Far-Away Planet

There’s this
     far-away planet
     which I visited
           once

The people who lived
     there

Spoke
     a different language

And in the years
     I spent
           living there

I learned that they had
     no word for
           “enlightenment”

The closest translation
     into their language
     meant
     “The day he began to smile”

“Love” meant nothing
     to them,
     but the phrase
     “The one who feeds you”
     seemed almost Holy

“God”
     translated to
   “A room without walls”

And “War”
     left them
     entirely stumped


-Jim DuBois
circa 2000

From "Sometimes". Get a copy here.

The Trees Above

The trees above
the sidewalk outside
Amanouz at night -
protecting me from
the infinite universe beyond.

Aug 30, 2014

Sometimes - eBook

I have a new poetry book in eBook format, available on the iTunes Bookstore for $2.99.

It is a collection of early poems by me, featuring themes of love, loneliness, space travel and spirituality.

Many of the poems have not appeared on this blog.



Get a copy.

Or view my all my books, eBook and print, as well.

Supernova

Until the first stars
exploded,
there were no
heavier elements
anywhere
in the universe.

Then billions of years later,
our relationship
went supernova
and I'm watching
more complex
and interesting things
form
as I cool down.


-Jim DuBois
July 14, 2012

Tiny Sand Frogs

Turning over
a canoe on the beach

I discover
    reveal

a multitude
of tiny sand frogs,
(five could fit on my pinky)

tiny sand frogs,
descendants
of the glorious stars,
constructions
of tinier atoms

tiny sand frogs
leap about
in a tiny horde
after I turn over
a canoe
on the beach


-Jim DuBois
July 15, 2012

Looking Up at the Stars

Looking up
at the stars,
I say hello
to the photon
that traveled
all the way here
across the vast galaxy,
and
  "boink"
hit my eye.


-Jim DuBois
July 15, 2012

Rocket Boy

We must have told you
that Daddy was far away
after he died,
or something like that,
because you got it
in your head
that he was out on Jupiter
in outer space, or at a star,
and we let it stand at that,
because often there was
no more reasonable way
to say it.

Lately you've loved to watch
the launch of Apollo 11
on youtube,
and listen to the song
"Rocket-Man"
by Elton John,
and I think
as I sit there with you
that you are on
a kind of a lonely quest
to find your father,
and I am awed
by the deep hope
you have
that maybe it's possible.

It is serious
and important for you,
at four and a half,
to be on this quest,
and it is important
for me to set down a reminder,
a note to your future self,
saying that even though
a quest might take you
across the universe,
it always ends up
being about coming to terms
with what is inside of you.


-Jim DuBois
Dec 10, 2011



Bonus Videos! Watch them separately, or do an experiment and run them both at the same time.

Start this first:


Start this after a couple of minutes or so:

__ of __

Son of
    improbably intelligent primates

Offspring of
    supernovas of primordial stars

Descendent of
    quantum fluctuations in the early universe


-Jim DuBois
May 9, 2011

Long Dream of the Stars

...like galactic sentinels
...like guideposts
...like will-o-the-wisps
    of the deep vast cold

...like angry protesters
    of the darkness
...like fiery anchors
    dropped into space
...like mitochondria
    of an emerging super-being


-Jim
Jan 31, 2011

"steel candy-cake perfume"

I remember that time
that you said
"steel candy-cake perfume"
and
Karl Marx
rose from the dead,
not came back to life,
just rose
straight up
UP
UP
into the air
and disapearred,
heading out
towards the
Oort cloud
and the horsehead
nebula

Well, that's the last time
I'll sing butterflies
of
supercluster cadences



-Jim DuBois
June 19, 2006

A Neuron Firing

A neuron firing,
An idea forming,
A muscle moving.

A letter!
A word!
A sentence, and a poem!

What next?

A person,
        A planet,
                A galaxy!

The forces of Gravity!
The speed of Light!



-Jim DuBois
c1998?

Fragments

Broken and re-formed
Like dna or atomic nuclei
Or life and death of stars


-Jim DuBois

Astronaut

I used to be
an astronaut,
floating out, way out,
somewhere between
the galaxies.

They sent me there
on some mission we all
forgot about,
but luckily I got rescued
by some aliens who brought
me home.


-Jim DuBois
2004

Stars, and Ice

Walking back through the front field at night,
after feeding the cats at the barn,
we used to lay down and stare up at the stars
and feel the enormousness of their distance
and what it would be like
to just keep falling
up into the sky.

Sometimes when we came back that way
in the winter,
the whole hill would be covered
with ice-encrusted snow
and we used to lay down on our bellies
and slide slowly
all the way down.


