The Cunning Linguist

[noosphe-re]

You know, people think that mathematics is complicated. Mathematics is the simple bit. It’s the stuff we can understand. It’s…cats that are complicated. I mean, what is it in those little molecules and stuff that make one cat behave differently to another, or that make a cat? I mean, how do you define a cat? I’ve no idea.

John Horton Conway (via inthenoosphere)

[philosophybits]

How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.

Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims (via philosophybits)

[ceremoniousliketombs]

Solstice

it was no mystery. we knew the night marked by frost.  the mood; chocolate between four walls saturated in the suave browns of melanin. you, at that stovetop you hate, boiling peppermint tea leaves in palms rich with sepia tones. across hot mugs wafts words raw earth nostalgia,  the want for warmth in winter. you led my hand walking, i memorized your hips; the rhythmic sway of nature. the melting of glaciers. the flow of fresh water. sighs and gasps  for air and vapor.

[ceremoniousliketombs]

Song for the Vespertides

If you have seen the moonlight trickling sneakily through silver slivers of grass to stalk  lovers marooned on the meadows of spring, or elsewhere, in rays sprawled into the penumbra  that is itself the spectacle, then you have seen beauty and recognize it for it’s poignancy. And if you have roamed off, lonesome  into the ink-black night to converse  with the cold glow of the galaxy, to learn its perfect stillness  in the caravans of afterdark, its murmur guiding you as if from years wandering  then you know that beauty is a private affair a noiseless thing, vibing endlessly. When the senses become frost-sticken  by the advent of sudden visions; its ancient grip upon the sensibilities, its branding stroke upon the chest - these are the hours of revery, fastened to darkness by those wise hands that slowly churns the mosaic of life. So rejoice, oh sage of the vespertide, in the spirit of the moonlight, trickling sneakily, stealing away dust from the souls' sepulchers tonight.

[3la-almashy]

-أجور خلف كلِمات بسيطة-.

[ceremoniousliketombs]

Drool

Everyday I see something that 

more or less melts my soul, like golden

butter on Mom-mom's skillet 

made for those Sunday morning meals,

the kind that puts everyone back,

for another few hours, in their beds. 

I can never keep my soul in my chest.

It spills out like baby drool,

cute and thoroughly holy.

There is no face that I won't slobber on

there is no palm that I won't glaze with it.

How can I help but grow wild and young,

in awe of the unbridgeable reality that is you and I

in our ginchy little house called Earth?

If I told you right now, with all conviction,

that the deep flirtatious infinity of space

was a wax sealed envelope 

with an illegible insignia inked in gold,

and we are the magnificent flickers of glitter within

tucked under the fold by hands incomprehensible,

wouldn't that be worth my perpetual grin?

My angel-headed heart, all too soluble in life's soft light?

Look! See the un-rushed brushstrokes 

of births and last breaths and, oh, there -

The rivulets of answered prayers foaming at the ocean's mouth,

the irresistible stars and the sunbeams that deliver

our love letters piggyback through this void.

[ceremoniousliketombs]

EMOTIONALLY EXHAUSTED

[ceremoniousliketombs]

The Joys of Living Life as an Improv Skit

It’s a snow day and our kids are outside,

every single tyke, toddler and teenager,

toting a sled over their heads, like a shield into battle.

And if not a sled, then a snowboard.

And if not a sled or a snowboard,

then cigarette billboard snagged from liquor store parking lots.

There is Marla on Marlboro and an unused non-menthol

Newport reds, The ones that everyone loves said no one ever.

That sign says five fifty-five, death is six-sixty nine now.

Back in the day we sled with whatever,

from trash can lids to our back sides

padded with long johns, long johns, long johns.

Does my heart good though, to know that kids,

witless, whimsical, the ostentatious object

of every adult’s secret envy, are doing

it as big as we did, still improvised like we had.

My lungs are a different story.

You take another swig, I take another drag.

Times like these, aging doesn’t feel so gory,

until our eye meets the bottom of our flasks.

[ceremoniousliketombs]

Excuse My French

After a long absence,

at last we meet again.

I’m decoding your new accent.

There are new lexemes,

fresh as legumes, in your slang.

You drink orange zinger tea now,

stirred with sugar you wouldn’t have taken.

Your lock screen is a wedding gown.

After a long silence,

I am stuttering under the table

and my hands are sweating against my corduroys,

the burgundy pair you bought me from Paris.

"Un petite cafe’", you say, "si’l vous plait, aves du soy?"

I say your french is getting better.

"His name is Henri," you say, "I am having his boy."

[ceremoniousliketombs]

I Learned Where To Find You in Astronomy Class

I am forgetting you are gone

as amnesiacs forget the coordinates of car keys.

On nights when the vacant mattress is hard

and unwelcoming, I step out on the front porch.

