This page is a continuation of “New Scopes for the Sky” and www.groundglassmenagerie.com/oozing-the-moon-songs-to-the-night-sky/ Hanging upside down can also be a very stimulating and inspiring activity, as I hope these verses show. You can read how and why I began doing this at www.rhythmvision.com/invertedmirrorworld/ Prose descriptions can also be found on www.oozingthemoon.com  Then re-live your childhood and expand your mind by doing a little inverting yourself!

 

First Time Any Time              

 

I was going to say like “the first time”

but it almost always is “the first time”

when I hang upside down

never knowing quite what to expect

 

Did I foresee that the copse

across the stream, now fine but ordinary,

would seem darker, richer, deeper,

more enchanted and glassified after a 180?

 

There is a riddle, a mystery

perhaps even an embedded koan here

or maybe just some grease

for the skids of a geezer’s mind

 

     

                     Walking Music

 

                     on the upbeat

           ba doo ba doo ba doo ba doo

  sound of the inverted embankment walker

 

funny graceful bouncy musical morning maker

 

                  on the downbeat

                   du du dull dull

    sound of the upright embankment walker

 

                what’s to compare or

                did I stack the deck?

                     

 

              Upside Down Walker II

 

               The graceful bouncer

           dit  dit  dit  dit  dit  dit  dit

                getting the lead out

 

Hanging’s Rhymes and Reasons               

 

Invert me revert me insert me

in the upside down world again

 

I know it’s replaying an old boring theme

but things are just different and not what they seem

 

They’re bigger and stranger

a downright real eye re-arranger

 

So if it’s something new you’re yearning to feel

dangle your head and the old is repealed

 

The sky is not sky it’s more than just that

it’s a big cosmic sea that doesn’t go splat

 

And the fowl that swim or fly in the air

cavort and double as great quantum pairs

 

Whenever a bird flashes over the dock

he’ll disappear soon and burst into a flock

 

That will circle and circle and swirl and swirl

and then come towards you in an uncanny whirl

 

And that’s a mere slice of the magic you’ll see

so hang your head low just take it from me

 

Seratonin Re-uptake Inhibitor             

 

Elixir rejuvenator intoxicator

all these you are and can be

my little invertible lakeside dock

I came to you down this morning

            but left uplifted

one look at your cloud encrusted ocean

being enough to raise a flagging mind

a black mood might defeat you

but you can easily handle the gray

 

Head Case                

 

There is a scholar, a psychologist, who claims

after long, laborious statistical study

that left-handers are existentially challenged

pathology-prone, short-lived, nine years no less,

eccentric and more likely to have been dropped

on their heads as infants, that’s what he said,

or like pitcher Lefty Gomez to freeze on the mound

in mid-count to watch raptly as a plane passes

over the stadium

 

Is that why I hang? If so all you other ninety percenters

are excused and may immediately write me off

hanging is for kids and sinistrals then

but only if fun is wrong would that be right

 

Inversion Shorts             

 

On the dock it seems little’s here

but upside down it’s suddenly clear

I’ve been beamed aboard and sent aloft

and look right down on the great orange sea

the clouds are pink the sky is blue

this can’t be real so what about you?

 

All the beauty in the world

seems summarized

in this pink contrail drifting drifting drifting

floating in the cosmic blue ocean of dawn

from Mt. Reston hanging down

 

Sitting on the top of restaurant steps

when I invert into a cumulous blue sky

Ah! how much different and grander

from the upright - Mama Mia!

there must be other hidden treasures like this

in life that make even death

seem small by comparison

or am I just wired a little eccentrically?

