Forum Activity for @meic-alger

The Gnostic Duality of Electromagnetic Radiation

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2016

Sometimes the person next to you is talking and you think, ok, now I know what you think. Other times you hear someone talking and you think, yeah, I know what you mean, but then there are those times when a person opens your heart with his or her argument and convinces you …

Like personal goat sacrifices

This doesn’t happen very often

                        …sadly

But it is why we believe in crucifixions

            Last week I was at one of those parties

Where people refer to books by the author’s last name

And ideas by the titles of books

                        I realized

They are all an endless process

And in that sense correct

            (…though I hate them and now doubt Calvary)

I wear these tides of fear between the train stations of clinging together

They are the house-slippers of my self-naming…

reflecting…absorbing…flipping

                                                                                                                      I know

And it is through light that we grope our way

Because we are the thoughts of light

…a scientist will tell you about photons and their emission by matter, while a poet will tell you about vibrating souls

But we worship a god of light

And there are eight winds in the trouser tuck of the Mediterranean

A piece of lint floats from Pythagoras to Orpheus

Through a friend of Bacchus

            --Dionysius to the Maitre d’ at the Olive Garden

                                   (…get you in with a good table even on the weekend)

                

                           …particles

 

Split hairs,

Bad translations

                                   Or just inadequate languages

                                                                                              I mean...

            (Verbs that must be

“conjugated” by subject inclusion)

                                   How caveman-esque?

                                                                                              However

Don’t get me wrong

The thin, reedy patois is my favorite form of expression

But it has its limits

...dial one for getting it wrong

In the beginning was...

The fiery breath that woke matter

(In this great twisting together

The truth is in the stretching)

                                                                                  Or

...the word?

Four letters

Limited meaning

Rusting significance

                                                           Yeah, but…   

Fertile deltas come from flooding rivers

                                                           Huh?

Byproducts of erosion

                                                           What did you say?

A belief system founded on a Greek predicate

Sophia?

Change is just corruption without the attitude

Oh, now I get it

So, ethos is ok if it shares its etymology with plastic toy building blocks

And there is life in life in paralytic metaphor

But like Dr. Frankenstein we have to hike it up on the table

Attach the lightning rods to the temple

And wait for a storm

Your attention, please

Will passenger Parmenides please report to the ticket counter?

 

                                               ...waves

 

The late afternoon sun of the winter melts

The inner butter of the Mediterranean infrastructure to the color

Of sands on which wash waves of American accents

Nothing much is said

Followed by French and later Italian

A world where A equals B

And it is easy to believe that light is god

            (With or without a capital)

But B equals A is not always accepted

Divinities moving a a certain speed does not sit well

Under mitres

On benches made of clouds

Or strong opinions about sin

                                                                        But fortunately for them

The metaphor breaks down as it should

When placed inside of strangling definition

A tomato is a fruit, but is a fruit a tomato?

This argument of particles and waves makes the choir nervous

Even though religious belief tends to change when observed

(...and if you think about it

it makes sense in both cases)

            Thinking could actually be light

Well, light that was catered and delivered to the reception

No one wants to spend the hours immediately before the holiday in a kitchen

So, without light there would be no gravy

Bounced upside down into the definitions that surround us

Defining our límits

Shaping our actions

I wonder to myself if we can smoke light and serve it with scrambled eggs

It’s like kick starting one of those Vespas

And then roaring down a cobbled street

Maybe the ancients did know the answer to Six Across

After all they worshipped the sun

And its seasonal swinging

They wrapped it in personal adjectives

 

All we did was sign the adoption papers

The Idiosyncratic Orthography of the Magi

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2016

I hesitate to girdle my thoughts

In letters sewn together

Because they become recess bullies

Too easily in these taxis

Where natural phenomena develop consciousness

With their radios blaring polkas

Or the latest gavotte

That hit the charts in one of those

Alternative universes

Maybe

Four doors let in many passengers

Hats, however, only fit a specific set of heads

Take, for example, the three wise men

(In some corners they are kings)

Talk about a long shot

Or for that matter any trip to the airport

In most cities it is

Hurry, hurried and hurriedly

Translation is such a broken latch

And who knows

What they put in the trunk

                (Boot in the mother country and second empire dialects)

A panic for these passengers of prose

Blue suitcase, blue shoes

And is an ascot over-packing?

Well, no one can tell until unfolded

And held up to the socks

Still I say, let customs wonder…

…it is their job after all

And any who

Letters stitched

Against the breeze will only work

In limited ways

So, why not throw them onto the page

Like dice

And shout “O come all ye faithful”

To tell you the truth they lost me at the myrrh

Because under the big top

Despite the order of the pitches played

On those paint-faded calliopes

Even-toed ungulate s can have hunches too

(Camelus bactrianus that is…Camelus dromedaries is limited to one)

While the boys in the crocheted panchos were merely following

Ancient but still visible light

                                                                                              Sidenote

R ecent excavations of fossils in the   Timna Valley  

Dated to around 930 BC

Allow us to hang a date on the stories

Of   Abraham ,   Joseph ,   Jacob   and Esau

So, if we burn all dictionaries

With fewer than ten possibilities

Their entries will sing a new ditty every day

                Have a little faith

                The croupier is a friend of my cousin

And for every slipper by the fire

(And ten dollar bill on black)

