Daylight

“Real mystics don't hide mysteries, they reveal them. They set a thing up in broad daylight, and when you've seen it it's still a mystery.” --G. K. Chesterton, The Incredulity of Father Brown

because a true mystery is hidden
not by opacity, but by depth
like a thousand fathoms of clear water.
No matter how much you see, there's
more there. So dive in and swim down
eyes open, and don't hold your breath
until you get to the bottom--
there is no bottom.

And on the way the bright fish
beguile you, branches of precious coral,
treasures of the shark's kingdom.
Every fragment of this mystery
is worth seeing, worth the effort
however deep you dive, even if
you don't make it to the bottom--
there is no bottom.

Confounded by depth,
walk all the way around it in broad daylight
and it's still a mystery.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Making Crop Circles

Surely it's a harmless pastime. True,
some sprouting grain is trampled and destroyed
and farmers bear the cost: so they're annoyed
by crop-circles. It just takes a few
yards of good string, some stakes and boards, some glue.
Next day, the credulous are overjoyed,
claim proof of life in interstellar voids
or ley-lines diagrammed for public view.

Controversy can be entertaining,
circle-making's fun when it's not raining,
but be careful of the farmer's rights:
don't break down a fence or damage fields,
pick a crop that's given up its yield
or find a better way to spend your nights.

Image by Frank Dasilva, via Poefusion
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Red-Winged Blackbirds

There is the flash of scarlet,
the wing-coverts of the male. He bobs
ferocious in the cattails.

Chek ter-ree announces
browning summer to the riparian zone.
Gilded epaulets on glossy

black plumage blaze like
the anticipation of poppies sprouting
from grass-fire ash.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Transforming Grandmother

Original images: hut by SCervino, castle by Paul Tait, cottage by Mary Daniels, queen of spades by Sachin Godke, wolf by Michal Zacharzewski, spider by Julia Freeman-Woolpert, bubble by Marcus Buckner, spiderweb by tigre, howl by Michael Lorenzo
Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Mad Birds

Ah God, unlid this sky
and free the wild birds who throw themselves
against it like stones against armored glass.
Unlid these sleeping eyes,
reveal the vast and turning armillary spheres
and the silent axles that support the wheels
rolling under the universe.
Smoke: all this machinery is smoke and mirrors
clotted now with cobwebs and we fumble blind.
Our fingers tell us truths
the eyes refuse to see. They find the gaps
between the gears, the frayed places in the fabric
the hinge in the sky's lid
that lets in a single crack of dazzling light
against which the birds throw themselves.
Of course the birds are mad.

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Cloudy Morning

3 Word Wednesday: Dreary. Embrace. Timid.

dreary overcast
timid flutter of sparrows
I miss your embrace

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Sword Words

Original image by mgaber
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Vignette: Pride and Prejudice

Vignettes are not supposed to be
discursive. They shouldn't veer off
into self-indulgent doldrums or irrelevant paeans—
they should be twisted tight as a torniquet,
unnecessary flesh excised.

He's debonair and saturnine, wears
the sobriquet "Olivier" easily. She's a bomb
hidden under an Austen-patterned parasol.
Their colloquy is punctuated
by vulpine yowls.

twist; tourniquet; debonair; paean; discursive; vignette; veer; excise; parasol; doldrums; sobriquet; vulpine; yowl; colloquy; saturnine; bomb

--words courtesy of Read Write Poem
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Dawn's Cafe – Seligman

Me and my parents in a rented car
on old Route 66. Red rimrock replacing
tropic savannahs behind our eyes,
while the young fellow at the counter
grins at my dad: maybe the only two
black men in all of Arizona in 1981.

He says he's from Chicago. Us? It takes
fifteen minutes just to list the places
we've lived and why. And I'm seventeen
with miles yet ahead of me and no idea
that I'll ever get tired of the road.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

The Stonebound Swan

Once there was a swan who swallowed a worry-stone.

This happens from time to time. It's good for swans to swallow stones; it helps them digest. The problem is, there's no way to tell a worry-stone from a regular stone.

Worry-stones tend to grow.

Soon the swan found herself getting heavier and heavier. She was afraid to go into the water because she would sink. Flight became just a distant dream.

When fall came, her sister-swans all boomed into the air and headed south. The stonebound swan stayed by the side of the lake where she had spent the summer. She missed her sisters, but she found the lake curiously peaceful without them. Never before had she stayed in one place to watch the seasons change.