 

Upside down cirrus cloudliness

is next to godliness

is what I’d say

and I’ll say it ’till my dying day

god and cloudliness willing, of course

 

Right side up a foretaste

upside down a full taste

from zenith to horizon

in one great arc of vision

 

Looking up eyes contend with gravity

inverting down they surrender

that’s why

 

Flight Lesson                 

 

The next time you hang over

the edge of your local lake dock

on a gray dawn day notice this

a bird streaks below you and heads

rapidly for the far shore

 

Strain only to keep it in sight

then as it strikes through the visibility barrier

the shock wave will shatter it

into a dense pixelated flock,

far-flung starlings perhaps,

 

Forming a vortex circling back towards you

maybe even to spin on your outstretched finger

if only you would summon it

It cost me a lifetime to witness this

It’s yours now for free

 

Gray Dawn Inversion            

 

Fast flying zigzagging birds

zooming rapidly away

crash through the limen

at the edge of sight

exploding into a pixelating vortex

astounding the blood-drenched brain

 

Nature’s suddenness

knows nothing better than this

flashing insight could not be swifter

 

Hanging over the Ridges of “Mt. Reston”       

 

Inverted Mar of Mt. Reston

what are you tell me true

the sum of all spring for sure I know

but something there’s more I’m certain

 

An Isle of the Blest off Alaska

in the cool Aleutian Sea

where giant Sitkas grow tall

down in the deep deep blue

 

Your spaces are grand

your prospects supreme

you unclutter the mind

what more can I dream

 

So Inverted Mar of Mt. Reston

that’s where I want to be

hanging from stately ridges

down in the deep blue sea

 

Greeting the Tree

                    

You are upside down

and also I who greet you

we both look better

 

and

 

The sky looks better

as we plunge down into it

making blue bluer

 

and

 

Our bodies are lighter

though gravity pulls us down

for we float on air

 

Watermelon Moon

 

More than just lemon

that’s what an inversion shows

with your juice on top

 

Watermelon moon

upside down want to bite you

your green aura too

 

Next Month

 

Watermelon Moon

rides the sky again

through the pinkening clouds

and the darkening of the blue

 

I had forgotten all about you

until I hung below just now

and there you were once more

as the double-faceted slice

 

Now I am reassured in knowing

that I was not just looned

for though I was not seeking you

I was automatically attuned

 

Ode to Proprioceptive Ambiguity          

 

Oh Tree, I did rise with thee

in Proprioceptive Ambiguity

I know that’s wild and seems not tight

for I’m supine and you’re upright

but when you go gold against the purple sky

when the light on you incarnates bright

when you both hold forth in forms fecund

my gyro turns, my head inclines, my eyes receive

and up up up I cleave

 

Hanging in Air

 

What is it about hanging from a picnic table

in a tree-ringed open field that explodes brain space

transforms sky into cosmic ocean makes it bluer

and its clouds into more graceful denizens of the upper winds?

 

It has something to do with change, blood to the brain

and looking down on what is allegedly up

Beyond that I don’t know – it is a little mystery

Perhaps children know but they aren’t talking

 

Stream Inversion

 

Seeing a stream upside down

is not just seeing the other way around

It’s another world

where different laws are given

where bank creatures transmogrify

with the changing of the light

where trees grow up and down

and right through the ground

where the oblique gives way

to the perpendicular view

and water, when it’s noticed at all,

becomes both vertical and horizontal

where the doubled green grass glows

like a fuzzy caterpillar

insects always fly in pairs

and fallen leaves compete with sculptures’ best

where disbelief is not just willingly suspended

but is just suspended

and the sojourner drinks strange beauty

from the waters of forgetfulness

 

Swan Stream

 

The natural beauty of fallen leaves made plainer

hanging down over a quiet, sinuous stream

watching them in all their three-dimensional glory

placidly plying their way back and forth

around and between promenading for best in show

stuck together, bent, torn, and doubled

they are not just leaves but little works of art

Calders, Moores, Picassos, they all float by

moving with the grace of stately swans

but just stand up and the vision vanishes - like a dream

or like a flatlander suddenly sent back from a visit to the globe

to his home on the plane

 

Picnic Table Epiphany                  

 

The upside down world

seems the really real world

the other needs a fix

 

As I hang from the Picnic Table

near sunset while the wan crescent

prepares her show

 

But when you can fit trees and sky together

like a hidden archipelago in the great blue sea

I might go along with you but you’re not there yet

 

                   Eros Most Fair and Fowl

 

                Suddenly a whoosing sound

              and out of an inverted left eye 

  the geese fly in for a fast sweeping lake landing 

      as if two halves that really belong together

        are being beautifully instantly re-united

            onomatopoetically at sound speed

                   PLOP BAM SNAP LOCK!

