in gratitude for an absence

In gratitude for an absence
it seems
I have my words again
after a year’s near-silence;
i returned

to that land that lies
before the fences and lanes
that language builds
and it stunned me dumb.

now, I have both worlds again.
better, i no longer
hear your words.

silence, blessed silence
___________________________________________
For the first time in many years I am showing newly-written poetry publicly.

On Meeting You

On Meeting You

these shards remain

of our prolonged meeting

distorted echoes and

reflections, and

each time i touch a

shard, a shattered

memory, you cannot guess (at all)

how bitterly i bleed

______________________________________________

Not real life, at least this has nothing to do with a specific person. I suppose someone who always knows the glass is half full (rather than half empty)–the optimist–could embrace losing relationships as well. Actually I know some do, and the common reasoning was that it was an opportunity for growth.

Were it current, I probably wouldn’t be able to post this.

SILENCE AND TRUTH

SILENCE AND TRUTH

is it odd that

as my words come ever closer to silence

my meanings seem clearer?
*Attribute the meaning of this to Dean Ing. Another way to say that is that his words were the precise inspiration for this poem, and nearly diametrically opposed to what he meant.

 

[“The Father of Lies merely taught us to speak.”]

About Truth and Inarguable Definitions

About Truth and Inarguable Definitions

dreamed toward but unspoken
because unwordy*
the name of the desired
unvoiced by very nature

(whispered only by the lipless wind)

cuts
unseeable unstoppable: ‘knowledge’

like ‘love’

is one word for many things
and hence
quite inescapably false
whenever used
________________________________________________________
Yes, coined and not an illusion of mine that it’s an existent word.

 

Perhaps 2 weeks old–or 2 months–but I do remember writing it, which is uncommon for me.  As I said elsewhere, sometimes I go through long ‘dry’ periods with my poetry.  Every time so far since I was 10 I will then proceed to find a great deal of poetry written during that time period, of which generally at least 50 per cent is scrapped, along with incomplete studies toward.  I also have a confirmed habit of trying to write something and sometimes working on it for months (in the case of the manuscript ‘Voices’, decades), writing any number of poems that lead toward the final one. I’m starting to write (fictional) prose again as well.  And prose with the poetry.

in memory of my fictive father

In Memory of my Fictive Father

i bear your name,
yes, but
like a scar
not like a blazon
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*Note; I finally ‘made contact with him’. [I made contact with my biological father & half-siblings in my sixties; I never bore his name.  My fictive father is my adopted father.] He was in the terminal phase of Alzheimer’s. His children found my existence (as his other and unmentioned child) unnerving and unlikely at the beginning, intolerable and impossible at the end. Since the connection was made by my wife via one of the gene-testing places [yes, the implied is the existent; how else?], I certainly had no part in the cause–which was in fact long past, if you want to get down to it, but in this cause the cause for the supposition of any connection between all of us. I’d even neglected to contact them, oddly enough, at 60-some-odd and with a habit of avoiding; one of them contacted me (she vehemently declaimed that I was a mistake, later; my mother would have agreed much of my life). I was born during the formal Occupation of Hitler’s Germany (yes, that one that persists* in a number of places; this was 1953)
*Calling it The Occupation openly is somewhat dangerous, potentially. To the obvious question, hard to tell, I don’t know, um…, perspective is generally drawn from methodology,

dedicated to Quora

dedicated to quora

i dream

i think

of speaking your name
endlessly
so much that my lips
are cracked and dry

but come morning

i know no name
–nor, indeed, “you”–
my lips are quite whole
and my mouth isn’t dry

tell me

can this mean
something?

_____________________________________________
You have to know what Quora is to appreciate this. Google it or better visit the site and try to find some of the odder questions (and answers); it isn’t hard. Right up there with Mil Millington [assuming he’s still on the web].

 

I came close to considering this submission-worthy.

uncomfortable truths

Too Much Truth For Comfort

to move toward you or away
just now
would require more judgment

or at least an ability to
see myself without complete distaste.

i

you see

am quite stripped of i.

fifteen years later
still captive to a long-past experience*
i still have learned
only occasional silence

as for wisdom?
not even its semblance.
______________________________________________
November 8, 2018 Transcription, somewhere between 20 & 30 years old. The inspiration was 40 years ago–now.

She did make me swear to never love anyone or anything, ever again; more often than not, her remembrance is sheer agony. Worst of all was the discovery that some of my ‘imaginary’ perceptions were very unfortunately quite real. No, I absolutely will not go there. Interpret that as you wish, I won’t and can’t explain.

Questions, Scars, and Scraps

Questions, Scars, and Scraps

today there were
seemingly endless
echoes (or perhaps shadows)
of your beauty and grace.

that means, yes,
i too am beneath the Wheel.
the “average” must be
understood from the
beginning to be artifice.

nor can names be used
to analyze their own effect
even from the start.

our reality has been
scarred into us. is it
important that i’ve
forgotten or never knew
my name?

___________________________________________________________________________
Written some time this year. My fear of getting published actually happened like this; I sent some ‘new’ poetry off to a magazine and it got published. I was again overjoyed. I’d even been paid for it! Then I walked inside the house and found my poetry in the magazine and it was utterly execrable. I hadn’t waited until what I’ve always called the “honeymoon period” was over. Unfortunately that turned into this fear of–near–inability to submit poetry. Questions, scars and scraps–indeed.

Note that in this Brave New World this–blogging something–is deemed publication. Which means that collecting my poetry would be somewhat laborious. Perhaps fortunately, no one has ever requested a copy.

simulated images

 

written 8/31/17

simulated images

caught within a moment
–its recollection, should i say?–
i once again remember you…

but then i realize
all that memory
is quite wordless.

we met, and parted.
and now to my shock i find
i cannot even remember your face

 

 

____________________________________________________________________________________________

I generally just let poetry sit for a while–hopefully a long while.  I am quite error-prone at times; deliberation before shattering silence is always wise.  A young friend of mine was over not long ago, and I told him I was a writer and a poet.  “But I’m sure you don’t read poetry.”  That was a true misjudgment; he read the poem and understood it immediately and was caught in his own memory, obviously similar to the memory that produced the poem.  Time not only passes quickly, it erodes all with its passage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because of TheDonald, I long for reality

3/19/17

on longing for reality and other foolhardy things

separated, the changes
refract and reflect the light
promising clear sight
and other most assuredly

imaginary things
(i’ve even heard “truth”
promised!)
________________________________________________________________

I have never before used my art explicitly on current events.  Because there are too many exact replications of the rise of the Nazi party into dominance, I refrain no longer.  I will do as well as I can to avoid polemic.  My pursuit is of the rational and beautiful (though the subject is often no thing of beauty) and most of all–in poetry–of concision in pursuing my goal, which is…I have to admit it, I still pursue it–truth.