poetry is orange

wake up to a faint orange
sky with a green quality
too bright to be ignored, cheerful,
unlike this morning’s paper
most of which I want to cut
out and discard. it does not generate

what reading poetry generates,
a quirky orange
atmosphere that doesn’t cut
up the beautiful quality
of the day on paper.
newspapers are not cheerful.

poetry is not cheerful
either, but it generates
food for the soul, a paper
can’t, all black and white, no orange,
even when the writing is quality
(and if its good writing it cuts).

am I irresponsible to avoid that cut
naive to desire only cheerfulness?
maybe, but I know that the quality
of my life is generated
by all things orange
and magical, not dreary news in papers.

what I want to read on paper
is words all cut
up and mixed with orange,
ignoring punctuation and syntax cheerfully,
in an effort to generate
poetry of the first quality.

mine isn’t always quality
and most of it will not end up published on paper,
but I know that inside it generates
some part of humanity nearly cut
off and forgotten (cheerfully)
by people not caring that words have colours, like orange.

the colour orange has a quality
so cheerful on printed paper
it heals cuts it did not generate.

the Kandern war memorial

a memorial to war, this monument
holds all the grief
of those now silent
unable to remember
this grey green tower guards
the beauty of insignificant lives.

their memory lives
in the names etched on this monument
in the wreaths left to guard
against forgetfulness, a grief
worse than to remember
all these silent

why are you silent
are there too many lives
here to remember
too many similar monuments
all pointing to the same grief
all statues in the same guard

but this is why they stand guard
refuse to be silent
or to give up their grief
all of these lives
matter, even if it is only the monuments
that continue to remember

they call us to remember
to join their guard
as living monuments
no longer silent
about the memory that lives
the necessity of grief

there is deep grief
in those who still remember
their pain lives
carefully guarded
often silent
made visible in this monument

here stands a monument to grief
though silent, it remembers
and guards forgotten lives.

p.s. You can find a picture of this monument here.

losing delight

stop a moment, listen,
can you hear delight
shouting through the wind,
laughing out of green?
or is it all screams,
lost voice of something fearful?

you are the fearful,
unable to listen,
not even to those who scream.
devoid of delight,
you are strangers to everything green,
shunned even by the wind.

how have you lost the wind?
become so fearful
you can’t see green?
its not that hard to listen,
not so difficult to find delight.
you don’t even have a voice with which to scream.

well I will scream,
lift my voice to the wind,
take hold of delight
and let go of all that is fearful.
I will listen
to the depth of green.

and slowly green
begins to scream,
all the world listens
as it comes on the wind.
your ears are fearful
for you it is the end of delight.

breathe life into delight,
rejuvenate green,
pacify its fearful
screams
riding with the wind,
waiting for you to listen.

will you listen to the small voice of delight,
hear what the wind says of all that is green
calm the fearful, still the screams?

I am a thought

In high school I took a creative writing class and learned how to write sestinas. “A sestina (also, sextina, sestine, or sextain) is a highly structured poem consisting of six six-line stanzas followed by a tercet (called its envoy or tornada), for a total of thirty-nine lines. The same set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time.” (Wikipedia) They are challenging to write, but also quite fun.

I am a thought,
ageless and alone,
hung between here and a cloud,
a small orange glow
that seems to distort
the smile of the deaf.

I am not deaf.
I can hear thoughts,
with no desire to distort,
the beauty of being alone
in the fog that glows
like a translucent cloud.

I want to fly away on a cloud,
scream my fear to the deaf,
burn and glow
with the passion of a thought,
that let me be alone,
with no doubt trying to distort.

Truth can be easy to distort,
become a vague and shifting cloud
placed in the sky, alone,
taught to be deaf
to pure thought,
faith that glows.

burn, burn bright, glow
truth is dead, there is nothing to distort.
I was once a thought
now eaten by the cloud,
feeling like everyone is deaf
in a crowded room alone.

I am alone
with the sickening glow
of the dead who hear, but stay deaf,
who take words, distort
them and hide them in clouds,
hoping no one will find the thought.

I, who was a thought, am alone
a distant cloud, a faint glow.
it takes little to distort and little to be deaf.