A walk in the Light

I stare at that light,

that light at the end of the tunnel,

and I wonder,

“Why are there no colors?”

Briefly.

Then I devour the light.

I watch it twist and dance –

it is not only at the end of the tunnel,

but it runs along the sides,

liquid diamonds.

I long to drink it.

.

Then,

I spit.

The uselessness of these words!

ow many times

do I say the exact thing,

over

and over?

Every time these same,

comfortless words.

What are they?

An expression of my desire?

I write them,

think them to the light,

hoping it will hear,

(for written language is nothing

to the light).

I beg again for that light,

and I touch it with my finger,

snapping the dream.

I fall again into the useless reality.

The light will not let me in,

not alone.

But no one else can see it,

and I quake with frustrated rage.

So close,

yet close

is meaningless.

But in that light,

reality and that narrow tunnel between

are less than a dream.

Oh!

There I know myself,

as I melt into my guide

and the light penetrates

my soul,

purging it of shadow,

fusing it to another soul,

equals.

But where is my guide,

and for how long must I search?

I grow weary of games,

of testing through words,

these same words.

No!

Step into the light with me,

hold my hand and we will explore that world.

We can explore the light.

I say ‘we’,

but who is that other?

Where can I find that soul

with courage?

One that wants to taste that light

with me?

Oh,

if only you could see that light

as I do!

If you had put your hand into it

and felt that jolt

of life

that stops the heart.

There I have seen the world melt

as time stood still.

There you can go beyond tasting the world,

drinking her colors.

Oh,

come with me –

it is so much easier than you think.

Let go

and come with me.

I cannot understand your fear,

and I hope that you do not see the light

through my words only,

for they are nothing.

I hope that you have been touched by the light.

But your fear speaks otherwise.

Let me take you to the light.

.

11.25.98

1er Soir Apres La Rentree

So it looks like all I’ve got now is what’s in this pocket.

Memories don’t fit,

so I slip them to the wind.

Run away again,

do you think this is something I need?

Do you think I like to be bitten?

I see these walls surrounding your faces,

strange faces,

stories of lifetimes I no longer care to know.

I have been lost,

and you all have lost me too,

I see.

I look inside,

then in this little pocket to see what I’ve got –

a wad of cash and a few pieces of paper,

some soviet smokes and the keys to my cell.

This is not my world.

as I had once hoped,

but now I see this is a foreign place to me,

I am alien.

I look in this pocket,

what I’ve been given to finish

whatever it is I must do here.

I look and see my work,

my words,

words of welcome,

expressions of friendship,

but none of you knows what I keep in my pocket,

and you never will.

I am a liar,

and a mocker,

and I suffer from emptiness.

Well,

what did you expect?

Why did you call me friend?

Have we given each other something,

exchanged something?

Do you know me?

Is you life different without me?

That is why I look to this pocket –

to see what’s left

and to know what is mine.

But,

do not call me friend,

for such we are not.

I am an island here,

in this world,

in your world.

I am alien,

nakedly clutching the meager contents of my pocket.

A wad of cash,

some paper,

and some soviet smokes.

That is all I have to fight the emptiness?

.

But what do you know of emptiness?

Or for that matter,

of completeness?

Who are you to judge what you cannot fully see?

Can you speak of my love,

of what I have tasted and helped to shape?

Who are you to believe I am as simple as what the surface belies?

Fly, Blindness!

I have no room in my heart

for your sadness,

and your biting words are nothing –

only words.

Yes,

it’s sad with only this pocket,

and this handful of life.

But I have loved like none can imagine.

I have loved purely and deeply and solemnly.

Fly away blindness!

And send your biting words to the wind.

They will not fit in this pocket.

.

10.11.98

Response to Ladygleesy

“Do you have a place you like to go to to write? Tell us about yourself, sir?”

Do I have a place?
As in,
a physical location,
or more metaphorically,
a place?

Historically there have been many,
as I reread words drafted so many years ago,
fields of battle that birthed a nation,
a ‘prison’ – symbolic ire of an expat
against a foreign land.

More recently,
I scribe in a cave,
a corner tucked away underground,
removed from the sun,
devoid of history and purpose,
yet bordering on lands rich with craft
and music
and memory.
But this place is of yet empty,
and I have no yet into its few cubic feet
poured any fluence of meaning,
nor instilled therein
the distillation of thought,
and thus gilded the walls with depth.

Today,
and yesterday,
I scrape the barrel of time,
eking a moment here,
a word there,
as I test this renewed bed
of poet,
something nearly forgotten,
comfortable as old shoes,
memories of prior works
that need mending
and modernization.

