Sketchbook  Gerry Bravi, CA

 

 

Haiku snow birds on a beach full of strangers they molt   blue heron at dusk figment of imagination or perfect disguise     a raven struts on yesterday's water winter arrives     a thrush flutters in for such a colorful song so drably attired     eaglets being fed fins, scales and tails, entire fish becoming wings and things     days grow long as snow sinks into itself thoughts turn to robins     Tanka thoughts fall on thoughts just as rain falls on rain each relinquishes its oneness to become nothing and everything

 

 

Free Verse Ideas I enter through ports mostly unseen and wander about in your thinking machine. Test all your ports, run all your URLs, tweak a few boards, give the CD some whirls, buzz through you chip sets, electric and strange, fragment your hard drive and bytes rearrange, flash round your screen without worry or care, giving your mouse and your modem a scare. I hack very well so your memories I sample, stodgy old DOS, compliant blue APPLE. I cut and past and edit insanely. Resist you insist but oh so vainly. I'll pervade every document, program and file. Don't fret, soon you'll enjoy your new style. So when I arrive on a screen full of chat, in e-mail and messages or things such as that, don't push me away, don't easily scare, push down on enter... Do it! Do dare!     Just For the Hell of It Compositions from the tree tops. Subtle, thrifty symphonies. Melodic rites of courtship? Refrains marking territory? Or, just for the hell of it? coffee at sunrise how sad to live this moment but once a hand moves words flood a blank page each scribed in borrowed ink of many tints and hues… from where?     Facade who said this was me did you hey this costume's not for fun nor this mask without some care this is serious this thing that I've begun you can't know me nor even I cause this this thing you see it's just this lie     Control Who locks my cage but sets me free without my window pane? Not he, not you, but me.     School Days We ran through halls charged with thought but all our running brought us naught. We dipped in wells, but couldn't spell. We pushed and pulled Palmer's way but never learned to write OK. Then as now you thought us slow to grasp the things you think you know. The world condemned because we failed to cope with waters you had sailed. We left those halls and all that guilt warned we'd destroy all you'd built but after years we did discern it wasn't us but you who'd failed to learn… When lights grow dim and we grow tame we seek out others whom to blame.     Bias Is life my personal coloring book tinted by the Crayolas of my past boxes of 8, 16, 24, 48, 64 and ever enlarging array of hues and tints more confusing life never fitting my neat categories so many choices forced to select and reject screening reality through infinite meshes of me stereotypes they always save me conserving time and energy but so numbing as they ease the burdens of choosing and obligation allowing righteousness to sublimate guilt     The In Crowd amuse us you poor pathetic creature and you comply even revel in our feigned affinity little do we know as words fall from our mouths that it is our lies that bind us into never ending circles of posturing and brutal yes brutal friendship words they fall from our mouths and life rushes by

 

Haiku winter trees the throb of brittle limbs wakes me at dawn     the sun shines in how difficult to discern shadows on shadows     Snow spinning on snow the scene blurs     Kicking Horse Pass one after another the peaks tumble     winter fields no hue disrupts the white each bloom still there     reflections at dawn no before, no after just now

 

Triolet We Play at Life We play at life on this machine and never question why. Typing thoughts upon a screen we play at life on this machine baring lives to those unseen. Is this some despairing cry? We play at life on this machine and never question why. We play at life on this machine and never question why. Shifting lives from scene to scene we play at life on this machine creating just a wakeful dream. Replacing lives gone awry? We play at life on this machine and never question why.     Longing Yes, I miss you every night, more than I had thought I could. Why did I not expect I might? Yes, I miss you every night. Alone and sad I try to write but scribbling verse does little good. Yes, I miss you every night, more than I had thought I might.

 

