Small Craft Warnings

Small Craft Warnings

L. Edgar Otto   17 September, 2013

In our deeper dreams than those that review encounters of the day and set our memories, our throes and fall as we pass thru the wide wall of sanity before we make sense of all the creatures and fantastic worlds our unlikely stories ground us in mangled pictures we impose to protect our rest that for awhile we do not startle back awake, there in our second sleep like a second death we rehearse imagine warnings, fight the shadow beasts of night.

Or is there a real place to go down into some imagined future that fate itself binds us to foreseen actions we cannot change our dreams walled off too far from others that we no longer connect to each other once we have touched in shared entanglements save some parallel place, space time travel the echos and actions to which we can make a ghostly difference in some other world?

I caught a lucid dream before it was forgotten of a place far away I had never seen before, a warning horn startled me to awaken, to seek some level of familiar world of home yet felt at home there awhile until like a lightning bolt's echo going around the globe and coming back the static overloaded the crystal cat whisker whispers of my mind's sensing waves of radio.

I was walking down the streets, the capitol stood high in the distance but grew larger as I let it guide me closer.  The isthmus grew more narrow between the two lakes.  The streets had familiar names but it was summer time, and a joy to just be where the snow cover lingered but I did not know this was some future bright and not a wishing to take flight from the reality of an empty depressing season.

Odd plants growing by the street and on the bricks of buildings, in the gardens and the lawns were different than places I had been but neither these nor the town seemed to bring to me that sense of fear of strange lands and strangers
when on the road open to shadows of the unknown.  The motor and specks on the bricks and the painted houses and picket fences with many layers seemed to be there so to see the thousand stored memories in the air from the minds of brick layers on some particular day, of some particular brick pattern they had long forgotten so deep into the years - or like the no two snowflakes the same in the complexity the whole season of them, and all the seasons over time, that I somewhere found time so to leave awhile my footprints.

Just one glimpse of a hint of chilling resonating in the lower notes of my spine, that from where time folds back again into itself to take a clearer or different form, a teardrop like a world in a drop of rain of denizens in the distance really small, on the face of my indian grandmother stopping a moment in daydreams as she roasted the acorns, and fried some fish, here caught between the lakes and the isthmus, a warrior chief and his tribe were subdued by the federal force leaving too damp to preserve paper treaties what was still left in the grass of their dew.

As I came to the canal, briefly watched the water fill to height and the sleek fast pleasure craft within it, I crossed the street and walked along the wall.  Being raised near the Eastern ocean I knew of fog horns moaning in the distance at night but did not know such a warning near these locks would be so loud.  As I turned the corner I saw a little girl fishing with her cane pole by the bank in the park like grass and a Spanish man near her.  But she was close enough to the road to be startled seeing me appear from behind the wall just at the time the horn blew loudly.  So startled she jumped up and fell into the canal.  I rushed down as did the Spanish man and jumped into the river but we could not find her in the tangles of the growth and mud, and for awhile it felt like I myself would be trapped and drowned - then woke up to the chilly room thinking how strange and creatively intense our dreams.  We sometimes avoid the final ground of our dreams as we fall.

Yet, a year and a half later I found myself in that town chasing a job in the New Orleans style restaurant and on a day off decided to walk to down town.  I would use the Capitol as my compass and guide.  Sure enough the scene became familiar as if I had been in that place before as I came upon the horn, one that I found later would act as a warning to all the small craft in the lakes for changes in the weather such as storms.  Then I remembered the dream. I wondered if this premonition like event was destined or if we in some sense were free to change it.  I did not know but I hesitated to turn the corner by the wall and waited while the horn went off sure enough as if this was a certainty.  Then I slowly peeked around the wall half curious if I would see a little girl.  With their cane poles I saw her and whom I presumed her father holding hands walking away down the grassy park and nearby road.

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Footnote: this story inspired by the Monday open link poem by grapeling.

Fork Falls Island

Fork Falls Island

L. Edgar Otto    15 September, 2013

The secret place , out of the way, in the city. Upstream of the old bridge where the channel splits around an island in the river's center the rapids begin to fall.

Ducks, geese, and cranes know the place, pass by in season unaware what forces of town will banish them, remove the wetland oasis in the concrete desert. Give them a trial to adapt to toxins, cling to the roadside, railways, and rivers ever less pure what was the natural prairie fauna and flora.  A bounty then on these half domesticated breeds as if they no longer fit into the world and are in the way, so do not matter.

