Puckett Publishing - Poems Volume 6

Volme Six: Hexagonal Perspective

Accidental Pre-Dawn Shock	Away and in Danger
Bathstone	Busy Business
Cold Hands, Warm Heart	Earth Waves
Expectation	Five Oh Seven
Heart As Hearth	I Have No Hobbies
Leafsmoke	Midwinter Muse
Never::Not	Next To
Messy Scenes	Ode to Power
Palace of Winds	Ragnarocky Vision
Shadow Horse	Small Things
Southern Summer	The Art of Procrastination
The Fog Lies Low	The Smallest Slip

Accidental Pre-Dawn Shock

Walking into the kitchen like

Nothing much, just easy like

Five A.M., but not too strange

Walking past the kitchen range.

A shadow past, with my same stride

Beside me quiet, seems to glide.

I start and shout, my heart is raced

Against pure terror I am braced.

A second, no, it’s even less:

It’s over and who would have guessed?

My daughter’s stride so matched to mine

And three quick steps could so define

My fear, then ire, then quick regret

That moments like these we forget

So quickly that another morning

Will find us only merely yawning.

Away and in danger, this is my small stream of thought:
That you move at a remove and still at home in my mind.
The dangers are real and imagined. The thoughts are clouds,
Born on the winds of a brain that could drown in you,
Easily. And yet, not so easy: the face and form that
Glide before the eye of the mind, they shift and will
Not be still. Which is your hair? Which your lips, your eyes?
What is the sound of your real voice? My mind can conjure,
It cannot create. To have you back, your flesh and mine,
This alone will sever the fever and free the seer.

Alone and in anguish, this is the flood plain I tread.
These movements are shadows, only your true presence
Can dispel them. Love among shadows is a shadow, too.
A sudden mental fire consumes me: it is your dream self,
Your dream body, holding mine, your embrace is centered fire.
These are shadows and yet not. Their promise is frantic,
But they pass as smoke, each reaching for the other,
A dream wind breaking them into smoky shards, fragments...

Awake and in waiting, this is where I find myself,
My true self. The dream body stands on western cliffs,
Gazing as if to fly, ready to leap across the days, ready
To lie across your breast. Soft breath mingles with soft wind.
Soft sounds fall into softer skin, sweet lips kiss with
Strong, and then stronger need. Eventide throws the stars
Into our laps, brilliant moments that need no words.
To have you back, my soul and yours, never yet apart, yet
Requiring one another. Sleep another night, perhaps
The dream may find us, needing and nurtured.

Bathstone

Bathstone is cappuccino:
Monkish anciens, submerged Roman
Architecture, lead-lined decadence.
An Avon flows through it all,
Hints of Shakespeare, fed
By hot springwater.
Minerva feeds the Bard?
Wisdom informs the Muse?
But so many Avons in England,
They may all be confused.

Waters that rained ten millennia
Trickle down to the mantle
And then percolate up
To warm Roman butts
And thrill American tourists.
A similar feeling?
Romanesque Yankees?
But so many Romans these days,
They may all be Romans.

The Circus and the Crescent
Enclose the soccer play.
The trees and lovely gardens
Robe the silence
All around the bathstone.

Busy Business

Busy business takes up all the time
And throws it out of the net
Might as well forget to forgive
As try and deal with a dealer.

Businessmen crowd the halls like ants
Intent on meeting the next moment
With vigor and definite courage,
Never confused with idle one-upmanship.

Stormy trades are endorphins here,
Another modern addiction:
Might as well resign to design,
And carry wealth and power to the grave.

Crazy comprehension takes all the cells
And throws them in the blender,
Wishing they had forgotten
Instead of merely losing the way home.

Cold Hands, Warm Heart

Try seeing through a flame,
And see what you get: distorted sight.
A flame in the heart is not the same
As a flame in the eye.
Burning for something
Is not the same as being burned up.

Look through a sheet of ice
And see what you get: more of the same.
Having it down cold is not the same
As being cold inside.
Being collected and cool
Is not the same as freezing up.

