March Pebbles Glistening

 

autumn's fall

crimson leftovers
fall, angle down
crinkling sidewalks/footpaths and lawns/grass
in
thundered color

--

when we pull up to Rhyolite
that derelict Nevada ghost city

where it lays stranded in blazing
withering intense heat

deserted, forsaken, desolate
though 100 years ago, from this Cibola

half a million ton of gold
got extracted here in 1905,

became an instant city
in barren desert by 1907--

got water mains, sidewalks,
electric lights, telephones, newspapers, 

hospital, school, opera house, swimming pool,
imported Italian marble and stained glass,

stock exchange, 3 banks, 2 places of worship,
lots of brothels, 35 gambling dens, 50 saloons—

El Dorado? No; 

The gold city was only a brief flash in the pan--
boomed, busted, and abandoned in less than

10 years, a faded park brochure states;
miner Tom Kelly built a bottle house from

50,000 discarded beer and liquor bottles;
and 70 years later, on the ridge behind

were created 12 chalky-white statues looking down,
“The Last Super” by Albert Szukalski,

a Belgian sculptor; through those paster-burlap
ghosts and crumbling structures, strong desert

wind blows, toward Death Valley, howling.

 

Narrative poems including The Lady in the Garden

 

The Lady in the Garden

A picture-post-card date near the wide
Serpentine sway of the wide Schuylkill River

Meandering through Central Philly's park garden,
Towered over by leaning elms, while 3 long canoes

Swift by to the paddling of Ivy League collegians.
Gazing at my dear companion in the Garden

A Quaker girl, Karen, chestnut-caped round
In waist-length hair like a swaying black ephod,

Vivid in her red chambray shirt and blue jeans,
Is an aspiring concert violinist but converses 

Passionately about King's March in 3 months.
Myself, drafted, a Conscientious Objector

Working with lost-saken kids in a mental ward,
Disturbed by their absent parents' bad living,

But am still so youthfully focused and narrowed,
More concerned with my companion's

Figured shape than humanity’s ship of state.
Gazing at Karen, hoping for love in the Garden

We sit cross-legged on the lush parkway green,
Getting ready to eat our carefully bagged meal 

Of 2 peanut butter and grape sandwiches,
As we discuss the ravages of far-off Nam

And Bob Dylan's 'hard rained' croons.
Sharing deeply with her in the Garden

But then I inhale a fuming putrid odor
Coming from behind us; I twist and see

About 6 feet away this bag of a lady in a filthy rag
Of a dress lunging slowly forward, hanging

Onto the ugly mesh of a shopping bag.
Her stench to high heaven wafts so rancid that

I pinch my nose tightly and turn away.
Gazing (instead) at my date in the Garden

But lo and behold! my dear violinist rises
And welcomes the old hag, “Hi Lady, please join us

For our Sunday snack here in the warm sun?”
 but I get all upside-down in my face

Gazing, surprised and frustrated in the Garden
As the homeless hag sprawls haggardly on the grass,

Next to us, her wretched, spotted shift
Wrinkling up her scraggly legs. She reaches

Out a grubby hand, grabs a sandwich,
And shoves half of it in her narrow jaws,

Chews open-mouthed and teethed.
I fume at this ugly interloper in the Garden

But then am shocked awake, almost too late,
Jesus emphasized on 'the least of these"! 

I join my dear musician's sharing our meal,
Thus we commune 3 of human kind,

Below trees of compassioning
In the modern Garden of hope.

 

1st pub.  in The Oak Bend Review
then in Dark Energy, a collection of Daniel's published poetry.
Get the book at Amazon.com and local bookstores.

 

 

 

 

Meditations on reality, life, history and the cosmos

 

In the stream of life, poetic lines of empathy and mercy counter the sorrow and harshness that claim our yesterdays and tomorrows—help us redeem this troubled present day, this thankful present moment. 

a lightwaveseeker

Of Princes and Frogs

*People are born princes and princesses until their parents make them into frogs.
--Dr. Eric Berne, famous psychologist and founder of Transactional Analysis

IF all of us humans are born princes and princesses at birth,
Conceived as innocent wondrous human beings,

How is it that every generation of caring parents change their
New born precious infants into  glucky messy "frogs"?

And of course, what of our blameful parents—mean bewitchers—
Who were once wondrous innocents, too, little babes and toddlers

In their own parents’ arms! And back, back, to
Many grand-grand noble parents, ancestry-past

Turned endlessly back hopping into tadpoles, then slimy frogs
(warty toads) once upon a time as ill-well

Down to the 1st human primates at least 100,000 years ago;
Not so grand beginning of all croakliness.

What unlovely history words for the froggy in us all.
So where did this repulsive ‘tail’ of our soon-to-frog ancestor start,

The tadpoled-former prince of humanness begin?
Back before the primordial pond changed into corrupt skyscraping

High tech zoos, where worse slime and grime still remain?