The island goes under the flood waters three times under that its life like terrain saturates so reviews its life in a second before its final freeze and its ghost departs the second and vanished final time.  Such a drowning in the burst of light prepares the way, its path and self-vanishing.

The boatman over that river Styx between this sunlit shore and the underworld may stop at the lost and re-discovered island to which all myths think there is only a river round where the snake may bite its own tail with purpose or with a chance swirl of spin, its loop by magic self sustained.

We are our own boatman who juggle the fox, the chicken, and the corn across the other side that with only two of them at a time and reversed some trips bring all home safe that one does not consume the other.  Yet, from his higher view he solves the puzzle and higher still his mindful vision sees two ways to choose which are the passengers.

Some of us live in this higher world of shells much greater than we have dreamed or with shifts of time dance in the world as if we are like the foxes heeding nature or subdued having lost so tell others to lose their tails.  At times but in the chicken's mood back and forth, changing sides just for the sake of moving endless random walking only to return to where we began until the lightning strikes blind creatures with their heads cut off. Then some are just the corn, so long to sprout and dream if then and if no crows consume them.

I have watched the boatman in his work along the river and when in the concrete desert of city streets and star obscuring lamps felt the buildings, echoes in their granite stone of messages lost to the wind or in holding patterns in crystal lattices that seem alive enough to climb, set tendrils in our trellises, scale, root, and crumble our ivy skyward walls.

I have come to what without its measure as magic anymore in the sunlit day so late an awakening, free as if in us all beyond scale and degree, even the lesser creatures sufficient to their short lives and memories time enough outside of time to find what seems a Spirit again.  I know more of the secret, the still half unknown of what we and the world are and can be.

We all rest who reach this unrestrained and justified optimism despite what scaffolding in the emptiness of intelligence or ignorance circumnavigates the held face of the moon far from its dark side.

Thus we ask of walls, shells of our mental universe, with a little more wisdom can pass thru them, even before the imagined beginning or tunnel thru that cave wall that we fancy holds the universe as much as we imagine ours is a limited and isolated realm of mind. I understand better the broken souls, their crust that shifts on mantles, membranes that mold their beating hearts of sparks and stems.

They feel in the way and wary of my all to human shelter that they heal fearing the vague deep source of naked light do deny the inevitable drift or crashing of life's continents and of such a gift of compassion born of love, love the substance there in depth by tragedy itself that there be longing, these lost souls sense but cannot truly believe.

Yet in the here and now as there and then how can they understand without their growing that the unexpected consequence of my dabbling alchemy of esoteric physics is that I see with compassion into their hearts so walk among them, share the water and the wine, net the fish, labor to sift for their gold dust pebbles in a dish.  Let us who hath ears and eyes forgive them for they knew not how much more than their earthly dreams they are and still will be.

These islands at the falling rapids, forks in the river, paths that fade slowly a dying species or half tossed away as nature her acorns and apples so replete for those that ripen as this old world keeps on and the source of light renewed. Or that if failed unto others so failed into themselves those that take or lie to what can be, save the narrow chains and parasites on each a universe yet more, thus self unforgiving.

* * * * *


A short narrative for Open Link Monday although I considered posting a poem from my early teen years on this 50th anniversary of a significant moment in civil rights struggle I called  "Who Are the Damned in Birmingham"  I may link to that page as it is on the web somewhere...

Her Twin Towers in Fantasy Land

L. Edgar Otto    11 September, 2013

Miley
Cyrus
catching
Virus
Wrecking
Ball
Clamping
Legs

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for the imaginary garden with real toads community

Fireblossom (whose picture for this evoked an opposite of maiden and fishy parts) and Margarets (Not to mension also a Fibonacci minimal 112 112 form) Eight Words very good... I don't feel a kiss will give the sealing in me a soul or tell me I am beautiful...Live long enough and the metaphors make new memories and new metaphors... slow connection so this is too much like homework to respond all the time to all of you... eight words, who says we don't like haiku?  Well, I liked the song but the video was so contrived.  So forgive my contribution today, it is an endless lazy eight.

