Friday, October 29, 2010

This, a Fallen World

Call in the strangest group of weirdchildren
Take! Emblazon on thy banner of cess
All alms to thy belly do we take!
I took the two broken pieces
Having broken it in two
The tree and the disgust, no more reaching to the moonlight
And I shriveled into less than two
Of how many creatures no longer stamping out their tribal songs
What with all the world a prodigy
And no room for a scab
It just keeps bleeding and bleeding
Blood was just the beginning
Each step I took took me deeper into the spark
Furl and bend, the burning, bloody banner!
Filth burns, and filth burns well



Wednesday, October 27, 2010

i hate words

I hate words
I hate that they won't do what I say
I want to crush them and hammer them
Until words stop forming words
And they stop showing to your eyes as symbols
But whatever fluorescence feelings are
I want your eyes to stop seeing and
I want your eyes to know
I want them to know pure communication
I hate words

All I will say is
GOLD
Think about gold
Inside yourself
And the gigantic, endless world that is you that can be you
Do you even know who you are?
You don't even know who you are
How can you know who you are?
GOLD
It means everything and yet it's just
A little nothing on the paper
It's you
And yet you can't know it's you
You, that giant of self that's swallowed up in so many other selves
Yet when you find you, you know real power
You know real truth and good
GOLD
I hate words

when i have fears that i may cease to be

John Keats:


WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be 
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, 
Before high pil`d books, in charact'ry, 
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain; 
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,         5
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, 
And feel that I may never live to trace 
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; 
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour! 
That I shall never look upon thee more,  10
Never have relish in the faery power 
Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore 
  Of the wide world I stand alone, and think, 
  Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.


Picture: Peter Gabriel



a testament

And when I die
What will I leave
But a streak
    across the sky?
My words are not as keys
To open locked hearts
My words sear no flesh
Nor brand any hearts
May I at least ask to be
A lingering testament
Of things greater than I?

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

loneliness

I read Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold, today (I seriously love my major).  I want to put the last stanza from that poem on my blog.

"Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."

(The reference to the "ignorant armies clashing by night" is a reference to a Greek war from over 2000 years ago.  In the war, it was dark and the invaders got confused by the darkness, and in their confusion, they killed each other.  At least that's what the footnote for the poem tells me.)

Stephan Balleux
I feel like any interpretation of this poem on my part would serve to trivialize it.  But don't you feel the loneliness coming from the poem?  Don't you just feel the aching for companionship and unity?

Sunday, October 24, 2010

love

Love is the most pacifying element in existence.
After a full three week stay in the college town where I live, away from my friends and family, coming home has been like walking out of a place totally bereft of color and life to a world where everything has warmth and meaning.
I have been living in a drought, but here I have found water again.
Why do I say love is the most pacifying element?  Up to Friday night, I had been ready to fight everything.  Nothing was good and everything had to be reformed, in my eyes.  I was anti everything, because nothing was as it should be.  As I found out, everything had been missing love.  I sometimes forget how much I need affection, how much I need someone to listen to my grievances, how much I need a kind word, how much I need to have fun, how much I need to sometimes let everything go, and how much I need somewhere where I fit in.  When I came back to love, I realized how hardened I had become, how cynical and critical I had been, and how little I thought of the world.  Now, love has softened me, again.  I no longer feel at odds with the world.  I feel like there is hope and that I am no longer fighting this enormous battle all by myself.  Love is the most important anything in the world.
So, thank you my friends and family.  Thank you for giving me a place in your hearts.  I love you.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

What is God?

What is God?
 God is found in every Good thing.
God is the cracking light flitting through 
bundles of golden-blue plumes.
 God is the movement of life- the way things 
spin, the way they weave, the way they jump, 
the way they dance.
God is trees. He is the absolute green 
in front of the backdrop of grey, 
leaves lifting from the earth, reflecting light to Heaven.
 God is a cool, dark pillow on a breezy 
summer night. He is drowning in comfort. I had 
to write that slow because God is life.
God is a pattern, a thousand threads woven 
together to pull your eyes up and down 
and in and out, to unite eye and spirit, 
joining them through the heart.
 God is finding what you are looking for.
God is a bent-legged, poised spider. 
He is 
beautiful close up and frightening when far away.
 God is tracing light in the sky, with 
beams so tight there is no direction to go 
but up, carrying glory in tow, shedding glory in wake.
God is Good.

