Puckett Publishing - Poems Volume 3

Volme Three: Imperfect Trinity

Das Ding An Zen	Do You Know What It Means
Fear Follower	Flight To England
In the Palm of Your Hand	Love, Now and Then
A Man Has No Womb	Martian Sunrise
Memory’s Curse	Never Again
No Fond Farewell	Periodicity
Preludes and Postludes	Scenes From a Postcard
Sharp Edges	The Problem With Rectangular States
Tralala	A Warrior Prepares
Who Was That Unmasked Man?	Wind & Cloud
Yellow

Das Ding An Zen

A lonely mountain in the distance.
No, wait, how can I know it’s lonely?
I feel lonely seeing it, yes, that’s it.

A mountain in the distance.
No, wait, how do I know it’s distant?
I see a mountain against sky,
Or something like a sky,
And it merely seems distant.

A mountain.
No, wait, it’s a shape, broader at the base,
Tapering at the top,
And blueness, or something like blueness,
Is behind it, no wait, frames it
On either side.

I am walking on the road toward
A broad, tapering shape framed in blue.
I reach it,
And it is a mountain.

Do You Know What It Means

driving down through the piney woods
mississippi gets lonely below hattiesburg
i-59 turns into i-10 just above slidell
turn west and the flatness has salty air
the long bridge over pontchartrain
stretches impossibly but invitingly
back on almost solid ground katrina’s
wreckage begins to predominate
and the radio is humming phantom jazz
even when it’s not tuned in
top the ship channel bridge
highest point in miles and there it is
the big and easy lights beckon
with aromas that are both decayed
and newly sauted in cajun spices
flag stone sidewalks in the quarter
echo endlessly into some of america’s
most ancient sub-sea level air
we will leave after three days
which is the most a body can stay
without going native and forever losing
one’s heart to this soiled and luminous city

Fear Follower

Keep checking, they may be behind you
Small insects and larger rodents
And people with tombstone eyes
Fear grazer, they might still find you
Soft feelers and scraping setae
And beasts in human disguise.

Stop looking, there’s nothing to guide you
No signpost or clever riddle
Or prophet with wisdom to spare
Lost roamer, there’s no one beside you
No sidekick, fit as a fiddle,
To save you when danger is there.

Just force it, each step right before you
One foot after the other
Victory lies in how you act.
Keep at it, though all men ignore you
No man claims you as brother
You’ll make it, and never look back.

Flight To England

Nashville to Dallas to London
The traveled man cares not
East to West to East
Or retrograde, it's all the same
Gather a pack and a bag,
Look at tickets, passes.
Check passports, schedules.

What separates beginning from end
Is the onboard ramp,
The slow queue, each waiting.
Give a pass and take a seat.
Time machines of the twentieth:
Rumble and roar and pass the time.
Go in and one is changed.
Step out and the world has changed.

Travel broadens, but the seats are narrow.
Minds can focus, but the belly's wide.
Wide-bellied craft, small-minded folks.
They'd carry more if they could,
But the baggage they bear is old,
Paid for with living too close
To each other and nothing new.

But once on! Then the changes come!
Nothing is the same and views evolve.
Morning becomes electric, and early,
Too early in this machine of time
And place and changing places.
Give it time, it will take you.
Any place is home with time.

In the Palm of Your Hand

You hold the key in the palm of your hand.
The lock is rusted, and opens by pain.
Turning the key might result in distress,
Leaving it be leaves the truth in the dark.
Courage deserts the soul that acts all alone,
Knowledge is drawn from blood in your veins.
Fearless resolve may fade in the words
Revealed when the door is opened and clear:
It’s “Know thyself”, written simple and plain
Simple to read, but perilous to do.
Below that phrase, there’s more to observe:
“Better thyself”, a labor without an end.
Finally, commanding you to the last:
“Perfect thyself”, a goal beyond all goals.
How can the human will hope to achieve
This endless end with a finite reach?

That key in your palm, better left in your palm.
Best not to know, nor look, nor try, nor gain.
This world works against all attempts to surpass
The limitations woven in genes and karma.

From palm to pocket to forgotten bureau,
The key quietly recedes from your thoughts.
Small souls will not grow for lack of light.
Doors kept closed are easier to walk past.

Love, Now and Then

With your faded tattoos and your tie-dyed tees
You remind me of me when I was proud
Proud of my alternative new reality
When I talked just a little too loud
When I held my head cocked to the side
Like I heard some secret refrain
And I knew I would never be satisfied
Till the old world was washed down the drain

Love was free and war was hell
Hair was guaranteed as a pledge
If all we need is love, then please do tell
Why everyone lives right on the edge

With your boundless abandon and full of life
You are primed for the best that life can give
There’s no inkling that the world can cut like a knife
That it takes all you’ve got just to live
Listen to that siren that wails down the street
Listen to that wailing in the wild
Listen to the sound of those marching feet
They’re coming here to steal your inner child

Love is all that stays around
All you’re guaranteed in the end
All we have is love, and standing our ground
With our brothers and our sisters and our friends

A Man Has No Womb

A man has no womb, that is clear
And so his future’s not, yet his fear
Of the future without him drives him on
To build and make some thing to lay his future on.