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Lyrics in Progress, My American Album

Lyrics in Progress, My American Album

L. Edgar Otto   August 26, 2013....

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Submitted for Open Link Monday  song writers use many methods from vague associations of sounds and words to fourmulas... which comes first the words or the music? How can some of the best poetry in our day be found in our shared songs and music?  I tried all such forms, well, not setting out to try them... but there is a transition to what can work in the simplification of a long poem turning into what is required for a song... these are such a transitional set to which as pre-lyrical I keep for the ideas and poetry's sake.

Lyrae

L. Edgar Otto   06 September, 2013 composed, Posting September 09, 2013

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Easy Bake Oven

Come Christmas morning, at our last supper
without a warning the second coming
computers crashing, new millennium
moment to capture before your rapture

The plots so woven, your witches coven
pepper spay and whistles without warning
set fires and sirens, surprise as burning
love left your easy bake oven

My doppelganger so filled with anger
became so silent, rehearsed the violence
listening to those losers tramping violets
the old coat hanger, their cause gang banger

Maybe if I stopped or let you drink
you would have stayed around or if
I slapped you silly like lovers past you found
who didn't call you stupid but didn't let you think

You picked the pockets of the Christians then
shared their gifts of grace, turned up their tables
at the fair, now say I rejected faith as fables
you searching God-filled singles in chat rooms without sin

Like Daddy's pockets for change and cigarettes
you said control leaving my forty years a wilderness
my brain did not wish on you chains to leave us all a mess
his punch bag rag doll. he too rests in free fall from regrets

The old coat hanger, the kids don't believe it
seek their own manger not what we've woven
this time to try again lightly light their easy bake oven
that their children's world is real, we once conceived it

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Crystal Tokyo

Fishes all aglow the ice wall melts
mantles fall waves break over sea walls
Damn, hell, Godzilla strewn on all I am
world shrugs, another childhood bones strontium

Oh the top hats tell us stories not as bad
the dark rain's eerie glory not seen sad
Glass bobbins break off the fishing nets
to ride the streams another millennium

The waning moon dream of Crystal Tokyo
still out of sight of school girls magic turns them
Into planet big eyed long legged goddesses
the rise and fall of empires made of meatballs

Koi fish live long while its rising sun, death white
red spot on its middle eye, chrysanthemum round
Short lived the hope of youth, Western ruby lips
sold to tourists as in dreams one falls in love

Don't we all long to go to Crystal Tokyo
climb the staircase of the planets safe to home?
Love's watched waters do not boil nor
up from the core and perfect cones, lava larval flow

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Neal, a Note

And for all the poets who lost their pets after a long time... old Neal really did drink beer (we kids stole from our parents when they had company) and loved to eat pancakes, so big a dog we rode him... he was a protector and childhood companion who went with us exploring the mudflats of Tidewater Va...  nothing more can be said, comments save.... I understand having been there.  Such things make most of the magic of  earlier and gentle, simpler times... of the poetic sort that does not fade.

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*Digital clip art from Jennifer White in the Oklahoma heartland, Victorian Boy, Girl, and Dog... she asked to let here know how we used it...

Lost in Your Troubled Dreams Fibonacci Form

Note:  I add a little clearer illustration called "God didn't make Little Green Apples or Canada Dry"
I revise this to complete lost steps visually too... added pollen and clouds of flies and falling leaves and daughter trees in golden proportion...

Lost in Your Troubled Dreams Fibonacci Form

L. Edgar Otto    Aug. 24, 2013

I posted for the toads my song on youtube. I will eventually re-post the full lyrics here but for now here is an excerpt from a common theme between the stanzas:
I
Saw
So long
You nineteen
Over night crow's feet
. . .
Knew
Pain
First tears
Little feet
Yet had so much fun
. . .
Sun
Dress
Long hair
In bare feet
How you loved your brood
. . . .

