Thursday, September 4, 2008

Short Poems for Thought

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Poetry by Ralph Dumain

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Precarious



Head barely above water,

thought barely above air,

bobbing in and out of danger,

anxiety of being aware,

at the same time friend and stranger.

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Analytical Philosophy (Haiku)



Long damp twig from a
birch tree stuck up my ass bared
to the winter wind.



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Two Dogmas of Empiricism

(for W.V.O. Quine)


I sat down to repast (but not at a table)
with many courses; it wasn’t dinner, exactly.
I couldn’t see it all at once;
I was blindfolded,
and presented each course separately.
Then I was told I ate a meal
as one whole, and each ‘course’ was a figment
of my perverted appetite.
‘You can’t get beyond that’, mocked the chef.
He pinched my ass, but I couldn’t see where to smack him.



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Two Artists Discuss Their Craft
(for Michael Colquhoun)



I draw out of the air
shapes
of soul.
There are stories whose beauty hurts.
There are polyrhythms in silence.
Materialize! Materialize!
Be blue lines spiraling in the air.
Be brushes of orange
painting the hollow
of this room,
following music,
as we strive toward translations
from an unknown language.



3 comments:

Everett Marx said...

Ralph, Ralph, Ralph, what can I say?

Your work suffers most of all from Blooger's formatting limitations.

And yet, these remain smart, snarky reads.

AtheistExile said...

I really liked these . . .

Consciousness and mind.

Our senses as filters of stimuli.

The artist's world of abstractions.

. . . or at least, that's how I interpreted them.

Candace said...

"thought barely above air"

"polyrhythms in silence"

Poets. I wish I could do this.