[writing from my moleskine notebook since January 2008; latest on top]
“What House” – 8/17/08
Maybe it’s time we recognize
what house. Where deer
grazed on the grass
without minding our watch.
Where we sled into the woods
while mother sewed our shirts
and father slept and snored.
Or one room less for
an always prodigal who
tired of thrift shop living.
I’m sorry. I can only say
what I know. I want facts;
I want important ones.
Perhaps we will grow unimpressed
by pagan formality. How
corporate offices with neckties
and telephones are a bore.
There is traffic on the sidewalk,
there is traffic in the elevator.
This is routine? This
is everyday? Spinning through
revolving doors, we can escape
to whichever house we choose.
“I Was All at Sea” – 8/11/08
A ship. A chamber. A thimble.
Your simple inventory
is deliberate like a runaway child.
Your suitcase is packed
as you may leave when you please.
The chandelier sways
and our dreaming’s not ceased
since the drone drifted from shore.
You weld together your garage baubles
to build the castle sailors deemed untrue.
While you ruled your iron cage kingdom
with your steel drum crown,
I was all at sea.
The captain,
he’s all in a fit about the helm,
how blisters sting and compasses spin,
how the horizon is never in view.
Likewise,
absentminded and landlocked at heart,
you are forgetting where you are.
Darling, what of the storm?
What of the brine and the black and the breaking?
The needles are in twos;
the towers are, again,
a heap of scraps.
While you go on at port believing
it was all my doing,
in defense I will say
I was all at sea.
["I was all at sea." - Brideshead Revisited: Evelyn Waugh]
“The Mind of Man (No Complication)” - 8/6/08
1.
I am sure children speak in parables.
I have heard their whispers
like sparks of static beneath blankets.
They warn of consequences,
of forests and the containment of laughter.
Adventures are unending without
the mind of man.
2.
Our backyard is now a grave.
The rabbit has died
and our washed hands
wreak of guilt.
We will drown ourselves
in books to forget.
We will hold our breaths
’til we lose feeling
for life is far more silent
and slow under water.
3.
There’s no complication about this sky as any.
Clouds are but the wishes of children, wandering,
reaching for the ears of God.
Consequently,
I have begun to study cloud formations.
“Pillars of Salt” – 8/5/08
We have become
pillars of salt
because we have waited
too long
Nostalgia
is not our crime
but mine
I know I know
I know stillness
for the first time
“It’s All Electric” – 7/25/08
The forecast had us all fooled.
It’s all electric,
they said.
So we kept inside,
gazing with terror
at sun
and marvelous wind.
Our big sister had them fooled.
It’s all electric–
her head
aloof, and about
runaway ideas.
Sister,
will you come back home?
Autumn nearly had me fooled.
It’s all electric,
he said
as the underground
shook; theaters ignited.
Oh God,
it isn’t your fault.
A barren tomb had her fooled.
The gardener knows not?
“Mary”
was His only word.
It’s all electric!
She’s sure
He’s risen, indeed.
[“Thinking he was the gardener, she said ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’” – John 20:15-16]
“The Elk and the Sparrow” – 7/18/08
The elk and the sparrow
stood motionless
glass-eyed
in the diaphanous light
Blinks held their time
hardly their sorrow
Did they wait by the forest’s spring
to make right the senseless?
How the leaves had gossiped
upon their silent migration
Branches crackling
with weight and fire
His plumage was ruffled
Her antlers brittle
in fighting to keep them
The look of strangers
amidst the glades
unbending
Breaths freezing in midair
The danger was not in bullets
Not fur not feathers nor fire
Perhaps recognition
was all the kill
The streams have frozen over
And if vanishing hoof prints
do not tell
what then would know
the aching of lovers
but the very chest
of God?
[“The sorrow is fixed, impersonal, expressing nothing but itself, like the eyes of animals or of portraits.” – “A Dream of Winter”: Rosamund Lehmann]
"Like the Defeated Child I Am" – 7/16/08
Our nails grow
without our knowing, I know
but can’t help feeling
I take part.
Heavens! Do raise your voice,
my lungs are not the lead.
Do I insult you by my static?
I couldn’t tell you twice
if fingers amount to as much
as hearing you behind the snow.
I am fickle
but do not change in height.
I make a sport of importances
like paper airplanes in conference rooms.
You are embarrassed,
I can tell.
You have your palms
on my shoulders,
spitting my name with such disdain.
(Today, it’s all fingers.)
