LOOSELY SPEAKING...

Shadows…

a song of middle-aged angst

…shifting, drifting airs with faces
and imaginary graces
but never firming to the touch…
Are you a shadow?
Am I?
Would you have me real?
Or I, you?

Shadows cast no pain, no joy.
Their suffering is not real
their fading glamor
passing clamor
not much to be wondered at.
They neither harm nor charm,
passing through one another
without the consequence of caring
or of sharing…

Each shade real only to itself,
plays out its game
with shadow pieces–
itself is played,
mislaid,
and never knows.

There is in Reality
much joy to be won
or to be lost.
I would not play Reality
with just anyone.

₁₉₈₁ _{CL Redding}

IN THE CITY

In the city
I remember green you can smell
and breezes you can hear;
Clean rain
Silent mists
Spider webs glistening
and solitude
that stretches far and wide…

In the city
I live with mostly greys,
Harsh vivid colors
slicing it in pieces;
The smell of industy
Burning coffee beans like tar;
Howling traffic
Pressing crowds,
eye never meeting eye
and solitude
a tight defense around you…

In the city
time is cut in segments
unforgiving
resistant to the slightest
alteration of The Plan:
Run
against the changing of the light;
Wait
on automated command;
Answer
authority’s demand
for identity and purpose;
Justify
your presence
As if this is a place
you want to be…

In the city.

_{CL Redding}

In This Season of Punditry…

What weighs two tons and wears a flower behind its ear?
a hippypotamus

What weighs two tons and practices medicine clumsily?
a hiippocratic oaf

What weighs two tons and is always under medication?
a hippochondriac

What weighs two tons and has an hourglass figure?
a hulahoopapotamus

What weighs two tons and lives under a Roman bathhouse?
a hippocaust

What weighed two tons, and once lived in the White House?
Rhino Reagon

What weighs two tons and stands in the corner?
a hippoteneuse

What weighs two tons and affects your nerves?
a hippothalamus

What do you call something that weighs two tons, walks under rivers and dresses in grammaflage?
hippreposterous

What do you call the love child of a rhinocerous and elephant?
elephino.

What is it when a bracchiating ape steals your breakfast?
gibbon-take

What has four hoofs and wanders around Africa in a state of confusion?
a bewilderbeast

What do you use to put up an African roof?
Giraffters

“Clear!”

I want my heart to move
to stir–

to be touched
into excitement,
to pangs of poignancy…

I want the world
to thrill me,
make me laugh,
delight me,
inspire me to dance,

to sing aloud,
to share,
to give
from my own open heart…

to reach out,
touching other hearts
grown stiff and cold
to bring them back

to life,
to light–

where all our hearts began.

_{~2000 CL Redding}

Love’s Not Always Pink

Love’s not always pink–
It’s what you feel and live
not what you think.
Sometimes it’s what you give
or are allowed to take
or nothing you can have
for someone else’s sake.

Love’s not always song–
its voice not always heard
or clear and strong.
Sometimes it’s just absurd
and makes no kind of sense
Or it speaks without a word,
has neither rhyme nor tense.

Love’s not always glee–
It has its moods and swings
and doesn’t see.
Sometimes imaginings
turn into fear and doubt
or expectation clings
to aims that can’t play out.

Love’s not always true–
a permanent romance
to nourish you.
Sometimes it is mischance
or timing’s never right
or only fine in sunshine
or only in the night.

Love’s not always whole
but without its tricks and tides
neither is the soul.

_{2009 CL Redding}

Possum: Caught in the Act

^{Upon discovering a very young, small possum raiding the cat’s food}

I am small I am fierce I will bite
if you poke at me
again!

I will gnash hiss snarl bite
if you bother me,
you Big!

Snap hiss See my teeth? See my teeth?!
keep back or I’ll
bite! bite!

And turn off that bloody light!
I’m a Creature of
the Night!
Small, and fierce and
I
will
bite!

_{co 1985 by CL Redding}

Horse Sense

The horse in harness casts an eye of woe
and plods along her daily weary path.
Perhaps she dreams of places she could go
And disregard all masters and their wrath:

–Of endless meadows green with knee-deep grass
and running waters cool and fresh to drink…
–Of vistas wide and open… but , alas…
these things a horse is not supposed to think.

So heavy hoofbeats mark the road each day
falls one after another, week by week.
She thinks of nothing more than oats and hay
and barely is aware her life is bleak.

It profits not to want what you can’t win;
A moral bitter, and a little thin…

Octopus

Lurking
loosely, blobbishly
unrolling,
your enormous
bulbous head
a-lolling,
with a kind of
neckless grace
as you come pouring
down the face
of rocky coves
and coral caves
that shimmer
with a most enchanting glimmer
through the roof
of pulsing waves–
Gem set in a jewel…
Red or yellow,
white and polka-dots
or maybe cobalt blue:
Loosely committed to your shade,
your shape also defined
sort of
by whatever space you fill…
And yet, in you
a hunter’s will…
And truth be told,
you’re really rather smart and bold:
Gravity’s your bitch
and physics, too,
and even literary art
as suddenly, you’re
outofhere!
with jet-assist,
and last-word mockery
expressed
in ink.

LOBSTERS ON PARADE

Across the abyssal plain,
in waters weighted with the entire ocean
and as utterly black as night can be,
lit only by the thrashing sparking flaring
of creatures bizarre by any notion
of ourselves, the lubberly kind…

Across these heavy deeps
in measured tread of little feet crustacean,
they march, determined in their quest
with thoughts in mind, if there is any thinking,
of dancing fandangos in slow motion
with lady lobsters, fair and fine…

Across the rippling sands
the lobsters march in single-file profusion
parading to their dancing grounds
driven by intent of reproduction
with no digression or confusion
Miles of lobster swains divine…

The Song of Hungry Cats

^{(borrowing a tune from Les Miserables)}

Do you hear the kitties sing?
singing the song of hungry cats–
They are a feisty fetch of felines
who are hunting in the thatch!
Do you hear the cats’ demand?
Say, do you hear that hungry sound?
If you’re a mouse, you’d better run
or your life is done!

Will you interrupt your sleep?
Will you get up, and face the mouse?
Some will doze and some will leap,
will you go tearing through the house?
Will you stir from your slumbers
to set up your moment to pounce?

Do you hear the kitties sing?
Say do you hear the hungry howl
Of the starving of the felines
crouching sly upon the prowl?
Do you see the twitching tail,
Say do you see the eyes so wide
as they stare and stare at the bowl
with naught inside?

_{revisions co 2024 by CL Redding}