Go back and back, generation upon generation to the human start—
That doesn’t solve why frogginess croaks and hops through the millenniums,

Why millions of humans birth oh so good, but devolve into ne’er-do-bads,
Why way too many of the little ones grow, cycling down

To dysfunction, neurosis, selfishness, even suicide and war;
Why some humans throw money around themselves like green confetti,

Gorge to overweight, and spend spend for dieting in deluxe gyms
While others, skin and bones, pick small finger-fulls of corn kernels

Out of horse manure on the muddy road or become child-soldiers with guns,
Why the most religious slaughter millions for god or ideologies

And the civilized century of the 20th became most murderous.
What unlovely delusion words of the poison froggy in us all.

Yes, we’re dealing with the cussdedness of our human kingness
Says Mark Twain (of The Prince and the Pauper)

Of course, Dr. Eric Berne, the astute psychologist knows our inner self
Of the 3 sides of consciousness—our inner felt, tradition taught, 

And rational-thought; what Berne termed “Child, Parent, Adult"
the latter which seeks objectivity, evidence, rational, who tries to sort

Some sense from the human  historic quagmire of feeling, insight,
Prejudice, superstition, fantasy, delusion, and moral conscience;

That deep within resides, too, is the Id a little fascist,”
Destructive desire that ever seeks chaos and destruction

But where did this little reptile desire come from?
Creeedalists in heated discussion will point to Adam’s Original Sin

When the wily snake cast doubt and tempted us to dragonhood.
The Calvinists shout our reptilian fallenness came

By the predestined will of the Almighty Sovereign who ordained our evil
Before the Creation of the Cosmos, we little infants born sinful

Pre-damned to Hell’s fire forever solely for God’s eternal pleasure and glory.
What horrific despairing words for the froggy in us all.

Secular folk reason we are born into through evolutionary biology
where good blossoms and evil cancers

(The duo of opposites) so babes are both noble and nefarious,
Will become both princes and frogs together split,

(Though snake or dragon aptly fits more than a few);
What we human primates need to do is  strive for rational evidence,

Not the sludge-paupered pond, diseased with plague,
Though multi-millions fail to reach such a sought goal.

Tragically, in so many cases lost children struggle in dysfunction
Almost from birth because they were born unfortunately

To very froggy parents living brazenly wrong, in our malfunctional
Societies, ever tempted by the glutted media praising our worst inclinations.
What despairing words for the froggy in us all.

Then by 7 or 8, waken to moral consciousness; but
Perceiving finiteness, we turn to gimmie gain and then guilt,

Not getting beyond our selfish tempted pond
Even group egotism, false illusionary religiosity

Masks the slither and wily guile gone to bad, to even evil,
Lke Muslim jihadists, Nazi supremacists, Stalinist oppressors,

And endless other historic destructors.
What unlovely theoried words for the froggy in us all. 

Egocentric, selfish, we cycle down from the constant testing
To our own demise or if we seek the Good, meticulous Truth, 

Caring Just, embrace, responding to Ever’s mercy, rise in
Thankful compassion, bow and kneel in meekness to true transcendent  life,

Renewing our innocent conception and blessed births,
Becoming noble refusing our lower froggy destructive

Passions, in our full-hearted reasoned, thoughtful morally real actions.
What wonderful truth for the prince and princess in us all.

 Revised 2/22/26

Daniel Wilcox

Romantic Poems of Commitment, Affection, and Passion

 

two hands

after a fine guitarist’s set,
hidden music
muses
through the spheres

out in the audience
hidden in the middle, two arms
under a table with two full glasses
ignored

two hands commune
caressing
as if the one
and only touching
on earth,
before the fall

for an hour and a half
embodied, that
warm embrace of their fingers
and palms 

close slow dancing
no palming
but sheer magic
one body, one spirit, one mind

1st pub. in vox poetica

 --

A Song of Songs Into Olding

Intense clangor—the joyous movement
of rod and belle
of the brash and the subtle
caroled with rubied passion,
they ring with joy their supple skin.

Fertile in consummation, in oneness
these two-to-one
jewel their future
days with melodic movement.

Appealing with rings that couple gold,
One circle—unending, endless, eternal,
They spangle their handed time with madrigals.

The chiming lyric of the sapphire
adorns their sensuous moments.
Embellishments of gemmed time

lay close
jeweled bare on their skin,
on circular strands

Down
the years

Turning irritants, trials, and struggles
Into pure spheres of visioned music,
Shimmering pearls of perseverance

(Unlike the coldness
of the bland flatness,
the flaked shale
of many a marriage's mediocrity).

He and she chime in their aging,
wrinkled skin, touched creases,
caressed emeralds of cherishing,

lasting into the soft opalness
of Olding, their souls flow
warm with mellifluous serenity.

Precious
the seasoned-round romancing,

the ringing, rubied
Song of songs.