What all women bear inside is real.
She knows the future touch, she can feel
The womb and what it makes, a guarantee
That she will always live and she will always be.

Many things to name that divide
Man and woman’s view of the fateful tide
But this perhaps the most such tales inform:
That woman bears the child and man is only born.

Martian Sunrise

The river is red this morning,
Like part of a Martian landscape
Before the Old Ones left.
When the canals were full and flowing,
And Martian trees lined the banks.

Down this channel, red water flows,
Lit by a dawn that wants to be on fire
But only holds the chemical signature
Of fire and sulfur and oxide.

Memory’s Curse

I wish that all we knew
Could ever be employed
By minds and hearts and fierce resolve,
Our memories overjoyed.

Like pioneers of old
Who viewed the landscape first
We'd breathe new air, ourselves remade,
And best poor memory's curse.

For memory fades with time
Though traces it will leave
The moments etched so timeless now
Tomorrow will deceive.

Thus wish it always thus,
That mind and heart unite
To give the past a perfect view
To see with second sight

Never Again

How many steps does it take to make the grade?
Why does the road never climb?
Who is the king who said we had to fail
When no one here had ever really tried?
How many ways can a song be never sung?
Where did the poet lose his rhyme?
When will we learn what we’ve chosen to ignore
That today is all we’ll ever know of time?

Never again, I swear we’ll not be
Ever again left hanging on the line
Never again, I swear we’ll not go
Ever again down where they do the dyin’
We’ll never again be left so high and dry

How many times will the pendulum turn back?
What can we do while it’s gone?
Look at the world when the world has all gone mad
Hear all the words that are all wrong
Why do you speak when you won’t take time to think?
Where do you think your words will fly?
These are the times we were warned we should avoid
The times when souls are sent abroad to die

Who would have thought we could ever hope to change?
Who shined the truth on that lie?
Where do we go when we need to try again?
Who do we need to tell us why?
Not in this world will the prophets speak again
Old magic died long ago
Don’t sell your soul to the first who makes a bid
Once it’s gone, you lose the way back home

Never again, I swear we’ll not be
Ever again left hanging on the line
Never again, I swear we’ll not go
Ever again down where they do the dyin’
We’ll never again be left so high and dry

No Fond Farewell

Sing to me no fond farewell
Raise no glass to toast my hallowed name
Let no one ring a single churchyard bell
Light no pyres, no farewell flame

Write no odes that bid me adieu
Say no words of laudatory praise
Of what I did in life leave not one clue
No monumental stone may you raise

No hymn nor psalm nor sad refrain
Drape no box with rosy carpet pall
Upon this world I wish to leave no stain
What was done was done and that is all

What was done was done and now resides
Enmeshed in fabrics worn by other souls
In the doing was the meaning that abides
Or failing that, it falls on rocky shoals.

So either way, remembered or now lost,
No memories at my passing should you say
For either how I lived was worth the cost
Or failing that, it should be thrown away.

Periodicity

The periodic rise and fall:

A mathematic certainty.

We climb the hill, we fall beside

Whatever road we travel down.

The sinusoidal tos and fros,

A pageant wrapped in mystery,

Presents a clear deceiving view

Of something never clearly found.

Preludes and Postludes

Preludes and postludes
Play upon the periphery.
Neither can notice
What wanders midst iffery.
Bounded by blinders
Seeing such a sweet symphony
People don’t ponder
The cause of cacophony.

Stricture and structure
Work with no deciding drum
Flowing past flowers
Whose blooms beat a gentle hum
Elastic leaves lending
Meaning more than a memory
Giving and getting
His and her hymn of the harmony.

Scenes From a Postcard

The exhibition goes on in the next room,

Which, upon opening the door,

Falls away into a great ravine whose

River cuts for eons without asking leave.

I would have sent a picture, but this scene

Is etched in some other mind,

One I no longer remember, or if I do,

It is dim and faint and the colors

Are not the same and my eyes

No longer see with the same eyes.

River runs, ravine swallows, earth dissolves.

Wish you were here. Wish here was here.

Sharp Edges

Sharp edges are foolish,
Fooling the eyes
And following the lines.
Hurtful knife blades that point
To nothing’s point
And something’s wrong.

Dull finish is fuzzy,
Easy on the eyes
And causing no pain.
As the years write their trace
The eyes go dull
And the edge grows close.

