Posts tagged ‘poetry from voices’
sudden wisdom
sudden wisdom
having thought, far too often
to love or know or understand
to name, to limit
confronted by the thought
of you, i’ve no response.
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Very, very occasionally I think I approach what I mean. But then that may well be sheer self-illusionment.
intimations
intimations
See, here, this
bed where she lay
(sometimes she laid)
with me, with me: i think
she has just gone, it’s still
warm from her body, she
must be near
must be quite near…
ii
And recall
you’ve left, to not
return.
Still, you’re scarcely gone.
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“Real. Long ago. I’ve nothing to add.” …
sooths
sooths
the old woman sits sighing
half-shaded from the sun: all
her springs have run dry, she lives
for the Sunday promenade
and muttered lines with old
friends (the summers of 50
years ago…)
her husband died
ten years ago–to be sure, at times,
she addresses him: but yet knows
he’s really become
only a part of herself, a reflection
of the labrynthine passages
of loneliness, memory, frustration.
her senses have, yes, dimmed: she’s unsure
what the young man looks like
who’s lived two trailers down,
for eight months. if he’s spoken
to her, she hasn’t heard…
her body has become a prison, covering
a self only she can remember.
sighing in the hot sun,
the old woman sits, hardly
knowing Now, telling her memories
like a bitter rosary: to
no god at all.
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Real. Long ago. I’ve nothing to add.
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.
fires
fires
when the fires had died
we found ourselves dancing
in ruins.
destruction was so splendid!–
how odd the rebuilding
is so painful,
so slow.
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The original subject was Nero and Rome (the addition of drunken partiers celebrating the event was apocryphal at the time, and occurred supposedly at his villa; that it occurred at all on his orders is modernly disputed; however, remember ‘sugar of lead’ and the following dementia).
That this would be applied by either side to the other of this modern debate that does concern the survival of anything resembling current human society and probably the survival of humanity makes the fires…very probable. The personalities of the two main actors on this peculiar stage and the fact that they act on characterizations rather than studies leads me to the conclusion that disaster is nearing the inescapable.
“God bless us all, Tiny Tim.”
Indeed.
I have categorized this under utter stupidity (mine) for a reason perhaps obvious to those who have been reading me. I won’t and can’t go further, unless I leave [have left] information for after my death. I probably would have done something like that were I in a situation necessitating protective measures; I probably would have quietly reiterated that verbally and actively. Since I of course couldn’t be in such a situation I wouldn’t and couldn’t have done such a thing. Final note; I rarely if ever leave a note like this without reason.
spring
spring
in this early
drought-promising Spring,
seeing echoes
of your face and others, and
other failed dreams, i
know there shall be other
hellos and other foreknown
goodbyes;
that, quite certainly,
in some sudden tomorrow, pride
and need and pain
will combine somehow with loneliness
to make another illusion
of love and untimely kisses
not so much begun as
recognized…i know
o dream truly dies, and there’s
the rub of’t. i dream
without belief.
in this too-early, dry
Spring, reviewing
past loves and past mistakes, i have
no great hopes for Summer.
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*of’t=of it=abandoned contraction, also a pun on ‘oft’, which would actually require a preceding comma
It was written long ago. My dreams now are often of the relief of ending, rather than constant and constantly increasing pain, while fighting desperately to keep on walking, and trying not to talk of pain. I haven’t been succeeding in that lately, but I have managed to increasingly approach nearer to silence in my personal life.
