Mantis on my hand

Mantis on my hand
Emerald
So green and bright,
And confident:
She will not bite
But combs her hair,
Cocks her head and stares
With iridescent eyes -
Then spreads her wings
And flies.

Lyrical Musings

On the train, I sometimes spend my time playing word games and composing poetry to myself. Often, I just let the words flow and build the stanzas entirely mentally - letting the work evaporate when I'm done as a kind of Zen practice. Other times, I try to capture what I've wrought by catching it on my phone or wrapping it in a scrap of paper.

I don't claim to be a poet - and I rarely, if ever, revisit the poetic work I produce so nearly everything remains a first draft that may have sounded good at the time, but perhaps ages somewhat quickly. All of these are largely unedited, except for a bit of tweaking with meter here and there. All are direct output, not intellectual pieces - that is to say, they will tend to reflect a moment that moved me, either as a result of a personal experience or something I saw on the train. You may note an occupation with loneliness and relationships - that's probably because on Tokyo trains, most passengers are thoroughly boring grey salarymen - generally my attention gets caught when I see couples and people who seem inordinately sad. And, of course, the urban experience following a long, stressful day at work has a tendency to leave me feeling a bit isolated and at times those moments of loneliness manifest themselves in a moment of poetry.

The work is raw, unpolished. 

Nevertheless, I thought I'd share some of my recent work here: a mix of haiku and more traditional western poetry.  It's not meant to be work for publication in a literary magazine, but (I may be biased) when I look back on these pieces I think they reflect some interesting facets of the way in which I personally approach poetry. 

Offered without comment of my own, but comments welcome of course.

#

When the water falls
The ripples race and scatter
Circles on the dark.

#

Forbidden Fruit (sonnet abbreviated)

Her hand in mine,
Our fingers twine
And palms press tight.

As soft as night,
Her eyes so bright
That smile in mine.

Her lips on mine
As sweet as wine,
I slowly drink.

Dare I think she might be mine?

#

In an empty home
The echoes of their silence
Keeping me awake.

#

Wish

I can't forget
Your hand in mine
So warm, sublime
Your fingers twined.

I can't forget
That heady wine
Your hip on mine
Your eyes that shined.

I can't forget
Your wine-drenched lips
I wish I'd kissed,
This chance I missed.

I can't forget.

#

Hooks

Hooks in my heart,
She pulls -
Long lines that dangle,
Threads that tangle,
Golden shackles
To airy thinness beat.

Hooks in my heart,
She binds -
Strong coils that mold me,
Knots that hold me,
Those winding ties
That hold me when we meet.

Hooks in my heart,
She chains -
Adamantine rings,
Such petty things,
Ev'ry day things:
This golden cage complete.

#

We're reaching for ghosts:
Electron ether phantoms
Whisper in the dark.

Whisper in the dark
Shudder at the fleeting touch
Of imagined fears.

#

Sitting in the dark
A bottle on the table
And a silent phone.

Brain Worms

If there's one thing I hate, it's brain worms - those little fragments, snippets, tiny crumbs of thought that stick in your mind and burrow and bait.

For me, those brain worms are often bits of story, bits of poem that just won't grow. They're like malaria: infesting my mind but often hidden, rising every once in a while to be obsessed over in a fever of impotent creativity.

One such brain worm I am infected with (I am a veritable Typhoid Mary of literary parasites) is a fragment of poem that has been hounding me since the mid-90s:

Bright Orion striding 'cross the sky
Looks down upon the fields all white with frost [1]

This fragment seems to emerge nearly every year right around mid-winter, and I have at least a dozen discarded efforts at completing it to prove it.  I love the image, and I like the cadence, but sadly it will not grow. And yet, it demands attention.

When I was in Canada, the persistence was perhaps understandable - winter is the best time to view Orion, and of course Manitoba winters are an excellent example of the land being frosted over with white - those crusty layers of wind-sculpted snow and ice...

But here in Japan? Particularly here in Tokyo, where a couple of centimeters of snow can bring things to a screeching halt, the horizon is obscured by a forest of sky-scrapers, and the sky is so hazy with pollution and heat that I can rarely see more than ten stars at once? (whoops - nine: that one was a plane) 

Short of assuming that the very fact it's winter triggers the brain worm's emergence, I'm at a loss. There's no explicit connection to Christmas, for example, and Orion is not particularly easily observed in this part of Japan even in mid-Winter.

So what triggers the brain worm episode?

I have no idea. And this is pretty much the definition of brain worms for me: little fragments that rise up, obsess me, and then disappear seemingly for no particular reason at all. And the worst part?

When the worm is active, it becomes difficult to work on other creative projects - and yet the worm itself never seems to go anywhere.

It just gets in the way for a while, then hides until the next time.

###

1. I sometimes wonder if the seed (egg?) for this particular brain worm was planted by exposure to Virgil:

Then wakeful Palinurus rose, to spyThe face of Heav'n, and the nocturnal sky;And listen'd ev'ry breath of air to try;Observes the stars, and notes their sliding course,The Pleiads, Hyad, and their wat'ry force;And both the Bears is careful to behold,And bright Orion, arm'd with burnish'd gold. (Aeneid - Book III)

But it's not as though I have been saturated with Latin classics - even if this is the seed, it's strange that it would have such a long-lasting (and unproductive...) influence.