star-worshippers of an Amerindian Tribe

and at the top a wide smoke hole

with the blackest black sky to uphold

Moon on Wolf

 

Space Gallery      

 

A Picture’s Platonic Higher Form

I think I saw just now

a giant space forest curtain

and then a Japanese screen

I was in the Freer Gallery of Asian Art

lying on the ground

sotto voce oozing Jupiter

who is always quite diverting

but can also be profound

he’s the one who pulled the trick

I just looked around

 

It was not very stable

but years of practice made me able

to hold it fast and steady

I saw its straight-edged panels

angled in and out

and its carefully wrought boughs and limbs

painted on its paper

it was a sight most strange and beautiful

next time I go to the Freer

maybe I’ll say I’ve seen theirs in the ether

or maybe not

 

Blow Hard Jupiter

 

SOS                

 

Telegrapher of the Titanic

seemed Jupiter today

flicking out frantic messages

from the wind swept sea

blow blow blow the ice trees sway

dots and dashes repeatedly sent

but not for his world

one two spheres down torn and rent

 

Jamming of the Spheres      

 

Double Jupiter was Charlie Parker today

going up and down the sax like there’s no tomorrow

the wind was kickin’

Mars was blowin’

Arcturus was soloin’

when the woods wind trio came marchin’ in

 

Space Forest Surprise  

 

For three years now

I’ve seen the Space Forest

and still my eyes do not deceive me

It’s as real as many things around

it just doesn’t last too long

and withers in the sun like an ice cream cone

but an hour or more before his rise

it’s always a strange eye-blinking surprise

this can’t happen this can’t be true

I just saw an airplane fly through

Moon Feather

 

Harpo Moon    

 

The Moon is a night woods tracker

who will stalk you step by step

mirror all your movements

as you will mirror hers

but what if someday she goes Hollywood

and becomes a “Harpo” Moon

playing fun house reflections

and a new moving tune

then you’ll know you’ve left the earth

and gone beyond the Moon

to the empyrean of the Higher Spheres

where different rules attune

 

Dancing with the Stars

 

When it’s half-past leaves

and a breeze is up

that’s the time to lie on the ground

and dance with the morning stars

 

Sirius and Rigel are a fine lumen pair

but the others work as well

the trick is to look not directly on

but to hold them in peripheral view

 

Then off and on off and on

off and on they go

hyper-kinetic semaphores

flashing the star-struck sky

 

Space Dogwoods     

 

My little Dogwood

you’ve grown frumpy on your fringes

but I do not despair

you and your kind are eternal

and not only in the gardens of earth

but in the night sky as well

for this morning I saw your space sisters

while lying on the ground

looking at Vega through a cluster of new leaves

rise up photosynthesized on starlight

and the entranced waters of forgetfulness

Just a transient trance some will say, maybe even I,

but you know better

 

Later

 

In the May bright sun of mid-afternoon

I see more fully now the alchemy you perform

on starlight and sky, Eastern Common Hoptree

if that is indeed your name

Japanese print against high blue

as much yellow sky as leaf

the perfect soil in which my eye

implants the white night flower

the hand-raising medium of strange delight

 

Space Forest Philosophy     

 

If a Space Tree falls in the forest

will it make a sound

if there’s no one there to hear it

or will it even have fallen

if there’s nobody there to see it

or can it even fall a priori?

all such questions being solipsistic

unless someone else sees one

otherwise they vanish with me

yet the words are still there

to re-seed them some day

then that someone might find

better, stronger words than I

to describe the stars coming off and on

up or down peripherally and panoptically

through these trees

Bright Moon Purple Dawn

 

Fact          

 

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

      Are sweeter;” - Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

 

Oozing the doubling evanescing orbs

among the branches of the night sky

is a proof most personal

that never has a greater poetic truth

been uttered ever

 

Music begins in the brain, settles in the stomach

rises to the heart and is purified in mind

distilled into a serenity surpassing understanding

The Music of the Spheres is not just metaphor

it is Fact!

