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!
______________________________________________________
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
________________________________________________________
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
____________________________________________________
*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
_________________________________________________________________________________
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?
_____________________________________________
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.
