Puppetry Without Strings Attached

A leaf flutters in his chest,
a replacement for the absconded heart,
and catches oxygen with its stretched veins.

The leaf is frayed, crisp, refuses to land
permanently; believes decay
cannot touch a moving object.

In the dark beneath the bone, the leaf
clings to the fallacy it is still green,
has unfurled only recently.

** this is an edit of No Strings Attached.

No Strings Attached

A leaf flutters in his chest,
a replacement for the absconded heart,
and catches oxygen with its stretched veins.

The leaf is frayed, crisp, refuses to land
permanently; believes decay
cannot touch a moving object.

In the dark beneath the bone, the leaf
clings to the fallacy it is still green,
has unfurled only recently.

The movement of the leaf causes
the body’s actions to become jerky -
puppetry without strings attached.

Free Will Demands Punishment

They hung me for clumsy crimes

and petty acts committed unwittingly.

I hung at wit's end;

swung back and forth

in time with the rope’s creak.

It did not concern me

to be hung - coming from a tree

I was used to the feel of suspension.

I will admit that hanging there

gave time for thought. I regretted 

the hurt to Geppetto who stood

below, eyes raised as if I

was a mysterious sacrifice.

My breath exited, I found though

that my toes had kept 

some sort of consistency

with distant roots, while fingers

became leaves.

I spread out; soaked in the world

while time became the preoccupation 

of those who hung me.

When they cut me down (again)

I ran to Geppetto’s arms, wept tears 

as thick as sap; promised him 

I’d do better with a second chance.

The Hand Of God

is a fist

we feel in the squeeze

that happens

when a future

is poured

into the offered well.

The vice threatens before

release and the fall hits

harder than an apple -

the sense of His fingers

drives repetition of an act

that beguiles lives, sparks words.

The poet writes to find the weak link

in that grip

and His hand unravel; finger and nail,

palm and lifeline –

mortal coil loosened, mirrors

lips separating after a kiss, saliva

distressed at the disconnection from intent.

Freedom lies in the ink

not the semen.

Donkey's Ears

It began with relinquishment -

a palm leaf bows before ripples of summer heat

as dust gathers, thick on lips, while eyes, hurt by the glare 

of sun off white concrete, are shielded by the saluting hand - 

first:

small duties morph

into surrendered shadows before the light.

Then:

muscles made useful for a great good

toil though dawn to dusk hours, the weary tongue 

curls around learned chants broken by screams when

a whip bites the unwary bicep.

Feet feel their path to hoof, hoof

pushes against the earth -

both body and planet

move.

Ears grew tufts of hair,

‘The better to hear Your name with.’

The teeth grew thick and blunt,

‘The better to refrain from uttering

the Profane’.

From early to rise

to late to bed;

light not to be wasted

nor mind addled

by useless learning – 'it was knowledge

that first cast us adrift.'

Hands have become little more than tools

and innocent heart beat to the drum:

work for 

the 

greater good

of a name 

that cannot 

be named.

There is the promise that a soul will live on

even as eyes lose the ability

to distinguish colour or

words became so heavy

they drop like lead into the pool

of psyche.

It was a dream that saved them.

An idea unfurled across thick minds -

a blanket

spread on the Spring clothes line

to beat back the dust

that had clouded thought - that drove

cloying incense from the censor.

Censorship in mist and smell

defeated by thought

as if mind had dipped itself

into the waters

of a clean well.

The ears receded into shells,

the river of life whispered words

back into mouths.

A free man

without free will that binds

and commits to an afterlife

while ruining the fruit of the earth.

Free within the time frame

mortality allots.

Free to be shifted by the events -

air currents and rainfall

dislodged by the wings of a butterfly

in the  South American jungle.

Whimsy dizziness spun out

into the air

as lungs expand and deflate/

expand and deflate/

things move on like oxen at the mill

round and round - each step different

and the same.

Young or wizen crust, the mind frolics

even as the muscles collapse.

Geppetto I am home! I am ready to learn

bring me books and voices - the cool logic 

of science and the poet’s bright eyes.

I am home at last.

Saved; ready to die

by living this singular life granted by chance.

Awareness cannot be served cold

The danger of turning to flesh
is that with the absence of strings
responsibility must be embraced.

It as easy as revenge
to let the carved joints clacker,
the jaw bone and wooden teeth clatter
and to stumble about this stage
under the guise of some greater will.

In deep sea moments when regret
stares back as a landed angelfish
I hate the double helix wand;
prefer to believe the old man’s hands
shaped me in his image.

I want to feel the tug of strings
pulled by forces with which
I do not have to reconcile.

Is there a God for the beard worm?

Before wood became skin

I went for a swim in the ocean

but my stone for a heart

anchored me to melancholy.

