Between the Hoarfrost and Rime

Monks and Quantum Physicists Drawn to Mountaintops 01-25-10

Air grows thin as I climb the mountain of wisdom
my blood boils cool and sooner and its too late
To shed my backpack of words and phrases nor go back
with a helping hand more than leave bread crumbs and life lines
For those afraid of heights and jumping the abyss of crevices

Beyond the beginning because its there my footprints
plod on immersed in beauty ever rare its grasping clouds
I cannot be the monk, distance hungry with its solitude
who sees his glory reflected at the top and waves, thinks
His echo bidding him to enter Shangra-la and so step off

The plane that brought me here crashed in the snow
before the condor knew of jet streams on the way to Santiago
Love for decades my muse descending though a glacier
will be found and make good sense yet quaint, not erased there.

* * *



* * *

Sans Continuum 01-27-10

How fragile the little birds made in kilns or
of dry clay and painted in arid climes
Or the collectors plate packaged and sealed away
against the shocks precariously on the wall displayed

Far worse the silvered rim, commemorative for the commonwealth
of the Old Dominion garlanded by bleeding dogwood
Its bright cardinal a fitting mate for the virtues and the amazon
catching my eye, failure forgotten, tourist candy for a trash bin

No one can, save by real time near nostalgia, auction off, as
if our rare collection of endangered butterflies keeps unique value
That such memories then and now protect yet enslave us
I guilty of that other whole continuum, grave marker names only not forgotten

Do I want to retrieve it, the stone reads only Mom and Dad, who never
stayed together, who moved him, who bought it, who honored them?

* * *

We make do with the trinkets left after building on the deltas
between the monsoons and hurricanes, thousand year quakes
Thank the gods for the few things untouched in the debris, rubble
count it as an act of faith or faults, thankful though standing naked

Those who welcomed into the school of Thales all faiths and nations
had a long run, millennium of a golden age, surpassing the best of Athens
I, like Leonardo of Pisa feeling alone in time trying to make sense of all the
rabbits, we who freely give to fallen temples ought also throw out the money changers

War made obsolete and so too war's attrition
short of apocalypse the terror a slow dirty fission
Her our unknown soldier phalanx arrayed in Lee's place, once Washington
the stainless banner still flies in Richmond near the holocaust and rebel museums

Edgar Poe felt the stars and pendulum, raven not before not after his time of stovepipe hats,
Black train smoke stacks, telegrams, between the hoarfrost and the rime

* * *

When the runes and songs have lost their salty savor, too costly
the flying buttress and fan vaults, no holy ground to set the quoin,
We'll fall back to the sacred music through stained glass windows

* * *

* * *



Touch and Sight Deflecting Love and Light
Category: Art and Photography

L. Edgar Otto 01-29-10

I can see you through the one way mirror
not just myself and my world in reflection
Nor from the shadowy rime ice blue in stealth do I
watch your actions fancied private hoarfrost melting

I cling to your light though it surface only
your image invisible to yourself
My little singing star echoed in my dark chamber
you with pinhole rays of warmth to bathe yourself

We both move through the world of others
waves on water, walk through walls
Unless our hearts slow down, dreams speed up
our trapped wide focus ride into a narrow whirlwind

Laser eyes iris to iris knew me better than I knew myself
You who walked on water, I who waved through walls

* * *



* * *

Thermals in Our Free Fall L. Edgar Otto 01-30-10

I cannot quite let my songbird go
thought she needs and longs for freedom
when late for her work of singing
spirals down with me smaller endlessly
As love and my height grows small and its she who

Returns to me with another of Love's new morning calls
late for work and in her coat wets her beak
as if all the time in the world from my cup of coffee
to chase and flee earth ages and their dawns between
Us count the last of faces, our globe a closed polygon

Her frost closer to my cloudy dream turns to spring rain
my rise and fall, thermal rides make hailstone shells of ice
Snowflakes of shifting sheets of iron in avalanche, my frozen core
again standing on or it magnetic fluid fire though its meadow seed
first salt she gleaned long gone

* * *

So odd that I sit here writing, below zero outside
by the window, bright the rising sun and through the blinds
I hear a peep and song and see her feathers puffed up against
the wind- my your look so big little one, how did you find me
Where have you been? She gazes up to me not startled and sings again.

* * *

Your false breasts like my brighter plumage
must grow cold in the windchill, frostbite the
thin skin and rice wine blush, pink grows pale
brine or silicon, pin pricked aneurysm balloons
The strongman's barbell weights proved hollow
the wholeness of Love's design endometriosis and stroke pain
my galaxies light up, my feathers stand on end
between your sweaty idols chaffed milky warmth
Yet its the memories we chase not erased such phantom limbs

But we glide without effort on the wind awhile
soaking the sun in, reptiles stirred from hibernation
survey Love's landscape from a height, hold our nose
getting dirty see what others found, join the scavengers for heart
Transplants still warm- yet the heart sings on its own though
we do nothing, we frozen embryos

* * *

Yet come another spring and springs without end I ask again
Some shared rhythm and shifting song Love hears, Are you not the
same songbird?

