Untaught Perception

And I’m wondering: would I be able to teach you to perceive the world in poetry, to express wheeling galaxies in terms of ducks on the river in the morning, grey but glinting if you quint your eyes just right;
could you learn to see the pattern of ferns sprouting from rusty floor grates equalling supernovae and the force of volcanoes on distant worlds, learn to map out energy trailing sparks behind your eyelids as lightning flashing through time, catching it in letters fleeing memory in the fragment of a moment it takes from resolving to write to putting a hand in motion, syllables dissolving into colliding, multi-coloured stars at the mere attempt of speaking them into existence outside the lattice of unspoken metre, their rhythm felt solely through through thumping hearts of ideas waiting to find forms that fold in origami dragons around the creases of connected strings of paper, wound up into endless loops of multiverse concepts fanning out into all possible lines, breaking in impossible places, in all of them at once, while staying whole, tangled into cassette tape knots when lined up for enunciation, unfurling into multidimensional peacocks’ tails displaying the grids of sliding consciousness, scaling liminal walls into soaring states of lucid wakefulness, sitting still in tower tops as new math appears, numberless but filling the gaps in pages upon pages of sky, falling into wandering cellars, moving sideways, on angled planes shining in moonlight desires of tasting strange beaches on asteroid resorts, imperceptibly ambling into gemstone-bright trance of repetition, words and words and words, and
worlds and worlds of metaphors, two-sided, shining and new but all used up until dulled to boredom and not so new altogether when you turn them around, a copper penny under a stumbling tongue, twisted around branches of disappearing corridors full of suns, purple and green and yellow and impossible rainbow darkness, and stumbling feet as you search for paper, keys, anything to capture your descent into

lines, too flat to hold what you see in mosaic vision

New Printable: Alchemy Poetry

I created a new printable for a zine (8-page fold), theme is an exploration of alchemy in visual poetry: https://starfishskies.files.wordpress.com/2020/10/alchemypoetryzine.pdf

Poetry Book

I can now proudly say there is a small book with my best poems and short prose in physical form! I got a small number of them printed for now, mostly to give to friends and family, but depending on the feedback I might get a second box of them printed or try a books-on-demand service.

I want to write to you.

I want to write to you about the tiny moments, the dark ones and the lighter ones, about the universe reflected in your eyes and about the black holes in our hearts. I want to write to you, but all I ever do is waiting in silence for an echo of my thoughts to find its way back to me in one of your messages, the messages none of us ever write. I want to write to you in poetry, in wordless, helpless shrugs, in emotional source code lacking decipherable equivalents in the human language we share and yet don’t. I want to write to you, one of you, all of you. I want to write to you, but the only ones who answer my nightly whispers are the digital ghosts of strangers, speaking to me in wondrous metaphors of radio dials and crackling static.

~

poets’ nightly words
travelling through the ether
undying in space

~

Grandeur of Secret Words (Haiku)

words nobody reads
poet’s nocturnal delight
secret worlds in ink

And it frees me. (Poem to midnight.)

Attracted by the powerful pull only a single string can summon by,
walking the line of notes, exhaling all the burdens of the day
– and it calls me, calls me

Inhaling dusty rhythms of old drumhead leather,
moving with its tidal waves, a rhythm so familiar my body would know to follow it in the dark
– and it carries me, it carries me

A guiding turn of the head, a tiny nod and a glance to the heart of the circle,
I’m following the lead into the sun, the warmth of joyful song and laughter
– and it frees me, and it frees me.

seasons of writing

red pages slipping from between my fingers
words found and, unspoken, forgotten.
my unlikely muse went to sleep
as did the ghosts of old days.
so many leaves to turn
from golden red to yellow on the trees
autumn came
with force
winter will trample snow from its boots
shivering mitten-clad hands will take off the woolen knitted word hat
exhaling letters written on crisp violet pages by the fireplace.
cold roads, white walls
a room of square folios in pale spring green

delivered to my wooden heart.

poet’s mind on the run

Maybe a poet’s mind has to be on the run most of the time in order to create and cover enough ground for all those thoughts.
So keep writing, keep writing, and never stop.
When the paper runs out, write on snow and concrete and whale backs.
Write on lanes and avenues,
keep scrawling and thinking and keep the words coming,
fill city voids with cursive and cover scycraper walls in the boldest letters you can muster.
When the words run out, keep running.
A poet’s mind on the run will cover miles of desertlands,
but at the end of the day there’s a chance to rest on tree stumps beneath clouds of words,
and the words they will keep falling, falling in place
in a poet’s mind on the run.

 

 

 

~

Dear brain, you are very annoying. Please shut up for a moment. I’m not interested in purple jellyfish and their connection to street lamps. Arrgh. Anyone wants to trade brains with me? >.<

It starts with a word or two. (What I wrote while I waited for my pizza.)

It starts with a word or two, a string of thoughts, a random image, and an empty day will be filled with new poetry. It’s raw, it’s wild, it can’t be forced to grow. Some days will remain emtpy, some will bear threefold fruits.

I want to be made from light and song, bring out the stars with my words

I want to know what creation was like, watch the colours pour into life

I want to know what the world was like when it still was what it was meant to be

I want to know, I want to taste the immense nebulae and every deep, dark creek and crease and fold of time and space

I want to write about all the beauty there is, was, was forgotten and reborn

It starts with words and ends with speechlessness, images too bright and pure and folded in themselves, colours the mind can see but our eyes cannot. Colours twisting into shapes taking up more dimensions than paper and brush and ink and reed can hold, more connections to be made than could be soldered on one wooden board with the finest diamond-sharp tips of midnight tongues.

I want to hold strings of words in my hands, pearls of syllables, hard and soft and round, rolling, rolling

I want to remember the faces, lines of laughter telling stories passing me on the street, manifold

I try to write and sing and live all at the same time, fingers tripping over blurry lines

It started with two simple lines, and it became the plea of help of a soul drowning in a torrent of images unleashed on dry ground, barren land not able to soak up all the wonders as fast as they are poured out, the golden song of dust being washed away too quickly before a microscope could be found to examine every speck down to its poetic make-up of crystal genes.

Thoughts born from interstellar clouds, delivered into bare and empty hands.

 

 

 ~~~

Writing this happened between writing the first paragraph and waiting for the pizza in my oven to be done. I had jotted down these first few words and lines as a Facebook status and then the idea decided to take a walk on the meta-level.

 

 

silver bells for you

I want to weave silver bells, tiny, tinkling silver bells
into a bouquet of flowers for you to smile at
into strands of leather for you to wear
into rainy days for you to dance to
into my words and stories for you to dream of
I want to weave my silver bells into everything for you.

 

~

Inspired by a picture on a friends blog, my soft spot for tiny silver bells, and song lyrics about the rain playing tambourine I made up for a story.