I sank so deep

I befriended the beard worms,

allowed my feet to become buried

in the sand at the world’s end,

lifted my face in the darkness

while from above fell

the stories of plant and animal;

fleshy manna - the saddest sight

my wooden eyes had seen.

It was in that darkness,

with my face lifted up

and my wooden lips praying,

I first began to doubt.

Pinocchio's eyes

Twin opals, hard black cores
that have waded through the wooden years
when time fell in drops that dripped,
slow as honey
off Geppetto’s tarnished silver spoon.

Undisclosed, in the darkness between
the two shapes of tree, the amber eyes waited.
Geppetto’s blade, urgent as a lover’s thigh,
slid between bark’s exposed ripples
and the soft tender wood of secret desire,
licked the two hard shells of resin 
formed over two small woodpecker wounds
that had captured two lost flies that flew
in with an insect’s hungry curiosity eons ago.

Geppetto plucked them free of the tree, with
a knife honed by a stone wet with his spittle,
gently shaped them, took an oiled rag and
wildly polished them so the amber shone and while
the black specks of what once flew
began to drink in the light, Geppetto
placed them tenderly
into the newly shaved head of me.

These eyes see everything at the speed
of an insect; a flood of the senses
condemned by the choice
the savage, armoured warriors of the micro-world
made when they selected tubes
over lungs and themselves condemned
to a fleeting, Achillean existence.

These eyes force time to gush like water
forced out of a hose, body pushed
and pulled, a puppet dancing
at the String Master’s whim - to combat
the constant sensual attack
my mind must concentrate on a single point
and leave the larger flow of life
to other forces.

These eyes are not gentle,
do not guide towards the light,
are blind to the magic of just being.

These eyes, formed by greed,
remain trapped in that act of need,
seek not to see but to feast.

Waiting for Geppetto

I stand in this shivering forest, stretch
toward streaks of light;
even blind I can see, my leaves -
the fractured eyes of a green Mayfly -
watch for your coming.

Like Odin, I dangle, see glimpses
of all that may be, hope my mind
is strong enough to recall the vision.

Like Christ, I wait to be cut down
and, by your hands and tools,
shaped to fit your image.

The kiss of blade to sever me
forever from the earth, to separate
trunk from roots so my nightmares
radiate with the darkness of soil.

The bark to be pealed free;
clothes no longer needed -
fed to the coals
while your rough hands
take coarse paper and knives
and search for me within the grain -
set me free
and bind me to a this new form.

Forever in your debt
my words spoken at your mercy
my acts, mere vibrations
at your beck and call.

Yet somehow I must
find my own footsteps,
break from the love and demands
you will place upon me
to find that I alone am real -
you merely a dream I once had
while my branches swayed in a storm
and the fear of death by lightning
overcame me.

Life is a terrible distance
to fall.

I wait for the kiss of your axe
and the plunge into my humanity.

From father to son, the gift of stone

Geppetto formed my heart
from a Travertine stone
he found years before the log
that became me.

At night he slept
with the stone placed
beneath his quivering tongue;
his dreams
stole upon him (in the easy manner
of music and smells) causing his tongue
to slide around the travertine
and words to escape as runes
into the pores of the stone.

That stone soaked up his spittle,
vibrated
with each nightmare, a rhythm
set within; was warmed
by the morning light
that entered through the window
to redden his cheek
each new day.

During the hours when he worked,
or searched
for something to fill the emptiness
in his life
he kept the stone in a purse made
from doe skin
placed around his neck
with a thong made
from the gut of an old Tabby cat
and nestled beside the skin
beneath which his own heart
beat.

I became his child
the moment that heart
found its niche
inside my chest.

Not about writing but....

one-guy-with-a-marker

Lazarus

 

Come Laz, come sit up,

have a chat these last minutes 

before the sand demands a re-turn.

 

Remember that day we played 

down the shadowed sideway of your house?

You were six and I five; your quietly shaking hands

lifted my blue dress up to my waist 

then dropped small stones 

onto my yellow panties as you sang, 

‘When Johnny comes Marching Home.’

Come Laz, just for a time,

sit up and talk some more

about the summers by the ocean;

remember the pier at Ocean Grove

you were fifteen and we dove together, 

your hand slipped, touched my breast, 

we kissed that evening as we sat 

on the grass between your father’s tent

and mine, the stars shone above and your brother

threw water over us.

Please Laz, stand up for me.

I want to hear your voice, I remember

the way you screamed and laughed 

all those summers ago; when I got lost in Spooky Forest

you were the one who found me, your voice

called out my name, I was able to follow it 

out of the maze and there you stood 

smiling in the dusk, my father

stood behind you with a torch and a worried look.