 

Proof

 

Through sky and vitreous ether

I heard her beat this morning

moving among the hollies

a pulse so soft and subtle

it could have been my breath, my heart

or a syntactic nerve

but, no, it was the Moon, I’m sure

 

When the stars flick on

in a space-forested stare

it’s a call from another world

so quiet so gentle so soft so still

so black so white so spectrally shining

so unexpected and expected

it’s the orbs tuning up to heaven

 

Panoptically trancing

on a space forest stockade

nothing is sighted directly on

so all is marvelously seen

coming off and on

like deep space spirits

light year fire flies

the stars are the essence of music

 

 Thoreau’s Summer Sky  

 

Thoreau loved the summer sky

for its dense spangle of dimmer stars

suggesting space, depth and infinity

and not so much the brazen few

that blaze forth in the winter

he still had a choice

that most of us do not

only once since childhood

have I seen the full night sky of summer

one evening in New Mexico far outside of town

exclaiming “O, the Starry Vault in all its majesty!”

to my host’s surprise and my own little embarrassment

but maybe if Henry had oozed

Sirius, Rigel, Capella, Vega, Arcturus, and Betelgeuse

or The Belt at Half Past Leaves

he might have sung a different tune

for that too can suggest infinity

he might have eventually he just didn’t have the time

 

Love Triangle

 

Equilateral and most compatible

were Jupiter Mars and the Moon

tintinnabulating away before the dawn of the day

striking sounds from the silent sky

 

Now that this ménage is over

they’ll be going their separate ways

but they’ll reunite again

to play for me someday

 

But will I be around for that conclave most Euclidean

when Venus replaces Mars

who are you kiddying

that’s twenty five years from now

 

Before the Rise               

 

With its back to the East

a Temple of Karnak Space Forest may be at its best

not too long before the rise of the sun

one more ooze or stare and up it comes

but this time brighter almost effulgent

hanging right on the edge of light and matter

yet still retaining arboreal form

though highly unstable ready to leave

in an eye-blinking second unless focus is closely maintained

but a brief glimpse of this

is worth durations with more well-known wonders

just my opinion what I believe

Faux Moon - Hirshhorn’s Oculus

 

If You Knew Venus                      

(to the tune of “If You Knew Suzy”)

 

If you knew Venus the way I know Venus

O  O  O What a Gal!

 

She oozes light that’s candle bright

O  O  O What a Gal!

 

She comes back strong as the Diva of the Dawn

with a voice so high she makes you cry

O  O  O What a Gal!

 

So you see I know Venus and I love Venus

for her morning song!

 

2 Shady For Sun Glasses and the Moon

 

They might call me a night woods junkie

If they catch me wearing these shades

before the dawn before the light

when there’s nothing that eyes might blaze

 

But how could they know I’m sane and sober

just strung out on the melodious orbs

awaking a quiescent entrancement

when these shades are nightly drawn

 

They quiet, they settle, they softly still

making a music more ineffable yet

providing an extra unsought for boon

darkening, they space forest longevity beget

 

And so again tomorrow

 

Down go the shades, up go the orbs

today it was Vega who was eager to soar

high and low back and forth

squiggling around all over the place

the illusion of motion in dim med space

along with a shake rattle and ooze

that’s what it was I must confess

Zeno’s Paradox in Brownian Movement dress

and also supremely relaxing

 

And the Moon

 

Shaded moon seductress moon

not a brazen or shameless moon

soft and subtle and golden moon

with a song inducing slumber

and so Lethe sent I doze a spell

on cool spring not frozen soil

 

This day in leaves and glasses

serially, the shades of a prophet, Ezekiel maybe

a philosopher, Aristotle, most likely

and an aged poet Frost, undoubtedly

or so the moon

shape shifter imagination tester most excelente

did assure me

 

Optical Collision

 