 

1st pub. in Word Catalyst Magazine,
and in outwardlink.net,
and Psalms, Yawps, and Howls

-- 

Ever After 

Waking up close to you,
Your ‘presence’ covered in our morning’s lips caress
Like the shimmering, luminous night's seal to a sleeping princess,

We’re warm, luscious honeycombed lovers,
Deeply treasured in life-long mellifluous romance
Truly our cherished delicious passion,

Chorus
And the moonlight on the water,
Moon shimmering on the lake
And the stars shine in our room
Through time to time to time 

Cherishing
Our heart-welling felt vow
Spectrumed rainbow of our arrowed hearts,
Protecting our intertwined soul and body

Not tempted, nor wayward
But delivered from every
Disloyal fragmented moment.

For transcendent now choosing,
True love so royal streamed
From time to time to time,

Through the first falling sky-up
On mount passion's verdant peak
High above the desert of briefness,
We begin newly blessed, giving life;

Chorus

And the moonlight on the water,
Moon shimmering on the lake,
And the stars shine in our room
From time to time to time

With the snapping of the corked top
And the delicious splash
Of  delicious wine on our sun-covered table,
And the burgundy bottle never empties
And our two communing glasses shine,

In the shimmering, luminous union
And the moon lights our room
And the stars’ shine on the lake

On our wedding night over and over and over,
You all in white lace
Warm in my embrace
And ever after.

 

1st pub. in The Shine Journal,
and re-published poetry book, selah river

 

"Roll Ever Columbia”

They bag fading lighthouses,
Explore more lone departed posts,
Live in their relationship of ship
To water and shore;

Brave roaring ocean storms
Bar none, faring better, more
Than boats-of-line passing through
That perilous channel ‘washing
Tons’ of Oregonian waves,
Churning in between,

But unlike historic river pilots
Who guided in-bound ships
Over that dangerous bar,
His home doesn’t dominate high
On Fort Astor’s exalted bluffs;

And her love hearkens back to 1812,
Long before any lensed high tower,
Back when townies lit up a blazing
Tree as the brilliant signal flare
To direct to an approaching schooner.

His love lights up her coastal way,
Rivering to her protected harbor;
Not like today in shallow America
Where too many a sparred couple
Forever shipwreck their ‘bows.’

He’s an in-bound ship-of-line
Braving the dangerous headland
And the deep rolling river, but above,
His wild woman glows aflame
Delights his vessel’s guided way;

There’s no disappointment;
Her shored cape opens with
Welcome, he sings the mark,
“Safe water.”

Oh so verdantly green,
Unfathomably deep,
For life;

Roll on,
Dear Columbia,
Ever and ever and ever.

--

*Don Bruno de Heceta, Spanish Sea Captain, was the first known
European to discover the mouth of the Columbia River in 1775.
*Captain Meares, on July 6, 1788 tried to find safe harbor on the
northern side of the mouth of the Columbia, but couldn’t so named the
place, Cape Disappointment.
*Woody Guthrie song “Roll on Columbia”

1st pub. in
cavalcade of stars poetry site

 

Summer of Love in Philadelphia

Twenty-two flights above Rittenhouse Square
in the spring of the fall you carved a smilin' pumpkin
candled at your windowed level,
a light in the times of horror and stress;

But below, we wandered our nights with
chapped hands interlocked, pocketed in my coat suede. 

We walked blind streets of revolutionary warmer, earlier days
and handled paddles, splashing and pulling canal water,
canoeing near the Delaware,
swishing and crossing where Washington
and we escaped near New Hope,

our newest way from countless foes
through spaces of pilings of bridges
of lush foliage over hung.

We were loving friends three times over
in the spirit and the soul and the city;
though warmed in closeness we never caressed,
for you talked of "betweeness," violin practice,
and your distant boyfriend on the west coast.

I called you evenings when I felt despair
when drafted instead of Nam, doing
alternative service, working with lost teens
handicapped by their errant parent's living.

But summer saw you in Quaker action
in raining D.C. for King's impoverished ones
and I never saw you ever after.

Yet your letters far crossed this land of Guthrie
from Reed in the redwoods of Oregon
To me back south in teeming L.A.
In the movement of the angels, where

I couldn't see clenched hands or shattered glass
like the new left riots of America in Isla Vista,

Instead I searched of the ancient ways so
coral deep in humanity's past based in that
tragic Cross spanning horrific centuries,
Jesus' kind hands outstretched and open wide--
we Jesus people.

No more passioned letters reach me,
And Oregon no longer knows you.
But I 'wonder' in this living life stream —

And will now hold you up in the Light,
For within my part of you so longs.

 

1st pub. in Wild Violet Magazine,
and in Quill & Parchment,
and in Psalms, Yawps, and Howls

--

Northeast Night

Under the glow
 entrancing of stars

Of that Whittier night,
Not Snowbound,

Globally warmed,
Sliding,
Not sledding,

Honeymooners
–Lasted, ever
Clung so close

Heating,
Like maple syrup
Snuggling

Within his
Large parka,
Smooching,

Below
A resplendent
Maple tree

 

1^st pub. in
cavalcade of stars poetry site

Kiss your true love in the Light, 

Daniel Wilcox

MORE REFLECTIVE LINES of HOPE and TRANSCENDENCE

 

Perception in Late Night

I work the graveyard shift in ‘67
Stock shelves of “Marlboro Country”
For California slickers, tubes of
Ultra Brite “sex appeal”
Brushed by grim oldsters,

And Olympia, “it’s the water”
For partying young adults;

I close the flashy cooler,
Pick up the empty card boxes,
Crumple and dump them in the trash bin;

Across the street a Texaco filling station
Slogans forth rusted, “Trust your car to the man
Who wears the star,”

But its “vacant for lease” sign
Came from the only auto to ford
Those shallow words.

