my zazen was writing
pencil in hand—
sitting still for minutes
    no special breathing
      just moving my hand

Stepping Over Epiphanies

Affecting all the molecules in me
the pull of moon and sea.
I felt the call to walk the shore...
I opened the door.

Tides and time send their signals---
step nimbly over epiphanies
flipped up and left in the turning sand.

Succored by all about me
I'm just a fleck of cold fire
flung out on this sacred space.
I sang out, loved this place.

Shore pines paint a background scene
short stubby crooked trees
swaying gently in the persistent breeze
mostly in shades of shadows and green

Stunned by the crisp clean colors,
savoring the sweet scents of the sea,
enchanted by the incessant singing surf---
I begin to see

What I see is painted by me
created for free in a brain for me
suckled from the breasts of reality.
Wondering ... Is this reality, or made by me?

Tiptoe over bull kelp strands
or over broken white clam shells
avoiding the driftwood piles
the tide keeps moving in swells

My granddaughter and I once walked
beside this Bandon Oregon dune;
not very long ago, it seems to me---
I Remembered. Will she?

Vancouver Hometown Miniatures

a stillness
     a hardness
          a bleakness
               a shiver—
February: the essence of winter

     six blind baby puppies
sleeping in a warm box
dreaming about milk
and their mother's licks---
     we all just watched

Noticed a long black bug
crawling up my shirt---
               Accidental tourist
               on for the ride.
I brushed it aside.

Tired
worked hard
job done---
resting now
sipping rum.

I felt crappy today,
     nobody gives a shit anyway.
We all have too much crap to do,
plus pick up all the shit
     from the human zoo.

Hometown poets
     at Ghost Town Open Mic—
sharing insights about their life
and living together in space and time
our environs shape connected minds.

white moth
          fluttering
     down and up...
breezes in leaves
of dogwood trees

   I was the occasion
     involved in the occasions
that occasionally occurred
for me amongst others
     in places familiar every day

Let things be as they Are,
that is, as we, truly,
     encounter them,
from near or from afar;
elusive as they Are.

Death Stopped By and Claimed His Prize

My dying dog Bruno looked into my eyes
And we both knew our end was near.
He was weak and walked cancerous-wobbly
Kept less painful by potent pain drugs---
Our walking together was past and done.

Red Coals Pulse Like Distant Stars

The last light slips behind the ridge,
a thin ember of day still glowing.
Boots thud softly on the packed earth,
the air cooling with each step.
Evening begins before we notice.

A match flares against the breeze,
brief and stubborn in the dim.
Paper curls into orange petals,
logs shift as if waking.
Fire learns its shape slowly.

Smoke threads upward in loose spirals,
finding its own quiet route.
A kettle hums near the campfire coals,
steam rising like a soft prayer.
Night accepts our presence.

Tall trunks stand just beyond the glow,
their crowns lost to the dark.
The fire paints their bark in strokes
of copper, rust, and shadow.
Even giants enjoy a little warmth.

Voices soften as the flames steady,
words drifting like sparks.
Some tales are true, some nearly so,
all of them shaped by the night.
The campfire listens without judgment.

Logs collapse inward with a sigh,
a slow settling of heat and memory.
Red coals pulse like distant stars,
steady, patient, unhurried.
The night grows deeper around them.

The fire shrinks to a quiet glow,
its edges soft as worn cloth.
Ash gathers in pale drifts,
the remains of what kept us warm.
Nothing ends abruptly out here.

The final spark dims into silence,
leaving only the scent of smoke.
Stars settle into their places,
unbothered by our small rituals.
The forest closes gently around us.

Five Elements Embracing

Soil, sea, sun, rain, sky ...
Five Elements embracing,
Intertwined in mind.
Unfathomable Matrix;
Scaffolds on scaffolds

Grounded in Otherness.
Below sky, gardener, bees, soil,
seeds, leaves, stems, roots, water...
Below wet cells embraced,
Below atoms dancing on Energy...

Deeper and deeper below
Into What?

     A Plenitude, a sacredness.
          Emptiness in full bloom.

Salmon Moon Magic

midnight moon bowl
framed by glowing zones of mist-fog
touched by swaying trees
guided by incessant gravity---
        All Mystical for me.

Staring Through the Green

By mid-morning the sun,
illuminated the laurel leaves,
bright brilliant vibrant growing Green.
       The intensity of the living leaves
       spoke clearly of Here and Being.

