phase transitions

-



                in Saigon in Saigon
                the rains and sun are warm

                Golden California
                you're too cold too cold
                Northern California
                i don't want your gold

                if to be streetful
                then in Saigon in rain
                where air's wet to the full
                and becomes your home

                the tree of your head
                and the roofs in the rain
                talk all night but can't tell
                are we alive and wet
                or long gone and dead

                Golden California
                you're too cold too cold
                Northern California
                and your blinding gold










wh,
1991-april

achilles

 


    in the morning breeze
    achilles shouted
    i'll catch you
    and light on his feet
    in the blink of an eye
    approached the cheetah

    the cheetah smirked at achilles
    morphed into a horse
    and went away

    not too far

    it was noon by now

    achilles shouted
    i'll catch you
    and soon crowded the horse

    the horse smirked at achilles
    morphed into a cow
    and went away

    not too far

    it was hot afternoon by now

    achilles shouted
    i'll catch you
    and soon reached the cow

    the cow mooed at achilles
    morphed into a turtle
    and went away

    not too far

    the sun was setting

    achilles shouted
    i'll catch you
    and soon approached the turtle

    the turtle smirked at achilles
    morphed into a snail
    and went away

    not too far

    it was late in the night by now
    achilles sighed
    i am making progress
    years from now
    one day i may catch you
 

 

 


wh,
2006-01-24

[my father...]

my father and i
walk on the patio
every
weekday weekenday holiday
i admire the gardeners' care

who am i?
my father does not know
nor my mother's name
he does not remember
his long gone wife

i show him the bold roses
the light pink bush
the pristine white
and the third one
of the deep ripe cherry color

choose one

he selects
the deep dark red
my mother's favorite color

wh,
2010-may

love poems

        dreamy senselessness





                i'll wake you up
                and tell you a story
                then let you sleep

                when you wake up
                you'll let me know
                am i alive
                or just a dream






wh,
1985




************************************************************






                  the last summer concert
                  ---- in san jose ----




          would you like to dance with a stranger?
          she looked at me why not?
          slow dance
          then she had to rush to san francisco







 wh,
1995-10-30 





************************************************************




   summer phone




          your voice nests in my ear
          the air's the summer's affair
          soft waves of your voice oh dear
          carry me through the summer air

          you study with thunder
          text after text a wide choice
          but my snow white phone melts under
          the summer melody of your voice







wh,
1993-07-4/5 



************************************************************




love




        you don't understand
        what's going on
        why you want so bad
        to be with someone you don't know
        eyes blinked twice and you think
        that eternities passed
        that you know

        the fog
        and the good people
        share
        in your happiness and pain
        and you think
        never again
        and perhaps
        you're right
 



 
wh,
1993-01-24



************************************************************





     san francisco blues



            you get in chinatown in san francisco
            good food for a coupl'a green butterflies
            i wona get to chinatown in san francisco
            i wish i got me a coupl'a green butterflies

            chinatown waiter sets a table for you & me
            but we wave to each other goodbye





wh,
2003-07-15

************************************************************




              we stopped on the bridge
              what time is it she asked

              i took the watch
              off my wrist
              and let it be carried away
              by the dark water below





 wh,
1997 

************************************************************






   celebration



      a fruitcake and a wino
      didn't mind the food and wine, no
      they had a good time, no? yes, yes
      and all that jazz, jazz
      you know, no? yes, yes

      beer
      turns tulips into roses
      our conversation
      absorbs foreign words
      and notions

      let's hope
      to find a thick dictio
      next to the eyebrow
      when the eye opens

      don't you feel
      that beer
      turns two lips into roses?
      ...
      ...

      wind and wined
      on my mind
      tutti-frutti
      you're a beauty
      worry weary
      don't you see
      won't you marry
      a fruitcake and wino
      like me?