I lean on a metal stool behind
The checkout counter, no customers;
Its past
Midnight's hour; so I

Close my tired eyes,
Rub my warm forehead,
The feel of bone so arched like a vault,
My skull under skin

Almost Neanderthal,
And my sense of self in that inner cave
Of stored memories, procedures, and ads;
What will be left in my finite end?

Suddenly like a lighted tidal wave
Overwhelming self and night,
Wide  vivid  A  w  a  r   e   n    e    s    s

Incredibly oceans deep--
Immersed unending caring acceptance,
Infinite wonder G_D

 

Previously published in
Word Catalyst Magazine

In the LIGHT,

Daniel Wilcox

 

 

Poems of Remembrance and Wonderment

shadowed garden

in the long backlawn,
ansel-adam shadows

grow in the late afternoon
extending across dark grass,
shading the steel dog dish.

the hula hoop, and wagon--
a one-dimensional garden
slowly tended

by the leaving sun
only to be hoed under
by the dusk

 

1st pub. in
The Green Silk Journal

 

 

Sunday Morning

I linger over my cereal,
Newsprint on my fingers, printer’s ink

From photo faces of skin and bone,
Children on our Times’ front page

That I used to wrap the garbage in;
At the sink I wash my bowl and hands

And leave for church.
 

1st pub. in The Other Side Magazine;
then, Quill & Parchment

 

 

 

 

all my nerves torn loose
in the streets dancing jangles
staccato’d electric wires
ripped loose from my telephoned
soul dangerous lighting night

 

 

 

 

 

A Wake

Wake
Up and suit yourself,
Into the floundering pattern-mudded
Consciousness of this our finite skin---
Into a being 'berthed' bemused, beseemed morning

So, like the proverbial hog, the typical sow of the round ring
Who as life's suitors are led about by their snouted 'knows;'
Beshrewed, besotted, bemired so we instinctively grunt,
Following our sensual, careening awareness

Or our dutiful grind-stoned routine,
We press our life's suit 'til evening
Or wallow down
To our suited
Wake.

\1st pub in Moria Poetry

 

 

ever hear
of the absent-minded poet
who plunged his teeth
and flossed the toilet?

 

 

 

eternity stark face

Is there beyond pale existence
a golden place
Or does death snicker?

 

 

 

I turn
to an odd scuttle--
a hard crinkled leaf
wind-blows across street concrete,
scraping staccato--
what if I step on it?

 

 

 

 

lost goals
superficial routines, rigmarole;
I throw lifelines out;
they flunk down but skitter back empty--
treading time

 

 

 

 

within the circle of the wheel
from the rim steel spoke
of each other spoke
how inferiorly shafted
but the hub laughed and laughed

 

 

 

 

falling from branches
dead leaves scatter to the wind
cold cartwheeling

 

 

 

 

Old glory’s stripes

swirl, grasp, hoard
blood drums silently
red

god, damnation, war
flag grins skeleton
white

cloud, demise, end,
music moans noted
blue

 

 

 

 

lost

death comes at a slow run
down the rotted streets
life’s ruts
old age clocks my days
in a time duel

frantic in the anxious crawl
I’m misplaced
grasping for the
ruby clasp of felled beauty

used coins of time vanish
after the upward toss
life’s illusion
death comes at a slow run

 

 

 

 

his dream a collage
in the dark rapidly receding
swallowed by the hard edges
of the night

 

 

 

 

her long cascade of
sunned strands;
slow intimate
touch of his calloused
hands

 

 

 

Jesus, crucified one,
on a crucifix of theologies—
crossed into history;
who were you?

 

 

 

 

 

my hours drip away
no way to stop that dark leak
empties to ‘pail’ death

 

 

 

 

 

topsy-turvy cold
crave depth and intensity
stranded dream death

 

 

 

 

 

marriage—a woman
with her back turned leaving--
the receding car

 

 

 

 

 

memory honey--
stored from a dancing past be
but now jarred empty

 

 

 

 

maybe facts are paints
perception mixes and brushes--
gray stain or violet

 

 

 

 

son of man cursed,
forsaken, hanged felon but
crossed history

 

 

 

 

fall leaved trees shingle/ in that fall, sun-jaded trees left 
leaved rainbows, zagging down in wind/gusts
jagged among the branches
yellow, orange
maroon—a fingerpainted horizon,
then shingled down zagged from the black
wrought branches—a kaleidoscope of assaulted color
cardinal Rorschach/amber/scarlet/crimson/orange/coral/
crimson thunder/thunderous color

 

 

 

 

sliced by the steel plow
black clods glisten, sun's mica--
potatoed paydirt

 