                   touch land settle freeze

           as if these geese re-enact the story    

      a comic playwright tells in the Symposium

   about a race of people cut in half by the gods

 who yearn to be whole through the power of eros

          a mystery of kinetic mirrored motion

            revealed only in rotated sky ocean

 

Nietzsche Inverted                                                  

 

Nietzsche, upsetter, overturner, transvaluator

of tables of values, you should have inverted over a

picnic table or a lake or two in the Engadin

too crude a metaphor you say - perhaps so

 

But it might have improved your failing eyesight

or relieved your throbbing head,

maybe even staved off the mind loss

and the sister who finally inverted you

 

At least it would have been as humorous

and liberating as harnessing yourself to a cart

carrying the young woman who took your head

             and broke your heart

 

A Passing Shower

         

As I was hanging and looking down

into the gray pink clouds of dawn

a voice whispered: “If you could go now, would you?”

“Yes, maybe, it’s deep and beautiful, why not?”

Then I rose and saw little circles on the lake

and then more and more.

“Surely, it is raining yet I feel nothing.”

Minutes seemingly passed and still nothing

I looked down - “No fish bubbling, either

Have I discovered a new lacustrine phenomenon?”

Finally a dream-dashing drop on my head

“No, you just don’t occupy much space in the world, do you?”

 

Pacem en Lacus

 

Christmas Eve Dawn

and the lake is at peace

not a ripple is stirring

to mar its clear sheen

the moon is on high

while the contrails glow by

and the blue is pure limpidity

it’s never been better

I’ve said that before

but the last time is always the greatest

my mind drops into this mirroring world

and whispers its own hosanna

 

Christmas morning and the lake

is more peaceful and unruffled than ever

its debris hanging in a state of immovable animation

mirror and mirrored inseparable

both sets of houses greet each other

like the most identical of twins

only a lone airplane and the slowly moving clouds

proclaim this is not a waking dream

but the perfected image of nature’s heaven

 

Quod in imaginibus, est in lingua

       (as in image, so in word)

 

My hanging dock knocked out

by the heavy rains of July

and the Picnic Tables not right

two long years almost

until today under the pavilion tent

pointing the four cardinal directions

 

Walter Benjamin dreamed, drug-induced,

of joining image and word

god’s plan and human sound united

so saith an article just read

 

Inverted image and eternity

I want to feel now

as insects buzz the late August afternoon

what kind of cricket is that

that spins its voice like a flywheel wanting grease?

 

This is a magic rectangle

a drug unseeded zone

better than a drug for being held in pure lucidity

for all its scope and sweep

yet here image enters mind and body

and so is close and near – Axis Mundi -

but which too may fade upon the morrow

World Historical Figures

 

Map and what it maps all together

that’s what I see this morning

hanging down

the swirling sands of the Sahara

glistening, ever-changing

the deep blue of the Argonauts’ Sea

surrounding Calypso’s bright isle

and beyond the peaks and dark mountains

just beginning to light -

the guardian gates of the Hyperboreans

but now I rise, clouds and sky

sands, sea, and mountains gone

beautiful but not quite a world

 

Inverted Sunrise

 

Con trails meld with clouds

in the furnace of the newborn sun

as a ribbed ridge isle of prismatic trees

floats in the deep blue far away

in uncharted waters that can no longer be

 

Instant sunlit doubled bank

a shining clarity beyond compare

yellow gold or golden yellow

what is water what is air

what is world what is sky

momentary earth’s eternal fair

 

And then around the corner

just along the bank

trot two husky dogs and a woman

speaking of what cannot be heard

yet words trip a wire in a blood-drenched brain

two women now in a four-dog sled

Mush Mush, O what visions inversions can untame!

