Posts tagged ‘poetry from voices’
safe
safe
isolate in a small place,
the woman
watches the world pass (framed
by the water-spotted window,
the smoke-stained curtains):
desiring, yet fearing
the fancied touch, the dream-held
lover…
so many advances refused! (though,
to be honest, often
she desired to answer,
yet could not…)
strange visions, unsayable thoughts
tongue numbed, lip
glued to lip…
o, and if only
for a way away, a path beyond…
still, lonely and afraid
she surveys
the alien, hostile world, safe
behind her window.
visitations
visitations
pausing at
the Hill of Skulls,
we left three flowers. (somewhere
near, rubbish burned; and a homeless mongrel
scratched at the earth)
but there was
(i am not sure
i expected any) no answer, and
after a moment
we merely walked away.
that Hill
was merely dead,
a blasted place, choked
with weeds and rubbish, and He
(i saw, to be honest,
no record of His passage)
was not there.
(my mouth was dry.)
pausing at the
Hill of Skulls, i think,
perhaps
i left my soul.
____________________________________________________
Same summer. Nikos Kazantzakis.
elegy
elegy
old poet, you
who strive to teach me, i
can tell you miss
your classes! your scraps
of tattered accomplishments, clipped
and collected, suggest
your dreams’ remnants, your
need for some, for any
audience, seeking
for response’s hint, some
answer’s faint echo
or intimation…
and you have known too many
too-polite
rejections (“no, not
quite that, it does not
suit our needs just now”),
have known too many
listeners, displaying
patience far too clearly.
old poet, with
your quatrained verse
and cliched line, your
failing, trembling voice suggests
your need, your shame half-hidden
(you defend, i think,
too much, at too great
length–to no attack).
and, having displayed
your loneliness like some hidden,
shyly revealed (and ugly)
wound, you slowly fold
your achievements’ scraps
into your venerable, time-marked
briefcase and slowly, awkwardly walk
(impeded by your aching joints)
away, awaiting only
another, similar call…packing away, too,
that loneliness, like some
heavy, nearly unbearable burden.
____________________________________________________________
Written in the summer of the year I turned 15.
Distortions
distortions
these reflections, i think, distort.
i keep striving for clear vision
for perceiving now
and instead dealing
with that long gone.
you speak, i hear
in now and yet
i act toward the past.
how odd. as
finally, you turn
and walk away, realizing
i haven’t heard you: not a word of it.
i wonder
at your leaving, and then
interpret it
in terms of the past
______________________________________________________________________________________
Alternative title; ‘on the functions of language
Fragments
Fragments
1.
The joy that you gave me
has all become remembrance,
sorrowed.
2.
Duck mirrored in the lake:
his hoarse call.
“Freedom.”
3.
The desert madman…
they called him wise.
He starved to death.
4.
This face recalled: surface’
reflection.
So bright, so sharp.
5.
And to truth?–silence
or a laugh.
Surfaces.
6.
After the word, silence.
After birth, death.
And after singing noise.
____________________________________________________________________________________
All for tonite methinks.
Journey to the West
Journey to the West
this sightly, seemly road
we’ve
set out upon: at times
most
bewitching, at others merely
a dull trudging, day
to similar day, no new thing done nor mountain known,
one unrefreshed, thirsting
for some unnameable liquid. (let us state, for the
record, that Lamb’s blood and milk left only that
thirst)
at times, to the side
of our path,
or before, we can see
shapes,
vague intimations of some goal, or ending-place.
…Shapes that sway
in the fog of a moonless night; peripheral phantoms,
never quite visible, straight on.
At times i think the journey means more than its end.
Without this shifting, dimly-seen path–where would we
go?
_____________________________________________________________________________
I remember writing this quite clearly for a number of reasons. A Dr. Runner (of Dordt University) was visiting at the Canadian border–I don’t remember which side–and on the strength of my comprehension of a very funny joke before he’d actually finished telling it, told me I had a scholarship awaiting me, all the way through to doctorate. This fitted in well with my first acquaintance with Nikos Kazantkis, a growing feeling of a need to do something (it sounded, from the way they described it, like a ‘call’ except that particular thing was supposedly devoted to be devoted to one of the ministering professions whereas mine had to do with some particular task, not yet known and I just didn’t want to try gambling since I was positive I’d suck at trying it; I kept ‘ignoring’ it with more and more difficulty as it grew toward compulsion.) The exact parallel was when I discovered poetry and realized I was a poet, although I still don’t claim I’m good. That’s for others to consider; I strive to produce art that most of all is an ongoing examination of what “reality” might be and where the source of it could lie but with a first concern of striving toward beauty while concentrating secondly on ‘truth’ or at least a painstaking attempt to convey exactly what is sensed. [One of the keys to determinism (behavioral psychology, Pavlovian psychology) is; ‘What is the source of the various criteria employed in defining the environment?’ In many respects behavioral psychology is learning theory–especially when it comes to things like rigged tests, rigged so the test-taker will fail because of wilful lack of consistency on the part of the test-giver.