 

 

 

winter camp

blanket snow without
but inside--in our tent, my
and thy-deep ardor

 

 

 

 

 

rainbow gum

on the road to Hana
Maui's painter trees
Streak in tempera
with uneven vertical
stripes
in plum purple
orange, light green
and pale yellow

natural artistic standups--
rainbowed bark,
fingerpainted
striping
pastel peelers

 

pine branch, morning light
stems with translucent tips
heavy rain last night

 

 

 

 

side of road

gray shadowed mail box--
engulfed by green, red-purple
bloomed jungle wonder

 

 

  

 

 

sip by sip, any bottle
becomes an Imp--
[sprite)
ty

 

 

 

brown daddy long legs
scampering part way up tub--
white porcelain trap

 

 

 

 

 

icy stream rushes
bucketing the grist mill wheel
cups of returned splash

 

 

 

 

 

her long black tresses
cleaved, the broken comb of youth
our grayed lost ardor

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

Face-Overs

Broken glass from his mug
Glints on their withered lawn,
The mush of dirty snow,
Law brief’s scattered leaves,
And dented Coke cans
Spewed fiz empty—
After their split

1st published in Mouse Tales Press

 

 

 

 

 

 

at the park’s bat box
our grandson scoops up handfuls
of fine dust and swings them loose--
fogged clouds
lighted by sunshine
that disperse
to cleat-punched ground

 

 

 

 

 

 

hot summer fun, 1956

we kids in new shoes squish
squished sun-hot street asphalt
hot blacktop to rock n’ roll--
tarred--feathered by folks/parents/dads

OR

our ‘checkered’ past 

we three sons in new shoes squished hot
sticky blacktop that veined our street,
so many cracks–twisting to rock ‘n roll,
but then encountered our ogre parent;
“scrub off all that!” we got told.

i countered, “it’s the other sun’s fault–
chubby-check mate!” with a twinkled glint.
we got railed and tarred down
to that asphalt sin
on our outer souls.

 

 

 

 

uncivil war 1934

Spanish soldiers slay--
wear heart patches of Jesus,
while they count dead foes

 

 

 

port san luis solo

6 pelicans sleep on huge guano’d pipe;
another takes off flapping
its wide wings

but an 8th 30 feet away 
in a crowded car lot,
hunkers alone, 

sleeps unconcerned
in the drive through
solo dangerous/dangerous solo

 

 

 

 

Lapping Ideas

Backstroking across the ceiling
white gulls of light arching
wing refraction

from high intensity bulbs above
that shekel-flash on blue body waves of the pool
bright incandescent--transcendent--lights

swimming in this liquid marble
strikes of 'lightening' broken
and broken on the waves
like archetypes that shimmer in this cavern
and electrify under water across the blue cement,
chimeras of our mental synapses;

after the swim, stepping out the glass door
into the brilliant sunlight—
shades of Plato.

 

1st pub. in The Centrifugal Eye,
Canada,
then, in Front Porch Review

 

 

 

 

 

Human Imitation

North of Duluth
I muse, mentally drooling
Over lake-shrouded woods,

Jotting scribble notes and
Fumbling with my camera lens,

Then I spot the
Enormous moose.

-1st pub. in Bigger Stones

 

 

 

 

A purple jacaranda
‘van-goghed’ our clay yard
violet-peppering into paint
splashing
'landescape'

 

 

 

 

Cambria in Gray

Down the fogged
June of ocean
Road gloom,
Through
Smog of a coastal fire,
Sparked mistake; 

Black and white flakes
Confetti ash down,
Cover our hood and roof
Gray ‘mourning’--

Dust to dust,
Ash to ash

 

1st pub. in
The Houston Literary Review

 

 

 

 

below our ranch bed

icebergs in puddles
next to her wet cowboy boots--
our global warming

 

 

 

 

End of a Rope

Last week in stark finality,
A reality TV star of us all,
Wanted by the American cops,

Hanged himself
In despair or regret
At the end of a rope,
So unreal in the darkened motel
In Hope B.C.

What an oxymoron of factual news,
A final exit show in
This small fairytale town
Below snow-capped peaks
And evergreen, cliff-ledged majesty
By the River Fraser rolling past time;

Strangely last Fall,
Bordering on the edge,
I, too, clung at the end of a lifeline in
A brightly lit motel down that same road,

But now I thrive in this troubled life
Far from the ledge of loss
Because last year when peering
Into the bottomless abyss,
I roped across
Despair
To the ageless Rock,
There in Hope, A.D.