The month of April I’m a fool for Vega

staring at her from the duff of the pines

flicking or oozing I was not choosing

either one would do just fine

but out of the corner an airplane spied

coming closer and closer, a crash prophesied

BAM! - it hit and Vega bounced forward

a parsec or two at least of measure

enough to cover several light years

I couldn’t believe what just had transpired

I’d witnessed a stellar high-speed rear-ender

then realized my loving stare

must have loosed Vega’s moorings

though usually seen, had gone unnoticed

but flashed to awareness with the collision

I had the reason now, no a god, alas

but still a once in a lifetime encounter

worthy of laughter and head-shaking wonder

 

Heine and Hegel            

 

Somewhere I remember reading of an encounter

between the young poet Heine and the philosopher Hegel

Standing on a verandah looking at the stars

on a clear summer night, Heine turned to Hegel

saying something like:

“How can there not be a hereafter

when there are such glorious sights as this?”

To which Hegel replied, approximately:

“Why have need for that hypothesis,

the sky is sufficient unto itself”

Knowing the debt his philosophy owed to Christian eschatology,

I was impressed

And so I wonder what would he have thought

had he seen the supernal light oozing its magic among the trees?

He might have wavered but not faltered, I think

“Ruled by emotion, the poets are prone to error, I won’t say lying

Instructed by reason, philosophers seek the truth without consolation

We do not need to stop up our ears or our eyes for sirens or conjurers

This too is sufficient unto itself”

 

Advice to the Star Struck        

 

To see the planets, stars, and moon

within the folds and caverns of the trees

is to see them closer, better,

stranger, stronger, richer, deeper

full of music and conjured tales

 

Forget some nights the Galilean scope

seek not to float above the clouds

and perch upon the mountain top

or hitch a ride on Hubble’s eye

but descend where darkness shines and shining darkens

 

If life is refreshed by benign ambiguity

then exult in the glory

of the twice canopied sky

surprises, tricks, and revelations

no where else will they be found so richly plentiful

 

For when night sky and woods confuse

it’s almost always to the good

they say without cant or preaching

that everything is ever changing

even when it seems eternally the same

Moon Over Lake Audubon

Trick and Treat - 10/31/08

Maybe there is a zone of the strange

every once in a while I seem to drop in

the only difference between me and the “crazy”, 

to paraphrase the surrealist Señor Dali,

is that I am at least partly sane

how else explain these uncanny three?

Yesterday I scanned an old, forgotten negative

Lincoln and his General(s) my name for it

after a book of that title written years ago

Towering Lincoln, top hat, and bearded

looks down on his bull dog Grant

maybe asking him the brand of his whiskey

so he can suggest others of lesser pugnacity drink it

Then this morning I opened the paper and was dumbstruck to read

about a new book on Lincoln as commander - the first in fifty years

by James McPherson, renowned historian of the Civil War

Improbably coincidental!  - I shook my head

and if I told you the second picture 

was taken within days of the first back in 1991

would you believe me? - I swear on the Book!

What else is out there - What else might there be?

ET

I caught this extra-terrestrial

just before he stepped into his beam

don’t be deceived by superficial appearances

this is the glow of a higher-dimensional being

ready to return to his own domain

but that’s sixteen years ago

who knows where is he is now

he might be urging you to vote for McCain!

 

Schroedinger’s Bank

In Schroedinger’s High-Flying Derivative Bank

what is the probability there’s anything there?

you open it up and there could be a lot

or maybe the vaults are completely bare

it all depends on arcane hidden laws 

but one thing is certain of one thing there’s no doubt

the Quantum Fat Cat will always get his rightful share

 

The Science of Greed

They plundered equations for quarks and stars

created a vortex that emptied the jars

now as we teeter on the grim Horizon

let’s hope for an Einstein who can go back in time

reverse the equations undo the crime

 

The Final Amnesiac

She’s posting something in this bar or restaurant

It looks like an image of Death

Perhaps it was Halloween or a playbill for a Gothic Band

I have no recollection of this scene

though I am sure I was attracted by the hair

of all the old negatives I have scanned so far

this is the most alien

and why not?

