As I'm sure some of my stylistic choices make apparent, despite the fact that I try to ignore the fact, and noticing that I have posted a few verses, here and there: I am a poet.
A Touchy-Feely-Unpublished-Poet.
Actually, that's not true. I am published. That was just my Wu Tang Clan name. Spooky.
Besides the fact that the English speaking world seems rather intimidated and disdainful of the word in stanza, and convinced that you require a supernatural passion for the language, a prodigious understanding of culture and history, or a masters degree to enjoy or appreciate it, poetry really is supposed to be the language of the blood: the visceral, the intrinsic.
And your mind is allowed to wander into possibilities. That's what the form is actually for, the reader and the writer both.
In any case, I'm not going to use this space to lecture on the cultural relevance of poetry; but I am going to post one. Another piece of paper I've come across in the moving preparations.
I wrote it when my aunt died two years ago,
when the world shook.
As the Coffin of This Day Opens
My youngest aunt lies in fire.
Those were the most comfortable bones.
There was a skeleton most gifted
of love, and the support of its arms
such a gentle steel;
And what tenderness brought those embraces
in the summer; and what smiles; and what
a wicked laugh. The best clinches in the sun and the flies,
the best salve in the world from its scrapes and bruises,
as one who understood the nature of pain, better than me;
And the best goodbyes, as one
who knew the nature of loss
even before I knew how to give.
***
Though I am familiar with those many things
broken within and without,
the forces that compel all sense and judgment
unfairly, so remains
the reminder, as empty as a bauble on a string,
suspended:
so many things hang from a thread
whether it be the plump doll
or shambling marionette. A bad mystery,
the devolution of the body,
and driven by a wicked laugh.
*
But what soul makes peace with the cage of bone and body;
what spirit has ever been happy there for long?
Who has had the endurance to love so
drawn out, in spite of the eurekas of confusion, and the pain --
and how can you stay when the only good left is a
love too big for a person to be,
rocking alone inside a broken vessel?
***
When the ashes cool
I want a few things said to the wind,
as particles part
and return to the firmament,
the conflagration of stars
that are all our birth:
First, that the essence of liberty is not physical,
that there is more from the marrow;
we do not stay.
Second, that whatever brittle remnants burn within
the fired porcelain of this shell, this cracked
doll sill full of phosphorous: I only shine
from what light I've caught from looking on those
better and finer than myself,
and I how I have been comforted.
A Touchy-Feely-Unpublished-Poet.
Actually, that's not true. I am published. That was just my Wu Tang Clan name. Spooky.
Besides the fact that the English speaking world seems rather intimidated and disdainful of the word in stanza, and convinced that you require a supernatural passion for the language, a prodigious understanding of culture and history, or a masters degree to enjoy or appreciate it, poetry really is supposed to be the language of the blood: the visceral, the intrinsic.
And your mind is allowed to wander into possibilities. That's what the form is actually for, the reader and the writer both.
In any case, I'm not going to use this space to lecture on the cultural relevance of poetry; but I am going to post one. Another piece of paper I've come across in the moving preparations.
I wrote it when my aunt died two years ago,
when the world shook.
As the Coffin of This Day Opens
My youngest aunt lies in fire.
Those were the most comfortable bones.
There was a skeleton most gifted
of love, and the support of its arms
such a gentle steel;
And what tenderness brought those embraces
in the summer; and what smiles; and what
a wicked laugh. The best clinches in the sun and the flies,
the best salve in the world from its scrapes and bruises,
as one who understood the nature of pain, better than me;
And the best goodbyes, as one
who knew the nature of loss
even before I knew how to give.
***
Though I am familiar with those many things
broken within and without,
the forces that compel all sense and judgment
unfairly, so remains
the reminder, as empty as a bauble on a string,
suspended:
so many things hang from a thread
whether it be the plump doll
or shambling marionette. A bad mystery,
the devolution of the body,
and driven by a wicked laugh.
*
But what soul makes peace with the cage of bone and body;
what spirit has ever been happy there for long?
Who has had the endurance to love so
drawn out, in spite of the eurekas of confusion, and the pain --
and how can you stay when the only good left is a
love too big for a person to be,
rocking alone inside a broken vessel?
***
When the ashes cool
I want a few things said to the wind,
as particles part
and return to the firmament,
the conflagration of stars
that are all our birth:
First, that the essence of liberty is not physical,
that there is more from the marrow;
we do not stay.
Second, that whatever brittle remnants burn within
the fired porcelain of this shell, this cracked
doll sill full of phosphorous: I only shine
from what light I've caught from looking on those
better and finer than myself,
and I how I have been comforted.
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