Blogs

  • wavy windy quest

    seasand-01

    it’s not red, but this is the red sea on the shore of jeddah, saudi arabia. photography by ssj

    is the wave
    that creates the wave
    that creates the wave
    that creates the wave
    that reaches my feet
    the same wave
    that reaches my feet?

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  • the shot

    2birdsfree-a

    the shot that got the drop on the shooter.   photography by ssj

    two birds with one shot
    and there’s but one caveat:
    birds free, shooter not.  

    __________
    copyright © ssj  april 2016

  • 3 on Anatomy

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    Image courtesy of Pixabay.Com

    1.
    When you find sad hearts
    that know no love and patience:
    Forget smarts, just farts.

    (more…)

  • life breathes on

    Here’s another play at mixing media: the poem ‘Light Breathes On’ presented in a video capture, from behind obscure glass, of pigeons nesting just outside my window, this time with Bach’s composition ‘Awake, Calls The Voice To Us, BWV 140’ synced into the background.

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  • Video Poetry

    A good friend once described some of my recent poems as ‘playful’.  I didn’t get a chance to clarify what he meant by that, but if ‘playful’ means I seem to be enjoying writing my poems, I certainly do. At times, I’d experiment on words as well as mixing media, and enjoy those too 🙂 Over the last few years, I have come up with a few ‘poem videos’, not too profound really, and certainly not the kind of slam-bang performance poetry videos at Button Poetry and the artsy films at Moving Poems. I do enjoy listening to Button Poetry videos on YouTube, with this one by Phil Kaye as a favorite, but I digress.

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  • gnomes in the mall

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    the cavern of a mall, after hours. photography by ssj

    there’s no sadder place
    than a mall shuttered silent.
    green gnomes dream of hay.

    Copyright © SSJ  October 2016

    (more…)

  • The Radical Authenticity of Bob Dylan

     

    bobdylan

    Photo of the Bard Laureate from The Guardian

    “How can the life of such a man
    Be in the palm of some fool’s hand?”
    – from ‘Hurricane‘, a song written by Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy, 1975

    From any angle, radical defines Bob Dylan.

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  • At The Edge of Things

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    photo courtesy of pixabay.com

    Where affords the best of views
    The edge of a woodland yawns
    To the spiders of the wind, cotton-hard
    Caressing where one is stretched
    Between trees and skies;
    (more…)

  • the growing

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    photo courtesy of pixabay.com

    liquid seeping through the ground
    and the life that sprouts is but
    a tiny strand of green and white;
    a root hugs the earth, a new leaf
    fixes face toward space and time
    azure now, then gray and windy
    and when some dogs bark, a spine
    quivers gently a consciousness.

    (more…)

  • Shells

     

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    photo courtesy of pixabay.com

    There are more to them than
    name and symmetries
    colors and textures
    dwelling in the vastness of
    a fluidity that marks
    their nooks and crevices
    edges and eyes grasping
    the folds of an ocean.

    (more…)

  • Flight

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    morning in a jeddah neighborhood. photography by ssj

    Morning hears the panicking
    Of fearful birds in the eye of sun
    And settle only when
    Blinding red shall close them down
    On horizontal weariness.

    Then Evening listens to the sighing
    Tracking on her knees it seems
    Sounds of living that have died
    And those of living that shall die
    And tiny hearts would beat along
    The rhythm of a vastness.

    -©  1979 SSJ

    _______________
    Author’s note: The poem ‘Flight’ is part of a collection of 8 poems, At The Edge of Things, written and published in FOCUS Philippines magazine way, way back in 1979 when I was still a student of electrical engineering. In time, I shall be posting the rest of the collection, in line with my effort to homestead most of my previous and current literary works here, in one place. And yes, this blog will present new materials too. Mostly poetry, some short fiction.