Stavenachi, Florida, revisited

Run ragged,
                   run cold
  Thy machine is cold

Feathers, trains, rustic refrains

 These will melt the pipes
These will make thee right

don't take away my chase

maroon

what kind of strange, quiet world have i found?

What kind of strange, quiet world have I found?
Too old to be airborne, too young to be bound
Seattle sees Paris and is jealous
2D puzzles stutter around 3D fellas
Can I be outside? Do I have to be inside?
All I know is that quietly, quietly,
inside, Inside is where safety resides...



okay, stars and mars

Okay, stars ran into Mars
Who brought light to the barren
Red; what released springs above
And sparkling twilight granted
Deep furrows cultivated
By sky-bound ethereal
Faces, smiling, sowing
Seeds of the moon and gentle
Green of light's reflection.
Pain bursting from the scarred
Red; what strange fear of good well-
Doing- when light is again
An omnipresent haunting.

more were purple than i ever could have thought

More Were Purple than I Ever Could Have Thought

If I have to stand, shaky in the sky for you
Flickering like a star, standard as the ones you drew,
Someone's always gonna have to be there
Running around
Starships aground

An inkling, easy as an achy egg,
It was always rumored to be true so
Someone was to be found
Running around
Starships aground

Some sort of sordid details
Fanned your faceted face like little wings-
A standard in the sky for you
Running around
Starships aground 

Pull clink ding strum
Tee lull ding ding hum
Roll………………….
Running around
Starships aground

I forgot that I, I can't even stand
In whatever deep sky you are
Someone was gonna be there...
Now,
Floating around
The air, drowned 

Thank You

This shaded glen
Draws me in
When I entered the shade
I was home
Now the light through the shaking leaves
Casts shimmering shadows
Over the dancing grass
What kind of ocean is this?
The sun glints off the green
From the cresting waves of trees
The swallow is the seagull
And wind is the sand carrying peaceful calm
Forever peace will reign in this glen
Where never a human word was uttered
Where nature finally had its way
Where life was made to show me
That I am loved.

domes

Domes
Holy domes
Domes of sound
Domes of holy sound
Run,
And not faint
Walk,
And not be weary
Domes
Holy domes
Domes of echo
Domes of holy echo

two miracles playing in the lane



Two separate miracles
Were playing in the lane
When a hulking beast bearing manacles
Bound them with the same

Before the dust ever settled
Every wind carried it away;
Light wiped off the little spittle
And the miracles joined again to play


i want to know the fox who sold his hole

The crease in my step opens the tear and
I have cowboys on my sneakers and
I reel. I reel 'till my eyes see the
  Colors flashing
Like the rain falling in a blanket
And the fiery cord twisted, spiraling
     Down

Did I burn the starving man?
Did I harry the ravaged?
I stand in the midst of the landscape
I raise my arms and the earth arise!
See! Oh run out the widows!
Bring down the atoms of pain!
Everyone disjointed, scatter!

             Find
                  Him

I want to know the fox who sold his hole
Come back to welcome
Come back to unrequited longing


it was a brilliant times louder

 It was a brilliant times louder
               Bending forth
From the harvest mouth of the founder


i can't escape my self

                     I hid in the deep cave
                          hid in the smoke
                                       walked with stick
                        Languor in slow-sinking mud
                    I ate tired mice
                        And saved all my coupons

                        No matter where I go
                        I can't escape my self

alight, bright thoughts of fancy

O pseudo-intellectual, no more may thy splendour,
Graceful, full of bubbles, thy laugh,
Pierce sweet silence of the power of my discontent!
Alight, bright thoughts of fancy;
Tie them to another pair of wet shoes!

Tuesday, October 12, 2010