The Kudzu Files

monkeys

if my mind was in a creative mode
i'd write a poem about a thing
perhaps of leaves of red and gold
(though we don't have so much red)
or winter sunsets that fade to black
so quickly that the stars are caught off guard
but on this night I'm not so sharp
as to write of things so profound
it's easier to write about monkeys
except there's none around

The Lesson Count

What is it
about us?
That we never learn
what we learn?

Wear your seat belt
Don't do drugs
The count
goes higher

What we know
we tell
to those who
will one day tell.

Don't play
with sharp things
Stay away
from strangers.

The count
goes higher.
What is it
about us?

Spring Haiku

Warm sun, gentle breeze
Azalea blossoms watching
Two swans on water

Seed into flower
Like one thing to another
Flower into seed

Words

I found your words where you left them
Floating disconnected near the path you walked
Where you tossed them carelessly
Once you were done,
Once you had wielded their edge
I think somewhere you might want them back
They expose a part of you that should stay hidden.
Words released are words unbound
And owned by those who find them
For better. For worse. Forever.

Kudzu poetry

At You Live Your Life As If It's Real.

Steps

Old steps covered with dust
can mean neglect
or just that no one passed this way
and the vines that climb the columns
can show that no one cared
or perhaps that nature just didn't ask our opinion

Winter's lines

Winter's lines
read black on gray
bare words without feelings
speak their piece and fade to dusk
we know their meanings too well to wonder
we see their passing too quickly to act

Dawn

In a still moment
Dawn, with a single finger
pulls away the night

Death of a television

A brief moment's freedom
Unplugged and unbound
A short inner passage
On your way to the ground
Does a picture tube panic?
Do transistors know fear?
Does the zen of the moment
Ease your end-time here?
I missed your death-flight
So I did not observe
Your final appointment
With the cold concrete curb
But to see as I did
The debris field of parts
Makes me think it was worthy
Of praise from the arts
So I offer these lines
As a requiem now told
To a dead television
In the grass by the road

Old House

Cracked gray stairs,
weathered porch -
broken boards leave holes to nowhere.
Battered door,
last latched many years ago;
I enter, and the world falls away.
Peeling-paper-covered walls,
fallen shelves, dusty mantle,
awaiting resurrection or death
and neither comes.
Life is gone; oblivion hangs
like a curtain that cannot close.

Winter Oak

Barren leaves of ice
Stark and cold, uninvited
Mocking green that once prevailed
Singing crystalline songs
In the chill wind
Beauty and bleakness intertwined
In a slow winter's dance