En Pied

We could be like plants
Live, laughing on sunlight soil
Toes sucking up rain
But not rooted

Traveling with
Dirt filled shoes
If you wear shoes
If not
The rich dark mulch of
Passed lives
Sticking to our souls

  
© 2024 Audri Phillips

Darkness Has Its Place

 Light is a constant
 Pulsing
 Darkness is smooth like pouring cream
 Filling the cracks
 It is darkness that does the heavy lifting
 Crawling across walls in the course of a day
 A sheltering cloak
 A wide oak spreading into the white
 Cool underneath

 Darkness has its place
 Nestling the firmaments 
The combusting stars
 Creators of life
Giving each the courtesy of a separate space

 Darkness has its job
 Nestling each heart within its cavity
 Together yet alone
 Woven
 One pin pricked black cushion
 Bleeding

 Can an x-ray reveal?
 The heart of darkness that resides within each
The engine in a cave
 Each heart a star beating
 A light bathed in darkness

 © 2012 Audri Phillips

Maybe we are all here to be lonely

To find our separateness

Our scapulas

Our heart beat

Our song

A knowing to bring back to the whole

Like a lion on a rock shelf

Perhaps we need a vantage point

Otherwise, why the horizon line

© 2010 Audri Phillips

Global Wahrman: Welcome to Global Wahrman

Global Wahrman: Welcome to Global Wahrman: Welcome to Global Wahrman. Our highly literate and welcoming first post was deleted because somehow it was rendered unreadable.  No one k...

This site is destined to be insightful and entertaining.  Michael Wahrman an old friend of mine who is a pioneer in the digital/computer world  has a lot of worthwhile and thought provoking things to say.

Germination

How do we take the measure of a seed

Nestled in the earth

Can a wooden school ruler describe

The space inside

With flower already envisioned

How big is that

And what about the cavity that holds the heart

How large is the space that contains the pain

How do we measure the pulsating border

Soft and shadowed

Where one stops and one starts

© 2009 Audri Phillips

Balance Adjustments

I lost my favorite notebook. Made like a hardcover book with a fold over snapping flap with a place for a pen underneath. The pages smelled like newly minted twigs, and newspaper ink.If I could drink them they would taste like that golden dragon white tea I buy in Hugos. I tell my friends the tea tastes like archival matte board.

The day I found it I also found my long lost glasses. My good glasses, my reading glasses, my seeing things up close glasses. Still haven't admitted i also need glasses for seeing things from far away. I was running around using my spares for weeks, not wanting to spend more to buy new ones when I was still paying off the bill.

My dad is forgetting a lot lately. It is scary to him, not remembering whole days of time or what he did an hour ago. Last time I talked to him he told me that at least he could still remember my name. He goes over and over in his head what he does remember, hoping repetition will cement the memory in place. He said the retrieval time is longer. He has to swim further out each time to find where the waves wash over him. When are they going to start inserting new hard drives into our heads? Update your memory banks with some new fresh ram.

You make a change, put more of your markers on one side of the long board and you have to walk out further to gain equilibrium. Like 2 kids shifting their weight on a see saw. One day I'll be catapulted right off.
The more rabbits there are, the more wolves there are, the fewer rabbits the fewer wolves. That's why putting predator insects on crops to kill off the parasites never works. The predators never kill off all their prey. The species on this planet are all interdependent, or were until we took over the change part of the equation and forgot to fight for the balance.
When are we going to get that there can be no balance until men and women are true partners, when the rights of all living things on this planet are respected.

It comes natural to us, playing with our own evolution, changing it and the evolution of everything on this planet. But what we aren't good at is establishing a new balance once we have melted the icecap.

Chasing down wolves in Alaska with helicopters just doesn't seem to be the answer. Had to turn off the newscast right before they gunned down that frightened wolf.

Anyway I found my glasses and notebook on the back floor of my car, I had searched there many times before. I picked up the glasses, wearing them right now, but the notebook is still there. Waiting for me to write down some explanation of it all. Something that will make sense.
Will I be able to find my dad on the back floor of my car when I lose him?

Wistful

I've been wistful over the loss of the burlap twins.
Those harbinger drifters from the carnival fringe
Who's words came out slowly to darken this town
The Mayor, the Gardener, the Governor and the Clown
Didn't quite hear what voters had meant
When they went out to vote and got rain on their tent
To deliver on skids the Nation's frustration.
A stark Episcopalian escalation
Right at the steps of the doors to the yard
This pile of shit was our business card
Their jockstrap knee jerk earmarks success and
Testicular ruminations couldn't bore me less
overruled pathetic devotion to a depleted joke
We got a new coal plant, the other one broke
You can't sit and tell me the system ain't broke
Sorry twins

Fearless Crow

From a foot away she regarded me

Cocking her head side to side

Beady black eyeball facing me at all times

Shifting her weight from leg to leg

Closer I came and still she remained

Whether I moved forward or back the crow did not fly

I put down my groceries on the sidewalk

Covered in the shadows of old oak trees

To talk with this befuddling bird

One night I dreamed my mother had passed

I was alone and cold

With her had gone all the warmth of the world

Primal remembrance of the sauna in the womb

Perhaps this is why women carry children

To the welcoming light of the earth

The rounded swell at the end of the curve

Where the stem meets the branch

Forever until the tree blooms in color

A season and direction for a leaf

Compelling forces of the fall

Gravity and love

They say space and time explode outward from a point

As territory grows the clock hand circles

Creating is said to take time

This center point lacking both size and time

Is this where the fall ends and begins

Where I and the crow wait?

