4/365: quantum

I sit on my deck in the post-storm morning air
and I find that all possible futures are open
and laid before me, so long as I sip my coffee
and do not rush into any of them.

the longest ones are perhaps the most frightening
as the odds of loneliness pile up
like diapers and jars of applesauce.

some end with friends and family
in a warm place,
but one cannot hope for too much simplicity,
too much easy happiness, because
these are roads that end in dull eulogies
and flowers
and indifference.

I recognize by quantum logic
(which I do not understand)
that all of these things will come to pass,
and they will all belong to me,
if only "me" were a singular being.

101/365: fig

the fig is jealously holding on
to its leaves
even as the other trees bare themselves
for winter's purification.

soon enough
the branches will be Stoic
and gray -
a bundle of knotted sticks:

unperturbed by loss,
indifferent to sun and cloud,
the fruit of next year's crop
deep beneath the ground.

100/365: very large hands

the very large hands
are below the waterline -
this is the ocean -
dark blue brine of the cold shores -
shores so far from your feet.

the very large hands
are there
just below the surface
waiting.
waiting as very large hands are wont
to wait
below the waterline.

99/365: the getting ready

before anyone else is awake
I sit with my coffee and
blank notebook page
and listen for a poem.

what I hear is the hum of the refrigerator
and the occasional pop
from inside the walls of the house.

no poems,
but the birds are making plans
for the day.

in minutes these are drowned out
by the movement of feet,
showers, and the getting ready.

98/365: while the coffee maker churns

dancin' in the kitchen
while the coffee maker churns
              and burbles
no idea why I'm happy
enough that I have to move
other than I'm alive
and it's a new day.

97/365: a man alone

A man alone
walks deep in the night
on a city street.

No one sees him -
this is not of consequence.

It is in the nature of men
to be alone

walking deep in the night.

96/365: a visit

Sitting at my desk
I suddenly started singing
a wordless melody -
a dirge like song,
with a oddly hopeful up tone

It seemed for a few bars
that I was intoning
notes I had known my whole life,
yet these were not my notes
but the notes of my grandmother
in house-Polish,
the Polish only spoken in western Massachusetts
among the older folk
before they laid down.

My wife asked what I was singing
and like that,
the notes were gone.

95/365: creative act

It is the morning
and all things are possible
as our souls
return from being a part
of the astral plane

where the madness of dreams
is real -
where articulation is
a creative act.

93/365: My Special Glasses

When I put on my Special Glasses
you can see yourself in the silver reflection
of the round disks that cover my eyes
like coins for the dead.

Nothing can be hidden
from those lenses -
all your secrets are laid bare
as you look into the place
where my eyes ought be.

With my Special Glasses on
you might assume I have X-ray vision -
like a cross between Freud and Superman
I can see everything buried and hidden
behind your smile.

But you would be wrong.

My Special Glasses are mirrors
on both sides,
so while you think you see my face
set in judgement around your sins,
eyebrows raised, mouth tight,
you see a different kind of reflection.

91/365: an operational definition of obscenity

The body's rhythm is out of sync with the mind's desire -
it's 5:57 on a Sunday morning
and there is no reason to be making coffee.

90/365: 3rd dimension

I'm cruising down the highway,
connecting two points with the shortest
possible distance.

It's a juxtaposition of events next -

Journey's Don't Stop Believing pops up
on my iPod and I crank the volume.

It's the blaring over the mini-van's speakers

and the dawn just about to happen -
a red rim forming over the treeline.

I crest the hill and for a moment
I'm convinced I only need to pull back
on the steering wheel
and my little van and I
will begin to lift off.

If this were to happen,
I would bank left
into the rising sun,
headed toward new beginnings
and possibilities.

89/365: Julia (Published in Words Dance)

She would be in her nineties now
but I only imagine her at four -
still awkward,
the roundness of her face
waiting to be stretched out
over family cheek bones.

Since photographs
were luxuries beyond
their means,
I can only guess
that her long hair
had a wave to it,
like ripples over a dark pond,
as mine once did.

I've only heard about you,
Aunt Julia,
in the way family scars are shared -
the teller of the tale
surprised to be telling,
but needing to tell
in order to help make sense.

My grandmother, your sister,
was twelve
and in charge.
Because adolescence
had not been invented in 1926.

What were you looking for
with your long hair flowing
when you opened the coal stove?

Deep in the waters of story
this is the moment
when madness sparked,
burning generations.