1st pub. in The New Verse News

 

 

 

 

 

 

southern utah

finger-painted
eye-widening rock,
brilliant sheened sharp
pastels bold in this sun-lighted reign
of million'd wonder,

this rock garden--
sandstone temple of
geologic time

 

 

 

 

 

Live Branch Reach

Writhing twists of growing
Corded effort stretched
Out westward

From the knotted
Leaning
Shadow dark
Trunk,
Bright sunlight
On the contorted
Slow-year braided flow,

Tribulating
Over
Dry boulders,
Stone-strewn
On the sand-creek/ed
Streambed;

Stretched wooden waves
Driftwood
Wrenched,

Intertwined effort
Convoluting,
Live branch reach

Tributaries
Flowing west with new green growth
Behind and above

The under shadows
On that barred river sand,
Living driftwood river

 

1st pub. in Western Friend Magazine,
then  in Willows Wept Review and
selah river poetry collection

 

 

 

 

liquid lead
rising from
the insurmountable
depths
of
the
chasm
earth;
the sea was a molten mass.
the sun a marble balloon
buoyed in the ocean’d fog
then
descending into nothingness

 

 

 

 

False god—my chain length rabbit’s foot
odd talisman, clutched in minded pocket
awed fetish, grown from childish root
mental fetter, tarnished locket
petted stench chain--
damn your reign

 

 

 

 

the burst of scarlet red fall—
how do newly dead leaves
bring trees such glory
but the autumn of our life
leaves us pale and bereft

 

 

 

 

all down and failed up?
then fail on without ceasing
so much edged over
to failed forward victory
than ceasing without fail.

 

 

 

 

 

a twist of words

dangle, dawdle,
malice in wonderland
the swimming ‘porpoiseless’ of it all
only a mat of matter
said the mad hatter with natural
selection’s wand:

what’s the sma0tter?
why do the theists get
up their ‘datter’?
let them walk on water
tottering
laughter

 

 

 

 

Retreaded, not yet ‘board and carded’

I’m retreaded but road-tired,
Rolling across cantankerous land
Though, thank heavens—knock around
On pavement

And redwood,
Not yet sent off to a ‘board and card’ mansion,
Rehearsing....

You know where decks and bingo
“Was a dog…” chips or
Markers

Define the tokened measures of your/our life--
Or where, too
Reclining and breathing entertain you/us.

Or tipped-wobbly with 4-wheels and unfeeling-ed feet
I walker about at Morro Strand beach-coast
Staggering in wonder...
Here
Until my brief spark of awed experience embers out

Gone...

Yet Reality--
more than energy and matter
of the trillion-starred cosmos--

Ultimately
Transcendent

 

 

 

 

There are 3 collections of Daniel's past published poems,
Psalms, Yawps, and Howls,
Dark Energy
and selah river.

All 3 books are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, local bookstores, and coffee shops.
For Daniel's speculative writing, futuristic poems and stories warp over to http://lastthings.weebly.com/.

Other websites by Daniel include

http://lightwaveseeker.weebly.com/
http://planktonpelican.weebly.com/
http://infiniteoceanoflightandlove.blogspot.com/

In the Light,

Daniel Eugene Wilcox

 

POETIC LINES, glimpses of the beauty and tragedy of LIFE

 

Shimmering Pebbles in the Light Stream

and
...a meteor shower of words in this early evening

 

after brief sprinkles

trembled jittering—
caught on our wet van windshield--
wisp-feather dust splat

1st pub. in Stylus Poetry Journal

 

 

seashore

under sea gulls kiting,
molten froth waves rolling in—
we hot-foot beach sand

 

1st pub. in a handful of stones

 

 

 

 

horse trailer rattles
past curved eucalyptus leaves--
they skit in gutter

 

1^st pub. in Lyrical Passion Poetry,
then Stylus Poetry Journal,
and Poetry Pacific

 

  

 

a trail of dashes
translucent on dull red brick
night’s telltale caller

 

1^st pub. in 4 and 20 Poetry

 

 

 

 

Moon River 

She knocked the hat off my heart
Not just because I paint 
In pastel and oil,

But because of her Basho splash--
Wet-sounded for life from head to foot.

1^st pub. in Ascent Aspirations,
also, Poetry Pacific

 

 

 

rain drip-drizzles down
against our foggy window--
blowing my wet nose

  

1st pub. in vox poetica

 

 

 

 

harvest field

ogre marshmallows
under the blue oz of sky--
plastic-wrapped hay bales

 

1st pub. in Full of Crow

 

 

rain water on oil
red and blue swirls on blacktop--
a peacock's feather

 

1st pub. in The Stylus Poetry Journal 

 

Crossing Shimmering Streams
into Dusk and
Stars

 

 

fall back to autumn

treetops blazing gold
with the last light of this day--
we lift our eyes

 

 

 

maui’s markers

on narrow sunny beach,
flashy cars crowd up against
withered gravestones

 

 

black manta ray
into the murk—steel descent
stinging death to weeds

 

1st pub. Lyrical Passion Poetry

 

 

 

 

walking the night

saplings blacken along
my waking path in the misted night,

a refracted light sky over
wrought iron candelabras 
on stands
lamping damp
in the coastal evening/on the coast

 

1st pub. in Writer’s Ink

 

 

 

 

surreal morning

bulky morro rock f l o a t s
heavy above the narrow gray
ocean fog strata of sedimentary air

while below the ocean's soapy crashing
churns combustible froth
and advances up our shore sand

high overhead, orange the sun;

and the heavy
floating ghost ship

 

1st pub. in Erbacce Print Journal , U.K.

