Untitled (so far)
Uninspired by a rose
my breath is sent
To the Moon
where dawn is spent
Steepled in history
and solid windows
Are encased in cement
arising from the fire
Where the dispirited flower
unites in death
In thorny attire
with its twin
In the tower
aflame for the truth
That is wearing thin
with every breath
Epigram
Terror rides the subways and the planes.
It rattles sabres and hackles manes
In capitals
And stately halls;
It gets more Press,
I confess,
Than
The Hunger of Man.
Students of History
Find it no mystery:
Famine will stay
But Terror will play.
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Elephants Aphasia
I have a hunch
There won't be lunch
The coconut bunch
The elephants will crunch
The people will munch
Small eats and punch
The guests will stand
The ceremony grand
The architect and
Designer panned
The elephant band
Will play as planned
To the logging camp
Where elephants tramp
And elephants stamp
Bring baby champ
Elysée is damp
So we all decamp
Certain of hell
The elephant bell
Rings the knell
Down in the dell
The designer fell
And broke the spell
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For the rest of my life
For the rest of my life, my unnatural natural life.
I am under a sentence.
Well, that much is obvious: life is a sentence of death, after all.
But can I bear this lot that is suddenly mine?
Perhaps I can (is there a choice?)
To be afflicted with something you cannot wish away;
Something to do with my 'self';
Something I would not wish on anyone.
I do not 'suffer' from epilepsy any more than I suffer from sleep.
Or breathing.
'It's all right Ma, I'm only seizing.'
If I believed in miracles I would feel blessed with the knowledge of being alive.
But self-knowledge begs the question: what is 'self'? What is 'alive'?
Whatever the answer, we take these as certainties;
'Eternal verities', if you will
But when you find the self you are is not the self you were,
All bets are off; all certainties squat.
'What am I?' is no longer such a stupid question.
Acceptance comes.
But slowly.
Still I forget, and then I remember,
Like walking into a dream, a nightmare of daytime unreality.
Where did it go, that forgetfulness, that naive somn-et-lumiere?
Ignorance is bliss, but unknowingness is epilepsy.
I want to forget; to swallow the un-bitter pills without thought
But I cannot forget; as though each pill is saying, 'oh no you don't'.
I cannot deny that which disables denial; nor deny disability.
Denial has a price: amnese this and risk missing the pill.
Remember this or remember nothing.
Except fear.
Memory is a part of life that comes and goes,
Like the wind or tide. We lose a name of a familiar face
Or recall the outcast kid we shunned in school thirty years before.
Crossword puzzles keep mental reflexes sharp, they say.
Perhaps the poet's way is as efficacious.
If we are cast away on a desert island, would we revert to animal?
"Take a letter, Miss Jones" and throw it in a bottle into the sea.
Will the wind and tide then return it to me?
Memories in a bottle tossed on a synaptic sea
Is life.
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An iambic tetrameter
Life is what you make it, they say.
If nature's so benign to life,
Then why did life so cruelly play
And stab me with its sharpest knife?
Remarks divide our conversations;
Events conspire to mark our lives.
Full stops are merely punctuation
But fits divide my days like knives.
Electric sparks within my mind
Denied me peace of mind. Instead
Each day my head was so unkind
To let me live when I would be dead.
Bounded by a noose's knot
That tightens while the victim flails,
I'm bound like loosened lips are not;
My ship was sunk before their tales.
How did the pirate breach my mind?
From womb or dissipated youth?
Get out! And leave my head and mind,
My perfect mind, my only truth.
But is it, was it true before?
Abandon thoughts of being all;
I wonder why I'm now made poor,
Though pride does come before a fall.
The last I thought would I to bear
Is this, and early death appeared
More likely than the curse I wear,
Not to die is to be feared.
in requiem October 2001
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