The World Is Only As Big
The world is only as big
as the size of the life going on in me.
If I wanted to take the full measure of the sky
what could that be
compared to the lightyears it takes
to get from one side of my mind to the other?
And look how huge the darkness is
that can be cast by one star
like the negative of its shining.
And what road has anyone walked
that was ever longer than their shadow?
Eternity's just another way of saying
you've run out of space for time.
I don't think I'm going to live forever
but my life will go on without me
just as it always has.
I'll get up in the morning
like the ghost of someone I can't remember
and I'll have a coffee and a cigarette
as I wait for the obscurity to clear
like steam on a bathroom mirror
to see if I can recognize
anything about me
that was true yesterday.
Will I feel as I do now like a leftover
from the night before
pushed to the side of the plate
as everything in the room
reviles me slightly
and gets back to the silence
they were engaged in
before I interrupted them so impolitely
I smeared their meditation
with my intrusive incoherence?
They all seem to be waiting
for someone to make an appearance
but it definitely isn't me.
It's beautiful outside
but when I look
I'm always looking at the beauty
of someone else's bride
and I turn away like night from the orchard
as if I were always the best man
at the wedding of Adam and Eve.
Eden.
In clay-bound Sumer
from the word Edin
meaning the southern marshes
of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
whose mouths were always full of food
and the living was easy and good.
Same garden.
Same tree.
Same apple.
Same suggestive serpent.
But I've always understood
from the first bite
of self-knowledge
the baffled man in me
eats the apple to know things
about the lucid woman in me
who eats it to grow wings on a snake
to raise that up high
which has been cast down low.
Now all gods and dragons are estranged oxymorons
and Nicholas of Cusa's Coincidence of the Contradictories
is the yin and yang
the lingham and yoni
of a grand biodynamic plan
to sow clarity in the heart of confusion
to see what kind of chaos we can make of it
that might randomly advance
the creative mischance of evolution
happening everywhere the same
to everyone all at once.
Though to think it has balance and purpose
is to build two retaining walls
in the corner of the one dunce.
It's the kind of war
where you go to peace against the other
and there's a commotion
in the heart of the stillness
that is distinctly human.
Something stirring
about the enduring effect
of love and compassion
when it happens without a cause
and the mirrors don't look through the laws
of iron bars
like skies in captivity
deprived of stars in their solitude
or words to lighten the mood.
Of course it's absurd.
Life's only playing at being serious
and a childlike madness
a crazy wisdom
that isn't imperiously innocent
of its own experience
is the only way to express
the lucid triviality of what's sublime
about its creativity
like stars in the daytime
lost in the lightless depths
of an expansive mind
that's come to the limit of things
like a Martian rover
by realizing
there's no edge to go over.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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This Is An Old Sorrow
This is an old sorrow, almost beautiful in the way
it underwhelms me from above, a sky caving in
like a circus tent under the weight of the rain,
a ghost of fruit that could not bear the weight of its tears.
This is a random sadness that's got me as its only friend
when it thaws like a mirror
looking back over its shoulder
at its glacial past, ex-lovers, friends, certain pets,
and eyes that were glass weeping
in the intense mystic heat of a blast furnace full of stars
for how little they understood at the time, things pass
like Canada geese migrating across the moon
like a river you can't step into twice.
Though it doesn't make any sense to say so.
This is an ancient sorrow. And though one direction
is as good as many, I'm still following
the herds of the grazing stars as far north as I can.
O we shall sit down on the good earth half lotus sometime
and cry together for the wound of being alive.
The rose has teeth. And celebrate the scars
in the herb garden as if they were crescent moons.
Or the eyes of a powerful wraith of sadness
saturating the atmosphere with the pathos
of a lament that's been sublimely burning
through its heart for lightyears
like some deep emptiness it knows can never be filled.
As if God would never be enough for herself
and the whole of the universe were
one long maternity of endless creation
that is manifested in its entirety in each one of us
the way the moon's reflected in a dropp of blood
hanging from the thorn of a rose
with the last of two beautiful sunsets for eyes
like the sheen of auroral silk glancing off the scales
of a black watersnake at nightfall when the swallows go in
and the bats come out on the nightshift
like the winged heels of some demonic messenger
with minions that squeal in a frequency too high to hear.
But however you send it, by sound or by silence,
by light or by night, be assured the message you send
however time and space bend things
is the message that's received, like a bee by a flower
or a star by the eye that transcribes it creatively
into hieroglyphic metaphors of picture-music
following a dream grammar of starmud
with a bird stuck in its voice like a phoenix in the Arctic.
Time washes the dust of the road off
by shedding the moonlight like a snake's skin
and skinny-dipping in the fathomless lakes of eternity
it finds along the way like eyes along the mindstream
full of stars and fireflies and what blooms in the soil of its sorrows
beside the stairs at the back doors of all those tomorrows
that left the way they came without saying good-bye.
Volcanic lunar oceans that are only as deep
as the dark tears I have left within me
when I dip the leaking cup of my heart
like the goblet of an impact crater
into a watershed of compassion that looks like the holy grail
and share it with my fellow mirages in this desert of stars
as if they were all as thirsty as I am and everyone
deep down inside somewhere within them
like the green star you can find at the core of an apple,
had a fountain within them like a moon dial or a wine glass
they smashed on the high notes of the nightbirds
just to express their joy as a kind of defiance
in the face of their lots in life, though, in fact
nothing is longer or shorter than anything else in eternity
just as there's only so much time and then there is forever.
And it's the black magic in the roots of a demon
that blossoms like Venus in the west
or New England asters up around Westport in the fall.
And though there's something beautiful in this sadness
that eludes me like a Braille starmap
I can't quite put my finger on to see what's shining
like Aldebaran through the tree line of a bride in a widow's veils,
as I listen to a whisper of flesh
pleading in the darkness not to be excluded
from the presence of time, or left behind by the spirit
like a false clue of cast off rags on a hawthorn bush
to say where it's gone forever and ever and ever
as if whatever the spirit and the flesh had
going on between them never mattered,
whenever the clarity cuts through
the thin-skinned mirror like this
as if it were trying to slash my eyes open
like an insight into what's beyond the obvious,
immediately out of a wounded mouth
I am healed by the balm in a voice of compassion
that rises sweetly like the new moon from the womb
of a scarred guitar that didn't know it had such music in it.
And it says in moonlit windows and nightbirds
that make all the dreaming children wake up and listen
to the intimate strangers that speak as gently as fireflies
to the vast nightskies of their own imaginations,
that the world that casts these shadows on your wall
like a crow preening its feathers, or a bell
that's lost its faith in knowing, and plunges like an apple
into its next afterlife, are merely the holy petals
and sacred syllables taken like pages from the Book of Life
left out like an orchard in a nightwind for every one to read
like a story each of us writes for ourselves
to help us drift gently off into sleep again
to find out how it all ends in a dream that goes on forever
like the fragrance of lilac in an old woman's memories
or the marrow of the apple bloom
that clings like the moon to our bones
or stars to the flypaper stairwells of our chromosomes.