© 2008 Audri Phillips

The Shape Of the Universe

A loosely spun cocoon

Twisted at the ends

Swelling outwards

Ripe like a bursting plum

Soft and sweet and sour

By the winter the squirrels will have at it

I race on my bicycle to the outskirts

Wheels spinning in the dark swirling storm

Where nothing meets something

I might have learned

One can wait in joy

One can wait in agony

It is all the same

What if we had the fourth sense

The one denied us

Waiting in the wings

© 2008 Audri Phillips

Our cool kopek (from Ceferino Elrod)

been pleased to grant.
She looked forward to hearing men speak of her father as a she.
Another of We came on some, the day before last, said Jaime.
Addam Marbrands scouts had found them,
might not think him worthy of the silver,
but Pate knew how to set a bone and leech a fever.

Note: This was received as spam mail to sell Viagra. I liked the title "Our cool kopek" and it was sent by "Ceferino Elrod". Finding the phrases and rhythm quite pleasing, I decided to post this spam email as poetry. I make no claims to be the author, only to identify the work as poetry.

Shelter for the Cricket

Mr. TJ Housley, I accidentally come upon your earlier writings on alfalfa on this blog, and I was moved by what I read. I heard the echo of a kindred spirit. Kind of strange to say this on a public blog. Even the word blog makes me think of marshy quick sand.

A poet’s job is to find both the body and the spirit and connect them. I think you do that.

Your work makes me want to share some observances of mine with you about the humblest of our neighbors, grass. Underfoot and trod upon it has contributed much to our common language, the mix of metaphors and contradictions that circle our psyches.

We take for granted, accept so much as ordinary that which is not. Is grass like sleep, something that is either unfathomable or a gift? A few of the words I associate grass with are, longing, growth, progress, up, persistence, hope and light.

The body of grass can be found in its greenness

A breaking of ground

The turning of the earth

Slender shafts uncurling

Tender pale on first emergence

An insistent flowering towards the light

One blade entwining roots with all

Separate individuals forming a whole

Even its voice found in the wind caress of one on another

Whispered again by the cricket

Grass has a directional parameter

Primarily growing upwards

Up now being for us the direction of forward progress

One blade, all blades indomitable before the blade

Can there be growth without longing

Grass, a visual representation of hope

Here can be found its spirit

© 2008 Audri Phillips

Please note that all other writings of mine to TJ will be posted on-

http://thotsohousley.blogspot.com from now on.

Wiggle Room or Sock Escape

City tree out of place

Mired in cross communication wires

Bumping up sidewalk cracks

Got tangled up in shoe

So the toe makes a break for a hole in the sock

Small root projection tearing through the cloth

Angling for some air

Fresh away from the other 4

Still that foot insists on coming along

Chipped purple nail polish out on the town

Mud pie fare of water and dirt

No more cause

Little toe is making like a leaf

Drinking up the light

© 2008 Audri Phillips

Photographs of Dorian Gray

Time's scythe, shuttered by a camera obscura
Purchased with quarters and dimes
Pressed from the hands of true believers
Not saved over the years but
Caught with a net at moment's intent

Due payment, the transaction is applied
Like layers of white gauze over
A row of swollen stitches
Unsanctified healing

Alive like a bullet from a flash of powder
Air oxygen ferrous clay breathes and sweats

Sweet salt develops into images
Inside the darkroom every fraction of a second
Servants of will-power stoke the boiler
Bladed shutters open

When the gauze falls away
Scars of indiscretion are masked by
A cake of cadmium persona

Chord Progression

Morning
Awakening awash with filtered stripes
Blind light
Strange soft shadows
Clamorous discourse outside
The drone

T Rex descendants
Liberated high in the palm of the sky
Dancing and chirping through the octaves
Every note lofted by the wind
The echo

Where is the on flight melody
When in the winged cycle
The song bird is born and dies on the same chord
The hum

Sound over time
Music or discord
The circle of fifths
Offering only a new sharp
My father remembers nothing
The progression