Cold hands, warm heart
Hot hands, cold heart.
Best to get it right.

Earth Waves

With a note so low

That it barely trembles the mountains

And leaves hardly any notice

On the ocean waves,

The terran ball rolls toward dawn,

One low note at the bottom of all.

Lower notes still do exist,

But this one is close

And humans hear it silently.

From the longest wave to

The quickest cosmic beam,

We partake in every combination.

We vibrate from the fiery fundament

To the crystalline cap.

Expectation

Senses sent careening

Waiting for release

Mouths are almost screaming

Waiting for the feast

Glowing titillation

Alive and almost done

Electric excitation

Illuminates the sun.

Touching stimulation

Thrilling in the spine

Near hallucination

Almost cross the line.

Near yet never over

Is where we want to be

Else lying ‘neath the clover

Or beneath the deep blue sea.

Five Oh Seven

Five oh-seven. Time marked.
No, already five oh-eight. No static,
Just dynamic configuration.
Wait for clarity, and eclipsed by thought.
AM. PM. Central Standard. Pacific Daylight.
Measured, I Am. Posted past noon,
I’m late, as usual.
Standard and pacific, central
Daylight is brightest at noon.
Ticking by at just the speed of time,
Hours per second. Second person,
Third person, first time ever,
Then past and lost and barely touched.

Strange: when you stop to notice
You stop noticing.

Heart As Hearth

Warm, suffusing glow, the heart as hearth,

Fills me surely and complete.

Tidal storms may await without.

Inside this place lies calm fire.

Returning here, I am a compass,

Encircling the best and brightest flame.

What keeps the glow strongly lit

Without burning down th emantle?

Peace and strength, a love who’s length

Knows no bound in time or space

Keeps no part in smaller place,

Finds but love in the loved one’s face,

Longs all times to know love’s taste.

I Have No Hobbies

He said, “I have no hobbies.”

What? Nothing for your spare time?

No wile away the hours, carefree soul,

Lackadaisical whimsy, easy listening?

He nodded no, then pointed at the clock,

Then at the calendar, then at the sun,

Then at the moon, conveniently risen.

Oh. It must be time, the relentless foe.

He said, “Time is not the foe.

Rather, all time is the same time,

All work is the same work, all effort the same,

A unified continuum, dharma matching karma.”

He turned back to his writing

And somewhere a punch clock stabbed a line

Dividing a day into drudgery and leisure.

But it was clear he paid it none of his mind.

Leafsmoke

The crisp clarity of voices in the yard
While leafsmoke considers
Its lazy route from golden lawns.
A radio reveals a sudden cheer,
Since somewhere there are touchdowns.

The barest sense of sadness tinges all,
Just enough to make it tart,
Like fresh autumn cider,
Like almost memories, on the edges
Of real memories, wrapped
In leafsmoke and cheering crowds
And markers of another year.
This is the changing of the year,
The true New Year event,
The edging out of fervent summer
To make way for barren trees.

For of the year, it is as Churchill said:
"Nothing so sharpens the mind
As certain knowledge of one’s impending
Execution." Sharp indeed.

Sharp like cider and leafsmoke.

© 1996 Chuck Puckett

Midwinter Muse

There is something primal and ancient in all this.
Something reminiscent of forces larger
And surer than those we consciously admit.
Life itself withdraws, and only the barest flicker is left
To give evidence it still exists. But the Solstice is past,
And we will now bravely revel against the Darkness,
A shivaree whose volume and sheer audacity
Eternally guarantees that the flicker shall quicken again,
Dormant now beneath the frost, but eternally returning.
The evergreens are sure sign of an ages-old contract.

Deep Magic presses against a cold windowpane and whispers
“I know… and I have not forgotten.”

Never::Not

Such finality!

What will you must possess

To state the proposition.

The negative is impossible

To categorically prove.

The one example

That counters the thesis

Might wait just around the corner,

Grinning in its prescience.

I’d be careful with such

Exactitudes. They plead

So convincingly with

The universe to

Reverse the ruling.

And then you have

Existential egg on your face.

