A Question or, A Quip Re: "Bogus News" [gnomic verse]

If your silence-breaking    O Parvardigar!
   has thusfar never the headlines grabbed
in the New York Times   tell me how Avatar!
   has Lewinsky this precise honor nabbed?

Lessons Learned in Charm School [gnomic verses]

The charming are naturally likeable
the natural are likeably charming
the voice when it's low remains micable
while beautiful arms are disarming

who value authentic demeanor
will find their nostalgia grows keener
when faux authenticity nabs them
or genuine falsity jabs them

November 9th Skype

Yo! Skype has just signaled a message
my father's birthday is today
 
it's in fact barely more than a year
since he quit our circadian realm
 
& no more is he likely to answer
any email or video- or phone-call
 
now alone the arcana of prayer
(so lo-tech!) might connect to his ear

The Alphabet Board [gnomic verse]

(or, a short history of tersity)


From telegram to tweet
    in seven easy stages
from leafy tree to sheet
    of erudition's pages
from avenue to street
    from jungli to cages
if nothing is complete?
    'tis said love is contagious

"The problem with predictions" [gnomic verse]

The problem with predictions is    they do or don't come true
the problem with convictions is    they are or aren't sound
we live by predilections    on whose basis we pursue
a thousand routes of thinking    till some avenue is found
 

How Silent is God Speaks?

(1)

How silent is God Speaks?
how vocal is God's silence?
who stroll by babbling creeks
deem not their clamor violence
but cricket-like or birdsome
pure prayer albiet unwordsome

(2)

Thinking outside the boom box
pulling way down the volume
zeroing out all the babble
silence resumes its own tale

==========

"Thinking outside the boom box"
-- a line borrowed from Kendra Crossen

Premises & corollaries [gnomic verses]

1.  Four Propositions

If a swan can be known to swoon
a man can attain the moon

If a toad can sport a tail
a road can display a rail

If a fish is endowed with fins
a wish can be crowned with wins

If a dog can master a fiddle
even a log might play a little

 2.  Four Questions

If a pomegranate may prove very pretty
can one be diplomatic in a merry ditty?

If a metropolis is a manner of maze
should a podiatrist garner one's praise?

If an author is a sort of anthropologist
is a mother a votive methodologist?

If a philosopher may seem a maestro of figments 
might a cartographer dream a bistro of pigments?

3.  Four Considerations

If everything has emerged out of naught
is nothing on the verge of being caught?

If our existence might comprise a mere dream
from our persistence could one surmise a clear scheme?

If questions are most essentially emblematic
are Christians consequentially peripatetic?

If unity radically contradicts every duality
does lunacy inadequately predict any reality?

Four Seasons & Eight Questions

If summer's the perfection of spring
if autumn is summer's completion
does winter show fall a new thing?
is spring merely winter's deletion?

If summer annihilates spring
if autumn belies summer's glory
is winter autumn's votive king?
does spring hide in winter's chill story?

If winter holds off spring's delight
if spring keeps in check summer's fire
does autumn fend off winter's night?
does summer suppress autumn's ire?

If fall had a crush on the vernal
& autumn were envied by spring
might winter in fact be nocturnal?
does summer at noon blithely sing?

Quatrain occasioned by a "We Miss You!" Notice

To what do the dead subscribe?
what periodicity draws them?
what news do they seek? what tribe
of angelic beings awes them?

==========

Note scrawled on a form letter
that arrived today, addressed to my late father (sent by the subscription department of The Progressive, a left-wing magazine) ; the letter begins:

Dear Sam Israel:
We miss you, and I thought you might be missing us, too. . . .

My scrawled note reads:

Dear Progressive:

My father, Sam Israel, passed away in October of last year.  He loved your publication, and for that I thank you.  But you need send no further subscription reminders.  Sam Israel is now permanently unsubscribed.

Thanks!
David Israel

Music Theory

If music is only obsolete in moksha
       it demonstrates what utility in life?

perhaps it's employed to overcome inertia
   & regulate all the threads of joy & strife

Quatrain responsive to a question posed by Lewis Carroll

Loving or being loved. Which is best?           77
[from the index to Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno (1889)]

If each is incomplete without the other
yet both are in a partial manner blessed
why argue which is preferable? I'd rather
suggest the state of both-at-once is best

Who Am I? [riddle riff]

If you utter my name   I vanish
if you mention me not   I'm there
I'm Silencio   if you're Spanish
(or Italianized)                in air
I dangle with mystery's mist
of all that is said I'm the gist!

"Many things" [gnomic verse]

Many things show some fragility
many things suffer disorder
many things flummox gentility
many things live near the border

==========

Verse in wake of the sudden & accidental dropping
of a ceramic cup, whereby its handle was broken

Canvassing the Silence [gnomic verses]

When the pollster meets with silence
and the poll at length collapses
can you hear the distant violins?
can you jump the short synapses?

When the pollster meets with stillness
and the poll is finally canceled
can you feel the silence fill this
open space with no mark penciled?

When the pollster hears no answer
and the poll's at last unraveled
do you glimpse the cosmic dancer
and discern how far he's travelled?
 

Cardinals Play the Mystic Card [gnomic verse]

[hypothetical riff on a New York Times headline]

Cardinals seek a Pope who has charisma and toughness
maybe it's time to nab James Dean or Henry Fonda
but if they're no longer available? we'll have to rough this
better draft a Pope who's drowning in Satchitananda!

via media [gnomic verse]

Pen to paper   thumb to glass   your lips to God's ears
Poetry   like leaves of grass   through the cracks appears

"Lost & found" [gnomic verse]

Lost & found in the woods of the words!
          tossed & drowned in the sea!
most astounding the songs of the birds
                 love abounding in me

======

Verse occasioned & inspired by a Facebook status update by poet Koyamparambath Satchidanandan, who wrote:

• O, I have lost my way in a forest of words. I see many passages in front of me, some narrow, some wide, some wild, some clear, some dark, some bright..Cannot recall which is the one leading to poetry.I can hear the waterfall, can smell the flowers, hear the trumpeting winds and the roaring rains... Is this a nightmare or language? Woods or words? Beasts or beats? Lanes or lines?Are there rhymes of prey? And metrical forests? Streams of similes? Mountains of metaphors? Winged adjectives and four-legged adverbs? Tailed nouns and horned verbs? Dictionaries are full of pug marks. Prepositions laugh like the hyena. Conjunctions bark like the barking deer...Lost, lost , lost.

"When you listen" [gnomic verse]

You keep the eyes open   to see
you keep the mouth shut   when you listen
if speaking connotes liberty
yet silence makes everything glisten

World & Eye

The world looms large   the eye looks small
               but this is mere illusion
the facets of the world are all
               in all of their profusion

projections of   the self who sees
within the heart   he's at his ease
================

[these lines seek to paraphrase Meher Baba]

"Like a double dare" [gnomic verse]

Retaining credibility   while losing all one's hair?
                my whiskers wax whiter than snow
if aging has utility   it's like a double-dare
        as drops dare to merge with the flow

=========

Verse inspired by (and riffing on) a reading of George Packer's blog post, "Loose Thoughts on Youth and Age" [at NewYorker.com]