Posts filed under ‘poetry’
For John Varley
For John Varley
Immersed once in silvery
reflections (how smooth
this metallic mask, this muse!)
in that cavern
(resting on quicksilver
on Mercury),
entranced, i was moved
(but we were trapped, and oxygen
was short) to touch your breast,
recreate that fearsome beast.
(I thought my desire
‘incestuous.’)
Did you sense my momentary
desire
behind my suit’s silvery mask?–you offered,
and i rejected.
How odd to find later that both desire
and rejection
were directed at myself!
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This is based on one of his short stories, and genetic doppelgangers, spare bodies meant to be kept mindless, and…I won’t give you any more of it. He was fascinated by the whole thing for quite a while.
meanings(II)
meanings (II)
meanings. this land
is drenched with meanings.
but the dead
are merely dead.
About Truth and Inarguable Definitions
About Truth and Inarguable Definitions
dreamed toward but unspoken
because unwordy*
the name of the desired
unvoiced by very nature
(whispered only by the lipless wind)
cuts
unseeable unstoppable: ‘knowledge’
like ‘love’
is one word for many things
and hence
quite inescapably false
whenever used
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Yes, coined and not an illusion of mine that it’s an existent word.
Perhaps 2 weeks old–or 2 months–but I do remember writing it, which is uncommon for me. As I said elsewhere, sometimes I go through long ‘dry’ periods with my poetry. Every time so far since I was 10 I will then proceed to find a great deal of poetry written during that time period, of which generally at least 50 per cent is scrapped, along with incomplete studies toward. I also have a confirmed habit of trying to write something and sometimes working on it for months (in the case of the manuscript ‘Voices’, decades), writing any number of poems that lead toward the final one. I’m starting to write (fictional) prose again as well. And prose with the poetry.
in memory of my fictive father
In Memory of my Fictive Father
i bear your name,
yes, but
like a scar
not like a blazon
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*Note; I finally ‘made contact with him’. [I made contact with my biological father & half-siblings in my sixties; I never bore his name. My fictive father is my adopted father.] He was in the terminal phase of Alzheimer’s. His children found my existence (as his other and unmentioned child) unnerving and unlikely at the beginning, intolerable and impossible at the end. Since the connection was made by my wife via one of the gene-testing places [yes, the implied is the existent; how else?], I certainly had no part in the cause–which was in fact long past, if you want to get down to it, but in this cause the cause for the supposition of any connection between all of us. I’d even neglected to contact them, oddly enough, at 60-some-odd and with a habit of avoiding; one of them contacted me (she vehemently declaimed that I was a mistake, later; my mother would have agreed much of my life). I was born during the formal Occupation of Hitler’s Germany (yes, that one that persists* in a number of places; this was 1953)
*Calling it The Occupation openly is somewhat dangerous, potentially. To the obvious question, hard to tell, I don’t know, um…, perspective is generally drawn from methodology,
in memory of Ms. Ed Yeaw
in memory of Ms. Ed Yeaw
i would say your face
is etched in my memory
but it somehow is not, only
the parts remaining, not
the whole…
say, rather
that on this morning
more than 30 years later
(having savagely awakened myself
every time i dreamed of you; you
never knew, never even guessed
that loving you was already
nearly “sinful” to me
while we were still ‘together’
though that we were never)
i thought to see your shadow pass.
it shall pass
again and again,
i know
and that i shan’t try to pause itl.
drinking of the moment
i do not, must not
fruitlessly
attempt to grasp it
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Mind you, the attempt to keep hold while not grabbing is either self-contradictory or extremely difficult.
dedicated to Quora
dedicated to quora
i dream
i think
of speaking your name
endlessly
so much that my lips
are cracked and dry
but come morning
i know no name
–nor, indeed, “you”–
my lips are quite whole
and my mouth isn’t dry
tell me
can this mean
something?
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You have to know what Quora is to appreciate this. Google it or better visit the site and try to find some of the odder questions (and answers); it isn’t hard. Right up there with Mil Millington [assuming he’s still on the web].
I came close to considering this submission-worthy.
on conjoined meanings
6/8/2015
on conjoined meanings
you react in disbelief
when i tell you
i discovered yet again
and this time in a dream
that i can’t do without you.
“o,” you say “but you don’t
show it, you say
so little, you hardly ever
even touch me.”
i shrug. in truth
what love might be, i think
or i might love myself.
and meaning
is not love.
uncomfortable truths
Too Much Truth For Comfort
to move toward you or away
just now
would require more judgment
or at least an ability to
see myself without complete distaste.
i
you see
am quite stripped of i.
fifteen years later
still captive to a long-past experience*
i still have learned
only occasional silence
as for wisdom?
not even its semblance.
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November 8, 2018 Transcription, somewhere between 20 & 30 years old. The inspiration was 40 years ago–now.
She did make me swear to never love anyone or anything, ever again; more often than not, her remembrance is sheer agony. Worst of all was the discovery that some of my ‘imaginary’ perceptions were very unfortunately quite real. No, I absolutely will not go there. Interpret that as you wish, I won’t and can’t explain.
Journeys
Journeys
as i try to recall
your face, i find
only shadows
on a cave’s irregular wall
but as i struggle
‘gainst my binding chains
(and against my blinding beliefs,
(gifted to me by my peers and seniors)
and finally look back
to see the light’s source
i can find nothing.
perhaps it all
was merely illusion
(“…i would have peace,
and a dry crust…”)
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I’m consigning this to ‘voices’ although it’s relatively new. I consider it unlikely that I’ll seek publication other than in this venue. Most likely the only way I’d do that would be if someone were to ask me to do so. I consider the likelihood of that exactly equal to the probability of my winning the lottery. I don’t play it.
Questions, Scars, and Scraps
Questions, Scars, and Scraps
today there were
seemingly endless
echoes (or perhaps shadows)
of your beauty and grace.
that means, yes,
i too am beneath the Wheel.
the “average” must be
understood from the
beginning to be artifice.
nor can names be used
to analyze their own effect
even from the start.
our reality has been
scarred into us. is it
important that i’ve
forgotten or never knew
my name?
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Written some time this year. My fear of getting published actually happened like this; I sent some ‘new’ poetry off to a magazine and it got published. I was again overjoyed. I’d even been paid for it! Then I walked inside the house and found my poetry in the magazine and it was utterly execrable. I hadn’t waited until what I’ve always called the “honeymoon period” was over. Unfortunately that turned into this fear of–near–inability to submit poetry. Questions, scars and scraps–indeed.
Note that in this Brave New World this–blogging something–is deemed publication. Which means that collecting my poetry would be somewhat laborious. Perhaps fortunately, no one has ever requested a copy.