Basho’s Frog Redux

Playing my harmonica
             quietly
A pine cone falls
             bounces by
I hear it clop               Surprised

My Ear's Hear Celestial Music

My bones have some stardust,
     my brain some
reptilian vestiges,
     and my soul
some of the Earth.

Hood Canal in May

Mt. Walker flanked
slender long Rainbow Falls---
    a salmon hatchery
on the tiny Quilcene stream,
returned the hatchlings to the sea.

The Hood waterways
blurred in hazy mists,
dull gray obscured today---
        flashes of sunlight
    cut through the trees.

Strawberry Moon
hung low
    orange glow
    midnight rose
over Lilliwaup Cove

The Halfway House Cafe was empty
except for me
eating fried Hamma Hamma oysters---
        while the perky young waitress
        told me her stories

                bird songs crossed
        the hanging skies
while emptiness hummed
        in the strong branches alive

Full moon
morning sky---
    a white silhouette
    faintly traced
        for uplifted eyes.

I’m not in Beijing, Rome,
    or Buenos Aires---
just in the Geoduck Cafe (in Brinnon),
eating juicy clams, drinking beer,
listening to friendly locals, so we understand.

Elk heads stuffed
on the Geoduck Cafe wall.
Still life taxidermy. Hair
    bristling. Comatose.
I heard the elk's stifled moan.

Wavelengths Away

     For me
a crow is black.

For other Animal Eyes
a crow is --- Rainbow Colored,
     Brilliant and Bright.

Fresh Figs, Rotten Plums

Winter weeks we huddled by the hot stove,
Spring days we shivered in the sun,
Summer hours we sat in the shade,
Autumn minutes we stared at the moon.

We had idle thoughts, we had no thoughts.

Life made our hearts cry and lifted our spirits high.

The ordinary, the exceptional,
the chosen, the accepted
the beautiful, the deformed
fresh figs, rotten plums

They appeared and disappeared

Samsara and Nirvana...

Here and Gone

The End

I watched my
mother and father
        Die!
Unconscious before me,
drifting away so peacefully.

Is is As is

'Is' is an insistent perplexity
        of sometimes being identity
        of sometimes being temporarily
of sometimes being actuality
Yes!, 'is' even postulates = equality.

Water Falls Into the Gorge

We drove out to Dougan Falls in the Spring,
       like salmon moving, drawn in by obscure passions.
I followed the ear-opening sacredness that keeps
       coming back to me in the rain of memories.

The stream doesn't care about a trillion rocks.
It goes because it's been blind for many millenniums;
       unlike what the lanky Douglas Firs discovered
              when standing still for decades in the Gorge winds.

My niece never said much about beauty.
       I parked the car, we joined the crowds,
       walked up to Dougan Falls.
We both looked up and didn't speak.

The noisy songs of Cascadian waterfalls:
from high to low, young to old,
flowing down, colder to cold,
into the Columbia River flowing bold;
till it becomes the salty blood
       in the arteries of Oceanus
beyond the south jetty of Living Time.

Double Visions

An eager face staring into the rich silence
Of mirrored space devoid of mind;
Not projecting or connecting, but reflecting.
Supreme non-fictions, Things
Naked as they are, as they are.

Inevitably, as sunshine blares on stones,
Green erupts from brown.
Curiosity Swings across the mind
past junkyards of ideas, peeling metaphors,
rusting rhymes, and concrete cliches,

Into the Center of Our Imaginations!
We are as we are:
Twofolds, Fourfolds, Eightfolds of
Realities and Possibilities.
Pushing on. Pushing on!

Mountains on Paper

I really hiked to the Top of:
Mount Whitney & Mt. Lassen,
Mount San Gorgonio & Mt. Baldy & many more---
        but only imagined understanding
   the ideas of Mount Analogue.

Many Words for Rivers

Chinook people had many more words
      for water and rivers than me.
Falling from my lips,
     many words for electricity.
Lived places dictate vocabulary.

Writing Solo

I'm a poet
of a body, not
a poet
of a soul, yes
I sing solo.

in-breath
out-breath
unconsciously
enables me
to Consciously Be

Yes, I wish Milton's Heavenly Muse
would dictate beautiful poetry to me.
But, unfortunately,
She never appeared, you see,
leaving me, seriously, with
the only Muse I hear—Me!

Every Detail Shined

Spring morning:
            a young man stands,
      listening to earphones,
            waiting for the bus--
Downtown Camas soaked in mist.

every leaf
     twitching to
          the gentle breeze
               slipping thru
                    morning dew

Even the little details and flaws
     Shined like diamonds;
          Caught our attentions!
               Were called beautiful---
The Beauty of Imperfections.

