Posts tagged ‘poetry from voices’
age (4)
age (4)
The roses stood
without my window, now
bare of bloom, yet leaved, pleading
to sky for deliverance
from the coming
fatal frost.
I would paint them, yes,
tomorrow…and tomorrow
grew away.
Frost come, leaves fallen
three bare
reproaching fingers
jut upwards.
Time is short
before remembrance,
too, ceases.
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.