See this poem on Words Dance: http://wordsdance.com/2014/10/julia-by-mark-bonica/

88/365: San Antonio, after rain

After rain
the gully
reflects the sky:
a schmear of white clouds
against razor blue.

There is a blossoming of insects
and the long grass grows
a foot overnight
it seems.

One wouldn't guess
that rock bones
will jut
through the dry skin of dirt
in only a few days.

87/365: oil

Whenever I pour olive oil
I find I've spilled some on my fingers.
It seems a requirement
that a drop or two
slips down somehow to my index finger,
or into the crotch of my thumb.

Today it's there on the ridge
of my middle finger
and rather than wipe it with a paper towel
I press it into my hand
feeling the warm slickness.

I contemplate the green glass bottle
that holds the rest of the oil
like the bottles and jugs and barrels
that flow backward millennia
connected by this gentle thing.

86/365: parking lot sunrise

Not quite ready to go into the office,
I sit in my mini van
listening to poetry,
chewing over the poet's voice.

When I notice the sun
is breaking the horizon
I realize I had driven in the dark
drinking coffee from a steel mug
the audiobook playing,
everything on automatic.

As I watch the sun making that first sprint
over the trees and buildings
another car parks along side me.
I hear the driver slam his (or her) door,
but I'm thinking about the moment,
and s/he's already gone.

85/365: household spirits

the hearth spirit (who lives in the oven)
is displeased again
with the way I leave my frying pan on the stove
and don't wash it immediately.

I sprinkle some flakes in the fish tank
and the water sprite I swore was a gold fish
when I bought her at the pet store
(no wonder the owner refused payment)
complains about how it's always more of the same.

The guardian of the threshold
informs me my shoes are not the best match
for the belt I am wearing;

the garden gnomes are disgruntled
about the un-neat edging I did yesterday
(what is "un-neat"?);

the dryad steps out from her trunk,
arms crossed,
and glowers as I get in the car.

It's the glower that stays with me
and when I get home
I hang the bird house I had promised
and forgotten about.

Then it's in to change and back out again
with the weed whacker.
I hear after, "he's learning"
as I go back through the garage.

The guardian approves
of my taking my sneakers off
at the door,

and when I drop some dried shrimp in the tank
the eager splashing is followed
by a bubbly belch.

I grab a beer and sit down at the kitchen table,
and the hearth spirit asks,
have the Christmas sales started yet?
It's only August, I reply, wiping sweat
with my hand.

It's never too early to start thinking
about family, she replies.


***

audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/household-spirits

84/365: my people

I contemplate the fifteen kinds of jerky -
two turkey and thirteen beef -
by the register at Walmart.

The blessings of far flung lands
burst into the aisles
and spill forth from end caps
and I wander amongst them
as I once did bookstores
(when there were bookstores)
considering the potential.
There is a book aisle at Walmart,
do not fear,
if you want to relive for forty feet of shelf space
what that other life was like.

This is a different kind of potential,
but not so different as the hipsters
would have you believe.

These are my people, I tell you.
They are dreamers dreaming dreams.
They are building castles in the sky
under which they hope to some day
put foundations.

They do not keep pace with you,
and they have not heard
of Henry David Thoreau and his project
to eat beans and drink water
and do nothing but sit by a pond,
so mock them.
But with their XXXL leopard print spandex
they too ride their scooters
to the beat of a drummer
you cannot hear.

82/365: just in case

My briefcase stowed in the hold,
I throw off
and drift into the stream of traffic
making my way down the canals
of my subdivision,
merging through the locks of lights
until I hit the big river highway.

I set my minivan on a southerly heading -
two hands on the wheel.
Red lights off the bow
and white coming past port -
the sun has yet to unfurl its rosy-fingered arms.

When questioned whether he was a merchant
or a pirate
Odysseus declared for the black flag.
There is no glory in being a merchant
and so I have my Jolly Roger in the glove box
and a bottle of rum under the lumbar-supporting seat
just in case I find the courage today
to drive on past my exit -
straight
into the winedark sea.

---

From Adam Smith's Lectures on Jurisprudence:

In a rude society nothing is honourable but war. In  the Odyssey, Ulysses is sometimes asked, by way of affront, whether he be a pirate or a merchant. At that time a merchant was reckoned odious and despicable; but a pirate or robber, as he was a man of military bravery, was treated with honour. We may observe that those principles of the human mind which are most beneficial to society, are by no means marked by nature as the most honourable.