You are skinny dipping in the sky tonight.

Not unlike the scenes when stepping

out of the shower, steeping tea in you bathrobe,

your wet hair dripping stars, gustations of heaven.

One falls into my mouth;

I am weak, I am drowsy,

your fingernails in my head

Like those nights you needed arms to hold you,

but you held me in your instead.

[ceremoniousliketombs]

The Witching Hour

The clock, dumb as jocks on the wall is right again.

Twelve on the dot.

Right on.

The face on my watch says it's the the witching hour

and I'm taking a broom to the kitchen floor.

There's a loud itchin' at the front door in my head 

I know it's not death so I don't answer.

My hair ends up in the dust pan,

along with those words I wanna say to you

that aren't tangled in that fur ball, clogging my esophagus.

There's no chemo, no therapy toxic enough exorcise

the cancer that memories of you are committed have tea with,

at this hour every night, when that dumb clock is right. 

But as long as I am alone, I am the coolest cat in the room.

[ceremoniousliketombs]

The Way Ex-lovers Swoon

You are coming to woo me

but not like as of yore;

we aren’t those tomfools we were before.

Could out happy wight hearts perchance

preempted these estrang’ed glares askance?

What untaught eyes, soft as scant hair upon you brow

could have overlooked the way our future shook

in the distance, the hurricanes, the thunderclouds,

over the horizons arc, beyond the voile, beyond the shroud.

Not so naive, still helpless at your skin.

You the one woman that coos me,

I am falling in love again.

[ceremoniousliketombs]

FIVE HAIKUS

Capitalism -

cheering on the fat cats 

that prey on gazelles. 

On a damp night's branch,

the sleeping caterpillar

cocoons by sunrise. 

Recycling bin,

you haven't been out in weeks!

A can of soda falls.

Your old john Hancock

scribbled on divorce papers,

drying beside mine.

My soul, in the glass

shrinks into a pair of eyes.

They weigh more than us.

[ceremoniousliketombs]

Sacrifice

In a photo of me as a child in Africa,

my cousins hold a lamb down 

with a hatchet over their head.

There is red blood on the clay sand.

There is a bright gold ring in it’s left ear,

and if it were a little bigger, I’d marry you with it.

[ceremoniousliketombs]

A Drunk Cat's Landing Gear

Stay, stray cat, strut under my awning

beside me, watch the silver rain subside in the fog.

my life feels so obtuse compared to your days

of fur licking and thick purring counterpoised 

by the airs whistle tonight. The hair you shed

on mine, your tongue thick as bristles.

Water trickles down like tinsels.

The wetness of our holiday,

your purr, my pencil.

new. simple. 

Another glass of Chardonnay.

I promise, I will get you some tuna

if you promise to stay.

the kids are not alright, 

but they play in it.

I remember when I was that small.

Those teeth tiny as thimbles

aren't in this face anymore.

I was so nimble to forgive.

I was so nimble to adore.

[ceremoniousliketombs]

Spilled Milk

I miss Saturday morning cartoons.

Not so much the shows themselves, 

as the politics around remote passing, 

the unanimous singing of opening themes,

the tinkle of cereal at the bottom of plastic bowls

and young me, aloof, forgetting to put the milk away. 

By noontime though, it's all over,

real people reclaim the screen and it's downhill from there.

Golf, money news, or the 700 club comes on

or something else just as painfully lame,

and all of a sudden it's time for homework or video games.

Those, indeed, were golden days

recalled as if it were a war outlived,

recollected in a daydream in an old hearts window.

As and late, I feel such a foreign contentment

with watching tennis, credit score obsession, 

frantic checking up on the dying infant 

that is my bank accounts, my possessions.

But If I were once again that star of morning,

climbing the sky on the shoulder blades of clouds

as a child's fingers climb the rusty wrings of jungle gyms,

We'd tarry around the breakfast table until Jerry Springer aired,

play rock, paper, scissor for the comfy chair,

and I'd exchange my puberty for a Playstation 3.

I'd no longer put myself through the ringer

over milk spilled or milk spoiled.

Haplessly, we'd stroll to buy new milk to chill,

with two dollars in quarters and a torn dollar bill.

My feet in your footprints for a long as they linger,

my hand in your hand, my fingers in your fingers.

[ceremoniousliketombs]

Dawn Symphony in the key of Braille

We are awakened by the earliest birds;

the rachet of ethical folks in church service

and the combustion of bulldozer engines

ringing the doorbell at you windowpane.

The natural noise of repentance

and machinery drowning out our pillow talk.

You are making out bed. The crisp whipping 

of lilac-tinged linen lined with finger snap jazz.

At breakfast, you kiss the remnants of roasted almonds 

from you fingertips and there is music in that too.

I hear those three coffee mugs, at your work desk being quiet.

The poem of our lives being sightread in braille.