Is it?

It scatters
It gathers
It advances
It retires---
What is It?

What is warm, then cools
What is wet, then dries
What is ice, then melts
What is rock, then shatters---
Time's arrow falls to the ground.

Time travel ----- imaginary
Fictional ---- hypothetical-figurative
Back to the Future --- reel time
Forward to the Past -- speculate
Fantasies in the Now - create

Magazines of Stale Memories

Opened the Door of his Mind:
Mostly a hoarder's rooms inside.
Filled with magazines of stale memories.
Packed with boxes of unpleasant dreams.
Piled with the dirty dishes of despair.

Mike Garofalo Writes Lousy Poetry

my cranky realism
bouncing doggerel
pithy reversals
sweets and sours
a mania for quintains
my prosaic commonplaces

my brevities lacking depth
telling more than showing
a disorganized random mess
quantity lacking quality
dull digital scrapbooks
my limited Northwest familiarities

my Romantic infatuations undisguised
jarring rhythmic irregularities
too preachy at times
a lack of the idealizing language of high poetry
my homespun ho-hum vocabulary...

self-criticism opens one's eyes.

Winter Death

February fogs—
among the rotting brown leaves
a squashed dead frog;
    Winter is a Brutal King
    freezing beings one by one.

There Is No More Crying

There is no more dying when you're dead.
     The skeleton let me hold its head.
     The dead had very little advice to give;
Except: don't visit them where they live;
and, die easily and unexpectedly in your bed.

Disappeared and Never Returned

I will be gone someday
      never returning
to walk or play.
Signed my Last Will to say
to whom my possessions are given away.

Coming in
let me nourish
      like rain on a garden.
Going out
let me disappear
      like geese going south.

More Poetry and Creative Work
From the Beginning Years: 2016 - 2019

Bundled Up, Volume 1
Wakas, Quintillas, Tankas, Quintets, Northwest
Haiku, Cinquains, Docu-Poems, Quintains
Quintain Poems 1 - 1,000

Bundled Up, Volume 2
Gogyohkas, Limericks, Seashore, Moods
Rhymes, Remarks, Listenings, Insights
Quintain Poems 1,000 - 1,500

Bundled Up, Volume 3
Octets, TextArt, Epigrams, Commonplaces, Onions
Quintain Poems 1,500 - 2,000

At the Edges of the West
Highway 101 and Hwy 1, Docu-Poems, Ocean, Quartets

Cloud Hands Blog

Cuttings: Haiku, Senryu, Brief Poems

How to Live a Good Life

Pulling Onions: One-Liners, Quips. Sayings

The Spirit of Gardening

Text Art and Concrete Poetry

Four Days in Grayland

A Gardener's Sutra on Time

The Middle Years: 2019 - 2023

Nighttime Chores

One night I awoke to the sounds
     of cold rain on the hard wind.

The clanking of backyard gongs
     till I took them down.

Wiped raindrops off my head.

Opened my fly
     pissed on the ground.

Headed back into my bed.

Alone in Time

second by second
hour after hour
week by week
month after month
year after year
decade after decade---
longevity adds up

The tug of the tides
and sounds of the surf
kept me awake that night—
     my 79th birthday
     alone at Cape Lookout

Will Cherished Ideals Survive

No Guarantees that to the End
Our cherished ideals will survive,
Our great great grandchildren will thrive,
Our monuments stand ...
Our guarantees?

This tree my great great grandmother planted,
This dog-eared Leaves of Grass on my desk,
This classic folksong on my breath,
This heirloom apple in my hand ...

This day,
no guarantees
for or against.
Good! So we strive on,
Their and our hopes in our hands now.

Ten Moves to Mate

The chessboard patterns
different each time...
     Like my changing life,
     complicated and intense.
Reacting when others move.

Flowers in the Sky

Leaping from the Ledge of Infinite Regress,
The Unmoved Mover fell into Formlessness:
Pure silence echoed between the galaxies,
Eons of eons vanished in a second,
Withered trees bloomed in fires,
The Oceans covered all the Land,
Polar mountains melted, rivers went dry,
Thusness scattered in sixty directions,
Space became Time, time became things.

Black Holes filled with Nirvana,
A billion samadhi mirrors shattered,
Galaxies snuggled within a single skull,
Many became One, One only, only One.

Then,
the Divine Illuminatrix in AllBeings
Opened Her clouded Eye, to see
exactly what we all see:
Flowers Opening in the Sky.

These yellow poppies reveal time,
These sweet razor clams taste time,
These brown seeds generate time.
The seashells speak of past time.
These gray leafless trees show time.
The Earth is Time; the Sky is Time.
And the five fingers of one black hand hold time,
And the blinking of two blue eyes cry time.
The dirty garden hoe and hoses water time,
The fishing line drops to the bottom of time,
And greasy tractor gears work time.

The snows on Mt. Ranier glacier time,
Moving Reedsport sand dunes cover time,
Cold ocean waves at Oceanside cut time,
Hood Canal ravens break open time,
The onion seedlings in Salinas sweeten time,
The roaring Feather River rapids erode time;
Ventura flower fields color time.

Remembering is time, forgetting is time.
Black lines of scripture tell times,
Great and small doubts reveal time,
Hungry ghosts and naked demons are time,
Newborn Gods were conceived in time.
Death is time, and conception is time.

Vulgar time, broken time,
Our time, space-time, in time,
The Right time, before time, Sublime time,
Standard time, beyond time, past time.
Dream Time of a still body-mind is time.

Time and Time again,
Explaining All and not
explaining any-thing.
From Being-Lost, with no abode,
selfless, bone dry;
Comes the time-Now
for the enlightened cry:
"Flowers in the Sky!"

The Spiderwebs of Time
are legion
multitudes of nows and thens;
Uncountable heres and theres
unhitched
from any eternal present
everywhere.

To Walk past the End Point
Of the Time beyond time,
Beyond pasts, within futures,
this Moment
Now and forever, beyond
ordinary minds.

Imagine what the Will can Do,
Cannot do, will not do.
Imagine more.
Please...

Vampires in the Hoh Forest

The Town of Forks hosts Vampires,
teenage blood suckers on the night prowl, and
teenage Werewolves howling, running fast.
Humans afraid of these creatures’ wrath.

Human, not so human, called by the Night,
confused, resisting, teenagers losing the fight
against inner demons and lusty needs
and ordinary life with real human beings.

Many beings eat, fight and kill to survive;
wily, tricky, stealthy, with a hunter’s pride.
The Horned God has history on his side.
From our Hungers there is no place to hide.

Hungers keep us all on the Edge,
ready to amorally pounce from a hedge
and slaughter or harvest creatures just ahead.
We are all Vampires rising from the dead.
Its said,
Living and dying scenes in a vivid Red.

Rafting Down the Trinity

The river said go easy, so we pushed off,
      letting the raft find its own argument.
The current kept offering us opportunities:
      a bend, a hush, a Class 3 rapid, fear, a sudden lift.
We followed, not knowing how far trust
           could carry us, only that it kept saying "Yes!"

The rubber raft slipped into its dreams, a quiet scattered logic...
Twisted by river stones, paddles, muscles, and wind
     and the long drag of downhill cold water.

Sunlight leaned into the canyon,
     finding us still where the current slowed.
There the catfish waited without hurry on the bottom.
We felt the day open, wide as the bend ahead.

Morning slid down the canyon
     and the river took it all in, cool and certain.
Our paddles touched the old stories---
     eddies of lore that encircled everyone.

We rafted the long remembering. Grateful to be included.

Later, the wind arrived, ruffling the surface
           into small disagreements.
We answered with strokes that tried to match
           the river’s impatience.
Even the banks seemed to listen, cottonwoods
leaning in as if our passing mattered,
           though we and they knew it did not.

The water shook us and we were fully ready,
paddling the raft past the damp bark of the alders.
We let the river tumble us over the large boulders,
bouncing us with a sudden shakes, feeling breathless glee.
Everything we meant to say stayed up on the shore;
only the wordless water mattered, and the joy and laughter.

Paddles touched the hush, the canyon walls held their breath.
Water knows the way.
We follow its old thinking, thankful for the hints it shares.

Toward evening the canyon settled in dim shadows.
The water gathered its memories.
We followed, quieter now, trusting the way it carried us---
     not toward any lesson, but simply forward-down,
     the river doing what it always does,
     and us privileged to be allowed along.

We stopped, made camp, ate French bread and cheese,
drank wine, talked by the fire...
The River retreated into the closing darkness.

Two dreamed of being tossed off the raft.

Polished Till It Glowed

     Tumbling river stones
     In the raging river borne along.
Polished smooth for decades past,
     Till all the edges are cut smooth and slick,
Then the polished colored pebbles sink home.

Recalling Errors

The door forgets being closed.
I remembered forgetting.
The sentence forgot a few words.

something was missing
after I looked

Not retrieval---reconstruction!
Each week I remember
some rebuilt recall---
a pinch of error
and something slightly new, that's all.

I remember remembering
a museum of portraits
each one of my face
each face at a different age
asking me quizzically:
"Are you still here?"

Details on Details, Zoom In

The endless treasures of the everyday,
the uncommonness of common things;
Ordinary mind does point the way
to unspoken wonders of myriad beings.

Whether a leaf, the moon, a plastic spoon,
or a shoe, an eye, an infant's cry;
the endless parade, zoom out, in zoom,
Details on details, thick, piled high.

Cellular seedpods pulsing pure time,
Flowering brains clone families of minds
that revel in thinking to the Infinite edge,
agog over life, and love of knowledge.

Whether, a quasar, a hand, a DNA strand,
Fantastic journeys in the Minds of Millions.

Fumble Fingers

Of things mechanical
I've little ken,
I fumble and fuss
from start to end.

Where a mechanic
pushes right---
I pull left till
things stick-tight.

Bending things
I shouldn't bend,
unfortunately---
Till they ain't right.

It's just so, so it is,
fumble fingers my fate it is.

The Magical Cane

Mayoku walked around his old Daoist friend,
Shifu Miao Zhang, three times, and he then thumped
his oak staff once on the ground.
Miao Zhang stood up,
walked around Mayoku once,
tapped his pine cane three times on the wall, and said,
"The power of the wind can topple trees
      and is gone by morning.
My cane can cut through the wind."

Master Yellow-Bitterroot Mountain asked me,
'What is the meaning of Old Pahto emerging in the West?'
I lifted my cane and placed it in my mouth, saying nothing.
Later, zany Zen liar that I am, I wrote:
"No minds, no dharmas. No-mind, much Dharma."

Entropy Points Its Finger

The Arrows of Time
        never rest,
moving forward unrelenting
irreversible:
from hot towards cold

from stream to Sea
from organized to disorganized
        from past to future
from moving towards stillness
                from life towards death.

        Or, so it seems, to us,
                with our little particulars,
                        with our home brew views,
        with our social habits a must.

A Gardener's Sutra on Time --- Excerpts

One purpose of a garden is to stop time in one place.
Take the time to melt into the Details.
Time will tell, but we often fail to listen.

Gardeners turn into the soil their lifetime.
Beauty is the Mistress, the gardener her slave.
Gardeners learn to live in worm time,
bee time, and seed time.
In the right place at the right time,
tomato worms on tomato vines.
Gardens are demanding pets.

Time creeps, walks, runs and flies---
it is all about moving things.
That something is eternal is unverifiable.

The seed idea for "God" is springtime.
The ten thousand things are more enchanting
than the Silent Divine One.
Dogmatists are less useful than dogs.
When the divine knocks, don't send a prophet to the door.

Time prevents too much from happening at once.
Time is rooted in Place.

What you see depends on when you look.

Perfection can be the opponent of betterment.
A working hypothesis is far better than a belief.
Most laws of Gardening are merely local ordinances.

Mother Nature is always pregnant.

A callused palm and dirty fingernails precede a Green Thumb.

Chaos breaks its own rules to allow Order to play.
Without vagueness we are bored with literalness.

Somehow, someway, everything gets eaten up, someday.

Pulling Onions 1,053 Quips, One-Liners, Aphorisms, Jokes

playing gods

Accomplish the Impossible?
Play being a god? Make The Normal passé?
Cure cancer? Make solar panels?
Create new arts. Know the Future.
    Ready, Go, Let’s Start! Soon!

    Appropriate the Everything
        passing quickly by---
a candle burning at both ends
machines that mimic the mind
mankind walking on the moon
real human/environmental costs ignored

Lazers opening up an eye
a skyscraper's glass two miles wide
a nuclear reactor making electricity
the Hanford reactors were a lie
wine from California in Japan
vaccine stalling a Black Death Doom

Computers held in your hand
MRI slicing up your brain
new wheat seeds bio-engineered in labs

Twelve tone music in your left ear
an orthopedic mattress making your bed
transforming sand into computer chips
air frying frozen bagels for your lips

Televisions in every room
Radios in every ear worldwide
Around the world jet airplanes roam
Cargo ships shipping timber to Tokyo
Basketball teams in Turkey

Music playing from CDs
Oil pumped up from underseas
Satellites filling up the heavens
Internet smarter with AI
Cruise ships docking in Cancun

Wonders upon Wonders—New!
Faster than a speeding bullet train
Leaping to Mars in a single bound
Yet, seeing the deadly arrows in flight
    Pollution our Kryptonite.

