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Bushman

climber
The state of quantum flux
Jun 1, 2018 - 09:38am PT
“The problem with being born, is dying.”
-unknown

An Homage to Death

Wrapped in all
it’s metaphors
death
A bramble with thorns
intertwined in a thicket
A briarpatch out of which
overripe figs grow
with blossoms so fatal
their venom as sweet
as the new melted snow

Turned bitter upon the lips
followed
by visitations of vixens
Pale white their skin
dancing over corpses
bleeding rose petals
from
their final impalements
Lacerated to white bone
cleaved and hacked

Wearing a hooded black garment
the specter approaches
Opens
a green sepulcher
adorned by a maroon cross
Dry bones fall
and litter the soil
where scorpions and centipedes
crawl sweet and sad
in knife piercing darkness

Many voices there go
A window opens
slowly
I see gossamer webs
floating icily
Drifting down
now veiled in white
A soothing voice
like the complete warmth of her
my mother’s embrace

Black shadows hang
from vines so strangely
as cat mewling and howls
break the silence
Wait...
Returning to this life
I have known or imagined
Staying yet death
with her luring seductions
lurking within my animal self

-bushman
06/01/2018
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Jun 24, 2018 - 12:35pm PT

The Swan (Charles Baudelaire)

To Victor Hugo

I

Andromache, I think of you! — That little stream,
That mirror, poor and sad, which glittered long ago
With the vast majesty of your widow's grieving,
That false Simois swollen by your tears,

Suddenly made fruitful my teeming memory,
As I walked across the new Carrousel.
— Old Paris is no more (the form of a city
Changes more quickly, alas! than the human heart);

I see only in memory that camp of stalls,
Those piles of shafts, of rough hewn cornices, the grass,
The huge stone blocks stained green in puddles of water,
And in the windows shine the jumbled bric-a-brac.

Once a menagerie was set up there;
There, one morning, at the hour when Labor awakens,
Beneath the clear, cold sky when the dismal hubbub
Of street-cleaners and scavengers breaks the silence,

I saw a swan that had escaped from his cage,
That stroked the dry pavement with his webbed feet
And dragged his white plumage over the uneven ground.
Beside a dry gutter the bird opened his beak,

Restlessly bathed his wings in the dust
And cried, homesick for his fair native lake:
"Rain, when will you fall? Thunder, when will you roll?"
I see that hapless bird, that strange and fatal myth,

Toward the sky at times, like the man in Ovid,
Toward the ironic, cruelly blue sky,
Stretch his avid head upon his quivering neck,
As if he were reproaching God!

II

Paris changes! but naught in my melancholy
Has stirred! New palaces, scaffolding, blocks of stone,
Old quarters, all become for me an allegory,
And my dear memories are heavier than rocks.

So, before the Louvre, an image oppresses me:
I think of my great swan with his crazy motions,
Ridiculous, sublime, like a man in exile,
Relentlessly gnawed by longing! and then of you,

Andromache, base chattel, fallen from the embrace
Of a mighty husband into the hands of proud Pyrrhus,
Standing bowed in rapture before an empty tomb,
Widow of Hector, alas! and wife of Helenus!

I think of the negress, wasted and consumptive,
Trudging through muddy streets, seeking with a fixed gaze
The absent coco-palms of splendid Africa
Behind the immense wall of mist;

Of whoever has lost that which is never found
Again! Never! Of those who deeply drink of tears
And suckle Pain as they would suck the good she-wolf!
Of the puny orphans withering like flowers!

Thus in the dim forest to which my soul withdraws,
An ancient memory sounds loud the hunting horn!
I think of the sailors forgotten on some isle,
— Of the captives, of the vanquished!...of many others too!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)
Gnome Ofthe Diabase

climber
Out Of Bed
Jul 2, 2018 - 04:59am PT
PHOOK YA' sayin'?

just plyin'?
phuk 're ya?
real fire is at
but just 'Moke here.

ON TOPIC BREAK,(CAN you HEAR THE TUNE?)
Riggers regrets! .11d? (im hoping)
in honor
COZ
not wearing to tethers

then here it belongs
I dare you to
Hear?
trice time two
Who da phook?
if itz oo R then harlow ya been? I;ve given ore' da sleen

theres no use
trhen there is this abuse

wqho now did you claim

ToBe
allapah

climber
Jul 16, 2018 - 04:05am PT
WOTEML

Stupendous overhanging Beatles of fear,
Scalloping my horizon,
Scalloping my horizon,
Inserting precious holds
Between the now and the here,
Between the now and the here,
This time my hold upon the coincidence of space and time will not fail,
A spreading interference pattern that seems like a line,
But is really the angular coincidence
Of all the coincidences residing within,
The interference pattern between the here and the now,
The here and the now,
My gravity’s influencing it now, I’m praying for the line to not fail,
But it’s not a line, it’s space and time,
This life can’t go on forever.