I know our lives have separated since then

but ancient nights and days still have their place

and even though our adult minds pretend importance

those memories are as dear to me now

as when they first happened.

Please Laz, life has been cruel to me;

two children lost to drugs

and a third in prison,

but the memories of you have held me

through some of those dark evenings.

Please Laz, my beauty is long gone

and my skin, once smooth,

now wrinkles like the ocean;you are always in my background,

a hope, a possibility - the way to combat age

is with memory and yearning. 

Laz, I am lost;

I want to hear your voice

calling me out again.

Bury me Standing

 When I die

 bury me standing;

 don’t lay me flat,

 stretched out on my back

 staring up into the night sky,

 stand me straight,

 plant me upright,

 plant me like a tree,

 bury me with dignity.

 When I die

 bury me standing,

 make sure you put boots

 on my naked feet

 so I cannot feel

 the worms feasting,

 so as I stand I can see

 what is happening around me.

 I’ll be dead for a long, long time

 so stand me upright

 not flat, like stinking meat

 on a cold, hard slab

 waiting for butcher Fate,

 with his bloodied apron

 to slice me asunder.

 Stand me up,

 push my lips into a grin,

 stick a pen in my hand,

 paper in the other;

 let me stand facing sunrise

 with a thousand new poems

 ready for the capture.

 When I die

 don’t listen to the undertaker

 stand me straight,

 drop me down deep;

 let me face the future

 as if I was still in the wings

 waiting for my cue

 to make another grand entry.

The Foggy Day Made New

The mist spread, like a parent’s warning,
upon the grass; grass so wet
it grasped the feet as they stepped, making the mind -
in the silence of that morning – a god
strolling
upon the stuff of dreams made real.

The mist caught thoughts and turned them
inside to out to right to left or worse, shrunk them,
like a twisty’s packet placed in the oven, so everything,
even memories
fell away;
rabbits down the hole.


The mist
waited
for the sun to act as a sponge
and soak it up: I waited too,
for that distant giver
so that the world might fall back into place.

Farewell Geppetto

The old man hardly dents the bed; bone-whistling chest
sinks into a sea-green song's lulling depths.
The candle light flickers, casts encroaching shadows
upon the ceiling and wall as if friends have gathered
to the final farewell. The middle of night meets the dawn
with a fork – fool's choice offered at the last.

Pinocchio holds the withered hand
that once gently held him; strokes
the knuckles and nails, studies the elongated fingers
that carved him into existence; feels
pain as his wood atomically realigns into flesh -
regrets his choices made along the way that moved
him away from the voice and touch of Geppetto.

'Father,' he whispers into the galaxy of the old man's
ear - sees how the hair that catches his sound
has turned grey, 'Strings force steps along preordained
ways but at least they offer an uncomplicated path.

'Father, existence is easy as a tree
or a log to be burnt, it is life's choices
that unnerve me,' he whispers at three
in the morning. The old man's chest creaks
like an old galley ship...then moves no more.

Pinocchio knows no prayers to say over the body
and cannot see the spirit leave the flesh, but feels
tears slide down cheeks that once sprouted leaves
instead; cries into the dark 'Geppetto is dead! Now
I understand what it is to be alive, Geppetto is dead!’

Pinocchio's toes wriggle to break past the floorboards
and enter the earth – seek sustenance in a connection
to everything his long-ago dreams made him abandon.

Thus Spoke... (an edit)

There is more to the action
than the way a tongue moves; the way it
approaches or retreats from teeth, or the manner
of lips shaping themselves first as sly, sunlit maid
and then as aching, grieving mother.

The chords thrum as breath weaves a wand
and turns into sound - the voice in the dark
catches light eyes cannot see.
Pause and listen to the tone; never the words,
the words
are the illusion, the packaging.

Imagine the world
as small as a heartbeat, as large
as a mind.

In the room, or out and about,
several companions lay down
or move around, breathe
their thoughts into a conversation
that is let loose…


It travels into a space
none of them expected -

not even the finest of poets -


the way a dance becomes something so much more
than a body moving from place to place.

Thus Spoke…

There is more to this

than the way our tongue moves; the way it

approaches or retreats from teeth, or our lips

shaping themselves first as sly, sunlit maid

and then as aching mother.

 The chords thrum as breath weaves a wand

and turns into sound - the voice in the dark

catches light eyes cannot see

if we but pause and listen

to the tone; never the words,

the words

are the illusion, the packaging.

In the room, or out and about,

we several lay ourselves down or move around

and breathe - imagine the world

as small as our heartbeats, as large

as our minds

and we let loose a conversation…

It travels into a space

none of us expected -

not even the finest of poets -

the way a dance becomes something so much more

than a body moving from place to place.