Put on a New Suit

Delete more adjectives
Cut more adverbs

Remove crayons from the box
Empty the trash

Tell a quarter of the story
Climb out on a limb

Be concise, be precise
Imitate Rae Armantrout

Don't tell it like it is
Neutralize explanations

Get to the point
Even when pointless

Worship the God of Brevity
Handicap the God of Verbosity

More Poetry and Creative Work
From the Middle Years: 2019 - 2023

Bundled Up, Volume 4
Remarks, Rhymes, Seeings, Onions, Sonnets
Quintain Poems 2,000 - 2,500

Bundled Up, Volume 5
Quintain Sonnets, Time, TextArt, Koans, Remarks
Quintain Poems 2,500 - 3,000

Bundled Up, Volume 6
Sonnets, Lore, Time, Language, Thought
Quintain Poems 3,000 - 3,500

Cantos of the Hands

The Fireplace Records Koan Collection

The Gushen Grove Sonnets

Taoist Master Chang San-Feng

The Tao Te Ching: Anthology and Concordance

An Old Philosopher's Notebooks

Quintain Poetry Research

Quintain Poetry Rhyme Schemes

The Recent Years: 2023 - 2026

Slippery Sentences Dematerialized

Syntax melts into calligrammes
Dictionaries lack verbs
Pages and pages of punctuation marks
Semantics smack of misunderstandings
Poems simply dematerialized

A limber metaphor walks through water
Messages leak and bleed on paper
Nouns found a time to hum
Periods became black blank zeros
Quintains morphed into Sonnets

Predicates dissolved into Objects
Adjectives unspoooo
                                     oooooo
oooled into Hieroglyphs
Cliches retreated into walls of phonemes
Truth became shy and subtle
The bridge of silence collapsed.

Turn the Clock Back

     I turned the clock hands
back an hour in the fall.
Even though, in private time-space,
          nobody can ever
     turn the clock back at all.

Oulipos Coordinates Conceptualized

I. Punctuated Still-Life

                                    &&&&&
                           $$$$$
                  ;;;;;
                             @@@@@

Compare with four pages of random punctuation
marks by Elizabeth Clark, Between Worlds.

II. Hidden Codes

A26 B25 C24 D23 E22
F21 G20 H19 I18 J17
K16 L15 M14 N13 O12

11P 10Q 9R 8S 7T
6U 5V 4W 3X 2Y
               Z1

Compare with six pages of meaningless codes
by Vito Acconci, Removal.

III. We/We/We

we see
we want
we steal
we lie
we use AI

Compare with twelve pages of brief phrases
beginning with the word 'my' by
Charles Bernstein, My/My/My.

IV. Counting Down

six, sixty, six hundred,
five thousand, five million,
four billion, four trillion,
Three, Two, One
Zero

Compare with ten pages of words for numbers
by Claude Closkey, The First Thousand Numbers

V. What?

ArE swbath blaZe muteRing empty RocKet
reD ciTIzenS As he desiBA Ntecello golD
comPlaining FocusDownnn Ulla FideNtia
is KelPt stOne CSChUrch btone threadI
mi sPirghi ch'iO gU di pietro Negator' D'usura

Compare with seven pages of misspelled, invented,
and highlighted Non-Words by John Cage,
Writing Through the Cantos.

VI. Seeing Three Ways

Compare with thousands of concrete poems,
text art, calligrammes, ASCII art, and graphic
messages as found in the Index to Concrete Poetry
by Mike Garofalo.

Concrete Poetry and Text Art Exhibit

VII. Alphabetic Trails

Abecedarian Sextet

All bananas can't' do everything.
Formulas give help in judging.
Keeping loving men noticing.
Only perfectionists quickly revise.
Settled truces universally valued.
Worried xenophobe yells zilch.

From ABCED ... VWXYZ

- Compare with:
See also Paul Celan, Index of Titles A-Z.
Bob Perelman, An Alphabet of Literary History.
Harryette Mullen, Blah-Blah, and Jingle Jangle.
Amaranth Borsuk, Show of Hands.

Reference Sources:

Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual
Writing, 656 pages, 2011. Edited by Craig Dworkin.

