Connection

Why is blindness a prerequisite of faith?

The truth can withstand deliberation

and if it cannot then can it be called absolute?

Neither proof nor patent, neither clutch nor crutch,

I am not without horror, without shape or contrast.

I live among others in the isolating patterns

of my perceptual field. This is the price of self,

the feeling of loneliness that comes

from being misunderstood and the callousness

of maintaining one’s discriminations

whatever the cost to others.

The ego cannot be discarded,

the trick is in recognizing

that the identity is fluid,

a process rather than a product.

 

By maintaining rigid boundaries

everything and everyone becomes

an enemy to be subdued or vanquished.

But if we regard others as aspects

of a vast and benevolent universe

then they become teachers, nuances

of our very own being with a purpose

unique and yet inseparable from our own.

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Photo Challenge # 97

Poppy by Liz West CC BY 2.0

I gorge myself on pollen and aesthetics,

our essentials wrapped and asphyxiated.

Within you exists the better part of me.

A poppy set to burst, a carnal euphemism

held underneath the tongue and deep within

the ribs like a ribbon of pure sunlight.

Stream of Conscious

Sometimes love goads,

It forces reticent wings

Into a blinding wind.

When in your company

I prefer disturbance

To the quantifications

Of a habitual silence.

–

My days are sheets

Of crumpled paper

And these poems

Which are awakenings

In theory are only

Fodder in practice.

Whose thighs and whose hands

Cradle my organs mutely?

Whose lips tear prophetic riffs

From my capricious knees?

–

Who needs to repeat the mistakes

Of their predecessors to recognize

Their own penchant to madness?

We want all our angels diseased

That we may count our blessings.

For each life there is a luxury

That will euthanize it

If substituted for passion.

–

It feels to me that I have several poems in here but I didn’t give myself enough time to write today so I guess this is more stream of conscious than poetry.

To dream or not to dream

Robert Mapplethorp

 

If you stand too close

To the heart of the matter

You are bound to scar

 

Will I part with dignity

Wraith wings palpitating

Amidst a populous lament?

Or will I, as ash, disseminate

Into the bowels

Of an unsigned grave?

 

How long I have lived

If pain is a testament

A transparent thorn

In a garden that neither

Blossoms nor withers

 

Will I end an imitation

To the Creator I failed?

My legacy evanescent

Books burned for warmth

In the belly of a metal drum

Expendable to the craft

But exploitable in a fix

*

The arts are often disregarded for being impractical (they seem to be vanishing from schools along with fitness) and poets are looked at as irresponsible for following a dream that does not generally result in a sustainable income. I am constantly at war with myself. Follow my dreams, go all in or do something more well realistic (it is hard to do both and become a genius). Weighing what I want against what others want and expect of me. It is enough to drive a person well mad!

 

2 Short Poems (Capacity/Terminal Velocity)

Capacity 

My alveolate tongue has reached capacity

What remains of my heart cannot be quoted

Because it has not yet been understood

Terminal Velocity 

Fear has cast all logic astray

I sit thread-less with sewn fingers

Contemplating my terminal in life

Will I take the black train

With the single illumined window?

Or will I take the red one

Screeching to a vainglorious halt?

*

When I was in high school I had a dream. The dream began brilliantly I was soaring through the clouds free and unencumbered. I saw a flashing light and found myself unable to focus on anything else. I fell from the sky faster and faster. I noticed beneath me was a train station or rather a single platform in the middle of a landscape that did not exist. The scene was black and white (well mostly grey) except a single yellow window in a speeding black train. The light drew me and I kept moving toward that flash and then I woke up suddenly outside my body. When I reentered my body I had a very violent fit. It felt like that lit window was death but even though I struggled vehemently against it the whole time I was dreaming I was being summoned toward it at a horrifying speed. So the black train in the poem is reference to the dream. I have probably told you this dream before somewhere but maybe not everyone has read it. I feel I am not the only one who has had this dream.

Amnesiac (3 little poems)

1

Poised at the left hand margin

I draw bolts of divergent flesh together

Praying that the stitches will hold

For there is a reality that stands

Perilously close to departure

2

There is a feral child cached

In the paper thin walls

Of my unreceptive womb

I do not know her name

But her screams echo now

As always within my heart

3

For an amnesiac

Writing what you know

Can be achieved only

Through immaculate conception

*

The best writers are often said to write from personal experience but what if you couldn’t remember the events or the people around which those experiences are molded? I suffer from various forms of Epilepsy induced amnesia. Unlike many writers I simply can’t sit down and recount my life in vivid detail. My memories from yesterday have the same vague dream like quality as those from childhood. I have heart and abstraction but lack the concrete details. Often I have to take my raw emotions and put them into fictional or semi fictional pieces because quite frankly I just can’t remember my life well enough. Writing has helped me to know myself. So rather than write what I know I write to discover.

Chicken

I turn the lights off

When I listen to the chorus

It’s like playing chicken

With God

*

Music is empathic

The way it presses tears

From soul threads

*

Every tender refrain

Leaves me redolent

As a newly dispensed sea

A state of saturation

That expedites purity

*

Everything I know of love

I’ve scraped

From your bones

Words rich and iron-infused

You are

The unbroken voice within

The illumination

Of a benevolent unknown

*

Not much time to write hence the disconnect between the stanzas. I am celebrating Christmas with my little family unit today and then with the in-laws tomorrow.  I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season!

3 Little Love Poems

Instinct

Compelled

By the same force

That incites migration

In Arctic Terns

We nest our bones

Together

Impenetrable

In the consummation

Of love

Hearth

We create within

A passage

That the other

May never want

For warmth

Generous

Your heart hangs above

Like a laboring moon

She is generous

With her expectations

But always forgiving

*

(night full of seizures almost went to the emergency room not sure how available or coherent I’ll be)

Love is Freedom

1

You

Unlace me

Like a pair

Of thigh high boots

Because of you

I walk

Without guile

Because of you

The rage

Of pseudonym

No longer

Dominates

2

From your lungs

I draw the sky,

The plumage

Of an effortless

Flight

*

I find it very challenging to write on the weekends and this weekend I have a sinus headache and a case of chaos head so forgive me if the quality of my work went down. Next weekend is my daughter’s birthday celebration so it is a bit crazy haha

Mercy Snippets

Starfish

My disseminated veins

Extend like the arms

Of a baked starfish

Thirsting for the salt

Of an extroverted mercy

Diversion

I sought compassion

In the sea, in salient tides

That furnish diversion

Secret Garden

I’ve traveled the fathoms

Of a skeletal garden

Searching for the key

That would unlock,

Once and for all,

The crimson doors

Of my ailing mind

Scrutiny

The surface seared

A enigmatic sun stalling

In the hem

Of an empyreal robe

She held me captive

Beneath her scrutiny

I burned, as if a fiend

Held against a cross

That could not bless

Without slaughter