Read Poetry Strewn Along Life's Pathways Page 8

frames of this world?

  "Let's call Room Service -- and find out!"

  [9/83]

  (Parentheses)

  our children will ask "Why?"

  and "How come?" and our answers

  will never fully satiate

  our past days will mount

  a testimony to rationalization

  and embarrass us with its surrender

  to feebleness

  "If you believe, why didn't you ... ?"

  "If you loved, why didn't you ... ?"

  "If you desired, why didn't you ... ?"

  like chinese wall posters, in time

  they are pasted over

  but at the grave they will whisper

  "Who was it he/she really loved?"

  (who is that creature bound by parentheses?)

  "I hope she/he is happy, now."

  with footsteps muffled by the noise of the world

  we are delegated to footnotes

  in textbooks of irrelevance

  unless we scrawl our children

  other lines to rehearse

  [8/83]

  Satisfied at Breakfast

  in the dark he walked

  to ask logical questions of the magician

  "Your wonders must mean that you are a god

  for A+B always equals C, isn't that true?!”

  "Yes, that is true," the magician answered

  "but more true is that you were born of a woman

  and that unless the spirit of woman births you,

  again,

  you will not truly understand

  that C always equals A + B."

  these words of logic greatly satisfied

  the ignorance sought under the dark sky

  and Nicodemus readied another clever question within his mind

  "B is C minus A, as always it must be,

  so tell me magician of the wind

  only flesh can have spirit and thus

  a spirit have only flesh, isn't that true, too?!"

  "truth again," the magician exclaimed

  “resides in A being always C minus B

  and if you disbelieve that be not dismayed

  for the things in heaven are known only on earth

  as earth is the stuff the heavens are made of."

  as the dark equated itself into the dawn of light

  (as it always must be, isn't that true!)

  the logical man went home to his breakfast

  satisfied that truth questioned will always

  find its rest in logical answers.

  [9/83]

  SIMPLE

  Show me your heart!

  I am in need of a friend

  for once again that time has come

  when the world has become undone

  do birds drop from the skies where you live?

  bringing messages of hearts afire

  with ageing desires for a warm embrace

  a cup of coffee, a toast with tea

  a greeting from he to she

  is it really all this simple?

  that to unfold the world

  I need only pause a moment

  and look deeply into your eyes

  Is that where flowers are born

  and the filth of pollution washed away?

  I want to ask someone

  a priest, a friend, that man with the gun

  is it really that simple?

  that to live in a world not undone

  all i have to do is release

  the sun within my heart

  and take a message from a friend

  "Yes! I love you, again."

  [8/83]

  Swanee: Proclamation and Response

  Proclamation

  If the world were but a stone

  I'd carry it as a kid's treasure

  and glance, now and then, at the merriment

  of sun spars dancing off its face

  If the world were but a tree

  I'd picnic beneath her leafy veil

  and wonder far beyond her spire

  with no fear of insecurity

  If the world were but water and sky

  I'd float between on dreamy clouds

  and conjure up a world of play

  and become mother to night and day

  If the world were but child and child

  I'd dance and laugh and conspire

  to draw a heart four miles wide

  and giggle without embarrassment

  Response

  If the world were but ...

  This primal ember in her hearth

  would quench itself upon her tears

  and roust out all her misted fears

  Yes, Swanee, like the river erupts

  commingling cavernous root and mud,

  blind mists and ancient blood

  to set free a form, a shape

  wilded by love, yet

  stooping to gently kiss a face

  [7/83]

  The Divorce

  you sat there like an Ambassador

  from one of those interminably small nations

  which only National Geographic exposes to shcoolboy eyes

  but you brought a message which rocked my world

  you had no proper papers nor aide de camps

  but you carried the moment with a strange authority

  i doubt if the proper world would find it impressive

  that you had irreproachable authority

  derived from the mastery of powerlessness and motherly love

  yet as i listened to your between the platters

  of seaweed and raw fish

  i sensed that enough witches had died

  and that now your nation had deemed to risk visibility

  as they disappear in Latin America, you said

  so they must appear somewhere

  other than in a mother's heart

  i know now that your problem lay in a simple confusion

  you speak words with mirror meanings

  to a people who read only left to right

  who knows the victory garnered by accepting defeat?

