Stippled red striated speckles buttered deep
In cocoa, aloe; the slide of cloth on skin
Searing scars of sun and sand.
Skin in sheets, shed sly like sidewinds
Scrubbing rocks, sloughing like cicadas,
Scattered food for mites.
So starts the metamorphose, stretching
To a higher self, a sentience sophisticated
Now for SPFs of sixty-plus.
From afar, the patchwork paisleys, tights
and robes, gaudy gowns
a glitter, the ladies
all a carnival, a sumptuous play, riches
on display until full light
hits her full force and then we see
the sawdust backgrounds, painted bright
to eye fool eyefulls, add horizons,
set the stages
gap between surreal, unreal, and real
and really, do they know
the way they fool us themselves?
and then the way the light hits
their saddened eyes
the lacework lashes
such pride in paisley promises
stony pride
in teetering at proscenium’s gap
We spent some time today at the park at a Cub Scout event, and I fell asleep on our blanket on the grass, staring up at the maze of intersecting branches, and at the smooth-trunked trees that vaulted to the blue. I was struck by how alike the grasses were, the same shapes and forks and blind reaching for the sun, the way that the water grasses arching over the little stream were hiding tadpoles from my glance, and the way the bigger boughs made the sun dart in and out like flashing flickers on a fish – was something watching us?
It made me think, if trees are just huge grass, then what grows huger still?
If Trees Did Not Stop Growing
The trees are dense with cellulose,
are grasses overgrown. They fork
the sky, they prize the stratosphere
And if they got there, what?
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I had a headache today. Fell asleep multiple times. My son’s got a fever too, has had for a few days. Blah. I’m ready for illness to stop going ’round. Anyway, caught intermittent pieces of a documentary on the making of Herbie Hancock’s Possibilities CD. And the experience of drowsing off the music while headachy got me this:
Herbie Hancock on a Headache
The thundundering of the duhduhdurums,
The lashing of the cymbal crasharashing.
Piano diddledaddle flatting fives and nattering,
The bass boom thrumming thump thrump on.
Play the drum head, pound that skin,
Send jolts of timbre dazzle down my spine.
Blow my mind, bounce the skull, a countercoup,
Ivories xylophoning tickles in a line.
But the music, music, music ocean sloshing close,
Washing-whipping, whirl-a-looping, a vortex
Vast and varied with snatches of a song;
In fugue I fade before too long, the scribbled charts
Rocking me to sleep, eleventh for a pillow,
The tang and ride a blanket muffling me to dark.