The Fibonacci Poem  "I"



I

I held

I held her close

Close
rose
colored
glassy eyes

Her
dance
far from
prying crowds

I
held
her close
we danced, rose
rhymed far from colors
crowd's madding prying eyes

Danced
from
madness
her
held
I

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Seeking Out There Somewhere

L. Edgar Otto   Sunday, 25 August, 2013

I

thought

I might

find the truth

if out there somewhere

aborted

our dreams

fade

back

No

damn

quantum

cat no damn

cradle made of strings

fiery walled

black holes

new

worlds

More

real

than she

held so close

baby universes

conjuring

space time's

deep

eyes

Braids

knots

weightless

discoveries

our geometries

written down

nowhere

in

books

One

truth

forgive

out of time

fading falling sand

far from heat

emptied

nests

keys

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Gentle Raindrops, Peaceful Tidal Sway

L. Edgar Otto   25 August, 2013

No
null
zero
beyond time
stopping quanta waves
once begun
many
beats
lubb dub
synchronize
our cycles, heart sparks
wading pool
Petri
dish

So
full
his life
swath thru time
room enough unique
world like mine
distinct
near
rhyme

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Like

Comment

Hayley

Hayley

L. Edgar Otto   ( posted  Monday, 19 August, 2013 )


Why do you treat me like a brother, call me friend
Guess our gentle kisses made no difference
Little Mama, Honey Chile, Sweet Pal of Mine
Guess I just couldn't be
              ... your peace of mind

Now I blamed your tipsy mother for you time of troubled sin
and I damned your gypsy father for leaving you abandoned
But there's and end to finding fault, naked you and me
Bumbled thru our brambled bed our hearts not free
               ... just like them

So Hayley, don't you go all holy on me
Don't paint me like the Devil pointing out the worst in me
Nor treat me like a holy man too pure for the touch
I might be your human eyes but not your helpless crutch
Human eyes... not helpless crutch

Now I don't mean to mess up your beautiful dream
There's much in Gothic images the pure heart redeems
But we must suffer sister suffer like beads upon a chant
Lose ourselves in our own will we never can recant
Lose ourselves... be born again

I know your denigm rose is an earthly shade of blue
and your leather bounded Bible really comforts you
But how I long to follow you like you follow Him and
wear those pilgrim overalls and sing those Surrey hymns...

So Hayley ... ... ...

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Lyrics for the Toad poets 

Note: in a comment I replied I was waiting for a bus with groceries on one of your poems which captured the moment and feelings of the experience, things in a distant part of town waiting long and reminding me of those moods and times of uncertainty and strange places foreboding on the road.

By the way  Hayley is not written for a real person as a subject of love...  she is really a child not conceived or born when matters of faith changed things in the face of life...

Here is the picture of the mundane bus stop as the moon rose...

Downloading Marianne

Dramatis Personae:

Insitu- in a universal scenario, situation
Denovo- something emerges, surprise, anew
Invitro- conditions controlled in a house of glass
Instar- the changing step in bodies of butterflies
Insei- Japanese for meteor
Deresu- concerning or about substance
Insync- making beautiful music or noise together
Immuni- protected against disruption of an entity
Tranz- that which goes across or beyond worlds
Xtal- she who clings to ritual, senses replication
Sapiosaurus- wiser lizards crave wiser company
Grid- how we draw the map, yet not a landscape
Cloud- the illusion we or the world has no maps
Mauve- Mr. Tompkins's wife, wonderland entropy
Fractus- Fractal fracturing of evolving wholes
Holonia- All returning to a fading whole again
Lyrae- one new constellation guides the way

Downloading Marianne  
L. Edgar Otto    17 August, 2013

We slime thru the landscape licking rust
downloading Marianne, the state her bust
Awakening in revolution all the motes of dust

So sang Insitu to Insei in formation
so probable the outcome of disinformation
That sleep again conforms each confirmation

* * *
Lyrae kept watch over Instar and her worms
as Immuni seeded Cloud in the war for germs
Fractus and Holonia fought then came to terms

Denovo and Deresu found their love Insync
children of Sapiosaurus tamed, learned to think
Xtal and shifting Grid held brittle on the brink

* * *
Tranz brought flowers to Mauve, Invitro so came
Driving to Oklahoma pursing comet tails his aim

* * * *

Footnote in a poetic form with suggestive new terms to be expanded later into a novel that covers a wide physical and social landscape with particulars while local color in great works becomes universal for all peoples, a sort of converse to express this.  This inspired by the painting of Marianne on the toad poet site whose breast of liberty represent the state feeding the hungry.  Speculative or Science Fiction in spirit.  We are given in stealth or seek to download things like HIV in hopes past the extension and dependence on survival at some certain end that the ultimate reality is that we can find a cure.