What are the subjects that I like to write about?
I will write about anything that comes to mind. What inspires me to write my poems can be something as subtle as a railroad engine chugging, or a complex as human interactions. Then the frequent turns to be found in my work will usually take a reader towards the infinity of God’s designs. There is such power in the gazing into our world that surrounds us. Also, to be aware of, and into the cosmos that we seem to be a part of, is powerful. Taking a trip into the meanings we all rely on -in our daily lives- is a strong source of subject matter.
View from Web
We are concerned with
Measuring our lives
In tens of years
Now the astrophysicists
Are measuring our universe
In billions of lightyears
We see our short lives
Thru lenses of earthly dictates
And as if this our vision, this only
Is the magnificent
Way it is
As if there was no other.
How do you get your head around?
A billion light-years
Or 13.7 of them, or even more.
White dwarfs do not refer to a small Caucasian
Black holes do not refer to manhole covers
Red giants do not refer to very tall Native Americans
Blue stragglers do not refer to a Buddy Guy blues tune
Mass isn’t a cancer in the liver
And a Type 1A Supernova isn’t a personality trait.
Did the Big Bang
Have a baroque choir accompaniment,
Or did laughter sound out
Among the stars at our earthly ideas, that presumption
Of our best human being minds
Are the brightest
Among it all?
There isn’t an encyclopedic presence
To a space time before the Big Bang
No thick, heavy bound volume
Needing to blow the dust off an individual page
As they are turned, to view the next color plate
Of the creation, that energy field of our God.
Mindboggling
Faster than the speed of light
Able to leap tall building in a single bound
Pale grey, insignificant our sight only fifty miles on the clearest day
When comparing our view off the tallest mountain in Colorado.
Can you wipe your humbled tears away?
***
Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays
The ideas you may yet believe in
Occurring in the daily means and ways
On only certain days of the week, Tuesdays-Thursdays- and Saturdays
Happy or not, those times are present…
That folks will, or won’t
Get, along get along little doggies
I shall have a full clue index
On all the days to come
Coming, coming even as they are
Exactly as they are
What is there on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays?
Which contexts are believable?
On those days,
And not necessarily the others?
Do I [and I mean I, as anyone] like e.e. Cummings?
Or is he one of those, only believable
On the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays
Which has the questions about the other poets
That experiment in writing
Sharing their award winning poetry…
Do I, again, believe in the power of vibrations!
Sine wave, square wave, even saw tooth waves…
What emanates from crystals on Weds?
What happens under a pyramid on Fridays?
Do I think that is there is already always an undercurrent!
That spans all days of the week….
That I stand on to believe in the scattered splotches of days
Towards a given morning
That unchanging every coming dawn,
And the special many hues of the early aurora’s light?
I feel the rivers flowing there in sunlight’s mysterious ways
A Mother’s love, a Father’s strength, a light from our God above
As we walk performing our adult portage
Carrying love for music, love for the written word,
That hunger of wanting to walk With You Again
Into the sanctum of stepping together, so that we may feel that memory
Do I, back again, trust governments to do the right thing
That one is only on Tuesdays, it appears
Or have faith that the rich will always be magnanimous
That one seems to be only on Thursdays
Do I, in looking around for the erstwhile
Find it only on Saturdays
[With options for Mondays too, it seems]
Then looking deeper casting about for the meanings
That exist only on the special days
Perhaps that uncomfortable birthday in the middle of the week
Where our ideas that our freedom is to live another year still exists
On a Tuesday or a Thursday, as well as Wednesday…
The undercurrent of our God is always there
I want, no, need to, believe in
All the days stand on what God put there
There, is the reason you must carry forward
To do the service within the world all around us
To provide the expressions of God’s Love to those that have forgot.
Feel that it moves you thru
All those days of our construct called “a week”
Where we humans are meant to bear onward
To build with the stardust given us.
The snow melts any day of the week
Leaving behind the memory of the white calm
Standing knee deep in the snow atop a mountain,
I am singing for peace, any given day of the week.
***
Thought number 205 about old friends and lovers
The confusion of days all running together
With the heart attempting to keep up
Is only another expression
Of loneliness.
Yawning, not exquisitely bored at all
Hand over the mouth to cover the yawn
Or, perhaps it is to keep something in
That needs to come out
There is only the cold outside, inside as well too.
Only the expectation of warmth remains
The cold body is from absence
The absence felt has the sensation
Of where there once was two, now there is only one.
II
There was a song some time ago
“Exquisitely Bored in California”
Now running thru my head.
Closing my eyes, there is an image hodge-podge
These of the dear women I have known in my life
It is crowded with the vivaciousness
It is a well, a welcoming tunnel of visions
Dismounting my landspeeder, I can branch into any
Particular image and become immersed, again, with that woman.
These warm, soft caves are not filled with orange angst
More like singularly devoted museum alcoves
With a solitary subject, the soft lighting illuminating
Exquisitely seen with all the rest
Some are clothed
Some, hot, are not, with that look in their eye
All are happy, in their own way to see me
It is recherché, not boring
A feeling of unhurried joy in the exploration
Some of them wink at me.
*”Exquisitely Bored In California” is by Pete Townsend, 1982, off the album All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes.
THE LINK TO THE LIVE EVENT
https://www.facebook.com/100063542572511/videos/1222416528401031
_________________
About the Poet
Ray Whitaker has been writing both prose and poetry since he was seventeen. What Ray is writing now is very different from what he wrote those so many years ago. All writers and poets are writing out of “the Self” however there are directions that the self speaks into, that change. Now Ray’s writing is to put foremost in his work, just who he is writing for. He intends on writing for the everyday man and woman. He firmly believes that poems need to reach into the everyday person’s pictures in their minds, and engage with those. This is where he aims to make a difference in his creative writing. He’s fulfilled when he sees that his work is provoking thought in his readers.
Ray has read around the state of North Carolina [USA] and Colorado [USA], and has been a member or the North Carolina Poetry Society, the Winston-Salem Writers, and The North Carolina Writer’s Network. He has thrice been a ‘Writer-in-Residence” at the North Carolina Center for the Arts and Humanities, at Weymouth, in Southern Pines, NC. He is the father of two daughters, and lives in Colorado Springs, USA.
He has three books published by Newness Twoness Books: “ACKNOWLEDGMENT: Poems from the Nam,” 2 volume set, and “FOR THE LOST AND LOVED”. A chapbook, “THE SCUPPERNONG WORKS” is published September 2022. He has one other book he is presently seeking publication for: ‘WHITE DOG SPEAKING.”
Some of his work has been published in online American, Irish, English, Belgium, and Bali Literary Journals.
