Dancing With Reality

 

—Poetry and Original Artwork by Joyce Odam, Sacramento, CA

CLICKETY CLOCK

Time is now
Is forward, backward, frozen,
Moment by indecisive moment,
Endless.

Time travels : tick tock
Instant interruptive—
May meander, mostly meaning,
Enclosing guess and measure.

Tick, Tick, Tock Tock,
Immeasurable ‘if’-ness . . .
Moments mounting . . .
Entering eternity’s triangle.

 

 

 

Harmony

 

HAPPENCHANCE

We met in a mutual memory—

stranger to each, but familiar,
one of us told the other why :

as if ordained . . . there was
a sort of sadness we shared,
tears came to our faces—

we
held
each other
in mutual sympathy.

_______________________

HARPO AND BURNING GIRAFFES
After Portrait of Harpo Marx
—Painting by Salvador Dali   

Harpo looks out at me
to convey :
nothing unusual is happening;

but the giraffes cluster about him,
maned in flames
and silently burning.

Amusement in Harpo’s eyes
blandly
intensifies Dali’s tribute,

and from the eloquence of art
implies :  such fire
is not for easy discerning.

 

 

 

Picnic In The Rain

 

LIAR BLUES

Well, just how long do you think
it’s going to rain . . .

It rained all night
and it washed the night away . . .

And I think I heard that it’s going
to rain all day . . .

And the weatherman will never find
the sun . . .

For I‘ve seen his eyes,
and I’ve heard his lies, again . . .

 

 

 

I Speak Of Now

 

NONCE

When I was Once, and that was true,
and you were Flounce, and I was Dew,
and we were Nonce; how sad were you
away from me.

I look through starry stars,
and one is me . . . where is the ‘other’
of the ‘wise’ and which is free.
How safe is love, and is it free.

God closes eyes and mind and plea,
I speak of now, all made of plea,
not anywhere beyond
that clueless tree that bears such leaves

and sets them free—such is the life
of butterfly, and frog and bee,
lost creatures all, lost from the call
of life and love, and there is me,

in prayer at last. Surrender me into the void of
‘Trust, Not See’ Oh, Life of God,
how can you Be. I wish, I worry also, cannot Be.

 

 

 

Not Once Have I Sorrowed

 

NOT ONCE HAVE I SORROWED,

not once have I lost my way—
not once have I learned to say the lie
as truth—or blamed a day for being,

I always stray
toward some answer
as if some question
knows me as wanting—

ah—want is something
never quite what giving offers.
books are full of learning.
books have much

to say.
I go
my way
through emulative texture.

_____________________

COMMUNICABILITY

what is wrong ?
and what is right ?
and we quarrel with what is neither

we are strangers to each other and to self
and we know how thoughts clutter
with opinions that corrupt—

it is the old familiar loss
that keeps looking
back—forlorn

a lonely circle rolling back and forth
with no directive—how silence
has no clue and grows so cold

 

 

 

Crying the River

 

THE UNKNOWING

Why not say what you say and not hide behind
your saying and saying and saying—sounding
so wise—and what is wisdom ! You spew it
until you hollow out again to my listening.
How can knowing be so vain, so certain,
convinced and, therefore, so demanding.
Oh, you are such a mystic, aren’t you,
so glib with all your glibness, so far
above the unknowing who can
never know you . . .

 

 

 

Borderline

 

UNREQUITED

I took Reality into my arms and said
I loved him, I said, dance with me.
I held him for a long moment and let him go.
He was babbling and weeping my name.
I said I was sorry, though I had done nothing
but hold him.

He said, dance with me,
he said he loved me, but his lips
were not moving—his eyes
were closed. I was holding his shadow,
which was inconsolable. I was telling him
lie after lie to make him love me.

He was holding me close enough
not to break. I could see the music
through the glass. It was sad and perfect.
He warned the glass not to take his reflection,
that he was a blur, that I should not watch him
through wet eyes. The glass shuddered with
distortion. I was there alone. He was the lie
of my love. I wanted his reality.

 

 

 

What To Do With The Hours

 

WHEN DAY IS DONE

You look in your terrible heart when the day is done,         
you wonder what to do with the hours that linger on
though time is new for the longest day.

Something old holds you apart though your heart
is not alive
though it beats hard against your wall,

you shiver, weep at last,
and let your sorrows live.

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

TOWARD ME
—Joyce Odam

Oh, how this old dress longs to escape
the hanger—shredding with effort
toward the innocence of music,
the memory of dance,
its strap, refusing,
—its fabric
floating outwards—bodiless

_____________________

Nonsense! says Joyce Odam, about this Seed of the Week—which actually was our Seed of the Week—and Joyce made a fine post of it, flirting with nonsense as she can. Thank you, Joyce, for trying to make sense of it all . . .

Our new Seed of the Week is “Courtship”. Spring is the time for couples (of all species) to pair up for getting Nature’s procreation job done. What do you have to say about that? Send your poems, photos & artwork about this (or any other) subject to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs, though, and for a peek at our past ones, click on “Calliope’s Closet”, the link at the top of this column, for plenty of others to choose from. And see our Form Fiddlers’ Friday for poetry form challenges, including those of the Ekphrastic type.

Correction to yesterday’s post: this Thursday’s Poetry in Davis will take place at John Natsoulas Gallery, not online. Here’s the proper info:

•••This coming Thursday at 7pm, Poetry Night Reading Series in Davis presents Julia Levine and Frank Gaspar at John Natsoulas Gallery, 521 1st St., Davis, CA. Open mic after the readers (one chosen text or three minutes). Host: Dr. Andy Jones.

___________________

—Medusa

 

 

 

 

 —Public Domain Photo Courtesy of Joe Nolan, Stockton, CA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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