Next To

You want that comedy to play to the back wall?

Keep in clean, mister!

I don’t care what you say, just how you say it,

How you do it, how you move it, and

Whether I heard the words

Or were they mumbled trash?

Comedyness is next to cleanliness:

If they can’t see it and hear it,

How can they laugh at it?

Sure, words with a “K” are funny,

But if it sounds like “pittle”,

There’s no hilarious pickle.

Keep it sharp, moving on the dime:

Dick Van Dyke only seemed to be stumbling.

Look closer: every prat fall was a pirouette.

Chaplin, Sellers, Ball, Gleason, Depp:

They might have been dancers

But they were comedians.

Cleaner than a whistle,
Funnier than crap.

Messy Scenes

Tragedy is messy. Melodrama is clean.

Melodrama wraps it all up,

And evil is repaid and

Good is triumphant and

You know who’s on first

And what’s on second.

Tragedy is unresolved and insecure.

Did Hamlet’s father’s ghost exist?

Did Claudius really kill his father?

Why did the comic relief die behind the arras?

That’s what happens when the Irresistable

Faces the Immovable, Apollo grapples

With Dionysius, and the Excluded Middle

Demands impossible reconciliation.

Dirt piled on a plate and dished up

For diners who cannot pay, much less tip.

Ode to Power

Written in the aftermath of the April Storms of 2011.

More than three hundred dead.

We think we own the world.

Houses flat, churches open to the sky.

We believe we have subdued Nature.

Relentless sirens wailing over and over.

Nothing can sway our will to control.

Mile wide swaths behind mile wide columns of wind

This land obeys us, these winds and waters are ours.

Darkness complete, wires down, phones silent

The human reigns over all he surveys.

Freezers thaw, food rots, candles burn, voices low

We are masters of all we survey, owners of the earth.

Power incorruptible is power without desire, mindless and utter

Palace of Winds

We will meet again in the palace of winds
When the last sunlight fades
When fall begins and summer ends
Pour the wine, fill the glass
Soon these visions too shall pass
In this world nothing lasts
You know that’s true, don’t you?

Leave home, leave now
You’ll live somehow
Leave love, leave time
Make way for starshine
See things, take roads
Don’t ask where they go
That’s when it begins
In the palace of strong winds
You’ll see your fortune sold
The way it was foretold
By seers lost in ages old
In ages old

Ragnarocky Vision

Dead things are moving
In the mists, in the foggy night
Nature is leaving,
With her heart, the sole living light.
Wrongness has triumphed
Over all that was standing guard
Darkness is roaring
In the dawn, and it carries a sword.

We are the parents
Of a world that is wailing now.
Our seed had union
With the worst, an unholy vow.
Morning won't save us
From the knife, from a harvest lost,
From vast destruction,
From the fire, from a killing frost.

All things are dying
On a sea made of frozen blood
No one is trying
To reach out, to see what is good.
Rampantly greedy,
We are torn, never satisfied.
Dead souls are needy
Never know they've already died.

Shadow Horse

The morning rides in on a shadow horse.
Clouds mass up to remind us of other shadows.
Nothing knows its own narration,
And so we forget who we really are
Because the story is stronger than the narrator.

Small Things

What is it in the small that rings of greatness?
The small voice rings out from the void
And captures the great soul.
The small hope grows from a crannied door
And overtakes despair like a tide.

Yet how do we know? If the voice we hear
Is God on his throne, or madness in minds?
What’s the clear flag, the legitimate judge?
Follow God, and you follow the Glory.
Follow your small mad self,
And horror waits down a dark alley.

Wisdom distinguishes, or so ‘tis said.
Sophia on her high seat leads Shiva
By the horns, and draws a circle around his loins
Destroyer? The dark angel tried mightily
And failed in Goshen. Belief stood firm
Against the form of terror. Sophia knew,
Moses commanded, Pharoah rebelled.
It is ever thus, the triad always tries
To square the circle when the Duad
Rears its hydra-head against the formless one.

