Discrete Aegean Sequence

More than enough

Here of what a sea 
Bird’s kept 

Folded be 
Neath 

Its wings. 

. 

                inland urchin 

Ringed by mountains 
Strange that 

I should have been thus 
So drawn to the sea 

I don’t remember 
Whatever became of me. 

. 

               inlet 

Salt sprays 

In the recesses 
The mind 

Tastes of brine. 

. 

               katabasis 

In a poem 
I once wrote 

Conches nest 

And thinking 
The sea, the sea 

Engulfed me. 

. 

                tail end of evening 

Of sails in the sunset 
Small white cries 

Of gulls sailing over 
The edge of the world 

Unfathomable. 

. 

               archipelago 

I shall pave 
The wide blue 

Sea with slates 
Of marble 

And keep on 
Striding 

Till I find you— 
Wait and see. 

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Minor Underground Poets

Oh, the ignominy of it all! 
To die as they lived, revolting 

And buried underneath rotting 
Sheaves of subversive verse. 

Moderator’s comment: As this is Cinquor’s first communiqué in almost a year, I trust he isn’t having second thoughts about continuing our five-year cooperative venture as set forth in this initial blog entry of October 11, 2010; worse yet, I’m worried to death he’s approaching terminal burn-out phase and will soon be beyond saving. Perish the thought! I don’t know what I’d do without his horseplay poetic and gadfly manner rearing their heads now and then and injecting some sorely needed life into this deadly lackluster blog. 

NB: I hope I’m wrong but why do I sense Huuk is describing himself here rather than some nameless poetic pencil-pushers pushing for world revolution through the medium of putrefying polemic verse?

Maven's Vigil

Keep a watch 
Out for the flickering 
Of the first evening 

Star and stare 
As if it were 
Your last. 

Coign of Vantage

This fragile young 
Unruly bitter lemon 
Tree weighed 

Down with more runaway 
Fruit than it can bear 
Needs a rod to spare it— 

Let him who is full 
Of plenty be the first 
To provide it. 

Pockmarked in the Process

Just passing through 
This corner of the universe, 
Stranger and couldn’t help 
Noticing round these parts that 
Your moon goes through 
Its phases like it was 
Some sort of zombie, 
And all that plus 

The look on your face tells 
Me more than likely 
You’ve been through something 
Similar and back, too—why 
Else should it be so 
Familiar and smacking 
Of moldy green 
Cheese, too? 

Berceuse Fantastique (Updated 30-8-2017)

Baby cries in white
House

                    Of jackals 
                    At twilight 

Soon night 
Shall set 

                    All things alt-right. 

Caesura of Summer

Our friend cicada? Halting 
Its cranking only 

Long enough to let us know 
Our attention span wasn’t up 

To cranking along 
Long enough 

To catch up, too. 

Crepuscular Crescent Moon over Hellas

appearing dark 
orange out of the blue 
so to speak and low 
on the horizon 
and hightailing it 

lickety-split be- 
hind a jagged 
bank of even 
darker blue 
mountains till 

all that’s left is 
a slivery tongue 
of blood red fire 
that’s done with 
licking its wounds. 

Sublurbia

Ah, to be 
A sylvan living in

Sylvania—that carefree 
Sapling spirit never to be

Crushed by the crunch 
Of SUVs driven mad 

By pedestrian poets reeling 
Off their sappy rubber-

Stamped verses crashing 
Into tree after tree after tree. 

Guarding the Gates of 'Murica's Hell

Keep a right dead level head, 
Look alive and stay put 
In your proper place, gentlemen— 

Nothing but a lynch mob 
All these years, you thought 
You’d keep me broken, barking 

Your heads off up the wrong tree. 

Heads in the Clouds

Watch out you 

Strange, down-to-earthlings— 
Stare at us long enough, 

You’ll start seeing things. 

Adieu to Fancy, My Little Pigeon

So long as the eagle- 
Eyed crow flies 
Straight to the bloody 
Heart of the matter, 
One thing is clear, 
Dear—that lovey-dovey 
Pair of ash-grey neophyte 
Doves preening on 
The edge 
Of that buckling, 
Pale red-tiled roof 
Of the derelict, 
Decaying house 
Across the street 
Cooing you-ah-you 
Won’t be preening 
There for long. 

Heralds

angelic                     lights

           approaching

from                       all directions

             darkness           soon

                              imploding

from one still

                     fluttering within.

It Just Dawned on Me

“. . .to hurl the hatchet so far into the depths of the earth that it shall never again be seen in the future."—Reuben Gold Thwaites, Jesuit Relations 

 “Truth has very few friends and those few are suicides.” 
—Antonio Porchia, Voices 


Wish you were here long 
Gone old friend, we could spend all 
Night arguing to no end 
Like we used to, 
And take in the sun- 
Rise if that’s what 
You wanted in the end— 

If not, 
We could bury 
The hatchet right here 
And now, agree to disagree, 
Say one last good night 
And leave it at that, 
All right? 

Citrus Grove in Moonlight

under odorous 
lemon trees 
bearing pendant 

globes of gibbous 
moons shining
overhead. 