  who feels the strength in the surrender of the powerless?

  who accepts love as the gift of being violently seized?

  i understand your words

  (and your magic did not transform me into a toad!)

  but i am as perplexed a male tonight

  as at the moment i saw you god spitting forth our child

  [9/83]

  The Ninth Month Symphony

  as a virgin-bearded youth

  i chuckled with Minnesota frostiness

  at Horace in his Odes jeeringly enticing

  the artful nymph to prime his pump

  embers, he said, are to be held sacred

  for from their memories fire is spewed

  i read between the lines

  and saw the mists of eager breathings

  on the old sage's face!

  within my loins i tattooed his ode

  and waited eons for the maid to approach

  how was i to know that the minstrel

  sight read by sign language?

  i was caught in spotlight nakedness

  in the darkened room

  the nymph moistened my reed

  and floated forth the tune of ancient waitings

  as ole Horace must have, so I trembled

  with the bass contralto

  and quivered with the soprano's pitch

  when has such ancient memory

  in full arrangement

  been conducted forth from the embers of my yearnings?

  as if again the virgin-bearded

  i was sculpted into a figure

  of astonished pleasure,

  violated at every sense

  during our first ever symphony

  when has my sense of powerlessness
<
br />   been so rewarded by a peace

  which wrapped me like a child

  just before the moment of birth?

  it is this agedness in all its impotency of fear

  and this peaceful powerlessness of the virgin-bearded

  which drop as cloaks from my soul

  as i dance to this minstrel's alluring ode

  as Horace in his graceful gesture

  gave her seed for children of the spirit

  so on the wings of my breathings

  i will charm one daughter, one son

  from your delicious ears!

  [3/83]

  The Piano Player at Ferns

  I saw you among grandmother's fine porcelain

  in your place, studiously assigned

  aureoled by spars of ice crystal and silver gleams

  planted in your pottery pot simplicity

  such refinement of ore and sand

  betrayed an artistic shiver

  while your form bore the robust play

  of deftly thrown delight

  I could hear the sounds of glass

  tinkling and the chatter

  of knives and forks

  which despite their purified character

  were but mere tools for the mouth

  Your sound was soft as the leaf

  which laps air

  and the impulse of your weight

  in my hand

  took me back to my innocent days

  when every random thing peered

  a magical face around the corner of my eye

  As you sit amidst such practiced manners

  I laugh at the joke

  your indignity of peasant clay plays

  and I am anxious for dinner to begin

  and to pour from you into me

  [9/83]

  The Triangle

  (for Debra and her mother)

  i have come here to sit with you, dear mother

  (i am sorry that i must sit alone)

  and i bring your favorite things to share, dear mother

  (please know I will never leave you alone)

  what are these memories we, are to share:

  of skinned knees and teased hair

  the times i came to you for evening kiss

  oh! so many forgetful pains I cannot list!

  i remember oh so well the day i broke my bone

  (see, he'll call me on your bedside telephone)

  i laugh when i see myself in her and she in you

  (don't panic, dear, please sleep, he'll come at two)

  oh! mother dear your sleeping face is battered

  by oceanic tides and forests shattered

  i see a vision in your lidded eyes

  yes, i know that through me you will never die!

  what can i say in these brief moments of respite?

  (he's coming, mother, i am sure, tonight)

  how can i tell you all i want to say?

  (this man, forgive him, lives on the other side of the grave)

  this pledge i seal upon your lips with balm

  i will, like you, refuse the calm

  i'll seek the storm, the drought, the crystal snow

  you'll live within me