You love so professionally,
so properly.
You will be older now.
I mustn’t put an end to my thinking,
You will be older now.
I’ve yet to venture the rooftops.
You try to send me home,
diagnose me ill:
inflammation of quixotic ideas.
I squirm in your grasp,
wrestle as you tighten your hold
until my stubbornness tires itself.
Admitting my age,
I embrace you myself
like the defeated child I am.
“Debating Rise or Sink” – 7/13/08
6am is the only code
anymore, still
debating: rise or sink.
Sink and sink, sink
until…
The blankets are neutral;
milk is yet
my favorite if waking.
*
Metal flies drop dead
at the cost of
profound growth
in bones and arrows
like magnets in sewers.
The pipes are clanking
incessantly,
the echoes trigger
your alarm.
“From Rock and Ash” – 7/11/08
To hear the voice,
silence the igneous raven–
that molten brother
of airs and answers
His slacks are clever,
his coos are charming
like summer jazz
His black is brilliant,
his black is beautiful
His crooked beak
calls you, culls you
as if to love much
Remember not,
for his is not your nest
From rock and ash
rise tree and light
You are alone, only now
"I Am a Skeptic of Water" – 7/3/08
My best and most surprising tragedies
are spit out by the morning.
I dreamt we laughed again
and woke up miserable;
I dreamt I knocked at your door–
how I missed your mother.
(Oh, tea leaves and gloom,
you’ll be fine) I am dramatized
by the unsoft tundra.
Though I am one for the wind,
I am a skeptic of water.
All I’m saying is:
the grass is dead
and he’s been taking long shots.
"O Land, Land, Land" – 6/22/08
O land, land, land,
hear the word of the Lord!
Cry for the ghostly name when He calls
Where are you?
Return to the place you long for,
be exiled no more
To where can you flee?
If you go up to the heavens,
marvel at a single crown,
He is there
Beloved, the promised is now
as ever before
Vineyards, vineyards,
hear the march of the Lord!
Sprout from your hiding place
behind petty fig leaves
as He walks to you in the cool of day
Where are you?
Stem from providence
Spring up, dance by the best wine
How far will you flee?
If you rise on the vast wings of dawn,
He is there,
feeding the branches with honeyed sun
Deserts, deserts,
hear the reign of the Lord!
Dig despite the drought
Scrape the sand with bleeding nails
as He whispers to you in wondrous illusions
Where are you?
Come now, unabashed by thirst,
run no more
How long will you flee?
If you settle on the far side of the sea,
He is there,
waiting with a jar by the well
O volcanoes,
hear the trumpet of the Lord!
Tremble with quaking
as the thundering voice beckons
Where are you?
He will plague the skies with light
He will baptize you with fire
How now can you flee?
If you make your bed in the depths,
He is there,
commanding each ember’s explosions
into your awakening
[Jeremiah 22:27, 29; Genesis 3:9; Psalm 139:5-10; Luke 3:16]
“We Are Children” – 6/17/08 [for Soo]
There is a snowman
in every letter
Broken crayons are framed
in gilded memories
There’s been no sleep since then
Shoes have worn since then
There are difficult words
of lip-bitten prayers
Honesty is in time;
worth in idiosyncrasies
There is quaintness in tiny days–
hours well wasted
*
Extend your vowels to me,
not that I deserve their count
*
Shall we wish to lose our way
just to spend more time?
We are children
still becoming children
in a space before the only sky
"Our Selves Lost" – 6/12/08
I would forget my only language
to know death upon the residual heat
of concrete at midnight;
to leave the transience of beauty
beneath the hypnotic bridge
where our wishes became known,
our selves lost again and again
The mute owl watched
with a stare that wrenched veins,
twisting arteries in the heart
Hot air escaped crooked lungs
Our best mistakes were made
in leaving the only cage we knew
to witness blood upon the hay
None could scream,
trembling at winter’s knives
Let us die together now
with the breaking of pavement,
with the flooding of feathers
Let us rasp vows like vengeful birds
immortally imprisoned in miserable whistles
["Maybe that mistake will be the best mistake you'll ever make." - Stan McDonald
"Life is such an unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful." - T.H. White
after Sufjan Stevens' "Barn Owl, Night Killer"]
"The Poet is Alone" – 6/5/08
The bastard boy smiles today
Yesterday, he was only a boy
I wonder if he knows
where his father lies
The bell sounds twice
The poet is alone
Seizure, he said:
Quit your morning ideas
Stop your outdoor talk
Come all ye, He said
Come all ye who are stained
and torn, I will hem you in;
be washed, be cleansed in loud shouts
Come all ye fatherless
and loverless
A great funeral awaits
Seizure, I say–
Absolute and electric
tremors where the hands clasp
Anymore, I am merely a girl
Tomorrow, we will forget
ever having loved another
"Wandering About the Afternoon" – 6/3/08
A UFO abducted her from sleep,
headlights through the window.