Death is the Final Amnesiac

The Biggest Non-Recollector of all

Birth of Venus

This I had also forgotten

but it all came back as soon as I saw the scan

the place, the time, the angle

Venus being born from a fountain

but in between something had happened

I had seen her among the trees

oozing light bright as a candle

singing her morning song

principal soloist in the Music of the Spheres

that’s what I said, I’m not kidding

and Moon, I’m not forgetting

but you’re in a league of your own

this one’s also bright

but lacking occluding instruments, the trees

and motion to strike the strings

her voice is mute, at least for me

no, I modify that now

I hear the spray, I hear the light

that’s what she does for me

after all these years

She’s Greek to Me

I didn’t want to shoot Apollo

and incur his Olympian wrath

even though he was distracted

by pursuing the beautiful Daphne

for he is the far-seeing god of sun

and even a glance could have rendered me ashes

instead I focused on the fleeing nymph

imploring her father, the river god, to spare her virginity

which he did in a god’s ambivalent way

where life and death are always intermingled

by turning her into a tree

Apollo Belvedere

Apollo Belvedere reflected in slime

wasn’t that a Star Trek from its earliest time?

Oh no - in that one Apollo is seduced by Daphne

tricked by mortals and then left behind

here he’s just pictured as an algae fed dream

The Birth of Athena

Zeus, fearing the fate of his father, Saturn

swallowed his children

until his daughter, Athena

burst forth fully-formed from out of his head

leading her brothers and sisters to freedom

Orpheus in the Underworld

Orpheus in the Underworld seen for his lyre

his form’s obscured, but his voice is singing

there’s his beloved Eurydice near

Hades looks on as two Shades appear

he’s heard rumors she’ll never depart

he knows human efforts are never assured

Let’s party like it’s 1899

except the denizens of this domicile 

don’t seem the partying kind

maybe because the Fin de siecle is about to end

no need to worry 

Pablo is nigh with a new art trend

If the Master had ever wielded a chain saw

instead of slicing and dicing conventional forms

he might have cut out something like this

only, of course, much better

Omni Guru

This famous fast food franchise was losing dough

all the construction around was obscuring its show

so they called on Omni Guru to save the day

big, brash, hardy, and gay

he rescued them and then went away

East Wing After the Rain

I call this the Prow

that’s easy to see

it’s angled and pointed

to cut through the Blue

it’s ever protean

like the spirit of Greece

takes on anything the atmosphere throws

transforms and molds it to the perpetually new

Nature, it’s said, abhors straight lines

that’s superficial

they manifest deep structures 

that govern the curves

no need to refute me

I speak rhapsodically

and not apodictically

spell that without spell-check after three glasses of wine

Sites of Renown

This sight is now defunct

no more telescoping the Capitol between tree and stone

but on the other side where stands the Prow

there’s another extinction to be bemoaned

On a certain day in May in the years before the terror outrage

facing the Prow sideways in the early afternoon

the glow would rise like a reactor going critical

then BAM! - visual nuclear fusion

building and Prow smashed to ONE

Stonehenge, the Tombs of Egypt

and all the others of Ancient renown

had nothing on this 

but how many noticed 

it being ephemeral and not noised about

Once as it was happening, I needed to share

I called to a woman passing by

urged her to come closer and stop and stare

“Do you see the fusion?” - “Yes, I do”

and I was glad

Defensive landscaping has wiped out this spot

but  it may return someday when there’s less to fear

but people may become attached to the new trees there

and not trust the words of an extinguished scribbler

Heads Alike - Hirshhorn Museum of Modern Art

                 Ode to a Scanner

Little box of light and humming buzz

I owe this picture’s second life to you

I had missed it on the contact sheet

all those years ago

it would have languished in basement limbo

and then finally passed beyond the pale

had I not decided to look at it

and all the others on a more discriminating scale

I couldn’t have done that with the chemicals

too much work too much money

so only you little box of light and humming buzz

saved this picture and its sculpted rhyme

now it rests eternal in the realms of cybertime

                         Going to the Motherwell (NG)

