No Regrets Journal Winter 2021

No Regrets Journal

Winter 2021 Issue 32

No Regrets, a journal of poetry, prose and images about the exploration of being and meaning.

Clayton Medeiros, Editor, Poet, Photographer, Collage Artist claymedeiros@aol.com Neil McKay (Johnny Trash), Webmaster Submissions are by invitation of the editor Epublishing http://issuu.com/claymedeiros/docs Facebook page No Regrets Journal, haikus, poems and photographs https://www.facebook.com/NoRegretsJournal

Frankenstein Sequel Broken hearted Frankenstein Unlike Adam, does not forgive his maker.

Watches his chosen icy world melt, Sees what’s coming at long last Perhaps humanity’s end of times.

He chose not to end his life On the funeral pyre, Outran all human knowledge, Learned many languages, Spoke with whales and wolves Hunter to hunter accepted him, He envied them their pods and packs, Shared the universe’s interlaced depths, Balanced all that is, all that can be, Galaxies, stars, planets, moons His own being, his own soul Included among the cosmic threads He sees through to the original sin, Failure to accept creation’s divinity He listened to the water Make its way below the ice shelf, Rush into the white capped ocean, Realized this was his world, His being joined with ice and water Touched too by creation

Ever Elusive Time Here now, in this moment’s shared time and space, Verified by clocks, computers, smart phones, sun dials.

Even though alone, confident that this moment exists, On this day, in this hour, minute, and second.

A pen notes some lines as historic reference For future consideration with no certainty That any particular event will be manifest Yet, future possibilities endlessly generate Appropriate roles for family, friends, strangers Among disparate memories, stories told, About which there might or might not be agreement, Divergent takes as to dialogues and intimacies The elusive dynamic relationship of passing hours

Time Traveler Displaced in time’s loneliness, Scattered across past, present, future, Like seed corn on a quantum field, Just random possibility, insensitive to place Across endless curves in ageless beginnings If you travel fast enough, nothing changes for you When you return to earth, enemies, lovers, friends, Gone to God and unrecognized incarnations On their particular wheel, no one left who knew you Your stories out of date words no longer understood Of interest only to linguists, your narrative artifact, Like archaeological finds being sifted For meanings no longer possible

Time Passes Each day does not return to yesterday Relentlessly present commitments As if fate keeps count Evens things among us Random periodicity Quirky justice and balance Like light and dark edge Each other out of days Infinitely back and forth Humanity meanders Through greater truths Of scientific merit Where what comes Is just probability Perhaps innocence A leap of faith to love While there is still time

Words and Lines T. S. Eliot, “Every poem an epitaph” Words to preserve a moment in time something felt something seen something lost something gained Held in letters, words, and lines Placed on a page, rendered, and revised Placed in a book, forgotten on a shelf Unattended year after year Found by a stranger In an old book store

Books Are Us I am my book she said As I sat at the computer In the Black Drop Coffeehouse Keeping up with my version Of the twenty four seven info cycle Mostly pursuing art and science With a touch of human interest Since it helps to remember I am one Not the transplanted son of an alien Sent here to pay my debt To a superior celestial society When I looked up she was gone The book closed on the chair I hoped it was a story she would like Plenty of whimsy and no violence

Portraits for Burk Uzzle The face Landscape of life The portrait Eye of the artist Comes to equipoise I and you Photographer’s skill Captures common sources This distinct moment Shared time and place Soon understood by those Who view the photograph Artistic values defined Subjective and objective Merge in the work Watcher and watched In this decisive moment Each face each image The merger of I and you Shared portrait Shared being

Dreamers All possible dreams Peek into the world Ever hopeful of being chosen As parents read to children Dreams wait for sleep Tip toe into the room The adventure begins

Character’s The Thing Each character in a play Has objectives the scholar says, The play moves emotion to emotion, Success sometimes fulfilled Sometimes thwarted like life itself Some players succeed,, some fail Some float place to place, time to time Hamlet’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Lost in a play with no sense Of who’s who and what’s what Why them of choices made In the plot’s out of joint time Faced with opaque scripts Muddled, discontinuous twists

Hopeful He always hoped something in life Would be fulfilled, rounded out Different than dribs and drabs Something complete unto itself Beginning, middle, and end Clearly marked out from before Distinguished from what followed Anyone seeing it or hearing it Would see purpose and intention

Day Passes The day passes In disintegrating haste I am of the day In interstitial space Of the time that it is Not of the things A casual watcher Of infinite detail Assuring neither invasions Nor territorial breaches A triangle with past and present Now’s apex mark’s the path

Rules

Newton’s laws open worlds Something measured now Could be measured in the past Could be measured in the future Superb for buildings and bridges That won’t collapse Scientists assumed they Could determine everything Our highly touted free will Suddenly indefensible Quantum theory arrives Uncertainty driven You can’t measure location When you measure velocity Determinism lost out to probability Accompanied by a bit of chaos Free will garnered a reprieve

Consciousness And The Universe Our neural networks encompass The small the large Lady bugs and the cosmos The simple and the complex A single leaf and a night full of stars Enjoy the deep green forest Reflected in the dark pond Envision quantum possibilities In their infinite choices Ever growing lists of particles Explode in collider tunnels No end in sight much like Creation’s edge inexplicably Expands more quickly than Calculations and predictions Questions out pace answers

Creature I am a creature of the cosmos My consciousness grasps the universe Sees beyond the senses of my body Solar systems, galaxies, black holes, We share atoms with one another When I have had my measure of time My atoms will join with the rest of creation

The Earth and I In the destruction The natural world disappears There is loss of beauty There is loss of diversity There is loss of balance There is loss of harmony There is loss of purpose There is loss of meaning Naming the world around us Provides meaning and definition Named places, creatures, plants Have an identity we commune with They are no longer a meaningless it There is purpose There is reciprocity There is the earth we share

Darkness Praise the dark If for no other reason than the phases of the moon Praise the dark Simply because the Milky Way Praise the dark Simply because comets and meteors Praise the dark That dreams may come Praise the dark That welcomes each day’s dawn