The Quantumverse
“Art often isn’t [nice] though it scrubs the soul fresh”
– Jim Harrison (Day Fifteen – 28 Days of Unreason)
The scour of carbolic
Is the most China smell I know –
The granite stripping scrub
Of every lobby, bathroom, terminal,
Mall, subway, and hall without end.
As if under Communism
There is only one factory
For Janitor in a Drum.
It is the smell of Forward!
And Upward!
A poem of the Revolution
Written with mops
For brushes.
“The moon is to blame. I am innocent”
– Jim Harrison (Day Fourteen – 28 Days of Unreason)
Moon uninvited
Rambunctious deer are stymied
Clouds hide boozy light
Also sending to Ronovan Writes Party/Enjoy
“Only the water is safe”
– Jim Harrison (Day Thirteen – 28 Days of Unreason)
A piece of jade so beautiful
It took prisoner of your eyes –
Prized their tempest for itself
To become the color of the sea,
A stone that secrets rain
In its deepest stony heart.
“The beauty of the rattlesnake is in its threat”
– Jim Harrison (Day Twelve – 28 Days of Unreason)
Sap in Autumn trees,
Leaves uncoil red and gold,
Slow from sunlight’s bite.
*Also linking back to Carpe Diem Haiku Kai – “Waiting for Autumn”
“I’m unsure if all of me returned”
– Jim Harrison (Day Eleven – 28 Days of Unreason)
Like a broken clock
Even a poet can be right
Twice a day.
Once at the hour of felony,
When our eyes are hunted
And our sins sharp.
Once at the instant when vertigo
Pitches over the horizon
And we are too dizzy to pray.
Don’t look down or you will see
All the words lost along the way,
Strewn like shavings on the floor.
We jiggle truth
To shake some loose,
So take what you can carry.
“Much that you see isn’t with your eyes”
– Jim Harrison (Day Ten – 28 Days of Unreason)
Grey toad sits in ash
Memory of dimming coals
Unseen forest burns
“That morning the sun forgot to rise”
– Jim Harrison
Well sure
It had been wild –
Out late with the boys,
Sirius crazed after his breakup
With Andromeda.
Heavy drinking
At Izzy’s Black Hole,
Then laying tracks
Across the Milky Way.
The cops are still looking
For the son-of-a-bitch
Out shooting stars.
Any witnesses
To the takedown
At the Apollo?
And cosmic conversations
At Observatory Park
Overlooking the Strip,
The city lights and sea
A and B sides of the moon.
Then home to Burbank
To sleep it off.
Call in some cloud cover,
Take a rain day,
And call it a night.
“I love the tracks left by hundreds of species of birds that remain in the air like we do”
– Jim Harrison
Cry of the heron
Notes left behind in the dust
Song of broken wing
“I’m not sure what it is, life’s puzzle.”
– Jim Harrison
Tokugawa’s sword
Like silver cranes on the wing
Life’s puzzle is solved
“In this world of dreams don’t let the clock cut up your life in pieces.”
– Jim Harrison
Clock hands
Hollow-ground like knives,
Sharp and thin as seconds,
Make mincemeat
Of the hours.
Today we feast on time:
Seasons, thyme,
Suet cut from the loins of day,
Marrow spooned out dawn to dusk.
Vinegar of want.
Broth of baby's breath.
Birth dates, wedding days,
And reason, left answering
To the sun.
Grab yourself a fork.
Belly to the bar.
Feed your dreams a slice
Of humble pie.
I'll cut.
You pick.
"Pyes of mutton or beif must be fyne mynced & seasoned with pepper and salte and a lytel saffron to colour it / suet or marrow a good quantitie / a lytell vynegre / pruynes / great reasons / and dates / take the fattest of the broath of powdred beefe. And if you will have paest royall / take butter and yolkes of egges & so to temper the floure to make the paest."
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