She levitated.
Her mind too,
wandering about the afternoon.
Nobody questioned her disappearance.
No crop circles were left behind
to leave the others any clue.
"The Crows Will Blind" – 5/31/08
when I am young
the crows
will blind traffic
with their metallic backs
halt wheels
between stoplights
perfecting a faith
beyond the speed of cogs
or the forward movement
of time
["and even if it's sunday may i be wrong/ for whenever men are right they are not young" - e.e. cummings]
"If I Look on the Pacific"– 5/29/08
If I look on the Pacific
shall I know it?
Its beds,
its schools and huddles?
What of its evils–
The dark that crushes lungs,
the teeth that clench old secrets?
If I wear a pointed cap,
starlit robe and owl
on my shoulder,
shall I be called Merlyn?
Know his magic,
speak to creatures,
or lose myself in time?
If I fashion a cape
upon my back,
shall I maneuver through air?
The damsel beckon me,
the villain plot against me,
the city know me
only by alias?
If I etch my name
into the sand,
will you remember it?
Carry the mounds
inside your pockets,
cherish what I’ve touched?
Would you tell it to me when I am old?
“Fantastic Lightning” – 5/27/08
Humidity and hair entangles her,
suffocates her,
traps wind.
She scuffs her boots
on convex asphalt
and cries until the new moon,
waiting for the music of blood
in the ear to pass.
Naked wrists have made
a new human
with no appointments.
*
“Do you know
the weatherman?”
He is in the great light bulb
above the universe.
sipping tea,
casting down
fantastic lightning.
“Tremors” – 5/25/08
Tremors
in the throat
in the wrists
Tremors
swallowing spit
clenching fists
Tantrums
quick words
kicking feet
Tantrums
quaking voice
killing, killing
“The Faun” – 5/24/08
The faun waits not for nightfall
to devour innocent children of the village
He lurks with a menacing gallop,
limping on a crooked heel
The evil exudes from his mouth
as frothing spit and foam
The beast's teeth sear through
dead bones and rotting carcass
He strikes in the seventh hour,
terror in his pointed claws
The faun plays whimsical notes on a flute,
luring foolish hunters to his cave
He scoffs, dust from his nostrils,
at zealous knights who come with intent to slay
The evil one hangs raw hide from his twisted horns
as trophies of his latest kill
The beast will find you
quivering beneath linen sheets
He is there, under your eyelids,
haunting your every blink
The faun will trace the scent of your sweat
when you hide behind the futile bark
He will steal you without warning
from your very shoes if you run
He will steal you like a whisper
with a flicker of candlewick
[after Sufjan Stevens' "Seven Swans"; but completely unrelated]
“The Magic of Atlantis” – 5/23/08
Mud filled the opera house
If there was a show
I do not recall it
Grains in the mixture
cut our bare skin without bleeding
He was a faceless body
smelling of sugar by the shore
I fought for him
not knowing the cause
No one knew
The scenery changed
without our knowing
A false night was cast
as a tidal wave towered the masses
I held my breath too soon
when it swallowed
but I did not drown
I was not wet; it was
the magic of Atlantis
if only for a blink
The face I wished for in the next
is another
The goddess of the theatre
is a robin a dragonfly
a rabbit a workhorse
If memory of the morning
is no different from
facts of the day
dreams are any thought
my mind is mud
“What Human is Bound” – 5/21/08
Of clocks or compasses
there are no destinies
like lips and the lake
I find it trite
to put a name
to featherless moments
Minutes are arbitrary
to the birds
Maps are traitorous
to their downward wings
When all flee
before the ice
I freeze
before the Lord
What tools can bend
solitude
deny abandonment?
What gadgets can produce
wonderment
unhinge the jaw
like the limp mouth of Goliath
as pebbles proved
swifter than swords?
What human is bound
by justice? What man
can save men?
I find it tactless
to chase
to measure velocity
of untamed flight
Of spheres and arrows
I have no use (for what cannot
be mastered)
“Of All Limbs, the Legs” – 5/19/08
1.