* * *

* * *

Ganymede to the Zee Descending Glides on the Bells of Zurich L. Edgar Otto 01-31-10

There is ringing in my ears
amplified in tune the spark gap harmonics
My eyes detect, my dream catcher flows one way
that my lover's colours crystallized through night..
My cat whisker brushing deeper than rusty razor blades and lead

The fast harmonics of bells I learn to hear not dissonant
only the songbirds hear, Love's perfect pitch evolved
Climbs out of the sea of cheerful and sad minor melodies
dust dancing on the speakers wildly as if drunk
Until finding meaning improvised, the choreography within the jazz

Adept at gears and bells and whistles, through echos and the
noise reverse the song dispersed pinpoints my songbird
How advanced back when yet now so trying the bottleneck of buttons and
still I cannot tell from song if she is one or legion, my songbird

* * *

Would you drink from my fountain, then know
my water's full of dropping pigeon droppings ?
So thirsty they risk downloading the milk in Liberty, Marianne
each and every one fancies themselves a swan
Jove's arms desired, our king but no false saviors for Gideon

She trusting in the world offended by the lack of trust in her
as I, no trickster in the sky to bind her wings by brawls or wine
Win by words her imagination knows better than to believe but longs to hear
though she needs no words, sweet enough her glowing music, glancing eyes withdrawn
She came to me her gentle beak worrying blood and salt from my breast

Not a raven at love's evening or proper dawn, wings clipped, songs sung at Love's predictable eclipse
to pluck our my eyes beholding her, Love blind or hell frozen over
That drank our last of salt, shared blurred eyes, Love's last of tears
only he gone deaf still writes and hears, blinded sees, unless he cuts off his own ears

Like Vincent who painted stars and their dark matter they so born
Startled by many ravens cawing in a latte sea of amber corn.

* * *

* * *

Love's Surreal Susurration
L. Edgar Otto 02-01-10

We men whose tongues instinctively suckle
the milk and mana, nursed by the Holy Book
The scriptures depict as trees, the darksome
forest of them, the orchids and viaducts, oases
Knowing, good and evil in the garden; the font, a Tree of Life

Our words most universal between peoples those
for trees and runes or tally mark abacus for numbers
"Who knoweth not the names, knoweth not the subject."
the carving begins with the slaughterhouse, ox head and castle
The crystal rim of reckoning counts ice sweetened apples, frostbit kumquats

My love sleeps under the whispering stars, Orion's hunts in winter
we hug in sleep not sure our shelter warm enough for us to awaken
So joyful for the rain of yellow leaves dead calm come falling come sunny morning
drowning out far away Antigua's strangers screams and a thousand meadow butterflies

* * *

Between the cotton and the rust belts the gathering
blizzard's churning ice storm wrestles with]
The white noise, the brightness strong turned off
we blinded by the windows, Love's broken fifth screen

We hope we can pass through it like all tides and seasons
not beached or stranded in the snowy sea foam
Our cave and hearth the Pink Lady singing in spin her sparkling cloud of glitter\
this generation too forgets to lasso the moon, walk on Mars

Where do the songbird's go, action and reaction my own
migration vertical to the music of the spheres, tornado alleyways?
The Viceroyalty of New Granada of New Spain rest in the
southern climes, empires long lived in their return to pole stars

The bark of trees covered them as if the vines
creeps over the whole tree, keeps its rings, drinks its light

* * *

Wisdom, so minuscule, a parasite take over, eats the brain
of the blue crabs their shells soft in growth and molting
The command the apparatus, robot arms seem wise these puppeteers
as magical as Easter eggs and bunnies from nowhere my songbird appears
It is enough we peckers in the suet surprised our hearts with her to sing a duet

Words and numbers are living things their subtle breath in cycles
the decimal floats and shifts, Mayan zero great arcana or origin for ice sickles
So goes any dream epiphany or scythe, metallic whips beyond the speed of sound
by thought alone an explanation, the moon looks bigger near the ground
No matter what here as above or from below, my secrets, heart enough to know you in by earth glow

Love is bothered that its never ending, not time to dream so full of issues
sweet nothings in our dawn stillborn, forgotten our tears with the tissues
Yet I know the gods are proud of her noble eyes and life's longing purpose
our love remains, fading in and out, or beyond the all or nothing

* * *

I danced with her in the evergreen bluegrass last night, stroked the feather
through the harp strings of her hair made through her blindfold, bandanna
We as if equal to the gods, real and wise in noble glory, creative whispers
in her ear knew better that it was you who was there dancing, singing

* * *

San Walkerberg L. Edgar Otto 02-01-10

Do not deal harshly
with your father king
who was but a vessel
to bring to the world your poetry
Failed star, embarrassment to your eyes

Demean not his judgments and
conquests, trappings of his capital
centered in the Confederacy at San Walkerberg
he only wanted to bequeath to you his presidency
That old soldier respects worlds made for his sons as poets..

The war's between the hoarfrost and
the rim ice, not races, lovers and their genders
I, the Pe Sla, his laurete, compiled this codex sixth screen and
groomed and gleaned amaranth from the din of her songs and feathers.

* * *