Poems

Flight

Flight

Such a miracle: those first steps to flight
taken by the cormorant over water.
That first one heavy, creating ripples,
the second one lighter, and the third one
scarcely touching the water.

The need to take flight lies deep within me.
Fleeing from what? Flying towards what?
Who knows? All I know is that the future
lies ahead where my bird’s beak points and
the past, a rippling wake, lies behind me.

That white water, trailing its kite’s tail,
tells me where I have been. Machado’s
voice calls out from the past: “Traveler,
there is no road, just a wake across life’s sea.”

Comment: The photo is a golden oldie, one of the first I ever posted on this blog. The poem is part old, part new. In reality, it is a revision, completed today, of the earlier poem associated with that old blog post. It is interesting to compare the two visions – with those seven extra years of creative experience between them. Let me know what you think!

A special thank you to my long-time friend, Dale Estey, for commenting and suggesting an improvement for the fourth line. Spot if if you can!

Janus

Janus

I walked backwards into my childhood
a step at a time. I failed to find it
where I thought I had left it.

I opened cupboards, doors, drawers,
searched beneath beds, went outside,
rummaged through garden and garage,
and found absolutely nothing at all.

 My past was as dry as a squeezed orange
when the juice has gone and long days
left on the window ledge has dried it up.

I looked in the mirror, and the man
I saw was not the boy I had seen
the day before. How could he be?

Janus, two-faced, looks forwards and back.
I will no longer seek the self that was

I shall accept the self that is, the one that grew
outwards and upwards from the one
that was before. Acceptance. I can do no more.

Underworld

Underworld

In the secret world of my goldfish bowl
I speak in bubbles but only hear silence.

My fish-eye lens bends the pendulum
of the grandfather clock. Westminster chimes,

inaudible, do not intrude. Noiseless are time’s
ripples across the surface of my submarine sphere.

I feel, rather than hear, my troubled heart beat.
The foreboding sounds of distant voices leave

me untouched and becalmed. Rocked in love’s
cradle, these amniotic waters nourish and soothe.

In my beginning will be my end. One day I’ll return
to the beaches of my childhood, where the sun

always shines, and the moon path over the waves
is a welcoming walkway leading to the underworld.

What brings you peace?

Daily writing prompt
What brings you peace?
View all responses

Septets for the End of Time

I

Crystal Liturgy

Here, in the abyss,
where song-birds pluck their notes
and send them, feather-light,
floating through the air,
here, you’ll find no vale of tears,
no fears of shadow-hawks,
for all blackness is abandoned
in the interests of sunlight and song.

Here, the crystal liturgy surges,
upwards from the rejoicing heart,
ever upwards, into the realms of light,
where color and sound alike
brim over with the joy that, yes,
brings release to head and heart.

Here, seven-stringed rainbows reign,
the everlasting harp is tuned and plucked,
and an eternity of music cements
the foundations of earth and sky.

Here, the master musician conducts
his celestial choir, their voices rising,
higher and higher, until they reach
the highest sphere, and song and voice
inspire, then expire, passing from our eyes
and ears into unbounded realms of light.

Here, the seven trumpets will sound
their furious dance, a dance that will announce
the end of this singer, the end of his song,
but never the end of song itself.

Apologia

Apologia
pro vita mea

The fairground’s distorting mirrors distort.
I change as I walk past one and then another.

Rage, rage against that hump-backed shape
that looks back at me from the bottle-glass.

Magic: eye of a newt, eye of a toad, cat’s
eyes at night lighting the road to bed.

Bedlam all around me. Absurd this world,
gone carnival mad in the blink of an eye.

I need a white stick to walk through
this fog that clings to my clay-bound soul.

This wine I drink, these thoughts I think,
life’s fountain pen soon runs out of ink.

Watch the tides as they ebb and they flow.
When your time runs out, pack up, and go.

Comment: My friend Moo did himself proud with the above painting. What is it? I asked him. Dunno was his reply. I have shown it to several friends and speculation is rife: the dancer and the dance, dancer and diver, a blur of three figures, headless mermaid (I love that one). And yes, life is absurd (Albert Camus), a carnival (Bakhtin) in which knowledge is power and civilization is mad (Foucault).

Originality and imitation – how many genuinely original ideas are there? Very few. And the same goes for poetry – original poems are very rare. Most of our ideas come from elsewhere, even if we do not know it. The title of the above poem comes from Petrarch. It’s structure is traditional – a sonnet. Its ideas are borrowed from Camus, Bakhtin, Foucault. And yet, shuffle the cards (Cervantes) throw the dice (Mallarme’) and this poem and this post have both achieved a kind of originality and uniqueness by linking disparate ideas in a new unity.