I am not the temperature
every hour.
Everything today
is due.
The moon (never feared)
is loved
for all its lofty implications.
2.
There is a waltz inside
the bride.
Of all limbs, the legs
tremble now.
3.
I have not hungered seas.
I’ll not
plead for an audience.
What then?
4.
I knew
you’d be alive.
No longer entertaining calendars; alive all
at once.
Meet me
on the tracks as a miraculous collision.
Marry me
as a cosmic revelation.
5.
Where are you (anomaly and all) for
the rising?
“Justice Kindling” – 5/8/08
Apocalyptic beaks catch
drumming; ennui forms
giant heavens
Imagine
justice kindling
lifeless man’s nobler offices
Presently,
quaint, resilient sparrows
trumpet upon vernal, weightless xenoliths:
Yea, Zion!
“Spend the Morning” – 4/15/08
My balloons reach ancestors
with each brave release
In time, they will send down
chandeliers and candid chants:
“Will you come into the lime walk?”
I have not heard if death’s swift
legs have ever touched the earth,
but when we hurled our hopes
to the clouds, the net was not torn
The annunciation of the “please”
is still hot on our tongues
We’ve never known whether
it’s the presence or the heat,
but let us curl against
the sunken sun squares
for proof of warmth again
Darling, spend the morning
and think nothing of it
I can wake for you
You were born for words
and things; you make me
laugh in an empty room,
but a single pair of lungs
in an echoed hall
is not nearly enough
I want to hear
the words from your chest
We should know the windy taste
or the growth of peace in pages
And to hear you say “It’s all I’ve got”
is more truth to me
than silvered seas in spring
["...but even with so many the net was not torn." - John 21:11]
“In the Art of Disappearance” – 3/28/08
The prelude is as raw
as the cheek that rests on fervor
When passersby look, then
look away,
will not the poor man
live as he has always lived?
Breathing, gliding, living
He will resonate to you
The symphony is appalling,
terribly beautiful as is
a cheated morning, as is
a penny earned and spent
The blind will have reason
to wait; the businessman
to slow his pace
He will resonate to you
The melody is inspiring
as are vagabonds finding solace
in the art of disappearance
So too, the performance–
never twice the same
It is a sound for which
all of suburbia would weep
He will resonate to you
[“The blessing will take me where it will take me. It is beautiful and it is appalling. It races through the barren hills to an end of its own.” – The Son of Laughter]
“The Post” – 3/27/08
The Post brought stamps from Antarctica,
where frozen seas tell of adventures without time
The Post quieted the towns,
save for galloping hooves and screaming chariots of ice
The Post knows the state of the grieving widow
who waits upon her lover’s words
The Post comes with crinkled corners,
tattered telegrams by broken soldiers
The Post will collect within a vacant home,
never to be returned or claimed by phantom travelers
The Post may weather while in wait,
unlike the tremendous winters from whence it came
The Post cannot answer impatient pleas
or nervous pacing, simply for the fact of Sunday
“The Alchemy of Our Hands” – 3/26/08
The aging
meaning of autumn
becomes
a sweet science between
ourselves
when the alchemy of our hands
grazing against a robe mingling
with hymns and whores
makes to forget the
former things the sparkling wings
turning all minutes
into
a genius gold
[a reflection on Mark 5:27-28 and Isaiah 43:18]
“Reviving a Breath” – 3/25/08
Behind the city lies a simple town,
empty stoops the only neighbors
Perhaps the hint of afternoon soda and gasoline
has kept their lungs inside
It could have been the shame
from the over-decorated lawn,
garnished with a rusted mauve barbeque grill
It could have been the loss in sense of time,
as autumn gives one last performance,
sneaking in between winter and spring
I remember reading Lullaby years ago,
declaring its weight of words like diamonds
And as a mother sings her best,
her daughter having none of it:
”Mom… Mom… Mom… Mom!”
I hear both pains
I believe in sidewalk benches
for the weary and the lost
Reviving a breath,
only a breath,
imagining it is actually autumn again,
the November when the Snowbird sang:
“don’t stop, don’t break”
I am surely going, but I am surely lost
[written during poetry class; through the neighborhood outside campus.]