81/365: Accidentally Talking with Oedipus

Oedipus will back me up on this -
you were destined to be reading these lines

right at this moment.

There are things you can fight,
but fate isn't one of them.

So I'm sorry if I've entered
your afternoon web surfing unexpectedly,
but it was preordained.

It's also true that
your choice of dinner this evening
is going to lead to an inevitable conclusion
some years from now.

Well, maybe not your dinner,
but something will.

See - Oedipus is nodding over there
the empty sockets of his eyes
directed away from us, but his ear
pointed straight at you.

He tells me it's not all bad,
this fate thing -

not

all.

***

audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/accidentally-talking-with-oedipus

80/365: a conversation

we say a lot
or we say a little

words come forth and
do dances

or 

they come forth
and sit down, feet kicked up
on punctuation ottomans

hearing what isn't said
especially
when there is a riotous word gathering -

a joyous festival of word patrons -
or a staccato of angry word soldiers -
or just a subway platform of word commuters
pushing and shoving onto the next train -

it seems it might be important
to count the silences.

79/365: point of view

I was not born in Turkey
so it's hard for me to explain
why when we talk
I seem to be a whirl of bright cloth,
my twin blades flashing
in a turning
not unlike the chaotic turning of two suns offset
rising East-West as expected, but also almost West-East
if this were possible.

You, with your laconically complected articulation
that says little when we both listen closely
(ears bent in - observing)
You are closer to the British style
as if what you hold back
is not as obvious as what I put forward -
the tip of your rapier
pointed and waiting for the linear strike
through all of my words -
my words.

but my words are a cloud of meaning -
does the lightning speak any more clearly
than the sky?

78/365: Metis

I heart-see Metis on her river
like a woman in a canoe

while my eyes see the reflected dapple
of leaves and yellow sun

she is what runs through -
penetrating

her paddle dips below the calm surface
and I study her black hair -
like a waterfall cascading,
the sun, white repeating, in its strands

she turns to look at me on the bank

  eyes now blue as the hopeful sky
  eyes now grey as the storm
  eyes now green as the return of shore grass

my feet are bare
and I am suddenly conscious of the cool mud -
I look down and recognize my origins
as well as my ends.

I look up again
and she is gone

***

audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/metis

* * *

from http://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/Okeanides.html:

THE OKEANIDES (or Oceanides) were three thousand goddess Nymphs who presided over the sources of earth's fresh-water, ranging from rainclouds to subterranean springs and fountains...Some of the Okeanides personified divine blessings, such as Metis (Wisdom), Klymene (Fame), Plouto (Wealth), Tykhe (Good Fortune), Telesto (Success), and Peitho (Persuasion). 

77/365: Iron

It is an age passing:

what men will we be,

when iron goes to join

bronze and gold?

76/365: white room

white room
prison room
waiting room.
time coming.

maintaining balance.
precarious.

sharpened -
there is a crack there in the concrete.

the steel toilet
the cot
the mattress

this is enough for one more day -
one more hour

precarious.
waiting.
white.

75/365: gas station in rain

it's raining and the thing to do it seems
is to stand out in it
while the tank fills, pump clicking
gas rushing.

each drop that falls
strikes my hair like a light finger tap -
like someone standing behind me,
perhaps on a stool
tentatively touching here, then there,
unsure.

the other pumpers stand under the roofs
not watching-watching me -
but this is a thoughtful sprinkling
not a downpour.

it is worthy of consideration.

74/365: hands

cracked skin old man hands
fingers wrap an axe handle -
strength has not fled yet.

46/365: first hours

in the first hours of morning
they say the mind is soaked
in its own dew.

things are undone in the night:

bows untied, and the ribbon left dangling
from the back of a white dress;

there is a gap in the fence
where slats have been removed -
no twisted nails, rusted heads looking
in all directions -
the weathered wood is just gone.

are your feet wet?
is that a blade
of grass on your toe?
where were you walking to
when I saw/was you in the moonlight?

73/365: blueberry morning

how the year of poems
rolls over into a third year

"lower your standards" is the advice
I give, but have difficulty following

the blueberries cooked black
in my oatmeal
burst with purple blood.

this is a thing I can comment about
all the rest seems too large -
why we exist here on this rock,
why we exist at all.

a comment on blueberries bursting
and no comment on eternity.