Rebirth

Rebirth

“El mundo nace
cuando dos se besan.”
Octavio Paz

A new world is born
when two people kiss.
The hummingbird sips
at the hollyhock’s lips.
Bee enters the blossom
and, sated, comes out.
A butterfly perches,
flutters its wings.
The sun enters a cloud:
radiance is born.
Silver linings
morph to gold.
The sun’s needle stitches
the world together.
Oh to be a part of Eden,
Paradise born anew,
in the moment when
lip meets lip and the tongue
is a twister, touching down.
Two hearts a-whirl,
their world aflame.
Their world reshaped,
new shapes now born.
Wild flowers swaying
in an age-old dance.
Life’s journey renewed,
not always by chance.

How would you describe yourself to someone?

Daily writing prompt
How would you describe yourself to someone?
View all responses

How would you describe yourself to someone?

I wouldn’t. Why should I? I might give them a self-portrait, or a painting of me, by my friend Moo. Or I might give them a poem or a book of poems or short stories. That way they could see me for themselves or read about me and make a decision about me that way.

“Ah, would some power the giftie gie us, to see our selves as others see us.” Robbie Burns, if I remember correctly. For those who don’t follow the Scottish accent – the giftie gie us = give us the gift. I don’t have that gift. What I see in the mirror when I shave is not the same as what people see when they look at me with their own eyes or, with their own ears and minds when they read my words or hear me read.

Meanwhile – I invite you to read this. There’s a little bit of me in there somewhere. If you can find it before it floats away down the plug-hole.

Self-Portrait

I smell. I whiff. I gloriously stink.
My arms, my feet, my crotch, reek with beauty.
This is me. I am still alive. I’m rank.
The time has come, the Walrus said, to take
a shower. I strip. I weigh. I obey.

Hot water streams. Bathroom steams up. I draw
faces on grey glass, smiling, glum. Soft soap
works its miracle turning Japanese
nylon into a rough body cloth that
rubs and cajoles all putrid dirt away.

Butterfly from its chrysalis, I step
from the shower, sniff with caution, and stench
no more. I am clean. I no longer pong. 
My body has been taken over by
perfumes no longer mine. Who am I now?

I am no more myself. I am no more
my own gorgeous underarm muscular
ripeness. I have left my odor circling
in the soap suds and drifting down the drain. 
What a pain. It will take me a week or 
more to start smelling like myself again.

Words of Wisdom

Words of Wisdom

“You can’t write about life if you haven’t
lived it.” Words of wisdom from the poet
who wrote The Old Man and the Sea.

“But,” I hear you say, “what did he know
about writing? He never took any courses
that taught him how to write, nor held a certificate
from a prestigious school that guarantees quality.
Nor was he a poet, he only wrote prose.”

And yet, the prestige of that ivy-covered,
ivory tower leads poets… I pause for a moment…
– to where exactly? Into debt, of course, and also
down the paved path of their own destruction.

What kind of life do they live, those writers,
who only exist within their cerebral boxes,
and never step outside them unless they are
ordered to build an even bigger box?

Have they walked with street-walkers in Madrid?
Have they sat beside the poorest of the poor,
in Oaxaca, shivering in thin cotton clothing
beneath falling snow? Have they visited Madrid’s
Plaza de España, stepping high to avoid the blunt,
bloodied needles, shared, to take away the pain?
Have they pan-handled in Yorkville or slept
in sleeping bags, by the Royal York, in the snow,
at 40 below, on the gratings above the Subway?

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” some say
Socrates said. But what I think is ‘the unlived life is
not worth examining.” Tear down the walls that
inhibit and limit you. Go out into the world and see
what others see and feel. Only then, come back,
stab your pen into your veins, fill it with your blood,
and set before us what was done to you, what you
experienced, how you survived, and what you felt.

Comment: Once again I thank my friend Moo for his illustration – Building Bigger Boxes. It goes well with the theme of this rant, or is it a poem? A verbal rant to echo a visual rant, perhaps, or vice versa.

Heartbreaking

Heartbreaking

How many have broken their hearts,
reading what I have written, as I have
broken mine, reading what others wrote?

My words reach out, naked, stripped
of false trappings, fake images,
my flesh and blood damp on the page.

Who knows where my words will land,
on fertile ground, on desert sand, or will
they lie on dry, stony paths, infertile?

So many people now scorn living words,
preferring those dull dry three-word chants,
fists clenched, or raised, that hypnotize.

Their love of words, thoughts, ideas, life
have been coffined in confining boxes,
cardboard castles, corrugated cans,
that they lock, then throw away the key.

Comment: Thank you Moo for your painting – Words fall like leaves and drift away. It make a fine companion to the poem.