New Poems 2020
by
Michael P. Garofalo
In the Summer of 2020, I reread a
number of old books of mine about poetry. I
have a number of good large anthologies of English language poets, collections
of individual poets, and books on poetry theory, writing and reading poetry, and
language issues.
So, I decided, today, on 9/30/2020:
To develop and improve my language arts skills, learn more about poetry, read poets and commentators from today to December 30, 2020.
To write one poem or make one Blog Post to my Cloud Hands Blog every day until December 30, 2020.
Start small, make it easy, make it fun, be realistic (reevaluate targets every
30 days), don't procrastinate.
10/1/2020 - 10/20/2020
Daily Blog Posts to my Cloud Hands Blog
Touching Up An Altar
Things to touch, small art objects to hold,
Matches to light, incense to light
Bowls and bells to ring, pictures to clean
Wand sticks to point and orchestrate the scene.
Red chairs to move, floors to sweep,
Books to Read, to Study, for decades to keep.
Pictures as reminders of what insights we grasp
Pictures as reminders of what we think we know
about pagan ways past.
Tables to move and dust,
Symbols, Altars and Signs in the Shadows of the Sun
A Book of Rituals to hold and read from,
Candles to light, daggers to handle,
Voyager Tarot cards to shuffle,
Feathers to finger, rocks to pick up
Thoughts ungraspable piling up
Tibetan Prayer beads thumbing one past and next up,
So I raise my hands and say
“Toys to play with,
Magikcal tools to play with;
With only memories to keep.”
Kind of like holding infinity
in the palm of your hand:
using a microscope or telescope,
reading a science book;
with two hands making an
Apache Door
string figure display,
the transfiguration of the commonplace loop of string
to help tell stories.
- Touching Up An Altar,
by Michael P. Garofalo, 10/15/2020
Strings on Your
Fingers, by Mike Garofalo, 1977-
Light Makes No Sounds?
By Michael P. Garofalo, 9/30/2020
Mano y Mano, Face to Face, a Fight
The Gunfight, Two Dudes, in Spokane (one dead, one critically injured)[i]
A fistfight in the Bandini barrio de ELA, City of Commerce
Two girls fighting at a Middle School in Corning …
Quick, Exhausting, Brutal, Injurious
Two US Presidential candidates debating on TV in 2020. Refereed.
Roberto Duran, millionaire Panamanian boxing champion, fist to fist against
Sugar Ray Leonard at the Brawl at Montreal in 1980. Refereed.
Lakers vs Celtics, 1985 or 2010, Los Angeles. Refereed.
OR
“No mas.” And/Or "No quiero pelear con el payaso"
("I do not want to fight with this clown.”); and,
back to the more immediate and important daily
realities of people
getting along peacefully with one another, and me.[ii]
Quieter, calmer, restful, safer, friendly, peaceful.
Memories can make bad sounds or not.
Many dreams, I suppose, are so silent, I can’t remember them.
Light makes no Sounds?
Too much light can make us cry or scream in
pain.
No light is scary and dangerous.
Lights Out, We Are Closing, Day is Over, Closed, Someone Dies.
Sunset is Silent, aside from the takeoff roar
of jets overhead,
heading northwest from Portland’s PDX.
Daybreak is Silent, aside from the chatter of birds in the garden,
or the drone rumble of autos and trucks on Interstate 205 nearby.
The Summit of Baden-Powell is bathed in light;
I’m warm and tired from the climb,
falling asleep in the silence of the light.
Things are all wrapped up, interconnected, with each other.
But, it maybe true, nevertheless, that light makes no sounds.
The Last Second of
Summer
The bare branches of an
old shrub
Above its fallen scarlet leaves─
Emptiness or forms?
Chrysanthemums in full bloom
Below clear blue skies─
Forms and emptiness?
The first second of autumn,
The last second of summer─
Neither Forms nor Emptiness,
The spaces of past time,
The realms of dead minds;
Or, bereft of Space and Time,
The Singularity of the Big Bang Sublime.
- Mike Garofalo, 9/22/2020
Thinking about:
Anatt
Green Way Research, Vancouver, Washington
This webpage was last modified, improved,
revised, edited, or updated on September 30, 2020.
This webpage was first distributed online on September 30, 2020.
Brief Biography of Michael P. Garofalo, M.S.
Green Way Research Subject Index
How to Live a Good Life: Advice From Wise and Respected Persons
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License,
© 2020 CCA 4.0
Created by Michael Garofalo, Green Way Research, Vancouver, Washington © 2020 CCA 4.0
Mike Garofalo reading in his backyard in
Vancouver, WA, during the Wisteria Springtime of 2018.
I was then reading The Potent Self: A Study of Spontaneity and Compulsion,
1985, by Moshe Feldenkrais.
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Michael P. Garofalo
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