We Anachronisms

In the moment Lives Between Time

met a human named Hermelinda,

an anthill, shorn by lawnmower blades,

bore its labyrinthine belly

to the hot Dallas summer.

Meeting Mister Shadow Body: another poem about sleep paralysis

Twenty years ago,
emerging from a dream
(now long forgotten),
awake but frozen –
yes, paralyzed!
(except for my eyes) –
I saw him pacing
in the hall, a phantom,
3-D silhouette,
Mister Shadow Body.
I was not scared then.
Terror came later
as he returned again
again again again.
Because Shadow Body
sightings are just
misfirings in my brain,
the more I learned
about evil,
the more evil he became.

Yes, I wrote another poem about sleep paralysis. Don’t worry, it hasn’t been bad lately, thanks to … ROSIE! At night, she scares the monsters away.

Obligatory science: During the REM cycle, when people dream, “Hypnopompic

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When I Remember That I’m an Adult Now

Have I really lived 9500 days?
I can only remember a small fraction.
My Consciousness is stagnant.
It must be a boulder sitting in the river
(in this metaphor, the river is time),
unmoving, yes, unmoving,
as it’s steadily eroded.

My Lernaean Hydra

We the Curious
are Tantalus in hell,
since every question answered
yields others, unending.
Our heads bow, made heavy,
not humble,
when the Lernaean Hydra grows, when
questions swarm and sting and coalesce
into one resounding
why?

 

Or, as Emerson put it, “Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.”

The Gulf Between Us

Back-to-back,
we are divided by two oceans –
the Atlantic and Pacific –
if you run west instead of east
and I fall east instead of west.

So maybe we should turn around, or something 😛

A Haiku About (Literary) Regrets

I once wrote a poem
titled “My Incarnate Woe”
and it still haunts me.
Seriously, I was a high school freshman, and I read it to the whole English class. At least it had a really appropriate title.

To My Astronomer – Love, Your Oceanographer

Nightly, behind a telescope you pine

for elsewhere. For stars, Goliath

gaseous planets, asteroids,

and nebulae. “Lovers want

the moon,” you claim.

I disagree.

You scoff, “Prove it.”

A Haiku Dedicated to Dreamers

Sleep paralysis 

provides the chance to fathom

superstitious fear.

Which can be fun sometimes. After the fact.