Void? Of what? The fullest reach
Of emptiness contains the smallest piece
And still explodes in zero-point denial
Of the vain attempt at micro-extinction.
Hold the point to your heart, and breathe
Its own intention. Death? Then come.
Immortality? That may be.
Reunion with the empty Fullness?
The greatest always starts small.

Remember the true One you started with.
Never release what God gave in the Garden.
Stop still before the first force
And seek the fountain flowing freely.
Chaos died from seven drillings.
How easy it is to die in a whole.
How pure to live so fully empty.
Want not, waste not, where not, who not.

Smallness will not wait, it’s infinite implication
Strives against all odds. Even then, the wait is hard.
The soul desires only to return to home and hearth,
Warmth and weaning. Relief and restoration.
What stops it? Only the belief that it differs
From the others in any wise whatsoever.
No separation means always home.
It’s the seeing that fails, that holds to distinction.
We could be heroes, and that tantalizes too much.
We won’t be zeroes, the finality of the flame
Is terror incarnate. Against that night
Enlightenment is a rabbit, cowering in a whole.

The small voice is infinitely small. Few know it.
Fewer hear it, fewer still are beckoned by it,
Even fewer obey, least of all succeed.
That’s the danger. And so we ask,
"Did it speak at all? Did God know me so well
That He revealed is plan, or even that small cog for me?"
Doubt, whose name is fear, worries on that
More than all the other stand-betweens combined.

So get small. Or don’t get anything.
Forget everything except the small details.
The devil lies in those, and will not be denied.
So? If allowed to listen, some small part
Of all of us can reveal the great part
Of every small voice. Nothing can withstand
The one who acknowledges his smallness.
Against the Great Tide, all hope fails.
So do not hope. Against the numberless Void
All effort ends. So do not try.
All the voice asks is that you do. So do.
Glory in God is doing for God.
All else is numbing commentary.

Southern Summer

Summer takes my breath away
But leaves no air at all
Or air I can breathe, anyway:
It lies there like a pall.

That’s southern summer I talk about
From July to September
When hot’s a thing so roundabout
You wish it were November.

The pavement’s hot, and so’s the pool
And even so the rain.
There’s nothing then can make it cool,
You’d die for fall again.

Yeah, southern summer cooks the soul
From the edge right to the center.
So why endure here? What’s the goal?
Well— there’s not much southern winter.

The Art of Procrastination

The improbable of dubious utility I do now,
The obvious takes a little longer.
The standard set of triage markers I ignore.
These decisions I think make me stronger.

The thawing tundra highway has a subtle appeal,
Macadam for pavement can only weaken.
Reading road signs for directions is for fools,
Trust the borealis to provide a beacon.

Speaking plainly to make a point is proving nothing.
Circular logic is more compelling,
Obfuscation is an art that's underrated.
It's not much the sell as it's the selling.

Wise prevention pounds against the mask of honor,
Unprepared, I wait for any dangers.
Cleansed and pure, unencumbered by perception,
I'm a warrior, tabla rasa, to face all strangers.

The Fog Lies Low

The fog lies low on the Tennessee

The bare tops of winter trees can be seen

Across the channel.

But there is no channel.

The fog covers it

The mists swirl and reach to the bank

But no further

The river is a river of fog today

The water hangs above and flows below.

The Smallest Slip

The stick slides out, the edifice falls.

The thread is pulled, the cloth unweaves.

The stone dislodged, the castle falls.

Lancelot lets one compromising

Passion unseal his heart

And honour tumbles,

Undone and compromised,

Into a lily-scented swamp.

Once the first lie leaves the lips

It carries with it the whole integral.

Now the soul is differentiated

Partly wishing back the unadult,

Partly covering up the subsequent lie.

For lies will emerge again:

Once sullied, once strayed from,

The crooked path is easily taken.

How did we learn to lie?

To avoid some pain or shame,

In the betrayed hope that inner shame

Would carry no cost, imply nothing

More than mirrored discomfort?

The universe lied when it offered

That glib and smoother road.

We carry every merest subterfuge,

That ever we careless played,

Like scars on the heart and soul.

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