Just say an “Ave Maria” before you toss the old pigskin

It will land in the direction it is thrown

                Vegas wasnt the only thing built on an inkling

And as long as you believe in the bounce through knowing

There is no shortage of truth in sprained ankles

Though do be careful not to break the basement window

The Night Owl Hoppers at the Renaissance Ball and Grill

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2016

 

 

 

Purple-black red splashed mud

On the silk soles of Giovanni’s slippers

Just one more pretension warmed over

In an endless bowl of alphabet soup

                               Without the peas

It ain’t rocket science

And it ain’t Kansas, Toto

But what it is depends not so much on the lay of the table

As on who made the value judgments on the spoons

                                               And that, my friends, changes everything you ever thought you knew

Like death on a cheap diner late night

Lazily lapping round the dessert

No one ever expects the blue plate to be fatal

                               And yet

The logic of all those films

The Stooges made in Hollywood…

Largely without the intellectual tradition of Blake

                               …flies south every winter

To roast and roost in those ever so hard to reach spots

Under the eaves and behind the Heliocentric…

Shall we use the good crystal?

                               Better not

When you’re challenging

The stitching on ermine under miters

Or any other opinion with tenure

It’s always in your favor to check the labels and never dot

Your whys

                                                                                              See,

The chairs have a way about them

They can’t help it really

A couple of catered banquets

And they begin to think they are above the table

And as far away from Major Strasser as possible

(The old guest list über the carte de jour trick)

Or as my grandmother used to call it

The inevitability of two toilet suburbia

                But with different phrasing, of course…

It’s sad that it comes to this

But in the end even lace tablecloths are seen

                               With suspicion

Truth can get you killed said the Cheshire Cat

Or words at least more or less to that effect

The logic of rabbits with watches will inevitably go off

                               With their heads

…though I blame the cushions for that

(They live so much of their lives in fear of grape juice stains)

Who ordered the cheesecake?

                The cook says we’re out of blueberries…

                But if you want he can garnish it with some strawberries

Or a dab of the whipped dignity of man

                                                                              …as long as you take it to go

Pagan Socks in Sundae Shoes

West Coast Eisteddfod Online Poetry Competition 2016

(Or Mr. Hughes in the Church of the Mounted Saint )

                                                                      

                                               i

 

Tumbled on the shelf above my piano

There are several faded dolls

                                                               All made by my mother

                                                               In what used to be the present

                                Though one in particular

Shadowed

And looking down on the dust-oily remains of sheet music laces

                                                                                              …of course now

My perception bears the yoke of poised finger position

Chords and rhythms

                               Proclamations of painted pressed wood shavings

Reminding me that all things twist as they go back

(But the truth doesn’t always go with the throw pillows)

Like inflated canaries soaked in fruited wine

Feathered sangria

While in those harmonies that don’t balance

The branch becomes lumber

The lumber becomes shelf

Surreally essential

Absurdly serene

Gesündheit

 

ii

 

Originally this doll had a dress that was bright red and summer yellow

The bonnet was bluish white, the shoes

I forget what color

…I guess green

And there were flowers on the little apron

We know our world through reflection

Crinkles where there was splashing

An apple left over from a broken diet                                           

So easily darkened

The no-color tone of cheap wood

Where only a carpenter can breathe it back in life

Too many ultraviolet rays breaking down

The chemical bonds of the chromophores of the mind

Purple becomes yellow and is followed by red

Each one letters in a word

...and yet more

Because even shadows reflect light

                (Though of a different definition)

Pouncing as the angels did on the thoughts of man

But Simon has no Sophia here

There are too many balconies for accomplices

He stands alone before the ash heap

Where the straps hide the essence

Like those crocheted plant holders

                               So universal in the last years of my youth

They were mostly white

Osiris, Orpheus, Yeshua

                No place for fricatives in the theology of salvation

Soft vowels and sonorous consonants only, please

And no more than the hint of decay

Amidst those echoing hymns written in rainy valleys

And sung beneath a solar deity that hides in smoke

Because Simon has no Sophia

He stands alone before the ash heap here

And the knots hide the essence

And gravity cuts through the weight

And the wallpaper is truly our only redemption

From the measuring

                                               His and mine

This incessant nipping and patching

And the resentment of the angels is obvious

 

                                                             iii

                                                                                                      

Diminished by our observations

Marie Antoinette’s final words

“Perdonez moi” to her executioner are nothing

We form the knife and direct it

She trod on his toes

So the loaf waits

Compared to her invitation to confection

Proverbial long before she was misquoted

In the mist of translation

                                                               (See Rousseau)

Confessions to a round lump

A poor man’s bread

More of the hearth than of Manna

Ironically put to infectious chords

As much the heresy of Pelagius as the Baptist bard

And then a voice comes back on the phone

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rosenkrantz isn’t picking up. Would you like me to try Mr. Guildenstern?”

“No, that’s ok.” I say and hang up

...but as I do

Saint Illtud flashes in front of my knowledge of Mr Hughes

And the dimensions in which I think fly out of how they fit into the grouping