If happenstance should plummet our life trajectory into space,
Piton pop,
Piton pop,
A clatter of technology blowing,
These fragile webs of metal are non entropy mixed with life,
Your unfolding decisions,
Your unfolding decisions,
The decisions you made today will last the rest of your life,
The leptons and quarks were manipulated by the cortex in your brain,
The anti-nodal lines were within the range of your interference,
What you found on the ground was the tail end of the fall,
Then live your life better,
Live your life better.

The resonance between
The here and the have been,
Better tie yourself off,
Better tie yourself off,
“What is Mind?” you ask and you wish that it might have been,
All of one thing,
All of one thing,
But dimensions are clashing and rubbing off in a line,
All the scientists are mistaking it for the phenomenon of time,
Blowing down to the interference pattern scrawling horizontal across the wall,
The Wall of the early morning light,
Wall of the Morning Light…

Was it a line, do we call it a hike?
It’s been years since the sound of a Sierra Club cup clattering down the wall.
Or was it a Penrose diagram with vectors in opposite directions?
There’s a rock coming down the wall,
Oh!, a coming down the wall—
Two domains of your life are subducting like continental plates of meaning,
You’re hanging from the A4 blade and praying for the noun of staying,
There’s not too many things that I’d have lived life differently,
Except for that thing about you and me,
Except for that thing about you and me,
Always the Beatles of fear layering up like successive challenges,
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
A-hanging over me.

Overhangs of blade and hook and mank of knowledge,
Of how you lived your life,
Of how you lived your life,
It matters now that you cheated and lied,
Cause there’s nothing much now, and you’re gonna die,
Gonna die, Gonna die,
Yer gonna die.
Quiet now the Arno leaks in your hypothalamus,
My pre-frontal is quaking and I can’t quiet the hallucinations,
Blind Faith override won’t quiet the Cake,
That’s no way way to dangle from an overhang in the sun,
I thumb the cool blade,
Though it’s a sunny day,
You’re ready to lead away,
I’m going back to Talkeetna in the morning.

Do not attempt to adjust the picture,
Stop time and don’t think about the adhesion,
You are arrogance personified,
Icarus not fallen,
Your penis is so large this day cannot end in tragedy,
You’ve seen that the line
Between space and time
Has thrown a green light,
Has thrown a green light,
You’ll climb through the night without fear the sun has fallen,
We carried no devices, no way to talk to home,
Only the memory of how we got it on were the things we carried,
No paranoia at the rosing of the Dawn.

Space and time,
Unfolding line,
I should have sent the letter,
Gonna die, try to try,
I should have done you better,
Done you better,
These insertions into the moment have got me greatly vexed,
There’s vectors out of my control and my mind is a settling hex,
If only I hadda seen all the vectors of what might have been,
I would have opened up my heart,
I would have opened up my heart,
But war is upon us and the Moment comes flooding in,
The line between here and now is propagating really thin,
Wished I could talk to you to ease my aching mind,
But I’ve been trying to call for hours and I just can’t get a line.

Off, leave it there,
F*#king fling this present moment,
It’s very clear there’s no reason here,
No end to the fall,
No end to the fall,
If I’d have lived it better we would hadda better weather,
It was the things we did,
All the things we did,
Fog going down and a zippering chord,
A tinkle of now coming up against metal,
Off, leave it there,
Sound of a human voice,
Without thinking,
The old man in the nursing home draws back on his belay hand.
Gnome Ofthe Diabase

climber
Out Of Bed
Jul 16, 2018 - 06:05pm PT
haha,no lists ?
a place Artificial Intelligence wont help?
1st there was fix'd then, there was no fix'd,
it was A Running Man who got piss'd
& swooped,
by the sprite from Cali,
that wern't right
yeah?
She hit it,so FA by her

Bolts, came & went & came & went?
"Work"Chains add'd by the NowWestPTpinhead,
&
Now?
the whole, patrolled by a gun totting owner!!

That is pretty much the most historic especially
now that Lanman's is gone,may you find peace in rest)
PiR Dave

From the top of Ski Minne you would be looking at Sky Writing,
but you might as well drink Hemlock with your Pilsner Urquell.


This, Of course, Like a lead of the Vampire, more like Insomnia,
& best climb'd at just before dawn it was a right of passage
What is it you want to know?
Remakably clean, Cleaved, seam'd, cleaved,
stacked, like an upside down set of stairs



I know You Know,
that Fritz was the 1st to see the cliffs
on a remarkably clear moment,
from a perch high on Breakneck Ridge,
after a thunderstorm clear'd the atmosphere.