Free Verse Solstice Your rays fill the shaded corners of my field casting off the frost of winter now like the flowers in the mead I slowly turn my head my soul to follow your arc through the heavens of my spring     Voices I love the sound of the human voice aflame with hope and passion. It fills me with belief. Ideas spring forth to play and dance if we just talk and listen. Yes, there is a chance when voices allow souls to glisten. Yet, we beat them down and send them into hiding. That's when my soul my "me" does frown  with dreams and hopes so less abiding.     Untitled Lens seeking lens Seeing only as you or I can see How diverse the images on our film But each so multiply exposed that none can fathom what gave them birth     Control Who locks my cage but sets me free without my window pane? Not he, not you, but me.     Used Hard, foreboding eyes of stone what sights has life so hastily cast through inky, marble holes those doorways to your soul? Aged face of so few years what thoughts and worries plague you? No lines nor creases etch a face that seldom sheds a tear. But eyes of stone, oh so blank, is the message fear?     Heirlooms Day dawned in a sullen mood. Cold emptiness replacing embracing warmth. Body enveloped in lonely sheets of space. Craving curves and hollows draped in satin, exuding luring musk and electric desire, but that's gone. Only memories linger, blurring and fading in vapors of bitterness that seep into my being and corrupt the past. A past my body still recalls with longing on cold, winter mornings after fitful sleep.     Alone beneath the snow a small white crocus waits patiently in remembered sun What Is Spring What is spring but a patch of brilliant red and yellow on a flashing ebon wing? Bright red epaulets puffed in threat he guards his patch of cat-tails. A welcome relief of color after a long, bleached winter on the prairies. Kon-ker-ree! Kon-ker-ee! Awakening my winter weary soul.     Food for Folklore Ursus Americanus shambled in early today not worried about sleeping late nor anything else other than food and upcoming hibernation. Awkward gait coupled with speed and grace produce sparkling black highlights that ripple across massive muscles that easily tip over our composter. We worry him little as he worries scraps from our garden and table but finding few morsels to satisfy his instinctive need he moves on. Bent grasses and disturbed dew are all that are left to record his visit and oh yes, there is a composter to examine and reposition. His presence, more felt than seen, will cause us unease for the next few days but his visit will be prized and woven into our campfire tales.     Awaiting a more Suitable Author The story came apart in my mind. An unfamiliar voice, saturated with escaping facts and fictions, telling a tale of life fragments in dissociated bits, devoid of mean or morality. Not constructed to help navigate anxious nights or give solace to a faltering ego. A fable, hanging there, filling a void, solving nothing except a set of physical rules about the necessary occupation of space. Is this the mid-draft crisis of my autobiography? Ashamed of the prologue, fearful of probable epilogues, am I insanely awaiting a more suitable author?     Just Move On to the Lee's age like small town stores limits choices and options though not because of lack of merchandise but because experience teaches the years tend to program us we know in advance our choices even our reactions or think we do tried them on enough to know those Levi's just ain't gonna fit right know it in advance tried them on so often just walk away from the rack and check out the Lee's they'll fit like a glove and get better with age that's how experience and years teach could that be how our social situations become been there… done that know how it's gonna feel why bother just move on to the Lee's

 

 

Thinking Thought, singular, reclusive, perhaps original or maybe just fashionable. Active deconstruction of the past while appending the present so as to amend the future. Mind, laboring in peaceful stillness, conversing with itself. Engaged in visceral debates it attempts to shed light on truth or bolster a hope. Ruminations, internal, silent, are they beginnings or just ends? Is there an option or does a mind instinctively feel the need to reveal? Convictions, dormant in the shadow world of the mind. Silent utterances confined to the intellect, eclipsed by our need for cultural fit. Post-modern, consumerism as thought, no longer personally understood. Free floating phenomena passing for ideas; thinking trivialized into daily gossip passed over the back fences of TV screens. Ideas, fabricated clichés pared and shaped to fit. Thirty second sound bites altered and amended to meet our momentary needs. Thought, the forbidden fruit. Cast out of the Garden for the temerity of thinking. Frightened, we again cast it from our lives. A risk not worth the taking and far too time consuming. Curiosity, natural, innate, waiting to be rediscovered, invited or cast aside. Thought not always apparent, but always there even if only a memory awaiting to be summoned.   Head Games when life exists but in your head you toss and turn and dream a lot imagine things that are so not as life and thought become unwed whims dance in and whirl about when in one's head life is set it helps to cope with things unmet if one neglects all things without when life becomes your head sail every dark and foreign sea and do whatever pleases ME `til living comes and shakes the bed oh me, oh my what have I said could I have really thought that life could be so easily bought and lived within this spooky head

 

 

Free Verse Gerry Bravi, CA What is Spring What is spring, but a patch of brilliant red and yellow on a flashing ebon wing? Bright red epaulets puffed in threat he guards his patch of cat-tails. A welcome relief of color after a long , bleached winter on the prairies. Kon-ker-ee! Kon-ker-ee! Awakening my winter weary soul.     Union A crystal lures my being out, reflecting much, absorbing some, it takes my breath away. How can you attract this self, this me, disjoining many hues? As streams of color issue forth bits of me rush into thee reforming you not just me. Does this drawing in and casting out mean that you and I are we?

 

 

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