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Category: My Poetry

  • The Secret Voice

    The screen is up and
    Borough Boy is
    being euthanized
    exactly as I write this
    5:18pm on Labor Day, 6:18 where
    it's happening in Saratoga, New York.
    The last race of the last day
    of the iconic meet.
    No one knows
    what is and what
    is not.
    History is still
    and could break both ways
    in superposition.
    People don't know if they
    are themselves or someone else.
    They believe its up to the mystery
    of another forgotten consciousness
    who has control for some unknown reason
    because its unfathomable that
    someone else exists.
  • Changing My Mind About Publishing in Today’s Media Landscape

    I pulled into Kroger’s tonight, and what I felt was a good poetic line seemed to flash into me —like so many do that don’t necessarily have a direct meaning consciously, but feel like they came from another place and I am just the receiver and feel like they are pointing towards something that is deep and true.

    Normally I’d put the line in Notes like I’ve done hundreds if not thousands of times before and that’d be the last I’d see of it. Today I said, “Screw it, let’s post it.” And there from my car, from my Chrome browser on my iPhone 7+ I opened up my WordPress, created a new post and typed in the line. After I hit save, another line came to me that I added, and while I was in the store a third.

    We’ll see how this experiment goes, but my point is, something keeps calling me toward this way of doing things in “real time” as the phrase goes.

    Here’s another example with music. A few months ago, I had a somber tune (sweet sad) come to my head on a Saturday night about like this one, and right here in front of this iMac I propped my iPhone, opened up Garageband and recorded it, knowing it would be my next single.

    But then a case of the “perfections” came in, and I still haven’t published it. I feel now like I should have gotten it out there, if not that night, for sure within the next week, even if it had a bracket of (Demo) beside it on Spotify. Now so many months later, the tune has sort of lost its “spark” inside of me, and even if I could lay down a technically better performance from taking my time, it would have lost its emotional spark that getting it at the moment or close to the moment would give.

    Of course ten years ago, much less twenty or thirty, this would have been a ludicrous approach, but as an example, I was just listening to Rick Beato talking about the B-Side Police single “Murder by Numbers” and as much as I love Synchronicity. I would just absolutely love as much a sort of “B-Side” album of the band recording the whole album live in the same mode of “Murder by Numbers” — mistakes and all.

    The great Carver Mead said “Listen to the Technology.” My gut is telling me that the technology, offering itself like this with its focus on immediacy, is telling us to publish, even in the formal arts of poetry and music, with the same immediacy that social media does.

  • Two New Iambic Dimeter Poems

    The neurons fire
    In love tonight
    The singing choir
    relieves my fright
    sleep with the Rose
    submerge the sea
    The bower knows
    what’s inside me
    She’ll come again
    another door
    her song the wind
    ears to the floor.
    Don’t say a word.
    Love’s almost born.

    —————————-

    Let conscious breathe
    you won’t I know
    but can’t we dream
    away we go?
    September morn
    blues Christ can play
    The bells adorn
    The nightly day
    The purring moon
    she finds her tide
    we’re in a swoon
    away we ride.
    Her romance seeds
    The worlds best deeds.

     

  • A New Poem in Iambic Trimeter: Visiting Isis’ Sister

    I know it wasn’t fair
    to those who dance below:
    Between our creaky stair
    Descends our nightly ghost.
    I’ve come to see my girl
    Her sister plays alone.
    Here in her deathly world
    Her grievance sings her song.
    What does she want from me?
    A willingness to die?
    Like Jesus on the tree,
    A needle through the eye?
    I sacrifice my bliss
    For you my little sis.

  • 2 New Iambic Poems

    This first one is in iambic tetrameter with the structure of an English Sonnet:

    I lost you to Arabian nights:
    The god Apollo’s basketball.
    You had that day Queen Isis eyes..
    Unfolding reddened fall leaves song.
    It does mean something here in snow.
    The M&#257rga flames the Firebird’s beak.
    Somehow it made me let you go,
    So silent beings now can speak.
    I reach across the earth for you.
    Across the universe I fly.
    You’re under spellbound mountain dew.
    Asleep by mirrors’ watchful eye.
    Then something shakes the arch’s gate.
    The colors open again Finn’s wake.

    ©2013 Stephen K. Pickering

     

    This second one is a straight English Sonnet, having the structure and the 5 iambic feet per line, iambic pentameter:

    It’s thought itself that’s separating us.
    My little molecules are calling you.
    So Jesus told the mountain, “Part to dust!”
    And said let go, that you could do it too.
    Transparent eyes that cover Western skies.
    I hook the trailer hilt that pulls the sun.
    I search for you each night on moonlight drives:
    Some feeling in the heart that you’re the one.
    You pulled me out of the beach’s seahorse sand.
    And ponied up the soul for Daphne’s bed.
    With wildest sleep we wake this magic land
    Sing witches stirring lives from worlds we’ve banned.
    The tea room veils the river’s bride in frost.
    All calling for the princess who’s been lost.

    ©2013 Stephen K. Pickering

     

  • A New Sonnet: Cape Arrow

    “Cape Arrow”

    One thing I do remember is the dance.
    Your river hair was flowing the magic nights.
    Steps guided by the heart’s inner lance.
    Our motion flew above the city lights.
    Remember fall among the yellow leaves?
    Our eyes reflected colors of the soul.
    Before we even knew we had the keys,
    Our fountain’s dream we danced around could flow.
    I wonder what you thought about our song?
    It echoes still, they say, that empty hall.
    It tries to resurrect what seems long gone
    A memory my heart will always call.
    I sometimes think when walking down this street,
    I’ll turn and somehow there again we’ll meet.