Opacity

[part one]

life is resplendent in
cold structure, crystalline
blues and whites,
shades of violet right under ultra
shimmering in the wind.

everything unique yet
patterned the same matter the same
basic building blocks-
stacked, angled, ordered,
precision and regularity
of unnecessary necessity (to survive)
(to survive) melt it all away,
flow the frozen
river back to ocean
clear back to clear.

[part two]

the structure lies in color, gives us color, let’s us see
the structure of the color that we see.

adding color we can’t see, color that lies outside
the visible spectrum are those that like to hide.

when the structure is gone, the colors seem to blind(?),
but that’s everything coming clear
in the mind.

prime yet prime not prime

gravity fell out and space licked up time
swerving and curving and stretching.
light punched a hole well past our eyes
with collisions of explosions of nothing.

math proved the math proved the god
of our dreams in the mind of our math.
we give him a face and a number in fog
and claim invisible understood hand.

silence in deafness, mutes of the violence
conflict and warring and fear and despair.
mindful of blinded walking in darkness
ignoring the unknown, care not to care.

two-ness and three-ness and more all around us,
first person pronouns detached and apart.
splitting to many from only from oneness
from singular mind, from singular heart.

continue the struggle the conflict the war
irradiate hate and inside we store
vengeance and revenge revisit us more
and amplify blackness deep to the core.

one way, one love, one light, one source.

shifT

wake up with
slightly shifTed focus
stare right through
reality and read
six feet under
six inches past
a book, your hand
talking to the guy
behind the guy
you’re talking to

seeing shades in
white, and colors
in black the way back
is there just
beyond the glare
of unfocus
to see (unstrain)
to keep
the focus
a moment
don’t strain
shifT

(Aligned differently than intended due to technical limitations. A team of highly skilled badgers is currently working on a solution. Here’s to more comments about the afterword than about the poem.)

Lights and Machines

I leave the machine that I call home-
with inconsistency to connect-
in favor of the machine that everyone
uses in the central system with hints
of afflictions from yesterdays.
There is good light in the center but
this isn’t center and I don’t
always like the illumination-
still seeing the light from the back,
from where I came with the machine
I call home; and the light is dim
in this place and that, but green reflections
find me as they bounce from thing to
thing to meet my eyes and I long
for that familiar light, but in honesty,
I like reflected light much better and
would rather gaze it from here.
The green light that comes to me
isn’t green at source and the machine
it warms fits me poorly despite
the fact that I can call it home.
And green light shows a white machine
that stays white even under fire of
green particles and waves or whatever
it is that light wants to be that day.
The machine is locked but I know the keys
and inside it resides an even whiter machine.

To cat or not to cat

The cat is a good cat he
did nothing wrong aside from being
a cat as cat’s tend to be unless
put in a box that’s just
an ordinary box, six-sided
no windows, permanent
placed lid on top sealing
cat and box but did I
mention the poison and hammer
and radio-decay with a coin
flip chance, a coin flip fate,
an hour’s time and the price
to pay to need to see to be this
cat still breathes or did we
waste a perfectly good
box and hammer and vial of poison

(If the reference isn’t clear, check it out here or with wiki if you’re feeling braver.) 

penny candy

a simple bald man wearing
brown robes, old sandals with dirty
broad feet that belie a slender physique
sells penny candy in a time
of inflation where pennies are
discarded with unimportants like the
mind, not really worth hanging on
to, with all the needed polishing and
sorting into nice little piles, possibly
by year or quality or some special
collector’s qualification that only matters to
those that qualify, like those that
regard penny candy as too expensive as
pennies are tossed into wells while
the man is chased out of town
with pitchforks and torches for
charging far, far too much.