wh,
1985-1996


************************************************************


       summer


           some of the comforters fall
           between the bed and the wall
           simple summer life
           you cover yourself just with five
           and you lie still
           till she reaches her goal
           which is you
           and she lets the remaining five fall
           too
           too hot
           she's calling you a spoiled brat
           she's right



wh,
2008-06-26

************************************************************




    soap bubble 



        a public domain user friendly shareware 
        romantic lover 
        a syntax error 
        a semantic miss 

        oh how i miss that ms 
        oh how i wish 
        that she'd exist 




wh,
2005-08-26


************************************************************



                 *       *

                     *


           is it the other ship
           or mine
           moving
           in the fog

           will I see her
           tomorrow






wh,
1997

************************************************************




  Marriage






    I the clerk designated for you
    by this higher institution
    before hearing your vows
    that you are her and you are his
    I have to warn you about this
    one thing:
    two married people will encounter
    a lot of good sunny days and a lot of bad rainy days
    a lot of happiness and a lot of sorrow
    gold & diamonds but also frustrations & tears
    and all kind of things
    as for instance children

    thus listen carefully to what
    this clerk who marries you has to tell you
    two people in a marriage
    can afford but one dream



wh,
(long time ago)

nuisances slow me down

out of proportion. The blogger manual here was telling me that html is available, that all I need to do is to click. I couldn't see any place to click on. I need the ability to format the text in order to post my poems. I can do it via html. But I didn't see any html button, I couldn't find it. I know that I am not observant, that I am not a hacker, but still, it should not be that difficult.

Finally I read what I have already started to suspect, that html is not available when I use safari as my web browser. I decided to give Firefox a try. Most of the time downloads don't work for me, I end up frustrated about somewhat messing up my hard disc. This time everything worked by itself. Also, my gmail, when opened with Firefox, does not seem to slow down my system. I do have to develop my system of bookmarks again but that's ok.

        HTML allows me to
          format my texts
            -- that's nice!

html test

This is a good place to store special unicode characters.
Let me start with some Polish letters:

   a/     c'     e/     l/     n'     o'     s'     z'     z^
 ą ć ę ł ń ó ś ź ż
 Ą Ć Ę Ł Ń Ó Ś Ź Ż
   A/     C'     E/     L/     N'     O'     S'     Z'     Z^

I'll add some mathematical symbols later.

(Hm, I don't see any record of the editing activities.
Blogger does not seem to keep the track of modifications).

Moonglasses

  moonglasses

mistic mystic brooding in the mystic mist
lost his thoughts in the fog
no police would find'im with their orange searching flash lights
only a philosophical dog

from the vanishing fog the moral has appeared at noon
pronounced by the zen respecting dog
but since no one cares about philosophy or moon
the moral has vanished in the fog.

wh ©
1990-02-11

*******

I made up the neologism "Moonglasses" as a metaphor for poetry, and posted the above text on rec.arts.poems. I was coming back to this theme repeatedly:





  moonglasses

transparent pigeons struggle
against a hurricane of vacuum
the waves of silence strike the shores--a blue hammer
in a hand of a judge--an illiterate stranger

blind and deaf i wear
my moonglasses

wh ©
1995-08-25

****

moon in the tear in your eye :-)
does it smile or did you cry ?

an eyedrop not a tear
protects my eye from too much light

wh ©
1995-08-24

****

Around 1997-8, there used to be an unusual server, RedFrog, owned by Iwo Gajda. Among the main activities of RedFrog were a children art website and a poetry website. The RedFrog poetry collection was by far the largest on the Internet ever, perhaps simply the largest. There were poems written by Internauts as well as classical poems, in many languages (English, Spanish, Polish, Portugese...). The websites were run by Iwo himself, who had also provided the entire software, for which he had an outstanding, artistic ability. In particular, he was also able to provide software tools to the users, without messing up the operation. Furthermore, he had involved some trusted users into certain tasks. In particular I had the honor to start the first two RedFrog antologies: "Moonglasses" and "Ksieżycowe Okulary", in which I was collecting my favorite poems by different authors, respectively in English and in Polish. It's sad that one day RedFrog simply vanished. Nobody knows what happened. While I left RedFrog somewhat earlier (half a year earlier? a year and half?), I still kept lurking a bit. Thus I may try to guess why Iwo could have been frustrated with the happenings. His idealistic view of the copyright was objected to by some publishers. The other problem was the progressing degeneration of the interactive Internet. Iwo was most likely the very first to introduce some constructions (at least in their easy to use form and superb functionality), which today we take for granted. Among other options you had on RedFrog the combination of personal archives (typically one per poet rather than one per user--also the long gone poets of the past had the archives devoted to their poetry) and of the discussion boards. Unfortunately, the level of the exchanges on the discussion boards ultimately went down the drain.

****

I experience, only too often, the "vasovagal syncop" (vasovagal reaction or effect), which means that sometimes the blood rushes away from my brain, and then I fall. As a rule it's not a big deal but last Friday it was not so simple. Oh, well.