No other way to explain the shining of this sadness deep within
as if my very blood mourned the passing of the things
that have drowned and disappeared into it over the years
like honey-bees in the lees at the bottom of a black tulip
full of rainwater, and by that I know
this is a sadness common to all
that's worthy of the stars in its windows,
and the dreams in the mirrors that paint our faces
like quick watercolour life studies of rainbows in tears.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Something Said Softly
Something said softly in the night
like a tendril on a windowsill
tasting the moon, a whisper, a word
that walked in the light without
abandoning its shadow,
a phrase with wet wings
dreaming itself out of its chrysalis
not knowing whether it's a leaf or a dragonfly
until the whole tree wakes up beside it,
something sought but rarely said
saturated with the meaningless life of meaning
that could touch space like flesh
and make it feel the thrill of new eyes
running down its arm like tears.
And it's not that I want
to unsay the night or God
to define myself as a human,
and it's of little moment to me,
seed on the wind,
what worlds are born of my words,
what ends, what begins,
what comes of what I cannot say,
but I want to say something
with the savour of time in it
that's worth living for a little more each day
like a small tree rooted like a thought
in a crevasse of eternity,
greening the moon.
Late at night, in the darkness,
while the silence is off preserving something,
and all I can hear is your breath
off in the distance like an ocean,
I want to unpack my vagrant heart
like a patched guitar-case,
a grave-robber in a pyramid,
and attune my afterlife
to the key of this one
in such a way
I can play like a new star in Orion
to all the sad, beautiful fireflies of the moment
that hover over us like living constellations of our own
not bound to any paradigm of light
that can only be touched by a mountain of stone.
I want to paint something
that feels like the flower
that just brushed against your hand,
I want to be inspired by the mystic blue of midnight
like window glass fired in the kiln of a star
that has looked upon the suffering of humans for so long,
their atrocities and deprivations,
their terrors and wrecked joys,
compassion has turned it into an eye so clear
you can sip water from it like tears
that taste of the history of blood and wine
that danced alone like a vine at its own wedding
with a bride of rain that unveiled herself
like falling chandeliers.
Unfailingly, absurdly, obsessively human
in the shadow of thundering magnitudes
that feel like the extinctions of gods
that time has wheeled out
to the enormity of the gravepit
that limes every abyss of the heart
with the stars of a new universe,
I want to add one candle to the shining
in a folly of insight so illuminating
even the earliest galaxies
forever entering the darkness
on the threshold of their first shedding
could see it, something
so profoundly vernal and intimate
even I can believe in it.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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When You've Averaged Out Your Crucials
When you've averaged out your crucials
and you've walked in the light and you've walked
in the shadows of things your eyes still taste of
though you've set a star as the moral compass
of your cloudy destination, and it's following you
down a long stray thread of a road, the smart money
bets on doing some good in the world
you may not even be aware of, let alone
expect payback for as if you were doing business
not gambling on an intuitionally calculated risk
its probably better to leave a sweeter cachet to the place
for your having been here, chicory by the side of the road,
or wild orchids in the marsh, by the addition
of one flower more than to desecrate your life
with bitterness, resentment, the indifference of ambition
when its heart gargles with an inhumane antiseptic
to keep from being infected by the human in its bloodstream.
You don't have to arrange paradigms of shining
into some kind of mandalic starmap unless you want to.
Giving something up isn't the same as adding yourself to it.
Even if you foreknow you're doomed to lose, total eclipse,
if you're a real gambler, you lose with flare, like a solar corona.
You're intrigued by the unfolding of the road you took,
the river you're running, the rapids in the mindstream
you're about to shoot down the middle in an inflatable life raft
in the spring run off of the waterclock of a reverential northern river.
It might be important to seek
the eventual forgiveness of the night
for what we've done to it, treating it as a reward
for breathing our way through another day in the light.
But the stars aren't listening to the alibis
we're whispering in the dark to our selves.
They labour under the cowbells of their own myths of origin.
But you can always do a little good in the world.
The whole place is wounded. No shortage of opportunity.
You can drive the ambulance back to the hospital.
You can be the atom that decides the outcome
of a cosmic event, so slight are the actions of the random,
chaos in action, it just takes one to light up
infinite time and space moment by moment
and blow it out just as quickly to enhance the night,
the pulsar of a firefly in a lighthouse of dark matter.
You ever wonder how many messiahs
have come and gone from the world
without ever once having heard of themselves?
If you don't like to drink spit out of the public fountains
of other people's mouths, though they exhale rainbows in the mist
maybe it's time to taste your own to see if it's sweet or not.
When things are real, not solid, nothing's diminished,
nothing's enlarged, because size is no longer relevant
in a world of wavelengths that have given up living like particles.
And forms are more provisional than cast in bronze.
Waifs of the air, maple leaves cast on the mindstream
covering their own reflections with the fans and hand mirrors
they carry like accessories to their own deathmasks.
Hard to make a wax mould of a dream, an emotion, or an insight.
The mystery of life isn't an interpretation
waiting to be deciphered any way you like,
though you're free to do this with the impunity
of a crossroad puzzle. Its silence is a deeper eloquence
than that, and when it expresses itself it's as immediate
as starlight on water. Its spontaneity never hesitates
to shock us with the impersonal beauty
of a moonrise over the lake in a lunar flood of wonder.
Or some small act of love that's denounced by the doer
as a foolish way to live against the odds, as soon as it's done.
Everybody's on death row here. No one gets out alive
or unwounded. Sparrows and stars and houseflies
pass freely through the bars, and the wind at night
whistles through them like the vocal cords of a harp.
Would it hurt to pass a cigarette through them
to someone in front of a firing squad of stars
or write a loveletter for someone who can't read it?
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Adam and Eve Apple Fantasy
I am bored Adam
I am bored Eve
Let's walk together in the garden
It is afternoon Adam
It is afternoon Eve
Our tummies are empty
Let's have something to eat
It is beautiful garden of Eden
How wonderful the fruit trees!
Adam look honey
This beautiful Apple tree
No Eve this is the knowledge tree
Look Eve there is sign in the sky
Can't you see?
Lord command 'Don't eat from the apple tree'
Ha Ha Ha
Who is that?
I am serpent of the garden
Listen Adam
Listen Eve
Go pick the big apple
from the tree
Adam my honey
Do you hear me?
My stomach is aching
go get me this delicious apple
Eve I would not disobey the Lord
Oh Adam
Oh Honey
You seduce me Eve
Ooh Adam
Ooh Eve
Something happened after
we ate the apple
Go Adam get some Fig leaves
Adam Let's rest
under the shaded tree
Adam let's have babies
Eve let's have off-springs
poem by Sherif Monem
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Iron Bars Of Mine
I stand behind these old iron bars,
To see the things, that I can see
I see a world that is changing everyday,
A world, that will not wait for me.