Slowly the reeds dried up and grew brown. The lily-pads shrivelled up and exposed the surface of the water, even as the leaves fell from the trees around the lake. “It's as if the world is taking off its clothes,” thought the swan. She would have been happy if only she could have swum, but she was afraid of sinking.

Then one morning, she woke to find the lake frozen over.

The swan had never seen such a thing before. She watched the ice melt as the pale winter sun rose higher into the sky. But the next morning the ice was back, thicker than ever.

Before long the lake was frozen all day and night, solid enough for the stonebound swan to walk on. It was harder for her to find food, but she didn't mind. She was fascinated by this new and different world: dry leaves underfoot everywhere, bare branches arching against the grey sky, small animals burrowing and preparing to sleep. The swan's plumage kept her warm even on the coldest nights, even though she was hungry most of the time.

The nights became bright, as moonlight reflected off the icy lake and the snow-covered ground. Snow was the first thing she had ever seen that was as white as a swan.

In the full moon, the swan went walking on the lake, and when she looked around there was a black swan walking beside her. “Little one,” he said, “what are you doing here so late? Or is it so soon?”

“It's late,” said the swan with a sigh. “All my sisters have flown south, but I am stonebound and can't fly.”

“Is that all,” said the black swan. “You could lay that worry-stone down any time you want, you know. Just cough it out.”

“I guess I knew that,” said the stonebound swan.

“Then why didn't you?”

The swan looked around at the snowdrifts spangled with ice crystals and the frost furring the trees. She looked at the frozen lake and the full moon. In all the world, the only things that were not brilliant, blinding white were the sky between the stars and the black swan at her side.

“If I hadn't swallowed that worry-stone,” said the stonebound swan, “I would never have seen all this. I would never have met You.”

“Was it worth it?” the black swan asked.

“Oh, yes,” said the swan. “I'm ready to cough up that stone now.”

And she began to sing.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Benoit Mandelbrot and the Coast of Britain

How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension by Benoît Mandelbrot

Water and land, like fingers interlaced
along a boundary of fractal length
divide and conquer self-similar space.
Like lovers in a close-contact embrace
they clasp each other in a couple-dance
in time stepped off in tidal increments,
the tango rhythm of retreat/advance
rekindled by each passing lunar glance.

So any scheme of finite measurement
of coastlines must require a leap of faith
from point to point along an edge of lace,
the moving merge of sea and continent.
And so Benoit walks on, his rule in hand
admitting he can't know the length of land.

--for Read Write Poem
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To Really Foul Things Up...

3 Word Wednesday: Efficient. Optimize. Treacherous.

Optimized, but wrong--
treacherous efficiency
makes mistakes faster

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Caterpillar Cub

He looks a little anxious, as if he's just realized how far he's climbed...

Caterpillar cub
creeping up a tree
how will you get down?

Thought it would be fun
stealing from the bees
furry bear-cub clown

but now you're very, very
far above the ground.
Caterpillar cub
how will you get down?

--for Cafe Writing
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The Game of the Friend: Nodemap

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The Game of the Friend

I saved a pressed rose petal in the name of the Friend,
the faintest of fragrances that came from the Friend.

A tree died in my yard and I'm full of complaints
but if the roots failed to grow it's no blame to the Friend.

A garden of prayer blooms under constant attention
and the sun gazes down with love the same as the Friend.

If your seedlings fail of their promise and wither for lack
of your care, do you dare to call shame on the Friend?

If you could wish for wealth and command over human hearts
then what would you choose between fame and the Friend?

If you can order the tide to your will and change the orbits
of galaxies, still you've no hope of taming the Friend.

But look how the flowers dance in surrender when the wind blows!
That's how the dervishes learn to play the game of the Friend.

--for Cafe Writing
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Leaving the Fortune-Teller's

He leans and staggers, seems about to fall,
unbalanced, maybe wounded, drunk, half-sleeping,
leaving scarlet palm-prints on the wall.

Not blood but paint? So there's no need to call
an ambulance for this poor guy who's creeping,
staggering along, about to fall

through alleys past and present, through the scrawl
of palmistry symobology that's seeping
like a scarlet palm-print through the wall.