Wanting Mainstream Spirit

Taking stock of it at the start 
Of one more “soul-searching” session, 
He discovered “rich” was not what 
He wanted it to be after all, 

But he did not want it 
To be poor either; 
He desired neither 
The one nor the other— 

Clearly muddled 
In the middle, his was a singular 
Commodity of two minds, 
Both mediocre. 

Surfeit of Naught

Replete with nothing 
But that which is 

Missing, ciphers 
Spend their entire lives 

Filling in the blanks. 

Supplicants in Garden of Eden

Once you were merely two 
Blithe creatures who thought 
How happy they were before 
The fact without bothering 
The gods for an explanation; 
Losing your grip, now you’re 
But two creatures who know 
There is no explanation. 

. 

(Parenthesis)

Such is the lot 
Of the lowly 
Sloth that hangs 

On high from branches back 
Downward and falls fast 
Asleep, feeding on nothing 

But fruits and leaves. 

Wishful Thinking

Still a young boy, 
I’d spend hours teaching 
My puppy new tricks— 

Now too old to learn anything 
New and old Fido long gone 
To doggy heaven, sure 

Wish I knew how 
He learned how 
To play dead. 

Eidomeni, Greece: Answers with Questions Not Missing Their Marks

Shoes that fit. 
What? 

Too much of nothing 
And not enough 
Of anything. 

But who’s counting? 
What else? 
Does a refugee need? 

Try it on for size. 

Old Widow Opening Window Shutters

Picture this— 

First day of spring 
Out walking 
At daybreak, 

At the crack 
Of something metallic 
Against stone, you 

Look up to see her 
Two thin arms shooting 
Out of an aperture, 

Securing the shutters hard, 
Fast against the weather- 
Beaten wall so that all 

The light can spill in 
To the dark room— 
Got it? 

Now print it. 

Taking It One Step at a Time

“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” 
—Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon 

It’s in the stars 
From the word go— 
Spend your life mooning 
Over where you’re going and never 
Once looking back, you’ll never know 
If you’re one step ahead of there 
Where you used to be or 
Simply backtracking, taking off 
On a wrong tack once more. 

Expendable Human Resources

I know 
It’s a long story full 
Of blood, toil, tears and sweat— 

But just stop and think—back 
Then we never knew how 
Much of us was spent— 

What say we 
Take it easy, after all, 
We’re almost there. 

Theater of the Absurd

Always on cue                 light is 

                         a dark angel 

fluttering 

                  in the wings for you. 

Amatorious

no apparitions

                            
                            sprightly

following a long

                         

                            spring

           drizzle, a pair of spar-

rows lightly spar-

ring on

a wet green bough.

Living with the Muse

Looks akin to having a virago 
For a wife, always berating 
You to stop wasting 
Precious time writing 
Trash, verbally 
Thrashing you with her 
God, why can’t you write off 
What you’re doing and do something 
Constructive for a change, 
Like take out the garbage 
Tout de suite, anything 
Anything to show me how 
Much you value your fleeting, 
Stinking life. 

Symbiosis Fated to Be Inevitable

Don’t be selfish, Janus-face—share 
Everything with your other if you must, 

Just so long as you’re aware 
It has to be 

Something you both need and trust. 

Breakfast for Two in the Garden of the Milk and Honey House

Waiting for pie 

In the sky cobbled apricot clouds 
Mourning doves' cooing 

Breaking apart what brings us together 
Piecemeal 

Our lives fly by. 

Classical Landscape with Homeric Allusions

That perpetual 
Refugee from darkness, 
Our old friend 
Rosy-fingered dawn— 
Let us greet her 
With splendiferous sips 
Of angelic light served 
On flower-bedecked verandas 
Overlooking the wine- 
Dark sea and not—by Zeus— 
With panoramic views 
Of an odoriferous Aegean 
Aflower with corpses 
Taking our breath away. 

Feeling Left Out

I’m taking all the time 
I need to read 
Between the lines 
To find out what’s missing 
And why nothing’s there— 

I know 

I need all the help I can get 
But something tells me 
I’m not going to find it 
Till I feel it leaving 
Me all by myself there. 

Zen Bucolic

At a loss with how to 
Jog your mind? 

Look at it this way— 
There’s a stream 

Of fresh asphalt sheep 
Droppings steaming 

In the sun, wide-eyed
Drop everything, watch 

Out where you run. 

Serial Killer

Oh dear, it looks like 
Your next poem’s well 
On its way to turning in
To your latest nightmare— 
What to do? For crying 
Out loud, choke it— 
You wouldn’t want it 
To end up stalking 
You too, would you? 

Skeleton Keys

Hard by 

There’s a door behind 
Which everything hides 

And where 

Everyone’s trying hard 
To get out 

Of going in. 

Lazarus Redux

April’s no fool— 
To come up smelling 
Like a rose 

In this waste land, 
You’ll have to dig deeper 
To revive 

Whatever remains 
Alive in you. 

Facing the Prompter

Friend, awake you pretend 
You’re sharp, alive and kicking, acting 
Up, one step ahead of the world again— 
Asleep, five will get you ten you see 
Someone tripping over his lines, 
A ham actor falling perfectly on end, 
Flat on his face again and again.