Posts filed under ‘truth’
SILENCE AND TRUTH
SILENCE AND TRUTH
is it odd that
as my words come ever closer to silence
my meanings seem clearer?
*Attribute the meaning of this to Dean Ing. Another way to say that is that his words were the precise inspiration for this poem, and nearly diametrically opposed to what he meant.
[“The Father of Lies merely taught us to speak.”]
Freedom
Freedom
Riding from the west, the knights
promise us freedom:
entranced by their shining armor, we
seek this mysterious thing.
Ah, but, later, we discover
swords powerless against
both greed and death.
Odd, this freedom
our masters brought.
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This was written during the Vietnam war, aboard Admiral Steele’s (Commander Seventh Fleet, in charge of all Far East U.S. Armed Forces) flagship CLG-5 USS Oklahoma City. This is about two contradistinct things; that war and rhetoric surrounding actions which are unjustifiable. As such, it’s also about politics itself. IT IS ABSOLUTELY UNJUSTIFIABLE TO “POINT THE FINGER” AT A GIVEN POLITICAL PARTY OR EVEN METHOD OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. All methods of justifying usage of force by stated hypotheses (theories are the result of hypotheses which haven’t been disproven by tests; there IS NO PROOF available through empiricism.
Because of TheDonald, I long for reality
3/19/17
on longing for reality and other foolhardy things
separated, the changes
refract and reflect the light
promising clear sight
and other most assuredly
imaginary things
(i’ve even heard “truth”
promised!)
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I have never before used my art explicitly on current events. Because there are too many exact replications of the rise of the Nazi party into dominance, I refrain no longer. I will do as well as I can to avoid polemic. My pursuit is of the rational and beautiful (though the subject is often no thing of beauty) and most of all–in poetry–of concision in pursuing my goal, which is…I have to admit it, I still pursue it–truth.
Two Studies
imaged reflections
delayed cascades
of shattered moments
eye-blurred lens-caught
form fractal expressions
of beauty, made
by the shaping of near-molten metal,
there
are many forms of speech.
the image is of a smith at his (her) trade, hammering almost liquid metal
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inflected experience*
the fragments of you i remember
i know are (half? mostly?)
certainly part self-perception
it is
like seeking true reflection
in the scattered bits
of a shattered mirror
but
frantically seeking that mirror’s repair
whether
symbol of my longlost soul
or your clear remembrance
(no matter the foreknown pain, i
struggle to recapture
that searing moment
that our meeting was
but as i struggle
to collect those fragments
somehow they cut free, and i bleed
once again
remembering you.
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These are both ‘studies’ in the sense that they are exercises of a kind–experiments might I suppose might be a better word–in styles and in one mixing of an experimental style I basically abandoned with my ‘normal’ style. If there is a distinctive difference in much of my poetry and writing and general it probably results from the usage of more than one viewpoint or perspective.
*This in particular is a purely conceptual poem, the image created by a shattered mirror’s reflections (and the attempt to suggest that the apparent distortion may lend a kind of truth that may not be entirely specious). [There is also an echo of
‘sun on bright water
narcissus, shattered
by a pebble’
which was my landmark poem in that it represented a definitive step into my own style without any hint of apology. Since I deliberately employed Grecian mythology in the poem to the extent that it is meaningless without its knowledge, it was a fairly brazen act. I lived with and amongst Christian Reformed people–Calvinists, who abhorred idolatry. But then my book report for the class for baptism was on Ship of Fools… I couldn’t resist and no one called me on it. In retrospect I still can’t believe it. I’ll leave it to the reader to find out which particular book I mean, with the hint that popular literature was just beginning.