Jim DuBois
Jan 1, 2010

Sometimes

I put together another book of my poetry, which you can get online from a print on demand service. This is a larger collection of poems I wrote in the 1990s, and it covers a wide variety of themes, including love, spirituality, nature and space travel.

Sometimes - a collection of older poems

My Dance Shoes ( + Make a poem )

I wrote a poem a year or so ago, and then invented a poetic form from it. Here's the poem:

---
My dance shoes,
black,
slightly worn,
resting after a night of lindy hopping.

Meanwhile,
the milky way
hurtles along its billion year journey.
---

Now here is how you can use the same form, and make a poem, which I really really hope you will do, and post in a comment on this blog. Just follow the directions below.
(the numbers are what line it is, and anything in ( ) is a direction about what to write on that line. Anything besides numbers and directions should be written in the poem, like punctuation and "meanwhile".)

---
1. (concrete, knowable everyday object(s) ),
2. (adjective describing the object(s) ),
3. (a short phrase describing the object(s) ),
4. (an 'ing' phrase [resting, running, reading, etc] about what the object(s) are doing at the moment).

5. Meanwhile,
6. (a very large almost ungraspable concrete object. Meaning something that exists, rather than an entirely abstract concept, but one that is hard to comprehend entirely)
7. (what that object does right now, using a present tense verb [runs, eats, sleeps, hurtles, etc] ).
---

Previously posted on my MySpace blog, with poems after it by other people

The Far Reaches of the Galaxy

Lately,
      I’ve been having this fantasy
      that I’m travelling
      through the far-reaches
            of the galaxy

I’m riding alone
      aboard this spacecraft
      and there’s nothing to do
      except relax
            and see where I end up

Worrying won’t help you
      when you are millions of miles away
      from where you want
            to be,
      And I have accepted this
      and appreciate the nearby stars
            and my sturdy ship

But I am waiting for that
      garbled subspace transmission,
      (which I think will arrive any day now
      from the higher life-forms
      on planet earth)
      which says,
            “You’ve paid your dues,
                  it’s time
                  to come home.”


-Jim DuBois
1998

Like a Radio Wave (Sept 2002)

Like a radio wave,
  moving steadily outward
    into the universe

Like a radio wave,
  or an echo,
    or light travelling from distant stars,
      informing viewers of events
        that are already well past
          in history

Like a radio wave,
  having no fixed point,
    only appearing
  to exist
    when there is a radio

Like language,
  encoded and encryted
    meanings –
      meaningless
        without a listener

Like a moment of history,
    or a book,
  sending out ripples of influence
    into the future

Has the moment passed?
    …
  Or just some of it?

Like evolution and procreation,
  providing an unbroken line,
    a varied but cohesive system of life forms

-- One moment,
                many appearances

Just one moment
  without a beginning or end
Just one self-modifying,
  everlasting moment,

Expanding like the universe,
  being picked up once in a while
    by various
      sensors and receptors.

Just a moment of existence,
    like a radio wave,
      moving outward.



-Jim DuBois

My Borrowed Ambition Pen (May 4, 2003)

My borrowed ambition pen:
      doodling,
                  noodling,
                              sketching,

trying to find
      what was lost

trying to arrange
      what is in disarry

trying to make sense of
      what doesn't make sense of


Like a mind of its own,
   it’s searching the shadows of my understanding,
      probing into my broken heart
         looking for the indestructible black box
            that holds the secrets
               to what went wrong


My borrowed ambition pen
   is travelling deep into outer space now,
      chasing comets of lost love,
         skirting the gravitational pulls
            of black hole disaster zones
               where nobody knows… knows what there
                  is there and nobody can.

What is it learning?
   What does it know?

When it gets back to earth
   we’ll have a party
      to study the complete map of the emotional cosmos
         called me,
      and we’ll put big red danger ‘X’s
         on certain spots,
         and never never go there
            except by accident,
            or if we have to because of true love again

Only this time I’ll have a new,
   re-enforced space suit,
      and extra oxygen tanks
      and plenty of food,
      in case I get stranded
         for a long time,
      and probably a homing beacon
         so you can come rescue me,
            all you people who were at my universe party
               and warned me not to go there,
                  but knew I would,
               because who can hold back
               where love and hearts are concerned,
               and who would want to anyway?


My borrowed ambition pen
   is like anti-kryptonite,
      boosting my strength to super human levels,
         and I’m using it to chop down
            forests of primal delusions
               where – by gum! – it’s still beating:
                  this old heart,
                     this old forgotten heart.

It looks like we got here in the nick of time, too,
   but it always feels like that,
      doesn’t it?



            -Jim DuBois