When there were people living under and at the ridge
for a century or more....... Stop asking in public,
there are books by Mark Fink......
As far from & different from Mike Fink & Karen Parddini,
as a military reform school is from a pajama Waldorf program.
Bushman

climber
The state of quantum flux
Sep 10, 2018 - 08:19am PT

Betelgeuse

I walked out this morning at three am
with the two dogs
some coffee and flip flops

I looked to the east
and the stars above
with the Hyades way up top

Then thought to myself
what a sight it would be
when a nova bursts forth with a scion

All the stars it shall spawn
in its constellation
adding nebula two to Orion

-bushman
09/10/2018

Bushman

climber
The state of quantum flux
Sep 28, 2018 - 12:30am PT

A Poem for Manuel

There we once walked the mountain path
as sunbursts splashed and tumbled fro
Your sneakers kicked up clouds of dust
as Jack the dog led where to go
Your sis and mom brought up the rear
we watched you from afar you know
You were but briefly at the cusp
of childhood dreams that you’d outgrow

We saw you take your bride in hand
raise up two kids for which to boast
You were your own man pass or fail
& stood your ground more firm than most
One thing that some remember well
the careful timing of your jokes
You saved your punchlines like your truths
for when they would hit home the most

I remember how that you once said
your love was pure emotion strong
a powerful conviction that
through pain and strife would carry on
I argued there was more to love
and countered there was work involved
And there we left it I recall
our points of view still unresolved

As husband, father, nephew, brother,
cousin, uncle, grandson too
The brightest hope we had for you
how you were loved I wish you knew
Your mother fought so hard you know
she did all that a mom could do
At least a few years maybe more...
we thought we had more time with you

There once we crossed a mountain lake
beneath the Rockies towering
It seems like only yesterday
with s’mores around the fire ring
We thought we had more time to voice
those thoughts that families hold dear
Within our heart of hearts we’d hoped
to care for you and to keep you near

We miss you son, always

-Dad
09/16/2018
Fossil climber

Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
Sep 28, 2018 - 12:59pm PT

Bohemian Waxwings

The waxwings sweep in through the swirling snow,
Attack the bountiful berries of the rowan.
The berries have fermented,
The birds are partying.

Two hundred fluttering wings shiver the tree.
Two late robins join the party.
Their cohort has long gone south -
These were waiting for the right vintage.

Magpies join the bacchanal,
They scorned the berries earlier.
Party crashers.
Power of suggestion.

A pair of hulking ravens flare in like thunderclouds
Swaying precarious on tiny twigs,
They ignored the berries all fall.
The waxwings caught their lofty attention.

The tree is almost stripped.
The birds are happier now.

Avian crapulence tomorrow.

Wayne Merry
Bushman

climber
The state of quantum flux
Oct 3, 2018 - 01:14pm PT

After all the Leaves have Fallen


After all of these years

I thought I would know

the path of my life

and how things might go

With the passion we’re given

and the lessons we’re shown

with what we’ve returned

to the universe unknown

Voiced by the arching

of the trees in the yard

framing my trepidation

how life can be so hard

As I see up in the clouds

through the sky high above

where a satellite passes

like the flight of a dove

And the stars all come out

as a testament to all

enlisted with the moonlight

in it’s orbital stall

There’s left only the thrumming

like the beating of a drum

I hear all of our heartbeats

pounding into one

And I see only the mystery

the comedy and the farce

of this irony called life

it’s finality and it’s course

After all of these years

as I watch the river flow

what’s meaning of it all?

I don’t think I’ll ever know

-bushman
10/03/2018

mouse from merced

Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
Oct 3, 2018 - 01:43pm PT
"In the Hunting Grounds of Arden Oaks"

There is some thing about magpies, Wayne.
It's hard to put into black and white, though,
since it's been ages since Sacramento.
There only came one Stellar's Jay the other day
and he had some thing he seemed to want to say...
I doubt it was about magpies.
You never know with Stellar's fellers.
Sea lions, okay, they get the point across.
Maybe not in grandiose cosmic Orion fashion,
but loud enough to warn you away.
I saw only that one stupid jay all week.
Where have they all gone?
Have the raven gangs driven them off?
We used to collect a quarter on every magpie as bounty on magpies.
Went out 'n' bought more BBs.
My brother was a good shot, pinned a butterfly to an oak once, by its head.
Don't need to take that home, Mike. Leave it mounted right there.
MFM
mouse from merced

Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
Oct 5, 2018 - 06:24am PT
Blow It Out, Dude