Behind these iron bars where I must lay,
Behind these bars where I must stay.
In this world where I am alone
Its a world that I helped build,
I make not the laws for how I live,
Time for me, she is held still.
As tomorrow is the same as it is today,
And today is the same, as yesterday.
Behind these bars, its where I am
It is the place where I sit and lie,
My destiny for me has already been chose,
For this is the place where I will die.
When the youth of mine turns into old,
When the dewdrops of dreams turn into snow.
The world that I made out of iron and stone
Where freedom and life is locked away
Where life is a waste, and living a haste,
It is where myself alone will forever stay.
Days and years for me, I have no care.
My only solitude, is sleep and prayer.
My day for me; she will someday come
When from my bars I am allowed to leave,
I will welcome that day with open arms and hope,
As those iron bars, will close behind me..
And for that day I will constantly pray,
As I leave those bars, for the bars of my a grave.
Randy L. McClave
poem by Randy McClave
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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My Swan Song
A vision of perfection, I must stare
Your arms, legs, your body, and your hair
With you I can find happiness
You are the one I want to caress
So it was written and so it must be told
It is you I want to have and to hold
At my window sat a single turtle dove
For I don’t want to live without your love
It rains all day since you are not here
My mind is in a daze no longer I see clear
On you all the money I would spend
I love you too much to ever be your friend
Your voice seems to mess up my brain
But I can’t wait to hear it again
I love all the things that you do
That is why I can’t wait to hear from you
Good morning sadness, please go away
Times I wonder how I make through the day
Please tell me how can I release the pain?
Knowing you’ll never come home again
I’m dieing inside without you here
I hunger for your love but do you even care
Loves fire I’m still burning
For your love I’m still yearning
My heart has been wounded very badly
But my life to you I would give gladly
My joy has gone I’m in a constant sad mood
Left behind to live a life of solitude
I gave you my best, I gave you my all
On my knees for you I would crawl
My love comes in all different kinds
But for you I would have died a thousand times
From God’s grace I fell
Pain and sorrow I know them well
I can’t sleep at night any more
Heart ache is my sickness and love’s the cure
I thought that you were special that certain kind
Now crazy thoughts run thru my mind
Dark as the night, cold as the winters
Closed the door, no love longer enters
Words them to sway you I can’t find
Cause you have left me so far behind
No one loves me, no one really cares
When you look back will I still be there
I hear the angels, I hear there call
Saying it’s better to have loved than not at all
From your love I will never recover
For you have been my one and only lover
My love freely I can never give away
I will always love you till the end of day
Darkness surrounds me now that you’re gone
Night cometh no longer the dawn
Pushed aside I’m no longer strong
For in your arms I truly belong
Remember the one that loved you no matter how you look
For my heart and soul is what you took
Young and innocent they have not a clue
So punish me but them too
Foolish is the man that thinks of no other
See the signs and remember the father
What you give is what you’ll get
For what you do one day you will regret
poem by Wilfred Mellers
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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I Wish Everyone In The World Were As Mad As You Are
I wish everyone in the world were as mad as you are.
I wish everyone in the world talked the same nonsense you do
and meant as much.
Stop crying.
I wish everyone in the world were as good as you are
and didn't lie to anyone else
other than themselves
about what the truth is.
You shape chaos to your mind
like light to space
to make a habitable planet you can live on
and if it isn't round sometimes
and O doesn't always cast the same shadow
that the others mimic with theirs
I wish everyone could put on your kind of airs
and be as good to life as the kind of atmosphere you are.
Come on now.
Here.
Dry your tears with this.
All those constellations you made up
out of the stars in your eyes
are your own private myths and mandalas
and you're free to change them as you will
and I wish everyone made as much
of the light they were given to go by
as you have.
I'm too much of a thorn
to paint the delicate iridescent watercolours
I see smeared on your tender bubbles
like original pictures of the universe
from a thousand spaced-out Hubbles
but I wish everyone in the world
had your kind of genius for vulnerability.
You hold up a single feather of light
like a candle among stars
like a green leaf in the middle of winter
and the world that is inured to three dimensions
for infinitely tedious reasons
would rather put its eyes out
and gape like blackholes
than see as you do
that there are countless seasons to the soul
that burn like a phoenix
and there's nowhere you can point to in the darkness
that isn't an equinox of love and understanding
when the sun shines at midnight
and spring harvests what the autumn sows.
Having a deep cosmic insight
like a stranger beyond lucidity
into the windows of the houses of your own zodiac
might make you look like a maniac to the neighbours
who keep watch in their asylum
against any kind of freedom
that might release them from their lighthouse
like a geni from a lamp
that doesn't conform to anyone's wishs but her own
but I wish everyone had the courage
you have not to be them.
Life isn't fair or unfair.
Life isn't kind or cruel.
It isn't half-Buddha and half-fool.
Neither impersonal
nor sentimental
life isn't a kind of obedience
to its own rules
as if it were bound like God to keep its word.
Or what?
Who else is there to answer to?
All the taboos want to be thresholds
and all the thresholds
want to run away from home.
Could be a curse.
Could be a blessing.
Could be just more idle words.
But you're not like that.
You're not a fountain mouth
that mistakes alphabets for birds
and holds them to the letter of the law
in a world full of music.
It's enlightenment to sing to a window.
It's ignorance to sing to a mirror.
But you don't sing to either
and your song is clear as running water
all the way down the mountain.
The picture-music
of your eyes and your ears
can already hear the ocean from here
that gathers to receive the flowing
like the heart receives blood
like the mind receives your thoughts.
Look out at the world.
You're the host.
Look inward.
You're the guest.
You can break bread with the dead
without being a ghost.
You can drink wine with the living
and it's the wine that gets high on you
flowing into a seabed of shadows on the moon
that hasn't touched a dropp for years.
Don't believe what the cynics say about innocence.
They have the sensibilities of blackflies
trying to draw blood from the Mona Lisa.
Don't grieve if you're a butterfly
that can't follow the flightplans of the maggots.
There's only a slight difference in wingspan
between a waterbird and a phoenix
but it would take lightyears
to measure a single feather of yours.
There's no cult of the rose
that insists it fall upon its own thorns first
or the moon draw first blood
on the blades of its own crescents.
You don't have to scar
your own deathmask with experience
just to prove you knew
how to eat the pain and bleed.
You don't have to wear your face in public
as if it were something you kept up your sleeve.
Dice might be the foundation-stones of the lost
but that doesn't mean
you have to go pearl-diving
for the moon in quicksand
or change your song like a jukebox
playing the slots
when you're a mermaid on the rocks.
I wish everyone had the same chance
to risk it all as you do
and win back their lives
like eleven come of seven
insteading of seeing everything
as if they were jinxed by inasuspicious birds
turning the wrong way on a prayer-wheel
that keeps coming up snake-eyes
with every roll of their skulls.
You can't heal the luck
of a wounded Nazi
by turning his swastika the other way.
You can't teach snakes to bite other people.
And you don't know enough
if there's anything left to say or understand
and even then there's a silence
that still longs to be heard
like a humming bird sipping honey from your ears
or deep in a telescopic wishing well of stars
burning in a dream of mirrors
they walk across
like fire on the water
or the distant blue notes
of the hidden nightbird
that echoes your tears
as if it were crying out in the darkness
from the safety of a secret place
for the same reasons you are.
As if it were trying to befriend its own sorrow
and weep for tomorrow as you do
for all the things of the past
it won't even know it's missing.
I wish everyone in the world
could live the future as you do
as something that is already happening now.
Even when you're crying
because you don't think you're brave enough
not to.
You're not a lame princess
that anyone needs to rescue.
You're a dragon bringing rain.
And if the snakepit hisses at you
like a social structure
and calls you insane sometimes
because you have wings
and they still hug the earth
all tied up in knots
taking their poisons out on each other
to keep from feeling anything
it's just their way of defining sanity
by the standards of the numbest.
It's not you that's crazy.
It's not you that's the dumbest.
I wish everyone in the world
were as warm-blooded and wise as you are.
When the serpent fire at the base of your spine
has passed through the doors
of all your chakras like vertebrae
and you're already a circumpolar constellation j
just a little off true north
shining like Draco
why worry if you're no good
at the game of snakes and ladders
they play like politics and religion back here on earth
to see who gets to be the pillar
and who the quicksand.
You understand way more than that.
I can tell by the fire in your eyes
that you're a phoenix among stars
and you've transcended the eagles and the houseflies
that can't even begin to imagine
the kind of heights you can reach to
or the depth of the view below you
when you're riding your own thermals
like beautiful helices in the mindstream
for the sheer joy of being only you.
Even now.
These tears
that run all the way down to your lips
as if water had fingertips
what are they
but the way you cry for things
that everyone else didn't?
I wish everyone in the world could be like you.
I wish you could teach us all
to stop living a spiritual lie
on the deathbed of an earthly truth
as if that were the only way
to foolproof ourselves
against reality
like a stranger looking through our windows at night
who doesn't recognize herself in us
because most of us aren't as brave and free as you are
to leave the door ajar
and let whatever wants to come in
come in.
Some track in mud.
Some.
Stars.
And the mud flowers in light.
And the stars bloom in fire.
And one looks up
and the other looks down
on each other's likeness
reflected in the other
as if they were engendered by the same being.
Sight is a kind of love
and I wish everyone in the world
were inspired by the mystic dimensions
and intimate clarity of your kind of seeing
that even through these tears
that I'm not having much luck in wiping away
can comprehend a world
that's more wonderful than it thinks it is.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Heart Of Poetry
The mystery of words wisdom of the heart to each
angelic form, the voice of emotion in verse.
The melody of heart speak in words that feels the
emotion to express the deepness of feeling in the mind.
Thoughts of words flow to the emotion to make meaning,
to the essence that moves, sensitivity inside emotion
through the words.
Intellect of mind with the knowledge of experience power of
wisdom transcend to composition to unlock the perfect will of
words justify hidden truth.
The magnificent power compose words gives roots
blossom to the garden of heart and bring fruits to the heart of men.
Love kind words are power to win oneself to transform the
beauty of inside emotion to one particular individual.
The poetry, words of wisdom comes from inner motives of
good heart that gives us privilege to express the hidden
beauty of thoughts inside mind to put it in words.
The power to dominate inside individual for beauty and
wonder purpose of life.
Copyright (c) Jocelyn Dunbar
13th of May 2006
7: 50 A.M.
poem by Jocelyn Dunbar
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Crazy
Girl, there are no words to say
What I feel in my heart
You, you're on my mind night and day
And it hurts me when we're apart
When you're not here by my side
There is nothing in this world for me
I guess I'm crazy, crazy for you can't you see
And although you may think it's crazy
Here is where I want to be
I will always need your love
Now, I can see every dream
When I look in your eyes
And though things never are what they seem
There is one thing that I realize
That there's no doubt in my mind
We can make this love go on forever
I guess I'm crazy, crazy for you can't you see
And although you may think I'm crazy
Here is where I'll always be
And I need you with me 'cause you are the dream
That finally came true for me
And all my life there'll be no one else
If I looked all my life there could be no one else
And for the rest of my life all I need is you
song performed by by Kenny Rogers
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Beautiful Night
Beautiful night, how the stars, they so clearly shine
And the joyful moon how it mirrors back my smile
Oh, beautiful night, you're good to a heart like mine
Oh, beautiful night, you've made this long road worthwhile
Beautiful night, glow of the city behind me
Smile, I, with my heart at peace and my mind at ease
Oh, beautiful night, tranquility sets me free
Oh, beautiful night, I dream of moments like these
Beautiful night and all seems so right with the world
Questions come later; decisions, future doth hold
Oh, beautiful night, for now I watch the sky twirl
Oh, beautiful night, I wait for light to behold
Yet, in the stillness of evening I dream these dreams
That the beauty of this night is all that it seems
poem by Danny Speicher
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Sunrise Gone
Night 's goes from there to here as gentle winds blow north to south flowing west to east the moon bright and full and as bright like a fire but not as warm one star two stars one million stars later flickering away into the night sky existence meaninful to meaningless as a heart bearts heavy and true one second until eternity counting back and forth until first light there goes night hello morning days anew this heart beats slow soft just like a old clock second after second like minutes that turn to hours these seconds that takes away in this beautiful things called life as sacred as your next breath in is reality this existence likes seasons and death birth life flows once more night comes again and darkness covers everything like a blanket one millions stars shimmer back into the picture sparkling away but then night goes fromhere to there back to there and a brand new cycles start all over again......nuff said! !
poem by Dorian Suchelle
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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I Stand Where The Listening Begins
I stand where the listening begins
as if my voice were just another one of the echoes
and my tongue were the tip of an edgy precipice
that doesn't dare make a move
over an immeasurable abyss of eyes
that nobody belongs to.
This is a seeing that's older than the stars
that were born of it
like a mirror is born of the shining.
Like a body is born of the mind
and takes on the shape of a universe
as an expressionist gesture of classical reserve.
In the great ocean of being before it turned into everyone
our eyes weren't beaded like two drops of water
strung through our nose
like a statement we were trying to make.
They were waves.
Waves of water.
Waves of light.
Waves of thought and feeling.
They were waterbirds that came and went
without leaving.
They were meteorological events
in the emotional life of the sea
when it played alone with itself like weather.
We didn't evolve hands to prove we had a grip on things.
We didn't evolve brains to prove we were intelligent.
We're not nuggets of insight
panned from the mindstream
that runs down the world mountain
in a rush of gold.
I stand where I can hear the night
breathing like a shadow in its own darkness
and whatever I am not
is as real as whatever I am.
And my sorrows dropp away
like the black fruit of ruined bells
and my joys know a freedom
no holy war ever deserved.
Here my death answers to my life
and not the other way around.
My beginnings are not justified by my ends
and my solitude is so wholly itself
it embraces everything
as if it were space
and time were its only friend.
This is a poetic state.
A dynamic mode of creative annihilation.
This is a phoenix blooming in its own fire.
This is life.
This is the universe full of bright ideas
that come to it like stars in the darkness.
This is the white mare of the full moon in the high field
with the gates open
like wings growing out of her shoulders.
This is a space that is so spontaneously immediate
that you receive the reply
long before you've even asked the question.
It doesn't take thousands of thoughtyears
for the light to get here.
A flower blooms.
A star comes out.
It's as simple as that.
You lift one veil of the mystery like an eyelid.
Nothing has a history.
The old man remembers nothing.
The old woman forgets her name.
Once they were seabeds of meaning.
Now they're just water.
And everything is ok with that.
People go grey
and turn into clouds in the mountains
just to catch the last of the light
and give their lives some colour.
And then it's night again
and the dancing chandeliers of the stars
that are burning like legends
to make a name and a myth for themselves
fall like constellations to earth
and shatter like the rainbows of youth.
Every dawn has a taste of the sunset in it.
What's the end of anything
if not the dark side of its beginnings?
I am the fool of a freedom
that lets things be whatever they want to be
deep within the heavy fruit of a compassionate heart
that ripens in its own lucidity.
There are worms.
There are birds.
There's a green star in the apple core.
My skin is the chameleon of the sun going down.
I know how to swim through stone and water.
There are fish in my treetops
and birds in my roots
and when I drown
it's the sun in the sea
and nothing ever really goes out.
Everytime I open my mouth to sing
this is where the muse
puts a finger to her lips
to teach me what I'm talking about.
I'm a star when I write.
First I let go of the light.
And then the children point fingers at me
and say in mutual recognition
of the stories they make up on the go
there you are
just as we foretold.
It's the same way with water
when it's lost in a desert of sand and stars.
Sometimes it takes a mirage to find your way home.
Death gapes like the jawbone of a mummy
and writes like a pyramid
as if it wanted to make all things last forever.
But when life picks up the pen
around the fires of the stars
to whisper into its own ear
things that only solitude
can suggest to the night
its poems are always tents on the move.
The moon sailing paper lifeboats down a river
like waterlilies
blooming in the pale flames
of their lunar immolations
as if each were a white phoenix
rising above its own ashes and smoke
like someone dreaming of swans.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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As I Began to Love Myself – Self Love Poem
As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering
are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth.
Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY”.
As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody
As I try to force my desires on this person, even though I knew the time
was not right and the person was not ready for it, and even though this
person was me. Today I call it “RESPECT”.
As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life,
and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow.
Today I call it “MATURITY”.
As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance,
I am in the right place at the right time, and everything happens
at the exactly right moment. So I could be calm.
Today I call it “SELF-CONFIDENCE”.
As I began to love myself I quit steeling my own time,
and I stopped designing huge projects for the future.
Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness, things I love to do
and that make my heart cheer, and I do them in my own way and in
my own rhythm. Today I call it “SIMPLICITY”.
As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for
my health – food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew
me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude
a healthy egoism. Today I know it is “LOVE OF ONESELF”.
As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right, and ever since
I was wrong less of the time. Today I discovered that is “MODESTY”.
As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past and worry
about the future. Now, I only live for the moment, where EVERYTHING
is happening. Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it “FULFILLMENT”.
As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me
and it can make me sick. But As I connected it to my heart, my
mind became a valuable ally. Today I call this
connection “WISDOM OF THE HEART”.
We no longer need to fear arguments, confrontations or any kind of problems
with ourselves or others. Even stars collide, and out of their crashing
new worlds are born. Today I know THAT IS “LIFE”!
poem by Charlie Chaplin
Submitted by Mihaela P
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Everybody Says I'm Too Intense
Everybody says I'm too intense and I say
you sure as hell aren't.
And since I was sixteen in highschool
and before that in the local neighbourhood
in the bosom of my family
people have always thought I was mad.
My highschool graduation yearbook says
most likely to become
a mad teacher mad scientist mad poet mad.
An oracular assessment of my peers
that has haunted me for years.
But I say crazy is the only antidote
to the extreme chaos of conditioned consciousness.
Look at the world.
Lies lies lies.
A coalition of lies
that calls itself
the history of civilization.
Crazy wisdom.
The tantric insight
into the fact
there is no nature to things.
You're not a very wise human
if you don't understand ignorance
is the clearest expression of enlightenment.
You see what I mean?
It's hard to speak of unity
in the split tongue of a snake
without making an oxymoron of it
at the fork in the roads
it mistakes for a direction.
Regard the dead parachutes of Babylon
no one can understand you
I said to myself one day dying with a sneer.
It's the moral obligation of a writer to make things clear.
I forget who said it.
But he was a nitwit.
One of the lice of literature
that makes your mind want to scratch itself raw
for the next half century.
It's that word moral that bothers me.
Not his preconception of clarity
though when it gets down to that
you smear the mirror
when you try to be clear about clarity.
I said that.
It takes an amateur madman
to be a good shrink
and make reality
try to correspond
to what you think.
But what an impoverished way to live your life.
What a distortion of humanity.
If you're mad enough
there's plenty of room in the asylum
to embrace sanity with decorum.
When in Rome do as the Romans do
and try not to make a spectacle of yourself in the Colosseum.
It's been my experience
that so much of what the world calls mad
is only freedom
with the courage to open its eyes.
Most people look into the eyes
of spontaneous freedom
and it terrifies them.
They don't want to know
what's not there.
The world ends at the back of their eyelids.
Things just get too deep
and they drown in their sleep
like pearl divers on the moon.
At every moment of your life
life is more certain than death.
It's all you can say about
where you expect to be tomorrow
and where this is now.
Everybody always wants things
to look the way they seem.
They want to live the dream awake.
They don't go along with their own mindstream.
They're shore-huggers.
They live at the edge
of the great sea of mysterious being
in sandcastles with blowholes
that burp like tiny volcanoes in the receding tide.
Herculaneum and Pompey
are mummified in the flow
down their pygmy mountainsides
but it's easy to see where they hide
thinking they're out of reach.
But who am I to preach
quicksand to cornerstones such as these?
Everybody always tells me I'm too intense
but they've never been through a nightstorm
far out on the Pacific
where the moon's your only lifeboat
and it's just gone down
like a bright penny in a wishing well
like a last longshot in the slots
of an odds-making hell.
And it's seven to five you survive.
They've never fallen in love with a hurricane rose
that's built like a fortune-cookie
and paints her eyelids
with the blood of ex-lovers
who were sacrificial enough to propose.
If you go looking for the meaning of life sincerely
sooner or latter it will find you
like one fact final enough to delude all the others
into thinking it's ultimately true.
Complete one act well
and you've accomplished everything
because one act begets another
until everything is done of its own accord.
Because your birth isn't terminal,
your death is ongoing.
And the same is true in reverse.
How do I know this is so?
I let go.
I blossom like the memories of a dead branch
in the apple orchards of the Hesperides,
everyone of them
a full moon.
I see how innocent my doubt is.
So even my darkness
is a singing bird on a green bough.
I've looked at drops of water
at the tips of the blades of the stargrass
like the thin-skinned tears of the sky in childbirth
and everyone of them
was the seed of a new world.
Worlds within worlds
whose only conventions
are the creative dimensions of the perceivers.
Not one size fits all.
I don't put my finger to my lips
like an ego-I
to eclipse the great silence.
I let it say me with its eyes.
And we both come as a great surprise to each other
when we're standing
on the same side of the mirror
on the far shore of the mindstream
like two eyes of the same seeing
astonished we're here at all
without lying to the miracle
about our reasons for being.
Have you ever considered the enormous distances
in the body of a small bird?
Or how strangely intimate a star can be
from thousands of lightyears away?
A whisper of lucidity in an oceanic ear.
Something you've heard for a long time
but never listened to before.
Never this near.
This clear.
Have you ever wondered which of two sisters
is the older of the elements.
Fire or water?
Or why spring lies about her age
when she's as old as autumn
and then claims
to be the daughter of the grain
when in fact she's the womb of summer?
Is it insane to wonder?
Is it too intense to fear
living my whole life
as if I were never here
to take a good look?
Is it deranged to feel
the enlargement of my seeing
is not the diminishment of my being
because I opened my eyes
and saw they were both
two ends of the same telescope?
It's one thing to let the light in through the gates of your eyes.
It's wholly another to let it get this far
into the palace of your imagination
without being announced
or scrutinized.
Life's a breeze
when you don't look at it
like a disease you're afraid to get over.
If I'm inspired by the vastness of my ignorance
to turn a leaf over now and again
like a new page in an old book
to avoid being obvious
am I looking for a happy ending
or am I just delighting in my indolence
when I read it like a map of my own lifelines
by running my finger over it as if I were blind
and it were the one who could see?
If I don't believe we appear briefly
to disappear forever
because everything here
is a vast collaboration
with creative emptiness
and it isn't going anywhere
what do I care
if you're confused by my endeavours?
What's it to you
if I'm a mirage on a grailquest in a desert of stars?
Or if I practise compassion spontaneously
toward myself and others
as if we were all the same wound
under many scars
and if my lies heal,
are they not the fruit of insight?
If I'm the dark genius
deeply intrigued
by my own misdirection
that you say I am
though that doesn't change a thing
about the way I can't help being
and not being myself,
what makes you think
there's only one star
you can point out
like the needle
in the impoverished compass
of your last course correction
as if there were only one way to go
and the truth were always
somewhere north of you
instead of under your feet
in all directions at once
like the radiance of stars
before the arising of signs?
Today Jesus and the Buddha walk on water.
Tomorrow Lucifer and Kamamara will walk on fire.
But when the opposites
get their baggage together
and realize they can't lift it
and abandon it by the side of the road
like an outhouse on a trailer hitch
or a hubcap in a country ditch
that's stopped spinning around
and come to rest in an oxymoron
posing as the full moon
that's come to liberate
an empty asylum
they both walk on earth
bewildered by their innocence
when they discover
they've never had anything to do
with the course of events
that made them who they are.
Wasn't the Buddha enlightened
by watching Venus in the dawn
lead the sun up
like the morning star
that once was Lucifer
before he took the fall like a ripe apple,
before he stole fire from the gods like Prometheus
the thief of inspiration,
knowing the moment of his perfection
in all realms of knowledge
infernal or divine
was the best time to jump?
And the darkness will always seem like a liar
to those who don't know the truth.
If I don't see life as just a bag of water
with nine holes in it
leaking out of itself
as I once used to
eras and eras ago
and you still do
when I look at what remains
of the desicated parachute of a jellyfish
you've made of your brains
clinging to shore
next to the sewage drains
that poured you out
and washed you up
and wiped their mouths of the taste of a dead ocean
what's it to you
if I run so far out to sea
from so high up
on the down side of the world mountain
I'm swimming with dolphins on the moon?
I'm teaching blind starfish how to shine
like dark matter with a mind of its own
and no sign of a constellation
with feet of clay
afraid to leave home.
Say what you want to say.
Be what you want to be.
Enlighten your ignorance
and then ignore your enlightenment.
Don't drive the darkness out of your lucidity
like a scapegoat into a spiritual desert
you're afraid to enter
because you're not bright enough to see
that under every threshold
between the inside and the out
certainty and doubt
insanity and the sane
the trivial and profound
the homeless and a habitable planet
there's a sphere
spinning on a tilted axis
in the immensity of space
that's so far out it's in.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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11 Star
STAR:
'FOLLOW THE SAME STAR'
The truth we see;
How small a part
Of that lovely light
Ever reaches our heart?
If you're looking for the light,
There is a star shining bright,
A dawn to this dark night,
A candle burning bright.
Long ago, a star
Sent forth its light from afar.
And now, no matter how far,
We will follow the same star.
Lost sailors used stars
To calculate their course
Whenever the wind and waves took
Them with their force.
Let truth transform you;
It will make your heart and mind new.
If you're not faithful, your heart's in denial;
Take it from me - it's worth your while.
So forget this world with all its cares,
For troubled dreams turn into nightmares.
You have to leave this world behind
If you want to keep what you find.
The stars haven't always been there,
But the love of our Lord is everywhere.
The devil appears as an angel of light;
He does his best work in the night.
One day you'll leave this world of ours,
Taking your place among the stars.
Shine bright with light, my star;
Show the world who you are.
'SHARE THE SAME STAR'
I'm looking at this star tonight,
But will my wish come true?
I can't help wondering,
If you can see the same star too?
Do you see what I see,
As we stand in its light?
Does darkness overwhelm you,
When you look up there tonight?
I am dreaming in the darkness,
About this star that shines above.
I hope that you'll find me,
Looking for true love.
I've wished upon this special star
For my whole life, it seems.
I close my eyes and make a wish
For all my hopes and dreams.
One day, I got my wish;
I finally met you.
You're that special someone,
Who made my dreams come true.
They say you should never tell
What you wish for, it's true,
But I want the whole world to know
That my wish was for you.
Though there are miles between us,
I know our hearts will meet.
At the point this star begins,
The two will have one beat.
Whenever we are apart,
I find that same bright star.
It makes me feel close to your heart,
No matter where you are.
'WISH ON A STAR'
As I wait here, wondering where you are,
I lie in loneliness and look up at the stars.
Soaring on through space like a shooting star,
Still searching - wondering who you are.
As far as you can see into eternity,
Each one is a wish that with you I'll be.
Stare at the sky, on a silent night;
Count the crystal sea of stars, blazing bright.
Staying by your side wherever you may go,
I have to tell you now - I just want you to know
That even as the stars keep shining in the sky,
My love for you will burn forever and never die.
There's just something beautiful about when angels pray;
A star shines brighter in the night than the light of day.
You can't lift a candle to show lost souls the way
Without feeling the warmth of that radiant ray.
'SHINE BRIGHT WITH LIGHT'
Up in heaven, the angels cry;
Another star falls from the sky.
A falling star - a fading light,
And soon it shall pass from our sight.
When the world starts falling apart,
The hope of heaven is hidden in my heart.
I'll make the world a brighter place,
Like the light of a star in space.
Someday, we'll be just like the angels are;
Like the steady light of a distant star.
Someday soon, we'll shine like them,
Radiant as the rarest, glowing gem.
Sing to the stars - sing to the sea;
Let your song echo for eternity.
Truth our hearts alone can see,
A reflection of reality.
'EACH NIGHT I PRAY'
Walking outside, I lift my eyes
To a symphony in the skies.
You are my star - you shine so bright;
When it is dark, you are my light.
Everyday, I'm so grateful
For your warm and glowing light.
Thank you for being so faithful;
You make my whole world bright.
Just like a star, you're so far away.
I think of you - each night I pray,
But I know there's no way
For you to hear the words I say.
I see you in the sky at night,
But I can't touch the star in sight.
I guess I will always be
A friend you will never see.
'WISH YOU WERE HERE'
One night I was out wandering,
Feeling lost and alone.
I looked up into the heavens,
And there a bright star shone.
I picked one to wish on
From every star above.
I closed my eyes and made a wish
To send you all my love.
So look up in the sky tonight
And find that star;
It will shine bright with light,
However near or far.
And when you see our star,
My wish will come to you;
Stars were made to wish upon;
Sometimes wishes come true.
'I SAW THE LIGHT'
I saw a bright ray today
That led me out of darkness.
A little light so far away
In an endless sea of emptiness.
It burned like a shooting star,
In the distance, so very far.
I think it’s getting clearer;
Now it's coming nearer.
A light just as bright as the sun
And almost as distant;
It wasn’t the only one;
You couldn't have missed it.
When I'm lost in the dark and I can't see,0
I just look for the light.
I have hope when it shines on me,
Everything will be bright.
'YOU ARE MY LIGHT'
I looked up at the stars last night,
Just thinking about you,
And wondering what I could do
To make our dreams come true.
Together, we’ll shine like the sun;
Two candles burn brighter than one.
We'll dance just like the stars in space,
Together forever in an endless embrace.
Wherever you go, I will follow;
And it doesn't matter how far.
Without you, my heart feels hollow;
I just want to be where you are.
You shine just like a star so bright;
I'd be lost without your light.
Hand in hand, we'll stand together;
I promise to be there forever.
'A STAR IS BORN'
Every star is destined by fate
To live and then to die.
It glows with light - it just can't wait,
Shooting across the sky.
For a moment, it is there,
Burning bright up in the air.
It falls gently onto the ground,
Without making a sound.
Like a falling star,
Glowing bright with glory,
I'm just another ending
To someone else's story.
Just a dropp of rain in the desert,
Just a grain of sand in the sea;
What have I done that won’t be forgotten?
Will anyone remember me?
'SHINE LIKE A STAR'
I look up at the sky;
It hurts so much saying goodbye.
Every time I think of you,
It makes me want to cry.
Hope is not hope if you can see;
Is there a star that shines for me?
Like a star, you showed me the way;
You led me with your light each day.
I'll say a prayer for you;
I'll make a wish and I hope it comes true.
Put your faith in what you can't see;
I wish you could be here with me.
Sometimes I wish I could be
A star to shine for all to see.
I know the light is not my own;
I could never do it alone.
'YOU ARE MY STAR'
You are my star,
So bright up above;
I can't forget it;
It's you I love.
My star will shine
So bright and true.
It's a light in the night
Made just for you.
When you are lost,
Wherever you may be,
Look for the light,
For it will set you free.
Don't hide your light,
Wherever you are;
Let it burn bright,
Just like a star.
'A SEA OF STARS'
A life is lost;
What can we say?
A bright light burns,
Then it fades away.
And at the sight,
They stop and stare
On this dark night,
But they don't care.
It came and went;
I'm not sure what it meant.
A star fell from the sky,
And I want to know why.
Just for you,
This star fell;
You have one wish,
So use it well.
poem by Daniel Cobb
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Garden of Eden (Bible Poems for Children)
The garden of eden, was made
by God,
Adam, the first man, to ever
trod.
Beautiful trees, and plants
grew there,
Adam was happy, without a
care.
Tree of Life, and Knowledge
too,
Planted, in the garden grew.
The tree of Knowledge, God
forbid,
Do not touch, or he would rid.
A lost paradise would occur,
A magic kingdom, all a blur.
One day when Adam fell asleep,
God took a rib, made Eve so
sweet.
Satan came in form of a snake,
Tempted Eve, for goodness sake.
She ate the apple ripe and red,
gave it to Adam, Adam was fed.
A paradise was lost that day,
A working life began this way.
poem by Heather Burns
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Garden Of Eden (Bible Poems For Children)
The garden of eden, was made
by God,
Adam, the first man, to ever
trod.
Beautiful trees, and plants
grew there,
Adam was happy, without a
care.
Tree of Life, and Knowledge
too,
Planted, in the garden grew.
The tree of Knowledge, God
forbid,
Do not touch, or he would rid.
A lost paradise would occur,
A magic kingdom, all a blur.
One day when Adam fell asleep,
God took a rib, made Eve so
sweet.
Satan came in form of a snake,
Tempted Eve, for goodness sake.
She ate the apple ripe and red,
gave it to Adam, Adam was fed.
A paradise was lost that day,
A working life began this way.
poem by Heather Burns
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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This Garden Of Eden
The garden of eden, was made
by God,
Adam, the first man, to ever
trod.
Beautiful trees, and plants
grew there,
Adam was happy, without a
care.
Tree of Life, and Knowledge
too,
Planted, in the garden grew.
The tree of Knowledge, God
forbid,
Do not touch, or he would rid.
A lost paradise would occur,
A magic kingdom, all a blur.
One day when Adam fell asleep,
God took a rib, made Eve so
sweet.
Satan came in form of a snake,
Tempted Eve, for goodness sake.
She ate the apple ripe and red,
gave it to Adam, Adam was fed.
A paradise was lost that day,
A working life began this way.
poem by Heather Burns
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Because I do not wish to hope again
I
Because I do not wish to hope again,
to like an eagle spread my wings,
because I do not wish to gain
experience and to learn new things
and do not wish to soar up against the blue sky,
wondering what lies
beyond the scope of the vision of an eye
and with time in me all hope dies
why should I be afraid
when the darkness closes in,
when destiny has knotted my life in its braid
and I do not know what comes with the new morning?
II
Because am not the man I used to be
and the things of my youth now is of no interest
with age taking effect of my body
drawing me closer to the place of eternal rest
and on the other side of the beyond
there’s only darkness that I see
and to this ageing body I am bound with life’s bond
that is slowly leaving me
when the reality of life in death makes me aware
that life is only transitory,
that destiny has its impact everywhere
then as a tired man I still lift my eye to God in His glory.
III
Because the moments of tranquillity
have left me as if they have never been
and I am now enfolded in fragility
as if my eyes have never seen
the greatness beaconing on the other side of the beyond
as if no word or deed from me will last into eternity
as if no beauty, greatness I have found
or left a mark of my integrity or sincerity
I wonder what the reason for living is,
have difficulty to comprehend
what life holds
what pain, fear, joy and bliss
brings before the last of my life is spent?
IV
Because I know that time is running out,
that even a newborn child is bound to destiny
and it feels as if it’s no use to beg, pray or shout
as every single human being is covered in iniquity
I am left to pray to God for His mercy
and ask Him to let me forget the dreams, the plans and hope
that was once mine, and every single fallacy
that as a human being once did envelop
my mind, my heart and when His righteous judgement falls
may it be lenient as there is no way to live again
and deeds and words well meant become spent when death calls
as every human being is destined to walk the darkening plain
l’Envoi
to at an allotted time expected or unexpected depart from life
and even from the time of birth
the seeds of disaster and strive
are build into every human being living on this earth
and therefore I pray to meet You Lord
to experience the depth of your love
as is promised in Your eternal word
lifting my eyes to You who reign from above.
[Reference: Ash-Wednesday: I. “Because I do not hope to turn again” by T. S. Eliot.]
poem by Gert Strydom
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Singularity
You were the singularity at the bottom of the blackhole
where all the light and life and love and money went.
You were an abyss that just couldn't stand being empty.
You wanted to be a fat void in the midst of plenty.
You took your own body as the Standard Model of the Universe.
You were a death-maze that tried to make a living selling breadcrumbs.
You used to tell me
I could run from the blessing
but I could never escape the curse
of being an optimist for whom
things kept turning out for the worst.
You always did try to make an original point of the obvious
but your clarity was invariably cruel and cunning.
So I gave up arguing with you
and learned to grow orchids
that slept with secrets
in the shadow of that outhouse on the moon
you kept up like a diary of your changing moods.
Being the stupid one
I thought love had substance and content
the way thought and feeling had flesh and blood.
You thought it was a wardrobe of auroral attitudes
you could put on or take off as you wish
like smoke in a mirror
or a whisper of lingerie.
Sex with you was always a good day
and we had a lot of them
and that's how I ended up staying for six years.
That and the compassion I felt
for the tears of rage you would shed
like rain on the lava of a wounded volcano
that would pop up on the west coast without warning
and bury both of us like Pompey and Herculaneum
trying to grow geraniums on its harassed slopes
like the hippies who grew pot
on Mt. Saint Helen's
who aren't selling anymore.
I always thought you gave your love to someone
and that's what made it a gift
but you bestowed yours upon me
as if it were a right
I should be grateful to receive.
I was abolished from diplomatic lip-service
in the court of the mad queen
time and again
for things I didn't mean
even in my native language
that were just too insane to believe.
But the body endures.
The mind copes.
And despair and ashes to me
given the tragic optimist I am
are full of high hopes
like spiritual loveletters
in earthbound envelopes.
And just as I did then
when at least I taught you
what not to look for in a man
I hope you've found the simulacrum
of the real life you were looking for
and it's healed that crack in the mirror
that used to scar you like a black sail
on an empty horizon
waiting for cosmic news of the weather
that kept running you aground
like a widow on a beach
everytime the tide came in like providence
and left you just out of reach of yourself
like a wedding bouquet
the bride tossed away over her shoulder
without looking back.
As for me
things have gotten worse for the better over the years.
Swimming through quicksand.
Swimming through stone.
Impersonal revelations of intimate stars.
Sometimes the moon shows me
the fossils of the ancient oracles
she's pressed between the pages
of her darkest shales
like deep wounds
gashed in the matrix of space and time
that were the distant ancestors of us
who have survived the truth of their prophecies
like scars without a myth of origin.
I still end where I begin
like the black grammar of a white magician
answering for myself before my own inquisition
for heresies that were holy enough
to be condemned to the fire as proof
of their volatility.
Your blood was a watercolour.
Mine was an oil.
And red was the colour of pain.
I shook things off me
like water off the fur of a dog
that's just come ashore
on the far side of the river.
You ran in the rain
like a crazy ribbon
from the gifts you were given to give
and didn't know how to survive.
But wanting to live
isn't the same thing
as trying to stay alive
though they're the two ends
of the same telescope.
When despair becomes
the orthodoxy of the age
and sinks like a heavyweight
who threw the fight like Atlantis
when it lost its sea-legs
the only true protest is hope
and the abandoned courage of a bubble
expanding like the universe
to break the surface
in a rapture of aquatic freedom
and disappear into the new medium
of an evolving atmosphere with wings.
And sometimes it's hard
to remember the way things turned out
as if the certainties were brief weathervanes
of the good days that never came
and the doubts went on forever
looking for scapegoats they could blame
like the leftover smoke
of an extinguished candleflame.
And though I might be slow
I know I've been thorough over the years
in wishing you love and life
and laughter among friends.
So I've never summoned you by name
like a ghost to a seance of strangers
who think they know you better than I do
and make way too much of too many little things
that don't matter anymore.
I haven't swept the stars off my stairs in years.
And there are loveletters
piled up in the mailbox
that say I'm in arrears
and when the windows cry
as they sometimes still do
looking out over the vastness
of the view from here
at the solitary figures fading
into the landscape of their homelessness
I try to cheer them up
like a reflecting telescope
by getting them to look at the bright side of things
by exchanging their lenses for mirrors
the way love does
new lamps for old
when everything that's beautiful and lucid
disappears under a veil of rain
like old eyes looking out at the world
through the new tears of a stranger's pain
like a faithful death-wish that's come true again.
poem by Patrick White
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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