The wound is in the past, beyond recall
except that poisoned memories are keeping
him a-stagger. Soon enough he'll fall

and give up, helpless, lie there limbs asprawl
forgo whatever future's his for reaping
under scarlet palm-prints on this wall

or else he'll move. Get up, or maybe crawl
and leave the fortune-teller's doorstep, weeping,
staggering, recovering from the fall,
away from scarlet palm-prints on the wall.

Image courtesy of an untrained eye via Read Write Poem
Collection available! Knocking from Inside

The all-time hit parade (and a new story)

I'm writing another story, which will probably not be novel-length but will be longer than a short story. One of those difficult lengths. More details here.

I installed the IceRocket hit counter here at KFI in January, and it's been an entertaining look at what pages get hit and why. If numbers bore you, skip the rest of this post.

The biggest single class of hits are against the blog itself rather than against any specific page. Right now that's running at about 25%. After that come individual pages. "Umbrella Manifesto" is the clear leader at over 450 hits (almost 7%), thanks to someone's having posted it to stumbleupon.com. After that comes "AI poetics?", which got linked from Ron Silliman's blog and has since acquired the occasional search engine hit: it stands at 246 hits this morning. Next is "Painted Sky", one of my image/text pieces, with 132 hits. "Painted Sky" is interesting, in that I originally posted it to Inspire Me Thursday, which is one of the heaviest-hitting prompt sites (see below). I then posted it to the Women's Poetry listserv in connection with a discussion about multi-media poetry, and it jumped up quite a bit.

Next come two "sleeper" pieces: both were actually posted before I installed the IceRocket tracker, so the hit counts for them don't include the original views (both were created for Read Write Poem prompts). They're in the top 10 on the strength of ongoing hits, mostly from search engines. "Literal and figurative poetry" has 129 hits as of today, and "Simile and Metaphor: Greens and Blues" has 96. Then we have another piece that got a boost from Silliman, "Was it flarf?" (83 hits) Then another Inspire Me Thursday post, "Lacemaker God" (78 hits). Next, "Buddha Hand", 77 hits, and "Lollipop Girls", 70 hits. The interesting thing about these last two is that they are also actively accumulating search engine hits.

Among other uses, I do hope that people will use this blog to learn more about poetry. So I'm gratified that 4 of the top 10 pages are informational. It's especially cheering that they continue to accumulate hits from search engines. The performance of "Literal and figurative" and "Simile and Metaphor" is particularly impressive because they haven't had a huge boost from a specific source, like Silliman's blog or stumbleupon.

I don't know if people find "Buddha Hand" particularly useful... there's no culinary or botanical information there... but surprisingly enough, when I Google the words, that page is the 4th listing that comes up. (The more I think about that, the weirder it seems. There's tons of online recipes, pages for nurseries selling the plant, articles about Buddhist statuary, Wikipedia articles... how does a weird little sonnet get onto Google like that?)

As for "Lollipop Girls", probably the hits I get are not exactly the ones I want. ("Digital Babe" gets a lot of hits too.) Those two will probably continue to accumulate hits as time goes on.

Interestingly, "Anna Goeldi" got a boost when the news about her exoneration went around, and "Dr. Manhattan and the Five Eyes" was popular around the time the "Watchmen" movie was released; but neither are in the top 20 any more. On the other hand, "Shihuangdi's Tomb" is still hanging in there purely on search hits.

Between 480 and 490 pages (counting the main blog address) have been hit in the time I've had the counter installed. The top two posts plus the main address account for about 36% of the hits IceRocket has recorded. "Painted Sky" accounts for under 2% and the percentage goes down from there. That's a fairly even distribution with a couple of notable outliers.

IceRocket also tracks keywords. The top 10: tritinas, literal poems, Lollipop Girls, buddha hand, first day of spring 2009, digital babe, aisha ansari, candid camera, birth of Venus, poetry submissions. Again the distribution is pretty flat, with "tritinas" being at 2.46% and the total number of keywords listed at over 1000. What's interesting is that only three of the top 10 keywords relate to one of the top 10 pages, and even looking at the top 20 pages only brings in one more ("first day of spring" at #17). "Tritinas" is my most popular keyword, yet none of my tritina posts are anywhere in the top 20.

It's hard to know how much to rely on these numbers, though, because different searches can bring up the same post (scanning down, I see I've gotten some hits for the keyword "literal and figurative poetry", which really should be added into the numbers for "literal poems"). So perhaps it's not surprising that the relationship between keywords and pages is weak. I could get a better look by downloading the whole report (one of IceRocket's cooler features), doing some hand-editing, and re-evaluating the numbers... if I had that much time.