Artifice and Indeterminacy: An Anthology of New Poetics,
392 pages, 1998. Edited by Christopher Beach.

The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book: Poetics of the New.
Edited by Charles Berstein and Bruce Andrews.
312 pages, 1984.

The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing
and Literary History, 187 pages, 1996.
By Bob Perelman.

Dying is a Hard Journey

Dying is such a depressing waste
    a wasting away of dignity
        facing the firing squad of some disease
            your own body murders you with ease
                twenty names for your miseries.

    Can't hide in the woods or city,
Dying spares no home, nor has any pity.

Dying can be over instantly
        in an hour, month, season, or years.
Dying can be around the corner
        or in a hospital in south Spokane.
Dying ends with an open mouth sigh.
      Dying and Death, the Faces of Janus.
      Dying is Death's Emissary, both liars.

Dying and I shared a final toast;
Before She finally released my ghost.

Managed Needs

/RATION my cash supply/
                /simplify/
$$ spend less, Economize $$

///Do I really NEED it?///
               !!! reconceptualize !!!

Cedars Reflecting the Hood Fjord

a syntax of resin    the green refuses
its own           NOUN          holds
what holding       means       against

the Hood Canal         does not
reflect            the cedars
The Cedars          reflect         it

January opens       from the inside
the word for COLD    is not COLDER
is the water's       other       name

waiting waits        its waiting
the Canal            a preposition
suspended            between cedars

(January)            the bark
speaks only          in the direction
of having spoken      already

Hood Fjord:          a grammar
the mountains         wrote
and then             forgot

what the Cedar       means by standing
at the water's       syntactical
edge:               to mean

to stand             by
the Canal            which stands
by                   Nothing

Tight Timelines for Unwanted Advice

in every moment
today is created anew---
          pristine possibilities
     changing opportunities
          depending on you

Between
two eternities
     your brief life
               is stretched
               tight

     your a book unopened:
          hidden potential
covered insights
closed ideas
     Waiting...

Intertwined Night

Soft lips softly stick to
tongues intertwined by mutual lust.
Lips find lips, unhurried,
tongues learn from each other's punctuation,
breathing hard, sucking in, lost.

Their warm skin trembled,
each touch after touch coming alive
gasping intensity in the dark
pulling closer to being One
fingers roam unbuttoning clothes.

Tongue licking her throat's pulse,
craving every inch of skin---
our rising pleasures erupting
her body answering mine
underlining what the dark car conceals.

Lips upon her breast
nipples perky and pointed---
my hand finds her slick yes.

Altered Identities

My experiences at times
have not damaged or broken me;
     but, indeed,
     have bent and twisted
          my identity.

Under the Water
of my mind
an unconscious Sea
of Memories
guide me through time

Keep me on a course line
send me some signs
become conscious at times...
freedom may a fiction be
controlled by unknown destinies.

Bring the Unconscious,
Sub-Conscious, ego, and Id,
Collective Unconscious figured in---
Over the waves of Consciousness
the flotsam of Unknowns are adrift.

A Time for Truth

Every Proposition
is time-place stamped
          for Context.
The date and place
help explicate.

A Collage of Manifesto Bullets

what you don't say
           is as important as
           what you do say---
and vice-versa

spontaneous perceptions
                      change directions
willy-nilly            Improvised

one perception should
                      directly            lead to
another perception ... Directly!!

Follow the Breath
like a jazz saxophonist:
in and out, stop and start, getting it down

doubts embrace the hemistich
irony precedes the enjambment
confusion follows the non-sequiturs
randomness hugs ambient metaphors

The poetic work ethic:
       constantly prodding,
               ever scrutinizing,
                        relentlessly wording,
                        swimming in stanzas.

Self-correct like a skeptic.
Delay the punchline ... then Punch!
The unspoken space leaves a heavy silence.

Attend closely to things and perceptions
           avoid intellectual digressions.
Focus on Locality---Our Places in Reality!

Avoid historic styles, meter, rhymes and
                      "that traditional stuff."
Be more lean and buff!

                      The open-field is beautiful;
           The closed-field grows vegetables.
Take your pick when your in a pinch.

           The desire for the Objectively Perfect:
                      rooted in our history,
           fixed to our place Inside
                     current real particularities.

words cover the pages post-haste,
don't stop much to meditate---
           go, go, Go ... don't hesitate!

