My Poetry
Poems — mostly written while travelling, mostly about paying attention.
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Elevator Musings
Of course she is not really ‘in’ the elevator But elsewhere, her thoughts rising and falling, opening and closing (The older passengers mere shadows, ephemeral, unreal) Hers is an interior life, encapsulated, protected, but alone Which is really the only life we live, the only terrain we trust (The rest – our external life –…
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One Wave
waves are days, oft high and strong — birds, dolphin, sunshine — then low and weak, dribbling towards dark sands. Waves never cease, lines upon lines, born from the Great Grey, the primordial Before, only to crash and disappear — no Before or After, just gone.
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Bucket List
our end timesa noisy bar or concertcraft beer in handsnake tatted armsselfies posted to the ether. here, then gonenot fixed, justsplayed, surfaceghosts riding barrelsin muck grey waterbuttocks upturnedfaces strained, redyelling into windbobbing, bobbing drowning – by MJB
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Walking Back
Walking through the streets of my hometown, thinking about time Everything is new: the buildings, faces, sounds and smells But also old: memories on every corner, shadows I can see and touch (Like:? The flashing lights as we cruised Main Street Bottles of beer on an empty lamp lit court Her hand in mine on…
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Motel Chronicles
The honesty, the insight Of family, of friends Of a place — a western prism (And such feeling for the place!) Something so real, so American Yet unreachable, almost dreamlike Like Shepard, looking at you And through himself – by MJB
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Sydney Sights
She: with violet, transparent billowing skirtswaying confidently down a Sydney street Her: tense aging face, but swishing loose torsobright sandals slapping a weathered patio She: with red plastered lips, wide earnest eyeslaughing between dull pearl earrings Her: white legs, crossed expertly at the anklestaring intently at the man, really a boy, and wonderingis he the…
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Into Japan
Silver rain on the backstreets of Harajuku. Every corner a vibrant cocoon of Tokyo, packing tidy storefronts with strange brands: Bathing Ape, w)taps, Onitsuka Tiger We are wet and smiling, mirroring the faces around us, the young Anime eyes perched above surgical masks, flashing like the streetlights above You notice: their voices and bodies so…
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The Proposal
She didn't want flowers, or the proposal Just the attention to detail of something not there An act of attrition, an effacing, or forcing of the break that we both knew happened long ago And even the flowers, dead sideways, uneasy, absorbed the air of finality, as the waiter dryly extolled the menu and smoothed…
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Timeless Coast
Walking south down the long beach is to journey into the ancient or always with wave upon wave of time spewing dead polished shells, brown bulbs of tangled sea vines limp on blue-black sands and round wet boulders plopped here and there set in stolid repose as you approach the tall eastern cliffs, resolute guards…
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Adams & Einstein
They say John Adams, at the end of his life, would fall on his knees in rapturous delight, at the sight (simple sight) of a meadow flower. That the man who literally forged a nation, with incisive pen and oratory, found a flower overwhelming, stupefying. Or that Albert Einstein, after crystalline mind journeys into places…
Words to Live By
One evening I saw a red sunset, its rays falling on the trunks and foliage of pines growing among a tumble of rocks, coloring the trunks and foliage with orange fire. It was superb.
— Vincent van Gogh
Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation . . .
— Albert Einstein
Learning is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
— T. H. White
It was as if God had lifted his baton sharply above the endless orchestration of the seas, and the eternal movement had stopped, suspended in the timeless architecture of the absolute.
— Thomas Wolfe
I’m not saying ability doesn’t matter. It certainly helps. But there’s something powerful about realizing that you’ve undersold yourself — that somehow your mind confused lack of effort for inability.
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
— Simone de Beauvoir
Learning is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.
— T. H. White
We read to know we are not alone.
— C.S. Lewis
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
— Albert Camus
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
— Simone Weil
I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity. I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.
— Simone de Beauvoir
There was never any more inception than there is now, Nor any more youth or age than there is now; And will never be any more perfection than there is now, Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
— Walt Whitman
Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
The process: sitting at your desk, focusing your mind like a laser beam, imagining something out of a blank horizon, creating a story, selecting the right words, one by one, keeping the flow of the narrative on track — requires far more energy, over a long period, than most people ever imagine.
— Haruki Murakami
Man is nothing other than his own project. He exists only to the extent that he realizes himself, therefore he is nothing more than the sum of his actions, nothing more than his life.
— Jean-Paul Sartre
A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe