blind repetition or ritual?

blind repetition or ritual?

at times your remembrance

blinds me into setting

your place again at the table

although you are gone from here

and no matter how

we might grieve or pray

you shall not (ever) return.

quietly, i replace the dishes

and then stand for a moment

staring down into

the winter-shadowed valley from this hill

(and remembering that hill

of yours).

actually, we parted

when i was a child

and i am old now.

at times, i find myself

setting your place…

on presuming to be a poet

on presuming to be a poet you ask me why i write then look askance when i tell you it is — merely a lense for my poor vision— and aid for my stuttering tongue

in memory of Ms. Ed Yeaw

in memory of Ms. Ed Yeaw

i would say your face
is etched in my memory
but it somehow is not, only
the parts remaining, not
the whole…

say, rather
that on this morning
more than 30 years later
(having savagely awakened myself
every time i dreamed of you; you
never knew, never even guessed
that loving you was already
nearly “sinful” to me
while we were still ‘together’
though that we were never)
i thought to see your shadow pass.

it shall pass
again and again,
i know
and that i shan’t try to pause itl.

drinking of the moment
i do not, must not
fruitlessly
attempt to grasp it

_________________________________________________________________________________

Mind you, the attempt to keep hold while not grabbing is either self-contradictory or extremely difficult.

on conjoined meanings

6/8/2015

on conjoined meanings

you react in disbelief
when i tell you
i discovered yet again
and this time in a dream

that i can’t do without you.
“o,” you say “but you don’t
show it, you say
so little, you hardly ever
even touch me.”

i shrug. in truth
what love might be, i think

or i might love myself.
and meaning
is not love.

Journeys

Journeys

as i try to recall
your face, i find
only shadows

on a cave’s irregular wall
but as i struggle
‘gainst my binding chains
(and against my blinding beliefs,

(gifted to me by my peers and seniors)
and finally look back
to see the light’s source
i can find nothing.

perhaps it all
was merely illusion

(“…i would have peace,
and a dry crust…”)
____________________________________________
I’m consigning this to ‘voices’ although it’s relatively new. I consider it unlikely that I’ll seek publication other than in this venue. Most likely the only way I’d do that would be if someone were to ask me to do so. I consider the likelihood of that exactly equal to the probability of my winning the lottery. I don’t play it.

Two Studies

imaged reflections

delayed cascades
of shattered moments
eye-blurred                lens-caught
form fractal expressions
of beauty, made
by the shaping of near-molten metal,
there
are many forms of speech.

 

the image is of a smith at his (her) trade, hammering almost liquid metal

__________________________________________________________________

inflected experience*

the fragments of you i remember
i know are (half? mostly?)
certainly part self-perception

it is
like seeking true reflection
in the scattered bits
of a shattered mirror

but

frantically seeking that mirror’s repair
whether
symbol of my longlost soul
or your clear remembrance
(no matter the foreknown pain, i

struggle to recapture
that searing moment
that our meeting was

but as i struggle
to collect those fragments
somehow they cut free, and i bleed
once again
remembering you.

_____________________________________________________________________

These are both ‘studies’ in the sense that they are exercises of a kind–experiments might I suppose might be a better word–in styles and in one mixing of an experimental style I basically abandoned with my ‘normal’ style.  If there is a distinctive difference in much of my poetry and writing and general it probably results from the usage of more than one viewpoint or perspective.

*This in particular is a purely conceptual poem, the image created by a shattered mirror’s reflections (and the attempt to suggest that the apparent distortion may lend a kind of truth that may not be entirely specious). [There is also an echo of
‘sun on bright water
narcissus, shattered
by a pebble’
which was my landmark poem in that it represented a definitive step into my own style without any hint of apology.  Since I deliberately employed Grecian mythology in the poem to the extent that it is meaningless without its knowledge, it was a fairly brazen act.  I lived with and amongst Christian Reformed people–Calvinists, who abhorred idolatry.  But then my book report for the class for baptism was on Ship of Fools…  I couldn’t resist and no one called me on it.  In retrospect I still can’t believe it.  I’ll leave it to the reader to find out which particular book I mean, with the hint that popular literature was just beginning.

book of sayings (3)

Book of Sayings (3)

about names and thought*

today there are hurried motions
in no direction, though
that sullen half-silence turns
quickly to rage if even slightly
slowed…

no speech;
the crowd grumbles and snarls
wordlessly; it does not name

but without names it cannot speak
nor therefore think. has
it somehow cast me out?

i wonder for a moment.
then i realize again
my namelessness
________________________________________________
*or, when i learned to speak
i forgot all truth

An Ode To Our Leader

An Ode To Our Leader

 

There was no stopping

Time, nor place nor mapped way;

we  just voyaged unpausing

to our GOAL which

 

as we voyaged, we found

was mostly what it was*

–a word, and vague fancies.

 

…Freedom is barely valued

until it’s lost

__________________________________________________________________

*our goal, i should say,

which simply receded

infinitely.

his goal was to rule us

and easily succeeded.

most of us simply wanted CHANGE;

that goal we’ve certainly achieved!

We have a Leader now

Long Live The Leader And The Party!

________________________________________________________________

I wasn’t going to make any comments, I’ll make one.  The entire resemblance of this to certain manifestoes is quite unplanned, of course.  That would require sarcasm, which I barely know how to recognize let alone use.  I am proud of knowing the word, though.

…

(Apollo’s) sister

sister

stripped trees reflected in water;
i turn away, quickly, fearing Apollo’s wrath.

 

_________________________________________________________

I’d imagine the legend should be identifiable.  Watch it, you might be turned into a deer!

unmeant revelations

unmeant revelations

you scratched me–meaning
to tear me–and left,
never realizing pain
has its own language, and
you’d told me you hurt
far more
than i ever could

________________________________________________
New: this is the territory of; if you thought about it you probably wouldn’t ask out of decency, and would you really want to know?

*Poetry published in blogs like mine are in fact automatically protected by Common Law Copyright.  All I ask for in poetry is that if it’s reprinted–reblogged, one would assume–there is proper attribution.  Glenn Charles, although Voices (originally with no caps) was written with the intended pen name of Samwise Davies. **This is a clue, since I think my comments which somehow come from that appear while I’m publishing under Glenn Charles.  Since–to add to the confusion–although Glenn Charles is my rational name it’s also in respects an assumed name, I’ve taken latterly to simply using that.  Samwise is in respects quite literally the “ghost in the machine”.

 

I would say “Happy Thanksgiving” but first I wish to say:  remember what this celebrates.  I wish you enjoyment of what it should be, but I think all who are not AmerIndian should pause very, very long before celebration of togetherness.  The actual event cannot be undone nor forgiven; less can the dismissal of the fact that there began the conscious slaughter of the Indians.  I read the facts as a child and was a bit shocked.  I was a child in Vietnam, too, by the way.  xxxx happens.