More fun is looking at referrers. The biggest single source of hits is Google search, with 23% of my hits. Next is "direct or from bookmark", which probably includes most of my regular readers, just over 15%. Getting into more specifics, the next four are Inspire Me Thursday, stumbleupon.com, Sunday Scribblings and Ron Silliman's blog. (The rest of the top 10 referrers stand at under 3% apiece: Yahoo search, Totally Optional Prompts, Read Write Poem and google.com.)

I reckon stumbleupon and Silliman for one-time events (although that's not to say it couldn't happen again), whereas the hits from Inspire Me Thursday and Sunday Scribblings have been accumulating week after week as I've been a regular participant at both sites. Inspire Me Thursday has consistently been the biggest provider of hits per page of all the weekly prompt sites: I've gotten almost 700 hits from that site since I installed the counter halfway through January. Figuring that for about 16 weeks, and remembering that I've missed posting there at least a couple of times, gives well over 50 hits per post. Sunday Scribblings at close to 300 hits has probably been bringing in about 20 hits per post (I haven't kept track of how many weeks I've participated, so can't be any more precise).

A note on geolocation: I've had hits from 97 countries, plus "unknown" and "Satellite Provider". Some 64% are from the US, followed by the UK, Canada, Australia, India, and Germany.

Bottom line? Participating at prompt sites brings in hits. Of the other big contributors, a reference from Silliman, stumbleupon or Diggit isn't really under one's control as a blog owner. Keyword searches are important, but unpredictable: I would never have guessed "Buddha Hand" would do that well.

It's an odd, odd world out here in the blogosphere.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Shadow Loss

All winter long I didn't see my shadow
(I, like groundhogs, peering anxiously)
but now she has come back, and I am glad, oh
glad to see her once more follow me:
a swatch of dark to balance summer skies
midday reminder of the coming night,
a clever masquer in a dark disguise
who mocks each move that I make in the light.

Each morning now the sidewalk sees her stretch
and shrink up tiny when the sun is high.
Oh my companion, dancing pavement sketch
where have you been these seven months gone by?
Of all the pains of cold and rain and frost
I think this was the worst: my shadow, lost.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

Disconnection

A lover's soul, in trauma from rejection
may attempt eternal self-protection
by erecting walls and barring doors
a fortress-heart, defended from all wars.
As if a sooty petrel were to soar
in fruitless search for stormless ocean shore
and never nest. The price? A disconnection,
loss of warmth, a blurring of direction.

The world retreats behind a windowpane,
a sheet of isolation, lonely-glass
and shutters made of self-indulgent pain
through which no human word or touch can pass.
The catch is jammed, the hinge too stiff to open.
To save a heart, the window must be broken.

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Dazzling Darts

The dazzling dart of dragonflies
across the water-shimmer makes
the water shiver in my eyes.
The dazzling dart of dragonflies
and ripple-sparkle that replies
across the shining summer lakes—
a dazzling dart! A dragon flies
across the shimmer water makes.

Across the shimmer of the lake
the dazzling dart of dragonflies
draws edges that my heart could break
across. The shimmer of the lake
dim-silhouettes a firedrake
a ghost of water in my eyes.
Across the shimmer of the lake
the dazzling, darting dragon flies.

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Sunflower Petals

Original images: angel by Heather Hicks, sunflower petals by Craig Jewell
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Scraping

Scraping off the rust
seeing everything as new
the first time again.

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Mosaic Art

We slither under the jetty
to gather granular sediments
(clay, not fish excreta).

Behind the steel posts of the guard-fence
in the scorching heat of the kiln
and under the force of our will—
pots take shape.

Unfinished. We carve and glaze
and shatter! Mosaic art,
create/destroy/create:
sublime cycle of urges.

mosaic; wilful; fence; post; jetty; granular; sublime; scorching; excrete; guard; carve; sediment; slither; glaze; finish

words courtesy of Read Write Poem
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NASA News

3 Word Wednesday: Bicker. Nervous. Trajectory.

nervous astronauts
bicker over attempting
new trajectories

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Crypsis

3 Word Wednesday: Cryptic. Flash. Malign.

cryptic moth senses
malign predator's approach
flashes glaring eye!