The Problem With Rectangular States

Laziness! Pure and simple sloth.
You see it growing, east to west.
The hardy Pilgrims and parolees and peers
Who landed first and found the land
In fractal primal unconquered hardness
Were willing to abide by what the landscape gave.

North by East, it seems the land claimers
Had more localized demands: small and manageable,
But bounded by nature’s boundaries,
And thus irregular and oddly shaped,
Lovely, unique constructions.

Moving South, the scope was broader,
Or else the map-makers grew weary of much detail.
And mathematics began to raise its ugly head,
Lines of latitude marking the southern edges of states.
On the western verge, still rivers and mountains
Decided the territorial limits.

Massachusetts was the first to hint at squareness,
Certainly its bounds are linearesque.
But the eye need go no further than Pennsylvania
To see the seed of sloth that blossoms heading west.
Who knew Quakers were closet Pythagoreans?
And from this seed, neighboring Ohio strives
For squarity, thwarted only by the river and the lake.

Tennessee’s parallelogram lies flatly over
The increasing rectangularity of the Deep South.
Cross the Mississippi, and there’s a sort of pause
In the square wave that’s been building.
But rhomboid Arkansas and almost square Iowa
Point to the inevitability waiting next door.

You can just see the territorial dividers,
With compass and ruler, manfully considering
Rivers and Rockies, some differentiation,
But finding none, And then looking up,
They say, “It’s lunchtime, screw it,
Make them all boxes, let’s get out of here.”

Laziness squares up the map until the obstinacy
Of the Pacific forces fractal reality back onto the atlas.
Lazy cartography, the bane of maps made by man.
Manifest Destiny meets TGIF work ethic.
I guess no one thought it would get this big.

Tralala

Tralala, skipping over stones
And other hard parts of the trail.
Tralala, ignoring cold stares
And unfitted jigsaw puzzles.
Red-caped and intentionally naive.
There are no wolves, or they have no teeth.

Tralala, singing in bliss.
If there were words, they’d all rhyme.
Tralala, there is only sun shine,
No shadows even, at least in front.
Picking jonquils from beside the path.
There is no small, dark cloud on the horizon.

Tralavail, whistling while they work,
Digging easy gems from soft limestone
Tralalunacy, moonglow on the beach
Stretched out on blankets for a tan.
The roar of surf drowns the gentle harmony
For a song that admits no dissonance.

Tracheotomy, and the voice stops.
No one was listening anyway
Tragistandupcomic, his empty jokes
Beget laughter that lulls to sleep, the ocean
Roars on until dawn, while a gentle tsunami
Prepares breakfast in bed for the sleeping singers.

A Warrior Prepares

The warrior class is awake now
Shaving and drinking coffee
Preparing to do battle with
Losses and profits and meetings
And emails and documents
And each other.

Significant he or she still sleeps
Not too significant, or else
The thought of them might intrude
On the endless parade of
Potential enemies in
The warrior’s mind.

Wake up, warrior! You only seem
To be awake, with your cup of joe
And endless list of endless foes.
Sighs if I can’t, signs if I can,
Don’t look for them lying
In the peaceful other’s sleep

Who Was That Unmasked Man?

Morphed so many times I’ve lost count. The gamut

From cardboard sets and aluminum foil monsters

To first rate special effects and whizzbang scaries.

The police box at least stays the same

But the insides have reinvented themselves

Continuously, with the one always-noted exception:

It’s still much bigger within than without.

Once there were endless black and white scenes

In English gravel pits, camera work that

Brutally shifted back and forth, exterior shots

With windy microphones to interiors

That were completely quiet sound stages

Where endless passages could be run down.

And it all grew up in time (where else?),

So now the scenes have color and continuity,

And the characters have dimensions (not relative),

And the man himself has Messianic power.

Who? Exactly.

Wind & Cloud

Given a wind on a cloudy day
And nothing can be denied.
A wind permits all possibilities,
Blowing away the barriers
And clearing the clouds.

Rather a breeze to face than rain,
Even a small hurricane.
Winds talk from other places
In language too subtle
For clouds to shroud.

Above the strato-nimbus winds
Are best of all, Elysian children.
Swirling on the tops of heaven
Cherubic seraphim
With wisdom and whimsy.

Yellow

Always been my favorite, yellow.
Funny, I don’t feel cowardly,
Though I’ve done enough damage
To my liver to warrant the adjective.

No, I prefer the sunlit, buttery hue,
Brightness against the blue, Tom
Bombadil’s colors, implied cherry nose,
Spread on toast in a bright kitchen.

The line down the middle of the lane
Is solid and I pass across it anyway.
Who hears caution with such obvious
Encouragement on the pavement?

Blondes and straw and jonquil spring,
Incessantly urged through the traffic lights.
Superman gained his powers from a yellow sun.
Who am I to argue such colorful logic?

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