I don't hate speech
              very often
                             so .......

reduce the i-me-my
no confessionals please:
           Depersonalize

Don't tell a story;
            hesitate to fictionalize.
Yes, there are characters,
           but keep them dry.
          Slide down on an anti-narrative prolixity.

Narrative suppress immediate attention.
The story keeps us focused on the story.
The potholes of plots can hypnotize.
Narratives trend towards conventional conformity.

To be more creative---overcome
                            your fears
of being wrong
              or making mistakes.

                      Even for old news
                      MAKE IT New!
Making your poetry:
Make it New, Make it Strange,
Make it Now, Make it Yours,
Make it Better, Make it True.
Make it Reveal, Make it Change.

Some poems are better
              Read
               than
              Said.
Let the speaker set the pace;       or,
Let the reader set the pace?
The eyes and/or ears
                both have plans.

Some verses stretched the mind
          Baffled the understanding
     Confused the senses
Upset one's peace.
     Discomfort can rejuvenate.

- A Collage of Sources:
Robert Creely, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Olson,
Bob Perelman, Ezra Pound, Ron Silliam,
Louis Zukofsky, W.C. Williams.

Truths about the Future?

For the moment, Now, for me,
the world is the case.
Yesterday, the world was
actually the case.
Tomorrow's events are not the case.

Only the Present and Past are Actual
The Future is bounded by possibilities:
uncertainties, unpredictability, chances,
accidents, unknowns, contingencies ...
And quasi-informative necessities.

        God knows the future some say.
                I don't think that way.

Some statements about future events
Are neither necessary nor impossible
and have no truth value.

Closing Time

running out of time
for catching up
    with the future
now
a problem

        my mind grinds
        my times
into memories
so fine
they disappear

Body Surfing at Manhattan Beach

Meat torpedo hisses and BAMS into the froth-committee
Salty telegrams: SWIM HARD ahead AHEAD ARMS arms FAST
Kick those big black rubber Fins: KICK KIck, Fast and Hard
Foam! Foam! A bureaucracy of Swishy Froth
Lifted by cascading surf---I'm flung, I fly
My arched body negotiates with a seagull's diving alibi
Brine hiccup --- my spine unscrews itself impolitely
Tumble tumble Mike's wet body ... THRILLING long ride
Fizzling out, I stand: a shallow wet parenthesis, finished

Time Travel to the Outskirts of Words

     Objects are Intertwined:
Inter-breeding like space and time
Inter-acting like brain and mind
Inter-relating like the drummer and the band
Inter-locking like fingers and hand

     Time is Objectified:
Counted, tallied, recorded, traded;
     Clock hands moving, telling time;
     Carrion bells singing hours at nine---
Time eats everything; Objects dissolve.

     Time is Personified:
Grim Reaper, Stork Baby, Dorian Gray;
     Talking Time Machines, Killer Shark AI;
Old man with a crooked gray cane;
     Eternal Goddess in a perfectly lazy Sky.

     We travel via Time:
All the time, consistently, logically,
Relentlessly, unavoidably, inexorably...
     But, realistically--- Entropy ---
     Closes the Past with a slap!

^^ We Only Travel in Time in the Now ^^

Words, thankfully, are Free
To thumb their noses at reality
To toss time-places-people randomly around
To invent a Supreme Fiction for us to See---
To create a timeless Heaven for Eternity.

More Poetry and Creative Work
From the Concluding Years: 2023 - 2026

Bundled Up, Volume 7
Quintains, Delight, Strangeness, Things, Beauty
Quintain Poems 3,500 - 4,000

Bundled Up, Volume 8
Experimental, Surreal, Conceptual, Text-Art
All types of Poetry 4,000 - 4,500

Bundled Up, Volume 9
Collaborative Poetry
MPGarofalo and Ms. Ai, Artificial Intelligence
All types of Poetry 4,500 - 5,000

The Tick-Tock Tractatus
Speaking of Time: The Poetic Investigations

The Five Corners of Time

Quintain Sonnets

Slouching Into Incoherence

25 Steps and Beyond: Collected Works

Attention, Language and Time:
Selected Poetry: 2016-2026

Texts PreSS Couve Publications
Free Online Poetry and Studies
By Mike Garofalo
Vancouver, Washington
Text PreSS Couve Email

This work is licensed under a:
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No-Derivates
4.0 International License. Selected Poems, by mpgarofalo.

This document was last edited, revised,
reformatted, added to, relinked,
changed, improved, or modified
by Michael Peter Garofalo [mpgarofalo]
on September 5, 2026. Ver. 13.