Ground Glass Menagerie™

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

The sailor Thamus heard a divine voice proclaim

that “Great God Pan is Dead”

here he bonds with Alien

and lives again

green-horned, young, and handsome

if only on an eroded bank

facing the lowering sun

unaltered, like all my photos

Why is it that buddhas, aliens, and such

are fodder for the inverted camera

it’s because their features

are rather simple and bilateral

and will gladly suffer distortion

all ingredients for the playful lens

seeking entrance to Area 51

In honor of the Chinese Olympics

the spirits sent me an Asian Dreamer

I had to invert to meet her, of course

but that was no price to pay at all

just the inverse

I was the one rewarded to greet her

An inversion and then a rotation

accentuating the absurd

taken casually, a throw-a-way shot

no anticipation of anything strange

two pairs of 20’s Flappers

telling little secrets

illusionary spaces and hidden faces

Star War’s ships passing over

none of this without the inversion

even the camera must defer