I saw your fancied body double and then forgot about it for several years

until one day watching people walk by this glassy railing

Of course, I saw their lower selves reflected in its blatant mirror

but when I looked up and stared

I saw their heads and torsos, faintly,

also doubled there

How can air or stone reflect? - the Motherwell had gone by then

I still don’t know but it’s somehow there

something about the building

something about the stone

something about the angle that keeps me coming 

seen sights are good 

but those barely seen are sometimes better

 

Time Expired

There’s someone out there predicting the end

here his dark criers and the dream that they send

Rough Weather Ware

I second that opinion, look in my book

I’m not just selling raincoats but seeing you’re cooked

 

The Law of Copies

Faces in the infinite sea of becoming

faces that can be lifted off

and pasted anywhere

the right of copies, which we are,

is primordially protected

 

Big Sky Big Mind

Sky blows up in mind

right outside my wife’s restaurant

upside down over the entrance steps

where the lovesick hawk once climbed

no drug is faster

no drug is more profound

this place should be protected  

designated a National Historic Hanging Shrine

where pilgrims come after healing waters

to open their eyes 

 

Visual Evolution

The eye evolved to scan the land

and not to search the sky

to see if lions were on the prowl

the clouds were all too far

but now that beasts are banished 

we drop vestigial fears

hang upside down widen eyes

and let the space blow in

It makes no difference if this story

is accepted as literal fact

take it as a Platonic Myth

that motivates the act

 

You know what I’d do if they abolished all zoos

I get a nice camera and go in search of some fowl

or maybe even a great horned screechy owl

I’d see them in situations unusual and strange

but not enough to totally rearrange

then I’d snap and I’d click and whisper with glee

I’ve got another for the Ground Glass Menagerie!

—————————————

Somewhere nearby live the forest monks

copying books, illuminating manuscripts

keeping learning alive in a barbarian world

all photos unaltered

Schroendinger’s Third Cat - B&W from 1992

Two cats make three

how can that be?

it must have something to do with Quantum Probability

Yin and Yang - Female and Male - (infrared photo)

What have they done to deserve this title?

look carefully - are they not the very image of each other

though postured strangely to the quotidian eye

inversions have a way of overturning

Another one in the same vicinity 

I inverted and twisted there he was

the Guru of the Glen - the Noble Namaste

the Perfected Master of these watery realms

we exchanged greetings and then a bow

easy for him a stretch for me

but two years later the winds blew in

uprooting trees destroying his home

he’s moved on I don’t know where

 

 

 

The poet Yeats awoke in old age

to find his “circus animals” had fled

I’m no Yeats and some years younger

so mine must be on holiday

waiting on the softer light 

soon their vanity will prevail

they’ll pose before me

until then I’ll take from here and there

I’ll wait them out - I’ll pretend I don’t care

Thai Goddess

Normally a nondescript bloodless statue 

with nothing to provoke eyes or head

but for a few minutes in May

I am Pygmalion and she Galatea

brought to life by Chiaroscuro

 

Africa Rising Over Suburbia

I took this picture in 1990

Public Enemy was fighting the “Power”

now eighteen years later a new voice rises

but some on earth are still misguided

by fear as groundless as vaporous clouds

The Ascension of Washington

A profile of the Father floats over his shrine

he ascends to Heaven his hands in prayer

his wig on tight his face looking forward

but disregard what lags behind

a disguise against unwonted eyes

I couldn’t believe it I thought I’d been had

only once in a Kalpa these stars align

Big Foot is fit, alive, and well

emerging from the forest like an arboreal swell

he’s peaceful and harmless, unwilling to fight

just don’t mock him he becomes uptight

Victorian woman up in the sky

I altered nothing not even a fly

I’m all thumbs when it comes to drawing

but I can click when something’s showing

East Wing of the National Gallery of Art

Sky and building go together 

interchangeable when light and times incline

Earth Sky Gods and Mortals - the Four-Fold said Heidegger

here is their abode - Washington D.C.

former center of the western world

 