I do not have a place defined,
thus you read many remnant words,
as the birthing of new verse
is laboring under this dearth of resource –
a lack of time
and of devotion of space.

Although,
although,
I have built for myself a space,
and recently imbued it with mystery
and memory
and craft.
With my blood,
my sweat,
and my thought,
I have constructed four walls and a roof,
hardly guarded against the elements,
yet rich in inspiration.
I believe that I shall go there,
for as of yet,
no word have I there uttered,
nor recorded of my own.
It has been a place of physic,
of thought bent to creation of form
rather than thought bent
to the recording of perception.

Perhaps the time is ripe?

Rent Mist

It is with such sadness,

such rending,

that I look into those eyes to see

reflected pain tinting all that is observed,

coloring this world

through mists

of misperception.

.

10.8.13

Cruelty

Alas,

foul mood fey and twisted with wroth.

I long for your consumption,

to be the burning, grinding, flaming end

to what little hope you have held,

what false projections

of justice and hope with which you color your visions.

 

Alas,

breath of cruelty takes me,

smiling blackness over my shoulders peers,

whispering voices churning thought,

perversions disfigured,

come to me so that I may eat you up.

 

I long to twist.

.

10/3/13

Poetic Trifles

I care not for gilded tales

of ruby lips,

nor for flowery meanderings

down paths of nature,

cascading words like lilting streams,

nor even for that cloaking darkness

that weakly veils less than forgotten pains,

.

These are mere poetic trifles,

exercises in word-craft skill,

or so boring,

so mind-numbingly trivial,

another aimless haiku

with no thought,

and no soul.

.

No.

I hunger for truths,

for Truth itself.

My heart burns to witness universality conquered

and confined to the page,

to read of myself,

of all man in the context of all that is.

Speak to me of perception within the great vastness

of Being.

Speak to me guiding words

of the depths of Why

arrayed in robes of bejeweled free verse,

or proclaimed brashly through screeching,

unwieldy rhymes,

.

These poetic trifles –

they bore my senses.

.

8/19/13

a rose

I arose once the morning

the burning of Apollo’s shield melt away

arose once a rose,

the eclipse of Jupiter

from the smoke of the Departed,

the vial of ephemeral snow,

entrapped in memory, vision, and fantasy,

encased in glass, the recess of mind,

never to wilt, never to die,

nor to live, nor to grow, nor to joy in life,

simply isolated,

a rose arose from smoke to settle

to persevere,

the rose in my mind.

.

9.23.96

Leave

Look into my eyes so that I may tell myself what to think.

I can’t remember what the feeling is and how much it knows.

But you recall,

you never left,

and that is my haunting, my pain and price for mistake.

The well inside, the reservoir of emotion

has quickened to a boil

everything erupts.

From the ashes, the terrible agonizing remainder

rises the fiery phoenix god of anger,

my revenge on myself for rejection by my self.

I no longer ask for you to understand,

and I yearn for the false glory,

attentions from the careless,

signs upon my body read messages for the damned,

untold unsung unknown and together all together here forever.

Run out once more,

please leave my company

to invite the sweet vampire pain to embrace my mind

to fill your seat.

Depart from my eyes, strike down my pride, just shatter the illusion

the gift gone go lucky feeling happy play.

We all know, we can all see the little child crying,

crying for attention,

falling for attention,

dieing to be with you.

Desperation is the game,

loneliness the sin,

loneliness the reward.

Desperation is my sin, my bounty, my child.

.

8/1/96

The Gifts

She hangs her head,
peacefully resigned to her fate,
to finally feed with her body
the last of nature’s hungry children,
the microbes and bacteria and fungi
that restore the soil
and trap life-granting nutrients
for her children,
strewn across the sun-lit fields
by furtive birds
and squirrels.
.
She hangs her head,
adorned with God’s signature
written in the artful sequence
of one-one-two-three-five,
a spiral dance of living children,
girded for a better life than she,
evolved against disease
and drought
and famine,
ingrained with the code,
modified instructions to paint their faces
as they gaze lovingly at the sun,
even as she spent her days,
basking in the glory of that light.
.
And now she bows,
silent and proud
in her gifts to her young,
and to the bird and squirrel,
as she finally beds to the Earth,
to return as her final gift,
that initial gift granted her,
life.

.

9/16/13

in response to Where by Kalina @

http://rowantreeswing.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/where/

Illusion

I lived my life in a dream

from which I could not escape.

All characters in my life, my dream

were invented by my imagination.

There were flat and lifeless and empty

without souls.

How alone I felt knowing

everyone else was different.

.

I live my life in a dream

from which I cannot escape.

I am only a character

in someone else’s mind.

IO am flat and empty without a soul.

I am desperately alone

because I know I am

the one who is different.