 

I Sing the Upside Down

 

On the wayward winds of Dada Land

I sing the upside down

its breezes come from heaven

and its ‘canes from parts unknown

it sallies forth in cirrus clouds

and billows in the brain

it excavates the great wide vault

and drops right through the dome

then lays a strong foundation

and builds a brand-new home

 

Silver Dawn

 

The silver dawn between the leaves

is worth its weight in gold

it’s crystallized and faceted

like a precious gem

 

But it can’t be bought or sold

or held in bank accounts

but its note comes due every time

the sun comes roaring back

 

It’s best seen on a bench

looking straight behind

but who am I to give advice

so seek your own recline

 

But should it cause a tingle

in body and/or mind

no need to fret or check yourself

it’s just grown more refined

Vision Quest

 

Predawn besotted and flat on the ground

looking forward and up to a towering oak

twisting the head and beginning to stare

a star might even be hanging there

 

The dark grows darker until its pure black

the spaces glow brighter until they’re not space

but clouds and flowers and then by strange grace

an icon of silver gigantic in form

from Constantinople or Moscow perhaps

 

But the figure inscribed is a great-headed wolf

who stays and stays and stays and stays

competes with the rays and then slinks away

but he’ll return tomorrow for sure

or the next day next day next day at least

Passing on the Word

 

If you should see the Enlightenment Moon

of thirty minutes before sunrise fame

shining like a bulb in the baby blue

and there’s a bank, dock, ridge, table

or any make-shift platform

from which to hang yourself low

don’t hesitate – Invert!

you’ll thank me when you do

but don’t worry I won’t get the big head

I’m just passing on the word

Winter Solstice

 

Find a ridge that’s somewhat smooth

one that lets your body move

and when the moon is shining bright

on the ridge you’ve judged is right

lie yourself down along the ground

then turn slowly round and round

and if a stranger should catch this sight

say “no need for worry no need for fright

I’m just having fun upon the night

for the moon looks different up or down

and circling makes the mind resound”

On the Path

 

Dried oak leaves hanging out with blue

catch the slanting sun and sparkle like the dew

but this should be verboten

it should not be allowed

 

For it pulls me down upon the ground

and might evoke some wrath

or if that seems overblown

at least some puzzled scorn

 

But even though I am self-conscious

I cannot withhold myself

for days and sights and colors like these

are a prone-provoking tease

Crescent Craze

 

When the clouds clear the crescent

they unveil her beautiful curve

but they also unfurl her feathers

if you are hanging down

 

For the cold clean air of morning

has a way of tearing the eyes

which also can go double

and the moon photonosize

 

Hanging on Borrowed Time

 

Topsy Turvy on this dog-walking path

the crowns of the trees reddening in the dawn

it’s always nice to see them looking down

where the neck need not crane

nor face squint and frown

but I’m hanging on borrowed time, I know

so up I rise preempting surprise

seconds before master and hound arrive

what I need is a MAN INVERTING sign fore and aft

then they’ll know I’m not dead, just daft

Doublings

 

Holy Mole Racantole

here I go again

hanging upside down for sure

looking at the sea

 

And here’s a squadron

of doubled geese honking up a storm

if only that was doubled too

I’d be deaf no doubt!

 

But now they’re gone, it’s quiet here

and only ripples churn

 

 

Mirror Mirror in the lake

what is clear and what is fake

 

right side up it’s easy to tell

upside down one must puzzle a spell

 

for on a cloudy rippleless early morn

no real sign of difference is born

 

 

Gold

 

Even in the light of brazen day

a hang from Mt. Reston

is worth its weight in slanted gold

like a parachute jump through inverted trees

frozen in mid-descent

floating above the sea

 

Rushes

 

Once you go slack

you’ll never go back

hanging right down

from the dock

 

Even the Moon whispers invert

for you’ll never revert

and she says it

with convincing élan

 

So if you seek morning rushes

that are more than just bul

lower your head

and take in the show

Purpleblue

 

Around and between the branches of trees

bark mixing with blue or yellow too

brings forth a hue,

faint and subtle and hard to name

yet there it is all the same

ready and eager and set to preen

but be forewarned it eschews the green

 

Yes, it’s true it shuns the green

but that’s not all I certainly mean

for once you’ve seen it and loved it a lot

it makes no difference what else you’ve got

just look and look and look some more

soon it’ll be there in full galore

                                               

                                                Sky Biking

 

                                              Bike bopping

                                          in the golden hour

                                           air clear sky blue

                                        Power towers turning

                                            cables strobing

                                             wires crossing

                                            t-shirts shining

                                             ladies smiling

                                           con trails trailing

                                              edges edging

                                        everything in motion

                                       music of the bike path

                                            beyond sublime

                                               exhilarating

                                               intoxicating

                                            hyperventilating

                                           sky blue sky blue

                                          sky blue sky purple

                                             pump the tires

                                            inflate the mind

 

