dogtrax @dogtrax@mastodon.social

Perhaps I need to do another #introduction here, since it has been some time since I did it last. My regular forays here include composing #smallpoems, writing #smallstories, sharing #smallquotes and other connected sharing threads. If you write there, I'll try to respond. I may even remix as a way to honor your writing. I try to keep my heart and mind open.

For friends among the hashtags I regularly use -- #smallstories #smallpoems #smallquotes etc -- I am going to pull back in most digital spaces for the month of July (as I do every year). I may still jump in now and then, but nothing with any regularity. I hope you all keep writing.

June's
rain blooms
lilies

We're
here, smoothing
petals

soft
but temporary
reminders

how
present time
wanes

#smallpoems

Finally gathered up into a Bandcamp collection all of the tracks and songs that I have been making/writing/recording since the start of the Pandemic. It's more of a curation effort on my part than anything else, so I have them all in one place. The project is called Notes from a Quiet Corner. https://dogtrax.bandcamp.com/album/notes-from-a-quiet-corner #songwriting #music #pandemic #clmooc

Gloaming
becomes us,
un-beckoned

A gentle reckoning
of day's faded light
into soft dark
of night

Writers and poets
reside in these seams,
the seconds between
dawn and dusk,

fingering the rust
and breaking the husk
of memory and dreams

#smallpoems

“I was engrossed in the film playing across the apartment walls. I had forgotten myself in her story, had lost my way, willingly, until she reached back and swatted my thigh. ‘Hey, don’t fall asleep on me now!’ But I wasn’t asleep.”

-- from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong, page 23

#smallquotes

Someone told me
I need to look beneath
the sweeping veins
of the big oak, to root
around dry soil with
bare fingers, to place
my ears upon the Earth
and listen with eyes closed
in order to understand
the origins of inspiration
but all I hear, here, is my
own voice, cracked
and rattled, reminding me
of all I need to be doing
before all of this gets
anywhere close to written

#smallpoems

“Undersea cables link people — in rich nations, first — but the earth itself always stands in the way. To determine the route of an undersea cable requires navigating a maze of economics, geopolitics and topography.”

-- from Tubes by Andrew Blum, page 198

#smallquotes

just some
words just
some chords
some melody
harmony
just a song
nothing more
than a moment
like that

#smallpoems

This is likely the last song of my pandemic music collection ... now gathering them all up for Bandcamp ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXr4Enw6Dwc&feature=emb_title

While you
look to the
waves, my
eyes scan
the skies -
your current,
my wind;
my wind,
your current

#smallpoems

Lethargic

Expended,
to the point
of exhaustion

Drowsy,
near the edge
of consciousness

Languid,
on the border
of liquid

Listless
by the boundary
of activity

Hopeful
with the prospect
of rejuvenation

#smallpoems for #openwrite

I'll be the first
to admit, my feet
don't leap like
they should;
but they've marched
when they could

my feet've paused,
on pavement,
when they rally
against injustice
paused at the brink
but not one step
beyond

they've stood, to shout,
and broken rules, no doubt,
caused us to wonder
and worry at the progress
not yet coming about

I wonder, at times,
if my feet don't come
equipped with my mind

#smallpoems for #openwrite

Think chords
finger acrobatics
on the fretboard
strange unusual
configurations
calling for left
hand dexterity
as the right hand
hits the down
beat with the
foot-stomp
on the concrete
yet the left struggles
to remember
that working
together makes
something close
to music

#smallpoems for #openwrite (theme: memory poem)

Always
its adjacencies
noticing
small trajectories
hearing
blue notes
ghost notes
lost notes
wanderings
the gaps
of possibilities
maybe the yes
is a lost no hidden
beneath stone,
our fingers
share the weight
of lifting
the unknown

#smallpoems for @tellio

Gravel-voiced troubadour,
my ears are ringing
with your singing,
the way you're always
bringing characters
into song;

A lyric
is a poem
is a story
is a commentary,
exposing shadowed light
with a turn of phrase
forgotten in the night

We're all still lifting
multitudes,
so many songs of self,
sixty years of music
sleeves, yet you belong
to somewhere else

#smallpoems

I'm listening,
Kamasi,
I'm listening

I'm here in this space
of song with your horn,
reveling in the something
beyond echoes of Shepp,
Shorter, Bird, Cannonball,
Kirk, Sanders, Trane;

This exquisite, complicated
melody brushing up against
rhythm, heartbeat, rhythm
as you're singing your history,
with your saxophone,

and I'm listening,
Kamasi,
I'm listening

#smallpoems

The bluesman
growls of the train
in the distance

chords;
hum

time;
resistant

#smallpoems

Be the pin-drop
on my vinyl –
the warped, scratched
sounds, spinning -
we're cut, carved, grooved;
the heart, remembers
the ear won't forget
the past is etched
forever in art,
while the body on
these feet still shuffle
and move

#smallpoems