In The Outer Reaches

It's no game to play
to call down the dark matter,
the dark energy
that passes through us.

To call on frigid forces
from the frozen fields
of some Saturn's moon
to bury the lambent world
in rocky boulders
of forever's ice
is not a game, not at all.
Never call by name.

‎August ‎11, ‎2011 9:46 AM

An unusual word appears in this poem. No one uses it very often. So... here ya go...
"lambent world" = "world of flickering soft and radiant light"

lam·bent
ˈlambənt
adjective - literary
(of light or fire) glowing, gleaming, or flickering with a soft radiance.
"the magical, lambent light of the north"
synonyms: flickering, fluttering, incandescent, twinkling, dancing, radiant, brilliant
"the lambent light from a distant campfire"

Life After

If my heart then died
I would be free to lift off
and take the angel's
flight, along the lines
laid down in clear air long time
past the start of things.
Immune now, standing
in the wind fully drenched, light
bathed, I radiate
immortality.

‎August ‎10, ‎2011 6:29 AM

A Lonely Man

A sense of the end
dogs me all around the slope
behind my log house
as I pull slivers
out my dad-blamed body parts
and hear the rooster
crow in his cage built
by Jose for him last spring.
A fine black fellow
is Leo, with eyes
that pierce the hen perfumed air
and his hens stay close.
I have no hen, me.

‎August ‎20, ‎2017 12:18 AM

Reality check... this house is not a log house. The picture of the rooster is not a picture of Leo, the real black rooster in the cage. But Leo's eyes are of a stern quality and he and his hens do not fear us when they are loose in the yard. They are used to their routine and so go in and out the cage easily and do not leave the yard when free.

I actually have no slivers I know of but I would from time to time if this was a log house, I am sure.

The chickens do perfume the air - there is no question about that. A fellow named Jose lives here and he built the chicken run and a very fine chicken house. They are his chickens.

There is a city maintained grassy slope that rises behind our house and at the top beyond the Oregon City Promenade an abrupt drop of ninety feet or so. That slope drains into the driveway of the house across the alley, where there is a sump and pump to deal with what was once a natural swampy pond with no outlet. I would never buy that house. We have sand bags in case of extra high water over there because pump maintenance is very difficult.

We have never really needed the sand bags but before my time here sand bags were needed one winter. We lay the sand bags to block off the doorway to the basement in which I live, because that doorway is the lowest point and all the water high enough to get over the road hump would go into our basement. That would be a bummer. Leo would not like that kind of high water, nor would his harem.

Final reality check: This is a fictional poem. I am not a lonely man.

Bears

Oh by the way... in the heavens, the constellations "Ursa Major" and "Ursa Minor" are translated: "Bear of Great Stature" and "Bear of Small Stature". The latest prompt for Red Wolf Journal (Prompt 318) was to write about the stars...

Don't Poke The Bear

This is no poem.
I mean, it could have been one
but since it is mine,
I get to choose what
I am going to call it.
It's a pompous thing
all carefully wrought
word salad, partly practice
for the real thing
and partly for fun...

I wish I was true to form
and worth time and space
like real poets
are.

Written by the shade of Pinocchio
who wished to be a real boy‎
and who if a real poet
would really have written
about the stars
August ‎14, ‎2017 8:25 PM

Feeling Distant

Charon in gibbous phase as viewed from near the surface of Pluto. The Sun is shining in from over one's left shoulder.

I took a wrong turn
on the way to Pluto's moon.
I forget the name
of the place I've been
searching for in all this time
circuiting the edge
where the sun is just
a bright, largish star.

It's cold
out here, as you know.
I hoped to find signs
and I still might at a guess
but it feels remote
and getting more so
as the oxygen runs low
and the windows freeze.

‎August ‎9, ‎2017 4:01 AM

Not This Time

Shore of Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Possibly I will sleep here tonight...on a true stumblebum shore.

I showed up, opened
the program and hoped for sauce
to squeeze out my heart
with my red red blood
that my words might mean a thing
for once, and maybe
appear soaring with
the flock of full fledged word birds.

Maybe I will get
it right this one time...

Then my head just exploded
and the heat of me
dispersed like day fog
on a summer coast morning
and I fluttered by -
a boy of all boys
in my dreamy escapades
from stumblebum shores.

‎July ‎27, ‎2017 8:58 PM

The Gale

I've had to change out
the ropes that hold the willow
upright despite rain
and wind, gale sized stones
that fall at the shallowest
slant and bounce along
our path through the brush.

You told me this was my job.

Not that I ever
refused you a thing -
I have never refused you.
You know this is true.
and yet you doubt my
purity of heart and soul,
love and devotion.

The gale is winning.

‎July ‎26, ‎2017 11:15 PM

Taking The Chance

"Marry me," I say,
casting all wisdom aside.

You look like a cat
looks to an entrapped
mouse and I change my whistle
from tenor to shrill
in that sudden squall
from a flensed and open heart.

I stand by my words.

‎July ‎13, ‎2017 1:01:58 PM

Foggy Dawn

She said there's room for
some kind of flash in the pan,
some flare up of hope,
some change in the shape
of slithery things to come
once the sun rises...

if the sun rises
on this latest weird damn day
of all the long days

that trail behind us
and are still rolling over
our crushed and shattered
arrangements and poise

(we had no right to them all)

as we lay them down
with the feathers shed
in our summer's latest molt,

We call as swans do.
our bodies newly pink
and utterly bare.