The wind is in the willows, with all those moles and rats
It's blowing in the caves among a million bats
It's chilling the Antarctic and the Arctic, too
And it's moving lots of sand out in the Howlin' Buckaroo

Mono Lake's a choppy mess of waves and salt 'n' spray
And Utah's being blown out west to San Francisco bay
I really hope it stops before it gets to Tahoe Lake
Cuz I just want to make a wish while blowing on my cake
--Tahoma Joe from Tahoma
Bushman

climber
The state of quantum flux
Oct 9, 2018 - 04:49pm PT

Catherine

there by the fountain
on the back of a dragonfly
I tasted the nectars
of a thousand sweet butterflies

down on my luck
I cast forth the dice
then heard the bell toll
not once twice but thrice

there out from eden
I was tossed on my face
what was once is what was
what is now is not just

she once took my hand
as I once took her throne
we had both pledged
to each other our troth
that was then
Catherine

your royal court was there
eyeing your long black hair
Catherine
find your man

he held his dagger high
thrust it into my side
I bled for her
it was not for my pride
Catherine
then I died

she once took my hand
as I once took her throne
we had both pledged
to each other our troth
that was then
Catherine

-tim sorenson aka bushman
10/09/2018
mouse from merced

Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
Oct 15, 2018 - 10:47am PT
Susurrate Thus

Quietly whispering to the wind
the aspen leaves have no worries
until the approach of late fall flurries
And then like all good leaves
they take themselves elsewhere
and return six months from now
as echoes of themselves
--John Murmuir
Fossil climber

Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
Oct 15, 2018 - 12:48pm PT
A couple of seasonal tankas -


sun low through clean air
trees heavy with gold
days ever shorter
I bask now like a marmot
soon I will envy his fur

***

silence in the north
a stillness overwhelming
but in it you hear
a leaf whisper to the earth
a lone gull cry far away

WM
Bushman

climber
The state of quantum flux
Oct 15, 2018 - 04:19pm PT
Rhyming at the last for the Daylight

The sun set loudly with a low pitched thud
never rose in the morning or so it would go
and never the birds sang nor the flowers would bloom

The deniers were never to speak on the news
having drunk the permanent Kool-Aid that day
before black hole eclipses would yet be explained

But so it would happen the very next morn
while facing the east in my lawn chair I cheered
along with my neighbors when great Zeus arose

Today I watched tiny Mercury go
fleet fast flying across the dawn sky
sister Venus held bright in her poisonous charm

Later pondering lost evangelicals oh
so hard for them ceding science it’s due
yet opening their eyes might have given a clue

-bushman
10/15/2018
mouse from merced

Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
Oct 15, 2018 - 07:21pm PT
Wow, you guys...

I love the heck outta this thread!
Bushman

climber
The state of quantum flux
Oct 15, 2018 - 07:46pm PT
The Mouseman’s poetry never sleeps...
as the Fossil climber shows his ageless-ness.
Bushman

climber
The state of quantum flux
Oct 16, 2018 - 06:18am PT
The Owl Speaks

The stars all winked at four am
as I was poor with sleep again

The cold a quiet pre dawn hush
one scratching dog I asked to shush

The dogs came with to warm the house
our own heat and a sleeping spouse

The owl outside my window there
hoot hoot hoot hoot he said beware

I think about what he did say
as I ready to greet the day

The world a slave to cyber norms
most heedless now of Strigiformes

Our signs by nature go unheard
like powerful messages in a bird

I blink my eyes to clear my brain
and hear the messenger again

The admonitions weaker still
I swallow them like a bitter pill

The days may come and days may go
what matters most is what they show

Of things I’m learning to this day
what means much more than I can say

Hoot hoot hoot hoot I’m coming near
and quietude is what I hear

The owl was speaking through me now
or I through him I don’t know how

-bushman
10/16/2018
Fossil climber

Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
Oct 16, 2018 - 03:33pm PT
I hadn't backed up through the thread much until today. Man, there is so much really good stuff in here! Seems to me that some of it should be in print.
mouse from merced

Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
Oct 16, 2018 - 06:13pm PT
I, too, think that's a worthy idea, Wayne. It's not hard, or at least it's easier than rocket science.


Rocket Science
by Matete Motsoaledi

A poet tried to be smart with his art
To satisfy his addiction to diction
But lost meaning to rhyme-scheming
He churned out empty lines
Which went into a comma and died before a full stop
But the fool wouldn’t stop
He scribbled passive cursive
Which was not at all impressive
And carried on cursing and cursing
To spice it
His imagery as I imagined it
Was like a litany of bad dreams
Insisting on invading my line of sight

So he was told
Keep poems simple
Like dots in Morse code
Weave words into visions
That loose minds in imaginings
Stevie Wonder did it
With limited resources
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