Original Poems
Tempest at 8:45
It is the hour after the has set. The gods of the sky pound and blow in delight or fury on the endless blue steel sheet; great sparks and bellows pierce the stillness. The trees wait; brave sentinels making their small rounds. The rain comes and comes; it kisses the Earth as it does my roof and all that’s green.
It is the quiet hour before bed. The candle lights flicker under my breath. They throw pale canvases onto the wall. My imagination paints them with veins of fresh lightning and old stories of old stories. There is no sound but for the tapping of the rain, the occasional crackle of flame or note from the heavenly gong, and the sweet clinking of keys.
It is the hour of infinitude. I labor at the arts of man. My cat lays silently at my feet, pursuing the arts of cats. I could pursue that, or anything else. I could pound at the sky or stand in the rain. Doing nothing in particular often suits. I grasp for the hands of the maestros. Thoreau, Matisse, Breugel, the wood carver, the candlemaker, the tobaccoist, the gods of the sky. I have built a shrine to them so that I could sit among them. But I know it is not that simple; I stare at them through windows only.
I have a fear
I have a fear, soft and slow,
that I have no place to go.
Not wandering, but wasting,
squandering the most precious gifts of all –
Sunsets, and rises too;
a dance only I could do;
a hand reached out, a hug embraced;
a friend to make, a cake to bake;
the vision of an Eagle soaring, captured by my heart or eye, or pen or brush;
the feeling of vitality;
the moments that are just for me;
movement in the soul from hate or grace;
desire to know how pine needles taste;
ease inside a liminal space;
of strength in my legs;
of straightness in my spine;
of line composed or mile run in a state of bliss –
This all I fear that I will miss.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained,
but I protest the rules of the game.
We make them and I referee,
then pout in bed, woe is me.
A belly of wine calms the dread,
but the fear is always a step ahead.
In my dreams, I range and strangers meet,
but in the daylight I am meek.
Clicking, scrolling, jawing, more –
a great game of copy paste I’d ignore.
I would rather breathe in a quiet place.
In hot passion I could engage,
but cool numbness beats its pace.
Gnawing, starving, cold hands and feet,
they are what without man’s game I’d meet.
But between brutal nature and sterile rest,
I must find beauty, chaos, death.
I must create, must conquer fear,
must get dirty, must flout the jeer.
So, on my own I will go,
to find the gifts I value so.
Rusted
My pen, my soul,
gone to rust,
under a restless moon.
I scrape, I strain,
back to polish,
under a patient moon.
Culture
One hundred thousand years of humankind,
all there is to show is culture.
Imagine a great blaze, wholly destructive and cleansing of humankind.
Its fixtures – monuments, homes, schools, languages – our culture, sterilized.
Like a phoenix, we rise again as children.
We become, again, the cosmic infant, intelligent ape.
What must, or might not, re-form staggers:
music, justice, medicine, shame in nakedness.
All that makes us human:
technology, religion, education, nations.
We are not a species, but a series of thoughts structured and un-structured:
cuisine, art, commerce, history,
the fruits of wars, the big questions,
landing on the moon, introspection, meditation,
family, everything beautiful made or considered,
your life and mine.
If all were wiped away, we are left with a shadow of a shadow.
Epigenetic tags and inborn propensities;
immunities, diseases, and primal urges;
all atop a rotting planet
When I am wiped away, weight what’s left.
The home I built or bought, exhalations,
my trash, my shit, my corpse in a coffin of razed trees in a hole dug on my behalf:
vapor, thin air.
More, or less, than my children and their children, their excrement and ambition –
and so forth, is it a matter of degree?
Instead, consider:
truth discovered, distilled, debunked;
beauty formed or reflected, my barb in the hearts of family, friends, and near-strangers;
good works and bad, causes patronized and ignored, philosophy espoused;
my bank account, my enemies, this elegy and exaltation, photographs of my cat;
jokes devised, minds swayed, recipes, songs, sorry crafts, the way I laughed.
All are air too, but thicker, heavier.
Culture is the triumph of consciousness.
In humankind it found its vessel, and humanity its paint.
The universe experiences itself, makes art of it, pushes and experiments, takes note.
It creates sacred wisdom, but not the wisdom of scarred grey men with silver tongues.
The wisdom is of second self, collective self, and is strong, deep, old.
We can only live a good life in the context of it, as an ant can only in its colony.
Culture is a superorganism, in a sense.
Indeed, alive, and not incorporeal like a ghost or rumor.
It can die and avoids death, but if it perishes no requiem could be sung except unknowingly by the wind and water.
It goes through periods of feeding and slumber.
It can change, and in fact must evolve.
It engineers outwardly: environment, social intercourse, expansion into new territory.
It is the expansive mycelium underground, and we are the fruiting mushroom emerging temporarily from the muck to joyfully release spores before rotting.
We profit from it, and it reproduces through us.
We are it and it is us, both apart and a part.
We call it Humanity, but that falls short –
for that second-us, super-us includes those animals, plants, germs, mountains, oceans, objects, concepts that which we love, hate, destroy, and cherish.
Culture is bigger, it swallows all.
Its memes are more powerful than Kings, though we create them.
Ideas, fears, dreams, traditions pass through fleshy ether –
viral electricity with no natural end except that of the universe
(should Culture not escape that unfathomable end).
What’s a hundred thousand years in light of thirteen billion past and future?
A blink, a breath, a birth.
A trillion – more – bodies piled:
human, apen, piscine, entomological, microbial.
Fertilizer for it, for that seed.
The sprout peaks from the litter of decay.
It is just beginning, the beginning of the beginning.
Another trillion more lives and what can it grow to?
Clair de Lune to a caveman is the result.
An incomprehensive destiny, as a sperm cannot comprehend a woman let alone the world.
That sprout, that cradled baby, wholly incomprehensible and gigantic to one human needs each.
Indeed, we each are its parent, in a small way, providing a nutritious meal and perhaps a lesson.
We should be proud knowing this child will, or may, one day
grow and play in the vast cosmic cul de sac.
Perhaps It, We, will meet friends, enemies, or those without such concepts –
or We will have outgrown them too.
And so, I’ll nurture It the best I can.
Pour my life into it, one pen-full at a time.