My little black cat
Grace leaps onto my breast
The purr

Do I lose this as well to the
Twilight

© 2008 Audri Phillips

More or Less

Living in a bustling world

flesh, blood and convoluted

Distant, the barren silence

where essence is rooted

More varied in nature,

than god and less near

Rarely in an image

of something crystal clear

More exuberant,

more immediate,

less austere

With oh, much confusion

and far, far greater fear

Beyond your drab conceptions

of truth grand and dear

With faith in independence

firmly held and sincere

Knowing all too well it must

finally disappear

With gentle death

‘Cause in the end there’s nothing, more or less

Finding signs in lover’s eyes

and in the words of men

Then finding peace still missing

to begin that search again

Hard science lights a candle,

in the blackest night

A path thru superstition

to dim future, fully bright

Intuition demands trust

in only reason’s might

Ever mindful of the distance

from delusion to insight

With blessed frequent respite

in romance’s lambent light

Desire’s fleeting nature

renders passion no less bright

There’s cause in creativity

and money’s a delight

But no final solution

to our appetite

For stress

For in the end there’s nothing, more or less

The detective’s on the trail

but the query found the sleuth

Seeking for the core suggests

a proof of the truth

It turns out that its name

means nothin’ to me

When called spirit

then all is spirituality

If we look for mind,

consciousness is all we’ll see

Name it god or love,

you’re really still not free

Words trapping the experience,

to separate it from me

What finally snaps the chains

of that verbal slavery

Is only this,

In the end there’s nothing more or less

The world appears a riddle,

a perplexing maze

And god is even more so,

or so reason seems to say

Complications of existence

weigh me down

Ten thousand separate jewels

in the lords crown

Ten thousand souls

in ten thousand towns

Awaiting his coming,

knees bent to the ground

Hands uplifted,

faces facing down

When that gentle laugh

drew my attention ‘round

Emerson’s voice, in my ear,

a blissful sound

Gem-like phrases resonate,

celebrate

and resound

To teach and bless

That in the truth, there’s neither more nor less

With feet on this dusty road,

and no sight of start or end

The horizon stretched before us,

highway without a bend

More vast than we can grasp,

we behold the view

The horizon doesn’t hold the truth,

the road itself is true

To try to understand we can,

dissect the avenue

Sift through countless qualities

searching for a clue

Faith and hope and charity,

kindness and virtue

Shatter its workings tenfold,

concepts to help imbue

Our inkling of a world

we somehow already knew

Or take in thirds life’s nature

to help the mind lasso

By body, soul and spirit,

a creator’s parts and glue

Or split truth down the middle

to help the mind construe

The nature and the meaning of

nature’s cosmic review

Good and bad, death and life,

divide the truth in two

Still all these fractions from,

one single essence grew

At some point all the splintered parts

must collapse into

One heart, one mind in concert

the divisions can undo

In quietness they coalesce

‘Cause in the end there is no more nor less

A Yogurt's Life

Arriving home from work

Wasted

I am defeated by the yogurt I forgot to refrigerate

Sitting spoiled on the table

French Vanilla untasted

Once gleaming proud on the factory line

Market surveyed

Carefully heat sealed

Certified and dated

Does my yogurt mourn

Lost potential

My sleek cat brushes my leg

Chasing a lizard brought in

I am defeated by the email photo from a traveling friend

A squalid market place

White chickens alive

Packed unmovable tight in a crate

A cat sits by licking its paws

I am defeated by the lizards tail

Found on the floor like a green pebbly licorice

My traveling friend calls

Informant of the bigger picture

Back from the earth's other side

Home of folded yogis quiet

The message

The poor there seem happy

When is acceptance resignation

What is a state of grace

If I worked at a car factory

I would bless each piece on the assembly line

Hoping the car imbued with love

Would make an owner happy

That their travels would be safe

I find The tailless green lizard

Crouched still behind the bench

Head cocked to the side

Alive and waiting

© 2008 Audri phillips

The world is so incredible

The world is so incredible,
most things in it are edible
The people most hospitable
The climate most amenable

The daily races most titanic
Flowers from the Adriatic
Strike me as I'm sitting static
A gust of birds in sudden panic

Take me all the way romantic
Volcano top and monkey blanket
Take away my polytechnic
Flashing glowing skies electric

See the mantle
Touch the dove
Watch it resting
In my glove

The worlds my gardener
And I'm the mole
Living sweetly
In my hole

Above a wash
In my motel
I see all this
It suits me well

The drainage pipe
It's not so fine
So this is where
I draw the line

I draw it quick
In inky stick
Connecting dots
With lots of plots

Around the globe
Follow the equator
But don't put that thing
In the refrigerator

I see my mission now
And my plants realize
When my visions dim
I must fertilize

The woman from Tralfamadore

March Poetry and Writings - place here

Please add any writing for the month of March here as a comment-
remember- let me know if you would like to be invited to be an author who can post-

Once In Awhile I Get A Reminder

The smug cup of tea that starts to boil

The pixelated image on the monitor

A video game with a stuck soldier

The veins in my hands

The high whine of my refrigerator

Constant in my head

The shifting weight of a dead cat in a shoe box

The saved house and the house burnt to the ground

Matter changed not destroyed

Creaking underpinnings of a carousel

A torn rag doll

Spewing out cotton innards

What is this chemical peel that rents through our world

Bends us over, flesh and soul

© 2008 Audri Phillips

Poetry Febuary 2007

For Febuary 2007 - Add your new writings and comments on the writings of others here in the comments section.