“For the Forgotten Days of Card Catalogs” – 3/25/08
The library's basement is an abandoned museum,
a storage vault for the forgotten days of card catalogs,
a literary factory more chilling than any ghost town
Archeology
The very invention of it was birthed in this grave
where human hands have been lost for centuries,
buried silent with no evidence of ever existing, save for rusted spines
Above ground, the air is no brighter
though time travel provided electricity,
declaring its reign over fiction
And so is this man, who listens to a sound only he hears,
mustache and wrinkles declaring his age,
mouths words only he knows
Translation
impossible to trace while his body sways with secret song,
while his arms wave left and right
His eyes are closed and no one can see him
The elevator or airplane announces arrival to the
Motherland
where whispering is a foreign custom
This country is rich with the brown sugar of leather bindings
but eventually, they all look the same
A trace of 1902 crumbles at one touch,
an entire civilization made to dust
Higher still, there is no proof of an outside world,
but the light bulbs where the windows should be
say it’s always daytime, regardless of any clock
The drone mesmerized them all, especially eyes behind cubicles,
speaking only the language of hours passed and spent
There’s something 1840 of Daniel DeFoe that will never be opened again, if ever
EMPTY
says the sign above the empty shelf, void of any irony
The desperate and bored boy behind the counter makes small talk
Enthused
with a drawn out vowel and awkward smile,
he stamps the date upside-down, effortlessly traveling through years
[a walk through Paley Library]
“We Are Still “We Are Still Sleeping (Ode to Stairs)” – 3/20/08
Or steps as babies are told
to climb because
we all
must learn to use our feet
Learn to learn to learn…
See,
it’s already taking shape–
the angelic idea of up,
before technology gave
us fake flight
Up without the work
If the world was flat,
would we all be one
dimension?
Flat and static like television?
Cluttered close together
with no room for roads
or sidewalks–
no vertical
We are still stepping
but the magic of
being above the ground–
not touching earth, being
not of the earth
is what I’ve been chasing
all along.
Then I am a saint
looking heavenward,
wanting nothing else
than nearing the roof,
loving all things square,
loving every harsh bladed block.
The view will be enough
to disregard my tiredness,
the panting from the climb–
catching my breath
while breathless from eternity
[a writing exercise on odes; based on Pablo Nerudo's poetry style.]
“Rain Was the First Trick” – 3/20/08
This bed is not mine
but once
Rain was the first trick
keeping the fools inside
No wonder
there are no words
only cars to occupy the puddles
If these streaks aren’t art what is?
There’s
an echo through the pass
I’m feeling most unnatural
I should not expect
to produce to conjure art every time
I want real sleep but once
terrible sleep
“What Lives in Any Space” – 3/18/08
I sit down to write
where breeze comes from nowhere
and the furniture that’s here
should not be here
or somewhere else–
it is dangerous.
I am between the stairs
but not on a stair,
just like how teenagers
teeter amid adolescence and age.
Only noticing they’ve grown
into blazers and dress shoes,
out of glasses and braces.
When I grew, I became
a poet, and there’s
ten too many spotlights now,
as if my time’s already come
like royalty to rise.
And that fake mosaic on the wall
could be something royal
or holy (I can’t tell from
this chair) but there
was a time when I made mosaics
too. Every time,
the question was whether the importance
was in the pieces or the space.
What lives in the space is
what lives in any space
like my living in this space,
or the doorstopper’s place, whose
purpose is empty– likely to be
stolen within the day.
[a writing exercise during poetry class based on James Schuyler's poetry style.
"Be where you are when you're there." - Stan McDonald]
“Freezing Moments in Syllables” – 3/11/08
Upon this nightly bed,
prose and colds collect less romantically
than Victorian novels on any given shelf
The constancy of black print is one
to be admired despite eras
Only the timeless are remembered,
so every word must be written
between the pinch of an hourglass
At this rate, it’s not so much
the wind as it is what it carries
It’s not so much the locations
as it is the drive between
The very-ness of each description
is frozen solid in the face
of scratching ink– that friction
is a biographical friction, forever
freezing moments in syllables
When they do not hold,
it may be as bleak as discovering
cobwebs in supposedly familiar crevices
The sands have stilled for some–
it may be just a matter of waiting
on a particular grain,
or the wind that carries it
“At Its Permanence” – 2/26/08
We are watching a dead man
but go on smiling at the sight
Did you hear the siren?
Don’t let it enter in,
lest the rigor mortis take us over as well
Not yet,
though my fingertips are calloused
along with the rest of us
Whom shall I address?