25 Jun 2017 5:33 AM

Old Wood

I am the old wood
receiving you as the rain
in all its aspects,
as mist, as the splash
or the roar of a tempest,
with the black of night
or the sun peeking
and the arc doubled sometimes,
receiving your moods
and the feel of you
whether you are cold or warm
and you strip me down.

August 9, 2011 7:40 PM

Willie and Joe, Boots, Jackie, and Stormy

Willie And Joe,
Or Wartime Lament

Something for my words
to finish and ooze between
like mud and your toes,
like slime and mine too...
...
I've busted through the wood frame
of an old dry hole

but I've caught a root
stuck out from one side, red faced
from the effort yanked
out of my left arm,
my scraped up dislocated
fingers... I can't hold
very much longer,
and I am afraid, Willie.
...
Joe, I fear what comes
gonna blow me up -
the bullet with my damn name -
even that boat home -
and in the long haul,

I must be giving up all
hope of having a
better past than this.

‎May ‎27, ‎2017 5:01 AM
Completed May 28, 2017 5:54 AM

Willie and Joe were World War II cartoon characters drawn by Bill Mauldin, part of his war correspondance and drawn from his experiences in Africa and Europe primarily. He drew these cartoons from 1940 until 1946 and occasionally added additional drawings until 1998.

I met Willie and Joe in a cartoon anthology my Dad kept in the back room of his Grandma's house that was once the bedroom he shared with his brother before the war. That was in Montalvo, California, a wide spot in the road south of Ventura, where the family settled when they migrated from Oklahoma in the Dust Bowl years.

My Dad was old enough to catch the end of World War II in the Pacific, serving in the Marines during the Okinawa campaign and later in China. After the war he entered college at the University of California at Berkeley and played football for the Golden Bears primarily as a center on offense and linebacker on defence. He was part of Pappy Waldorf's championship teams and played in the Rose Bowl, along with other notables, including Boots Erb and most famously, Jackie Jensen. At times, my Dad, Stormy Hileman, was center, Boots was quarterback right behind him, with Jackie receiving the hand off in the backfield.

Jensen went on to an illustrious career in the Bigs, playing Right Field and batting third or clean up with the Boston Red Sox to take advantage of his on base abilities. Jensen led the American League in various years in runs batted in, stolen bases, and in triples. Jensen also fielded so well that he led his league in double plays and assists. For a right fielder a double play consists most usually of catching the fly and then throwing out a base runner as well, which requires unusual throwing speed, distance and accuracy. The reason Jensen is not better known is that his career was cut short as Major League baseball expanded into additional west coast teams while depending more on flying to maintain the schedule. Jensen suffered from an intense fear of flying which he never could overcome. That forced him to retire early.

In my growing up years, we would travel to Oakland and dine at the Bow and Bell Restaurant in Jack London Square, owned by Boots and Jackie. We rarely saw Jackie there but Boots was nearly always present.

Jack London Square

Above is Jackie Jensen and below, Boots Erb. Boots' first name was Charles but everyone called him Boots.

Fairies Fly Naked

Fairies Fly Naked

Fairies are fine folk
and though they fly around nude
I think that's nothing
to them or to us
because they are really not
made like we are made -
no mud, in or out.

‎August ‎10, ‎2011 3:20 PM

Note: on this strange Manchester day, this also was news...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2596119/Away-fairies-University-lecturer-claims-photographed-real-life-tiny-tinkerbells-flying-air-British-countryside.html

Telling Stories-Wordle 299

"Wordle 299"

There's one tassel left
and one line formed on the right.

The speakers do love
their honor and pay
room and board according to
the ubiquitous
sign above the drum.

You gave a bouquet to praise
my work despite all
I did to stop you.
Orange poppies interpret
my current palsy.

I wish I knew more
about telling good stories
to the local crew -

but I really don't.

May 15, 2017 6:10 PM

The Straight Skinny

So she asked me to
reveal my slivered soul in
verse - and I of course
refused because I
mostly lie in words.

It's my eyebrows tell the truth.
Or my blushing ears -
So I grew my hair
to cover the stupid things.

I can't help lying
when I sit and write.
I write bunches - so many
poems (and comments
on the social sites)
as if anyone ever
cared - and I claim not
to care if they care.
But I do...really do care.

(No. I deny this claim.
What just happened here?)

May 7, 2017 - 6:38 PM

Turbulence Is Mine

A Bad Day*

"Turbulence is mine",
Sayeth the Lord of the Flies
And I fell for it.

Sorting me out from
The whole food fad grinding up
My locality,
I sneak a candy
Bar, a Milky Way, of course,
And suck a filling
From the last molar
In my upper wisecracking
Worn out dentition.

"What a full on sack
Of crap". I snarl as I suck
On that bottomless
Hole in my fat head.

27 March 2017

This didn't really happen today but I have had this experience, sort of. My last dental visit a few days ago had the dentist fill three upper and two lower worn out teeth on my left side at one time with a composite resin that bonds so well these days that there was no need for any more than a serious disinfecting and drying out of the gaps. Thus all was painless and pretty quick too.

Possibly because I am an ancient of days, the dentist figured that this simple procedure was enough because I will die sooner than the fillings will wear out. Cavities caused by infections are no longer my problem. Teeth wearing out is the problem now. Hmmm.