Post by Jeff on May 30, 2006 17:34:00 GMT -5
I’ve only ever been a bad poet as Lonnie will attest, though she may be too kind to say it. Still, I thought I would post some of my old poems written between 1990 and 1998.
Funerary
Before the comet
Everyone wondered.
Should it turn the sea to blood
Or cleave the earth in two?
But its arrival
Was wholly benign,
And it stayed in the heavens for years,
A constant source of light and comfort.
Then one day it slipped behind a cloud.
And, again, everyone wondered.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Magnets
Mechanically, efficiently
you've slipped by me
through fields too small to share
funny that
when our worlds are upside down
we come together there.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blackwhole
Overcoat beyond the lamp,
Revelation hedging sleep:
Your impressions fade,
An icy mirage
Offering sudden black
Beyond uncertain footfalls.
In that Last New Place there'll be:
No ceiling flash of automobile comfort,
No orange flood of halogen commotion,
Just an inky whole.
What nothing escapes
The gaol of light?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cosmos
"A pretty thing," mother said
of the shape in the marble,
the interruption of my sphere,
my wholeness, my slipperiness.
As far as I knew, it was unnecessary.
I could go on playing my game without shapes.
A name is all too solid;
And I can't sort it out of my sorts.
This pretty perishing, with its logos-curse,
could such loss be necessary:
a voice no one hears,
a face no one sees?
It scatters
and again comes together,
and approaches
and recedes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Compromise
I am bigger than your heart's walls,
but I will stay if you allow.
Though there's little room to stretch myself,
I know you're here,
and that's enough for now.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maus
He's at it, again,
That mouse in the kitchen.
I've set thirteen traps,
But he outwits them.
And I worry for thinking to kill him.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jenny '93
Jenny kiss'd me wide awake,
Kiss'd many men she once knew;
Time, good thief! transforming all ache
that meets your gaze, take that too.
Say I'm happy, say I feel
All the life that joyfully bliss'd me;
Say I'm full content, but still-- Jenny kiss'd me!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clouds
clouds: scene-memory parcels
stop-motion souvenirs (changing like clothes)
earth bricks: material expanse
what beautiful ground (changing like clouds)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vice
I saw a Vice as fish submerged
And with a rod and reel
Yanked it quick into my boat
Crushed it with my heel.
I. 1980-1990
Cut off its head, threw out its guts
Roasted up its meat.
Instead of Vice devouring me,
I had it to eat.
Spiked its head upon my gate,
A trophy--to be sure.
Warning all who come to me
Of Vice I won't endure.
II. 1995-
Lifting then its eyes to mine
To revel in my will,
It slithered straight into my throat,
Is in my belly still.
The water teems with other fish
That ever are my ken.
My fallen name: the browning leaf
Adrift atop of them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wedding
Let us have a private wedding
in some secluded spot,
away from house and garden
with but few friends to mark the hour.
Amongst the branches and the brambles
let us assemble under no higher power
than the beetle on the tree.
Let the coarser fabric of nature,
primeval and warm,
loose a life that dreams not to escape,
but to endure.
No testament or pledge,
no stilling the heart,
no wounding truer sight;
We sanctify our nuptial hour
with silent reverence.
Someday when greater sorrows
open this time to us again,
we will remember:
the stones that bruised our feet,
the wind that mussed our hair,
and the twilight that ever was
just beyond such certainty.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Estuary
For Thales
A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.
I exhale the substance of my heart
into corruption,
the mountains of Purity
resupplying my will daily.
But, the untainted water
is instantly fouled
by the noxious Other.
Take a sip from the middle.
Take a sip from that end.
It is always the same:
Unknown, Distant, Foreign.
I become a stranger
even unto mine own Self.
I cast me to the sea
that turns me into something else,
into nothing at all divides me.
Deepest of the salt sea currents
where on they float
- pleasures, ambition, wealth, fame, conquest,
I deny you my breath
I forsake your depths,
I give up my shadow
upon the well-traveled path.
Give me desert Deliverance
and vaporous Eternity!
Skyward I am hurled
without a name to behold
to touch the warm Creation
Pointed, Spinning, Manifold.
I yearn, I seek, I strive - but fall
as ice into some mountain vale,
there to wait before creation
- quieting before all creation -
returns me once more unto Myself.
Working from the wrong end can do nothing but harm.
Behold the secret of association:
Life is Nature's self-relation
without world without end,
as a process, flux ,and flow
spinning strands of stream into Itself,
into the Whole.
A little leaven...