Your only rival

Head to Head

Once I frequented the National Gallery 

and looked for scenes of life meets art

here it seems this bald man’s pate

is more alive than Rembrandt’s sitter 

but that’s because of Rembrandt’s sitter

Bactrian Buddha

Bactrian Buddha with an Apollonian face

once you rested in the noble Freer 

in surroundings worthy of your sculpted grace

but now you’ve been moved to a crowded shelf

amid objects in a neighboring museum of art

the Buddha’s rule is “not to attach”

still I’m hoping you’ll reclaim your spot

Art Exhibit

I suspect this teacher said: “Children, sit down on the floor

and write about where we’ve been”

but did she know she created her own exhibit

that fits right in

right down to the rhyming spaces

Chuck Close’s Mother, a Dubuffet

and a guard who comes in three

Guards are more art-like when they walk in a museum

and so are talkers doing any old thing

I watched these young men converge on the wall

once they arrived they installed themselves

Guards look too

they’re not always bored

and when told they are lucky

to work where they do

because art can change lives by opening eyes

theirs become a little wider

She’s been exiled to sit on a bench

while the others get to ride on a carriage

They’ve just flown in from Nebraska and are exited

the others are native and somewhat jaded

and would rather talk among themselves

The Importance of Being Ernst

means you get to be shot twice

These Dancers are gone

but when they were there

they cast a terpsichorean spell

over all who came into their realm

If an art museum is a secular church

here is one of its devotional centers

and its altar a painting by Church, I believe,

Frederick, that is, the sky and vapor man

it’s been many years

but I believe it was cordoned off for future services

 

Do you love the stars like I do

even in the polluted sky?

 

Do you love the stars like I do

oozing light through leaves and branches

unhinging eye beguiling mind

with drugless dreams of ecstasy

all that passes for princely kingdoms and pleasure domes

count for nothing where trees and orbs combine

 

Do you love the stars like I do?

I pass the torch - I’ve done my time

 

In my lens tunnel vision

Binocular Vision

Tidal Basin Admirer

That’s what I’m talking about

Hoplite Warrior

Contact

Confluence

South Lake Tunnel

Olympian

 

Riding the Range

Debris

 

Walking Hains Point the Morning of Love

thoughts of my wife’s restaurant and the coming fun

looked down and saw this - was temporarily dazed

“What spirit of illusion is befogging my brain

Cupid’s a trickster, he’s not to be tamed!”

back to my senses, I remembered my camera

raised and focused and took a lone picture

then thanked the winged boy for divinely confusing

 

This is it the rest of the time

I never saw it, I never looked down

only minutes a year gold and glowing

but should thoughts of saintly love precede

nothing less than a waking dream

though only once and never repeated

unless you believe Friedrich Nietzsche’s

Eternal Return of the Same

(All photos unaltered)

Cave of the Winds

or Hole of Souls

a glistening shadow

or just a smudge?

Strange is king

unless something familiar whispers 

try to see me new again

 

Strung on high

festooning sky

even clouds must compete

with jet-borne trails

in bringing forth the day

I don’t want to be The Emperor of Ice Cream

or Distinguished Professor of Atmospherics

Poet Laureate of Con Trails will do just fine

but my tenure might be brief

the vapors hold the heat

they’ll have to find a solution quickly

or I’ll be on the street

Music of the Spheres scored for eye and ears

Modern Trails

Thrum Thrum Thrum Thrum

see the sound of the beating drum

doubled by stick and creek reflection

this is a venue to test his words

music unheard is sweeter said Keats

 

The drumhead is smooth

the drumhead is tight

the stick comes down from the requisite height

the waves are calm, the music unheard

the test is passed, immortal is Keats

 

Much like Einstein known to a few

bent the light shot from a star

became a Nova by the end of night 

the only difference between them was

Einstein knew but gone was Keats

I’d rather be bored stiff

than watch the generic television program -

three hundred channels helped do that -

 

I’d rather be bored stiff

than play a video game -

I never have -

 

If there were more of us

we’d be shot for sabotage

but let the reality shows and games continue

 

I’m not bragging or blowing my horn

I’ve just become an entertainment vegetarian

I won’t eat those opiates of distraction  and ennui