Bike Trail Boogie

 

Wires of power you move so well

opening and closing and crossing

with Pythagorean grace

against the blue this high tide of morning

 

what is the secret of your music?

for that is what is

and not some fanciful figure of speech

 

the singing of the birds

the cool breezes

the limpid air

the highering sky and new air inflating tires

just a mood that just might hang around a while

or, most likely, all coming together

in springly conclave

 

whatever it might be

your electromagnetic fluxes line up

the filings of mind and muscle

propelling me musically forward

rising the road to meet me

 

Light at the End of the Bike Tree Tunnel

 

Popping out of nine miles of canopied trail

into the clean clear sky of the great rolling farm field

the black top is purple, the sky red, just a bit,

the space huge, the light all-encompassingly radiant

my Van Gogh moment and it lasts and lasts

so this is what a little dark adaptation can do

to eyes suddenly sent to heaven

Perfectamente

 

Biking a power and tree-lined trail

on a clear blue evening near sunset

is Euclidean, pure and simple

 

The shortest distance between two points

is a straight line - here it is

the straightest line imaginable!

the area enclosed is width time length

perfectamente - und so weiter!

 

Here all is radiant geometry, purity of form

and the music of singing wires

even nature rings out in these straight lines

Maya the Beautiful

 

Some days like today on the bike path

it seems that all things have been

sculpted and baked in clay

and then when their time is ripe, which is now,

they break forth from their molds

shining strangely and new

space becoming matter matter becoming space

Maya the Beautiful behold

Tour de Trance

 

The swinging of the wires

is a beauty to behold

they frame the sky and hold it

and even cast a mold

 

All that’s needed is a bike path

that curves back in and out

with conic section lines

that trace the perfect math

 

To tumble out equations

of graceful line and hue

that gladden ear and touch the eye

for cycling’s favored few

 

When dawn clouds rise over a high embankment

      they seem to climb the steep-vaulted sky

             spuming from that great caldera

                  where all clouds are born

                      but no need to run

                      just patiently wait

                         to be covered

                          by the ash of

                           an eruption

 

 

Some Places

 

There are some places, some streets, some angles

where the in-filling blue just pops into view and says hello

such as on this clear afternoon in October

wending my way home, circuitously,

to the school and its musically revealed turnings

 

It has something to do with the tree-rimmed

inverted V vanishing point perspective

slanting towards the horizon

a form fitted to let in the sky

“What a delightful thing perspective is”

muttered the old master Uccello

and it still is

A Walk into Spring

 

The oak of two trunks

knows its branches nearly match

almost a snowflake

 

Sky reddens with buds

branches still glisten with light

the leaves are coming

 

But you old rampike

under whom I lie musing

must blend with the wind

 

Sun running a branch

has struck lightening in my eyes

a bolt in the blue

for the few who scan the sky

 

Set against these trees

and this graywhite house

the purpleblue sky seems to have been painted

by a brush of no blemish

laying on its oil with one sure stroke

using bristle that leaves no trace

cajoling eye to move through space

towards it and its perfection

 

In the space of one mile

of woodland walking

the purples have further purpled

the reds grown even redder

sun and sky on overdrive

so this is what they mean

by “spring has sprung”

 

I didn’t know the day

could be as enchanted as the night

but today purple sky, bright boles

and red buds say it is

and who am I to argue

 

Look at this, my old stream bank spot

supinely lying - But what’s the need to

invert yourself on a day like today?

Isn’t this enough? - But, this my favorite

topsy turvy camera nook, now unclogs

after two long years of muck and mire.

I just have to and what I see I must report -

Oh no, I hear it coming - A sky bigger

and purpler than your uprightness can allow

I thought you were locked forever

but the spring has set you free

Walking up Hains Point – Washington, D.C.

 

What is this shaggy peeler in my morning purview

backed by cherries just past peak

multitudinous caterpillar leaf buds

hang amid insectoid branches

screening the sky, gauzifying it

you look like a divine artist’s overnight installation

hardly real yet you are, of course, purpling the sky