I thank the mountains of my breath
and cast me out to certain death
-- that a kinder sort of cruel
and I a wiser sort of fool --
who laughs aloud at my returning
I now silent before the burning
Tyger of my fate.
Funerary
Before the comet
Everyone wondered.
Should it turn the sea to blood
Or cleave the earth in two?
But its arrival
Was wholly benign,
And it stayed in the heavens for years,
A constant source of light and comfort.
Then one day it slipped behind a cloud.
And, again, everyone wondered.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Magnets
Mechanically, efficiently
you've slipped by me
through fields too small to share
funny that
when our worlds are upside down
we come together there.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blackwhole
Overcoat beyond the lamp,
Revelation hedging sleep:
Your impressions fade,
An icy mirage
Offering sudden black
Beyond uncertain footfalls.
In that Last New Place there'll be:
No ceiling flash of automobile comfort,
No orange flood of halogen commotion,
Just an inky whole.
What nothing escapes
The gaol of light?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cosmos
"A pretty thing," mother said
of the shape in the marble,
the interruption of my sphere,
my wholeness, my slipperiness.
As far as I knew, it was unnecessary.
I could go on playing my game without shapes.
A name is all too solid;
And I can't sort it out of my sorts.
This pretty perishing, with its logos-curse,
could such loss be necessary:
a voice no one hears,
a face no one sees?
It scatters
and again comes together,
and approaches
and recedes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Compromise
I am bigger than your heart's walls,
but I will stay if you allow.
Though there's little room to stretch myself,
I know you're here,
and that's enough for now.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maus
He's at it, again,
That mouse in the kitchen.
I've set thirteen traps,
But he outwits them.
And I worry for thinking to kill him.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jenny '93
Jenny kiss'd me wide awake,
Kiss'd many men she once knew;
Time, good thief! transforming all ache
that meets your gaze, take that too.
Say I'm happy, say I feel
All the life that joyfully bliss'd me;
Say I'm full content, but still-- Jenny kiss'd me!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Clouds
clouds: scene-memory parcels
stop-motion souvenirs (changing like clothes)
earth bricks: material expanse
what beautiful ground (changing like clouds)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vice
I saw a Vice as fish submerged
And with a rod and reel
Yanked it quick into my boat
Crushed it with my heel.
I. 1980-1990
Cut off its head, threw out its guts
Roasted up its meat.
Instead of Vice devouring me,
I had it to eat.
Spiked its head upon my gate,
A trophy--to be sure.
Warning all who come to me
Of Vice I won't endure.
II. 1995-
Lifting then its eyes to mine
To revel in my will,
It slithered straight into my throat,
Is in my belly still.
The water teems with other fish
That ever are my ken.
My fallen name: the browning leaf
Adrift atop of them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wedding
Let us have a private wedding
in some secluded spot,
away from house and garden
with but few friends to mark the hour.
Amongst the branches and the brambles
let us assemble under no higher power
than the beetle on the tree.
Let the coarser fabric of nature,
primeval and warm,
loose a life that dreams not to escape,
but to endure.
No testament or pledge,
no stilling the heart,
no wounding truer sight;
We sanctify our nuptial hour
with silent reverence.
Someday when greater sorrows
open this time to us again,
we will remember:
the stones that bruised our feet,
the wind that mussed our hair,
and the twilight that ever was
just beyond such certainty.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Estuary
For Thales
A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.
I exhale the substance of my heart
into corruption,
the mountains of Purity
resupplying my will daily.
But, the untainted water
is instantly fouled
by the noxious Other.
Take a sip from the middle.
Take a sip from that end.
It is always the same:
Unknown, Distant, Foreign.
I become a stranger
even unto mine own Self.
I cast me to the sea
that turns me into something else,
into nothing at all divides me.
Deepest of the salt sea currents
where on they float
- pleasures, ambition, wealth, fame, conquest,
I deny you my breath
I forsake your depths,
I give up my shadow
upon the well-traveled path.
Give me desert Deliverance
and vaporous Eternity!
Skyward I am hurled
without a name to behold
to touch the warm Creation
Pointed, Spinning, Manifold.
I yearn, I seek, I strive - but fall
as ice into some mountain vale,
there to wait before creation
- quieting before all creation -
returns me once more unto Myself.
Working from the wrong end can do nothing but harm.
Behold the secret of association:
Life is Nature's self-relation
without world without end,
as a process, flux ,and flow
spinning strands of stream into Itself,
into the Whole.
A little leaven...
I thank the mountains of my breath
and cast me out to certain death
-- that a kinder sort of cruel
and I a wiser sort of fool --
who laughs aloud at my returning
I now silent before the burning
Tyger of my fate.