 

 

 

 

 

 

california dazing--

summer

ground mists, chilly gloom
living on west’s ground-fogged coast--
wearing my snow coat

fall

palm branches flutter
while other trees’ leaves wind-fall
down on dry/dying grass

winter

rain-jade bluffs
6 leaves unfallen on our elm?
no! wrens flit from branch

spring

weeping tree saps down
drips red glop on our van’s roof--
then birds poop splats

 

 

Playing blues on my keyboard--
picking out despair
on pixel
strings

 

 

 

 

 

Up Early

In the gray-hazed dawn
Pale light blossoms
Softly explode from a violet tree
Rising by a jade-green hedge

Birdsong morning

 

1^st pub. n Mississippi Crow
Print Magazine

 

 

 

seashore

warped fence boards in sand
lean askew toward green windbreak--
old gnarled cypress

 

1^st pub. in Idlewheel Literary Friction

 

 

 

divergent learning

After our oldest son comes down serious
On the hard-won aisle and receives his diploma,
His flat mortarboard capped on his head
Its long green tassel hanging down to his nose,

Our struggling 7-year-old comes up grinning
Into the crowded study of our home with a manual,
His large iguana sitting perched on his head
Its green-threaded tail hanging down to his chin—

Look, Dad, I’m a graduate.

1^st pub. in Abandoned Towers
and in outwardlink.net

 

 

 

 

beach town

 swaying date palms

on the white-housed street
swaying date palms feather-dusk
sky’s fading crimson

 

1st pub. in Stylus Poetry Journal

 

 

 

winter honeymoon

ice melts
clear splashes on the teak matt--
our heat,
‘tinder’ 
intense caresses,
slushious kisses

 

 

 

 

gull wings
lightly spraying over gray clod fields
6-year drought--

so ‘irrigating’!

 

 

 

 

Night Watch Psalm

Walled granite
Moonlight
One mile
Down

Below the rocked rim
In the rusted Canyon
Rushing Colorado
River russet copper;

Nearby in the evened dusk,
I lay ‘stilled,’ a silent psalm
In the shine
Of that lighted granite

Eyes wide in the dawn
Of that Night

 

1^st pub. In The Cherry Blossom
Review

 

 

 

 

 

Perspective

Moments flash
Like falling meteors--
Precious glories,
I miss
Because I pine for that remote quasar
Whose light taunts--

Starred fixation, yet it burned out
Many millenniums ago--past
Light years
Gone

 

 

Misplaced?

Lost?
Seek the moral compass
Round this world ringed
Compassioned--
Don't pass by on the other side;
Be passionate
And encompass
Love's Sphere
Found.

 

1^st pub. by Diminuendo Press,
Dark Energy Poems book

 

 

 

 

 

Outside the Limit

Working Thursday's graveyard shift
At 7-11, I  stock cold shelves, of 'cours'
Then write a college essay on Dreiser"s
Claim, "Life is thin surface, all negation;"

But alert in that alone night, I reflect
While beyond the store glass, the parking lot
Lies vacant, lit by neon signs and street lights--
Then unexpectedly my mind transports.

My inner self somehow rises up above
My body sitting down there between rows
Of stacked cans and jars; see/observe my ego,
Skin, and skull; envision far beyondness

Am flood-immersed in wondered awe,
Vividly aware, blissful beyond words,
Luminous endless care, blessed all-encompassing 
Exalting surpassing transcendent becoming.

 

1st pub. In Flutter Poetry Journal, then
The Mindful Word, and poetry book
Psalms, Yawps, and Howls

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cape May Light

 
Back then
Her young wedding eyes glistened
More than the prismed Fresnel lens
That centered our lives
On the Jersey shore;

She's a Keeper.

 

1st pub. in hotmetalpress.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

starlight
when one doesn't
see the dark

 

 

 

awake

at dawn
upending my camping mug
for a drink,
but no water slurp;
empty--

wait!--a gray web’s net
laces
rim to rim;

and below,
hides its dark spider
silently dwelling

 

humming attack

wearing my fiery red shirt
for Christmas, I open our
sliding glass door;

sudden jolt in front
of my startled face--
a flash of feathers hum-buzzes,
darts within inches of my eyes

but then away, it flits left
back to that flowering bush
along our fence--

me a reject

 

 

 

 

 

yellow-beaked birds perch
on the wind-shifted branches
clamorous squawking

 

 

 

 

Our Catnap

Underbelly slurps juice from
Our empty crab can, lickety-split
Leisurely indulges in a foot n’ chops rinse

Then his forward paw,
Stretches to its feline limit--
Floodlighted by morning shine-- 

Contorts to nap my left socked foot;
Lazing man-napper.
And me, his waiter and footman

 

 

 

 

 

The Space Clown

When caught in
The romantic comet
Of the moment,
I touched her pixied face

And said,
I wish I could make love to
You on 3 million different planets
All at once;

She pixeled a look so scientific
And said,
Oh, don't clone around
with me

 