That vapid narcissist of a ghost
has been scouring the same scripts
Our blood quaking
at its permanence
Truth is,
we’ve been staring at the same
twenty-six characters our whole lives, still
plucking at its being and meaning
Definition has been an elusive animal
Search the urns; thus, lettered remnants rise–
gratifying nothing yet
for our ever aging palates
“Novels Soak in Swords” – 2/16/08
I should not keep you
from where you will come,
for my Nile runs green and
I am looking for rivers in the body
But if you must whistle when
the silence demands itself,
who will be taught?
I can tell a sound’s in you
from the tapping of your feet,
so do we recognize the postlude?
If you will stay where
novels soak in swords,
what is the function of symbols?
Like a surge of something rare,
(Sunday tears or tiny sails)
I have begun to believe the epic
The tributaries gain depth in you,
but you have not kept me
since when I can go
“Left Now Among the Graves” – 2/12/08
Numb because I must be apologetic
and am, truly, am
The dead in me, ever
grasping tighter upon the little
left. Now among the graves
I may not speak the right
or I cannot mean it more
Speaking so to somewhere
Miserable despite all wisdom
and the adamant unsure
for meanings boil like humanity
I am the seasons,
very seriously.
I am every limestone
“Of Facts Like Shoes” – 2/9/08
If you say my name, I know it
and I want to be asked
My body is heavy, I’m aware
of facts like shoes
and guitars don’t make you
or I (can’t sing)
No, I will not be put to bed–
nearly suffocating from the last time,
barely conscious since the first time
Come the bends of circumstance,
I wish to rise in such a manner
as forgetting any laugh
Though I hate to be asked
whether the tale is true (or you)
will forgive my glance?
“At Any Wonderful Moment” – 2/4/08
At any wonderful moment,
the rhyme will come by mistake
The categories you’ve planted
will sort themselves–
relinquished in a moment of holy utterances
At any telling moment,
your unfinished Babel will be unveiled
The broken bricks and stupid scene–
gloriously naked in all its shame
Laughter and mockery soon to follow
At any frightening moment,
even a poet will have no words–
left nodding your head in agreement
of the embarrassing silence at your page
Wondering still, what’s to become of it?
At this particular moment,
in a baptism of nothing
close to divine,
your hands scorching under the faucet
will prove to be the only necessary tools
“Water or Woods” – 1/24/08
The house is empty since six o’clock,
no one’s crying for mama.
Are we not accustomed to it?
How life is come–
not solely coming and going to good
people. She is good.
We hug her
when she stumbles past the front door.
Late at night,
we’re not counting. Down
by the creek, we follow the
stream up. Every now and then
we’ll catch a hypothetical dinner
We can’t keep it for long.
And for long, we don’t realize
how deep we are– water or woods.
We must get back,
we must be back,
we left the bicycles
in the yard (among all other things)
Yet, as her eyes are shutting–
almost sleeping, I think
the house is empty still.
“To Erase All Catastrophes” – 1/17/08
Brightness comes slow, and how it slows
Stretching long upon the sheets, of course
How it starts
reminding me to keep tomorrow
The verb is ever implied, but,
it is an elementary affair
How fair it is,
reclining against such smugness
with flight as leaving the tongue
There’s no proper time to confess
I am in a stately sort of loneness,
half in jest; mostly in waiting
With flight must follow landing
The direction has always been lost
to space and atmospheres, and so
among the debris– a body bruised but alive
The wounds heal slow, and how it heals
as if to transition child to adult
And I pick the scabs to erase all catastrophes–
convincing myself of such a feat
“The Poets Drank from Mystic Springs” – 1/8/08
The poets drank from mystic springs to fill their pages
and they called it inspiration
The well is not all that deep, only far, so they’ve said-
only to test my ambition
But many have scoffed, “All poets are fools”
Yet here I am, still convinced
this leather binding is everything
Yet here I am, ashamed of its emptiness
Words! Words and words- have I not had enough?
Even now, writing furiously, but unable
to grasp at value of my own dainty language,
I am merely print in air– my words evaporating ever unfairly
And the night had me with such futile measures:
scouring the shelves, embracing the typewriter,
pressing a pen to my lips, and staring
desperately in wait for substance
Perhaps the many were not so far
from the truth, perhaps I am a fool among the fine-
surrounded by science and brain-things
The poets drank from mystic springs,
but lo! Mine is a sun, and indeed it has come
In view of natural light at its best,
I too beam, greeting her, “Hello Horizon”
and laugh, finding I have written after all