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Portland

I. Washington Park Zoo

We're so high above the city here
that clouds drift past at knee-height, catching
among the firs where the peacocks roost
and scream at night. Cliffs fall away
on every side. Concrete enclosures are married
seamlessly to native basalt.
Flocks of brilliantly colored strollers
crowd the paths past the sleeping lions
and the busy popcorn vendors.

II. Street Food

Danos Dogs, Fried Onion, India Chaat House, Sip, Pho Le, Taqueria Uruapan
pan-fried noodles, barbecue and smoothies
Smokin Pig, Chozas Peruvian Food, Pagoda, Veggielicious, Burritos Funny
funny names on aluminum-sided trailers
Brunch Box, Ugarit Mediterranean Meals, Thai Sky, Original Chile Rellano
no-one knows where they all came from
Vegi Dog, Mecca Fish & Chips, Moxie, Whole Bowl, No Fish! Go Fish!
fish and chips and veggies, soup and bread
Taste of Poland, Spella Caffe, Duchess of Sandwich, Golden Saigon
gone on weekends, here all week
Zibas Pitas, Flavor Spot, Cavaliers Corner, Sunny Day Coffee and Flowers
our very own little U.N. in a downtown block.

III. Powell's, City of Books

Three stories stacked on a city block
and inside, millions of stories packed
on edge, elbow to elbow. These books show us
only their spines; what secret conversations
are they having, deep in the shelf,
moving their pages too quietly for us to hear?
Citizens of their own polis, nevertheless
they'll sometimes consent to leave Powell's
and travel with us.

Browsing turns to serious reading, sitting
on the floor flanked by a stack of books
(and a wallet full of gently smoking
credit cards) while the light dies outside.
The staff comes around to tell you
that the doors are closing and you have to leave.
"But I just got here." "It's 11 PM."
Dazed by the fast trip back from Barsoom, Samarkand,
the Antarctic, outer space, the unexplored margins
of your own heart, dizzied by a temporary
lack of depth perception or by shifted perspectives,
you stumble outside. The sidewalks gleam
with rain and car exhaust, and across the street
a giant eggbeater rocks gently in the wind.

IV. Elements and Directions

Anywhere in the five quarters of this city
you orient by the rivers. This city is spined with rivers,
ribbed with urban waterways, sprouts fountains
like fingernails on every corner. Water-boned city,
port a hundred miles from ocean.
This city is green, so green. Rhododendrons guard
wood-framed houses from the 1900s. No brick.
When this city was born, wood was cheaper than dirt.

There's not much dirt in the yards where
moss grows thicker than grass. People here
wrestle slugs for control of their lawns.
One shovelful of earth; half a shovelful of stones
ripped from the heart of the continent and dropped here
by the Missoula floods. Stone-fleshed city,
framed by mountains east and west, your people
gaze upward, humble.

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Wow!

As of today, the "Umbrella Manifesto" is my most-visited page ever, beating out the former champion, "AI poetics". Thanks to whomever posted "Umbrella Manifesto" to stumbleupon.com, which gave it an even huger boost than "AI poetics" got from being linked on Ron Silliman's blog.

"Umbrella Manifesto" stands at 415 hits. I hope some of my visitors clicked through to look at the original images and their owners' websites.

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Stone Pines

The Mediterranean stone pine was imported to Britain during Roman times. It's thought that its cones were used as incense.

Mother Roma, how I miss the stone pine,
pining here upon a foreign shore.
Surely I will die abroad, before
four years of exile pass. Oh, pour the bright wine,
wine of Rome, shipped out in huge amphorae,
foray of some merchant's shipping line.
Lined his pockets well, he did. And mine--
mining makes enough for me to pay.

Pale lead, am I your slave or you my servant?
Vanished Rome, oh how I miss the incense!
Sense of home, the smell of burning cones
connects my soul to Rome. If only I could plant
plantations of them, whispering with scent,
essential air of Roma, pines of stone.

Thanks to WOM-PO for discussions of anadiplosis.
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Sin and Confessions

"And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is". --Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

If I confessed to some half-guilty pleasure,
indulgence less than worthy of my creed,
would I be lessened in your estimation?
If I admitted craving hoarded treasure,
gold heaped up beyond all human needs
or if I copped to jealous palpitation
or feigning illness for the sake of leisure
expressing wrath in spoken word or deed
or lust that leads to careless fornication
or gourmandizing past all reasoned measure—
all sins come from one small bitter seed:
the use of others for a selfish pleasure.
Call it sloth or gluttony or greed
but recognize the root on which it feeds.

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