1^st pub. In Right Hand Pointing
and Abandoned Towers Magazine

 

 

 Rock Life

White-capped wind roars around
Huge volcanic buttes swimming north
Off Oregon's coast

Like asymmetrical gray whale giants
Leaving splashing trails of white water
Behind in the slate green ocean

Yes, waves churning around 
Those behemoths, frothing

1st pub. in The Houston
Literary Review

flighting surprise

in my morning bowl
adhering to wet blue berries--
a wispy white feather

 

 

 

 

cambria fire

green vines wind up fences
bursting with succulent grapes--
but dusted in ashes

 

 

 

 

 

starbacked

starbacked night, coffee-drunk sky:
rows of cars metal
at the red orb,
anonymous

a lone skateboarder foot-struts,
waits for the flash of sage green
his board-wheeler a bill of adding
getting a toehold
from the faceless

hidden in their dark glass
street cars
fathomless

when all dreams night
into marred
perception

 

1^st pub. In The Clockwise Cat

 

 

 

a time for…

In the fall a time for springing
childhood,

festivals of Monet-splashed leaves
that my sister and I raked and piled high
in the deep ditch in front
and jumped down
softly crashing into,

and our large garden behind the parsonage
with pumpkins, melons, and withered corn rows...

and lightning bugs on the wane,
flashing on and off

full of fall...

 

Ah, Bird Poop Van

Ah, bird poop van,
there in the far corner of the fast food lot
where wind-blown paper congregates,

and you squat against the curb,
a rusted Ford Econoline home,

spattered with a thousand puked starbursts
of smell on your dull finish,
a metal fadedness of has been.

Your owner in his tourist-trash hat
and long dirty hair hanging to his collar,
squats on the splattered grass,

Grizzled before his future demise,
a throwback to Ashbury
where he used to panhandle.

He sits with his wilted wildflower
in her faded jeans splotched with patches,
sipping their mocha coffee on the matted grass;

They're wary for the squad car to cruise by again,
and roust them out of their corner nest
under the gilded arches.

But, oh, old Van, you rest and rust so easy–
at least there are no more fowl in sight.

 

1st pub. in The Bicycle Review,
also, in amphibi.us, Dead Snakes,
and the poetry collection book, selah river

 

 

 

 

A Psalm of Late Life

Pessimist of my oldering years
Preyed upon by lamentable loss
I find no balmy psalms to lyre,
But after discovered liars
Only this harp
Of yawps and howls;

I pray for transcendence,
​This my modern yelled holler
My psalm of life end's exit,
Dance in this sorrowing
Starred night

 

 

 

 

bidingTimeabiding

bite my teeth on famous lines
a hole lot of fragmented shells;
hunger hollows within--
deepening abyss
of lost longing
lone-ranging, reigning the distance
of a round heartless night

of a round heart-last light
lane-ranging, raining the day-stance
of last longing
steepening a-bless
wonder hallows within--
a whole lot of fragranced ‘shalls’;
bide my heart on famous lines

1st pub. in Dead Snakes Poetry

 

 

 

late afternoon

our van tires roll home
over dark elm trees stretched long,
but where are the bumps?

1st pub. in Haiku Journal

 

 

Northeast Night

Under the cold stars
Of that Whittier night,
Snowbound-less
Schmoozing

Cuddly warming
Honeymooners
Lasted, ever

Clung so close 
Like maple syrup,
Snuggling within

His large parka,
Smooching deep,
Below that maple tree

 

 

dying leaves fluttering
scarlet
oaks, and aspen into glory

 

 

 

 

Sierra Hiker

Golden trails, loving strands
I follow with my eyes;

Radiant smile, glowing face
Lighting away my shadows;

Diligent hands, plying fingers
Latticing strew moments into art

Fruitful tree, slender body
Open to me, enclosed to us;

Caring heart, giving spirit
Surprising gifts daily to me.

1^st pub. by Diminuendo Press,
Dark Energy Poetry Book

 

 

 

 

Lips touch –harmony
life giving moments
of peace-communion

 

 

 

 

black crow atop pine
bobbing up and down his head
caw-cawing the cold

 

 

 utah sojourn

eye-widening stone
brilliant sheened
pastels bold in faded sunlight
this wondered rock garden
Of deep-time

 

 

 

 

lines, no white shirts but
birds black in a row clothes-pinned
to the telephone wires.

 

1^st pub. in Idlewheel Literary Friction

 

 

 

 

red hair of his wife
flickering in the hot wind,
glowing bed of fire

 

1^st pub. Ink Sweat and Tears

 

 

crinkly gray strands
in his black brush of bristles--
approaching heir time

 

1^st pub in Ink, Sweat, and Tears

 

 

 

sun in east

fog rising in west
horizon-faded jean sky
watercolor washed

 

 

 

old mail route

abandoned despite
postal service's past claim--
"neither rain nor sleet-snow:"

no longer their trusted carrier
but empty, idle, deserted
vacant slow-snailed mail box
has-been
ex-friend

 

 

 by Daniel E. Wilcox