I had forgotten the who, what, when, where, and why. A t first, I didn’t hear the cry, despondent, squeaky, like a mouse, timid until it climbed up higher, inspired by the grief within.
My own heart, paper thin, could not confine the sobbing that assaulted my own stronghold, the oubliette, where everything lay hidden, but never forgotten.
A pebble on the pond, the cry rippled onwards and out, became a whimper, grew into a shout. What’s it all about, I asked and took the cry to task for rippling my pond’s tranquility.
So sad, the reunion. Each year, fewer participants, faces older, hair whiter (if there’s any left) grizzled beards, hands shaking, not just shaken, memories lost or at odds with reality, multiple dreams turning into nightmares.
So much lost, youth, energy, confidence, contact, microscopic minds turned in on themselves, cognitive cogs barely functioning.
What really happened all those years ago? Nobody remembers. Nobody cares. Nobody really wants to know.
Is it a silken purse made from the pig’s ear of its seed pod, or just a single seed excreted by an incontinent bird?
Its bruised evening-sky hues stretch their emperor’s imperial purple all too thin. In the late summer sun it swallows one errant bee in its leviathan mouth.
Sole survivor, from a score of flowers that once climbed the seven foot, eight foot stalk to sway in the wind, it stands on guard against fall cold and winter’s snow.
Comment: I didn’t like the ending to the earlier version, so, when it came to reading it, I rewrote it first instead. I much prefer this version. Apologies to those who read the earlier words.
Long gone, those good old days, dead and gone, their centers collapsed in on themselves unable to hold on to time’s hands circling the clock of ages, that timeless rock.
Beyond these days, long days when light will fail to enlighten, eyes will be dimmed, the burden will grow heavier and even more heavy with life lying in wait, to weigh us down, always lying, and the lies themselves more rocks added to the pile we must carry.
Carrying them is one thing. Rolling them up this endless hill only to have them roll down, again and again, forcing us to stoop once more, not to conquer, but merely to live our lives, to journey onwards, relentlessly, to endure from the beginning of the end until the last, and we must endure, will endure to the last.
“Knowledge: that which passes from my notes to your notes without going through anyone’s head.” aka “Filling empty heads.”
I came here a beggar, begging bowl in hand, begging for knowledge, at the seat of all knowledge, from the hands of those who knew.
They fed me, taught me, brought me into knowledge, as they knew it, but I yearned for more, so much more.
I found it, one morning, in my morning mirror, shaving. I looked into my own eyes and asked: “What are you teaching?”
My answer: words and empty words, formulae handed down to me over generations of people who thought they thought because they repeated what others had thought.
This was not what I sought. Then, and only then, did I look into the eyes of those I taught, those who sought knowledge from me, in all my worthlessness, and I asked them what did they need, what did they want to know, and why did they want this knowledge.
Then I asked them how I could help them to attain that knowledge for themselves and to use it to construct their own lives, on their own, without interference and shame as I had never done.
Then, and only then, did I know I had become a teacher in the true sense of the word, and that together with me, my students had learned to teach themselves multiple ways in which to grow.
To lose your language is to lose your dignity and your muse.
It’s to lose the power of self-expression and to frustrate the longing soul that flutters like a butterfly striving to reach for the beauty of light yet frustrated by the weight of its now useless wings unable to rise.
So much the soul sees at night, wandering in dreams among the stars. Memories of former rooms where the old inhabitants still dwell, shadows among the shadows, some still gifted with limited powers of speech, but others, tongue-tied and silent, and our chatter reduced to a net of butterfly buzz words.
Oh for the freedom of flight, for the liberty of my language found anew and capable still of shaping and recreating the world of silence in which I now live.
Based on a Welsh Poem by Harri Webb Colli iaith a cholli urddas.
I had no paper with me in the car and wrote this on a bottle redemption slip.
Redemption: that’s what I seek and some days it seeks me. A double need this need to redeem and be redeemed. A double need too this god I need, the god who needs me.
Lonely he will be without me, and I without him. Knock and the door will open. Seek and ye shall find.
I look and, yes, he’s there, him within me and me within him.
This redemption slip is all I need: empty bottles on the one hand, my empty heart on the other, both now redeemed.
All of this while I sit in the car. outside Wendy’s or outside Taco Bell, sitting quite still and ready to wait, not knowing my upcoming fate.
rogermoorepoet 