The Poet

"The Poet, gentle creature as he is,

Hath, like the Lover, his unruly times;

His fits when he is neither sick nor well,

Though no distress be near him but his own

Unmanageable thoughts : his mind, best please

While she as duteous as the mother dove

Sits brooding, lives not always to that end,

But like the innocent bird, hath on goadings

That drive her as in trouble through the groves;

With me is now such passion, to be blamed

No otherwise that as it lasts too long."

-William Wordsworth, The Prelude

12/15/09

"i need you so much closer..."

image from IS Photography

pages

(the edges of these pages are as ragged as my thoughts, but they are beautiful, they are beautiful too...)

ghost

she cries into her hands in the softly lit room...

she is the reason children still tell ghost stories...

i can hear it,

i can see it coming down the hall...

draped in white, she sings through tears,

music coming from her

like the song of a thousand strings...

she cries before the cross,

lays herself down,

a river to make glad the city of the Most High.

sweet lady, what grieves thee?

dear lady, what sorrow...

she must have been real at one time

the way her weeping catches in her throat--

fighting herself, casting off demons that plague her memory long--

sweet lady, who are you?

dear lady, what beauty...

and tragedy makes sweeter still the ashen frame,

a pain that prods the past and future dame,

still very much alive,

so very much alive...

she is graceful but not liquid movement,

not luminous but pure and clean,

and now before my face, her presence

is all grace has ever been.

i am cautious

as though treading on the ice of Spring,

refined, exhausted,

weak to the warmth of April.

this she cannot flee.

i am afraid that much she cannot flee.

sweet lady, where are you?

dear lady, what dream...

12/12/09

He looked at her with the sorrow of a grown man crying. A mysterious sorrow, one that she couldn't help feeling in her hands, her face, her eyes. Every pain of the world was hers in an instant, her burden.

She wanted to touch. She couldn't touch. She wanted to cry out. She made no sound. She wanted to breath. She had no breath. A new part of him was laid bare before her, an answer to the glimmer in his eyes that she had come to know by making him laugh. She regretted asking the question.

If the silence had lasted any longer it would have killed them both.

"We're right here," he said.

scatterbrained

my fingernails are yellow from peeling clementines.

each time i approach the door of my building,

i notice the head of a red carnation

broken from its body,

neglected,

underfoot.

every time...

i may be acclimating to white noise,

but my mind longs for silence,

silence to fill with its own clamor.

forming letters is therapeutic.

forming words provides relief.

words that become solace for you

are my greatest successes.

Time is threatening me with its motion,

right now.

inescapable,

but not all powerful--thank God!--

it leads and follows,

pushes and drags me,

a leash and a weight at once.

but this gift--for that is what Time is--

this precious gift is a most valuable tool.

without it, i am lost.

without it, you may be too.

without Time, we could not be timeless.

our words would have no walls off which to echo.

like a blanket

weariness wraps me in its arms.

they are uncomfortable

and overbearing.

yet i belong here...

i have not done if i cannot be done.

i have no need for rest if i am never weary.

it provides a hope that constant respite could not bring.

focus--

see the letters are all cloudy.

though deep in thought,

i have naught to show,

not yet.

and even this

will slide beneath the cracks in the floor

and find its way into the shadowy recesses of history

never explored...

but it wants so earnestly to become something,

to develop a face,

and to be recognized by that face.

it can see, with one-sided eyes,

that no one is looking back,

not yet.

not yet, it chides.

my sleeves slide down my forearm

to remind me that they are too short

or my arms are too long.

my sweater's faded pattern takes me to my young self

on the carpet with her dolls...

the smell of the basement,

that lingering scent of books,

of learning...

(and i have separated myself from this moment...)

let me not live in memories, however dim or bright,

but in the light given me by hope,

that hope given me by faith,

that faith given me by love.

what Love!

what Love...

away,

i've come a long, long way...

evening poem

the sky is vibrant pink-purple-blue,

a cold color saturating colder air.

the tree branches form intricate patterns of black lace—

all i can see through the window—

alarming, alluring, alive…

sweet chords fill my ears,

and a familiar voice

gently proclaiming love, pain, reality…

it is more potent, more understandable through music…

these words i’ve been thinking,

these notes i’ve been living

without knowing it till now…

the blue seeps into the purple,

more defined, overpowering;

but purple gives way willingly,

and with a placid sigh…

“the evening is yours now,

the evening is yours…”

blue rises and deepens,

like looking back into my own eyes,

in recognition of something more beautiful still

in the dim light that makes me squint

and yet sets everything aglow

as with all the energy stored up from day.

in between.

i want to say it’s soft, comforting,

but this evening is oppressive.

in all its beauty, it is cruel.

i cannot judge it because it is inevitable.

i cannot hold a grudge against what must be.

but this day was ours,

and i do not want to let it go…

you remind me of the light of tomorrow,

and with that thought,

we accept that the black lace has disappeared.

the window has disappeared,

so that all that remains is within.

back from the bookstore

i like to be on the road. by myself, i can sing. with you, i can talk... and sing, but we stick mostly to talking. it becomes a state of being. neither here nor there, but in between, on our way, looking forward...

i've bought some books. some out of necessity, some out of desire... no, all out of necessity i suppose. a woman needs her books. even Emerson, whom i don't particularly enjoy, made his way onto the pile for purchase. whatever my likes and dislikes, it strikes me that had i lived when he lived, we may have had a conversation (however unlikely...) and now that his words have made their way to my eyes yet again, why not converse in the present?

"off to it then," i tell myself. soon enough i'll be back on the road, on my way there...

come by storm, you've come by storm...

words and music for this rainy day...

Come By Storm

by Laura Gibson

when my eyes survey the tree line
i'll recall a voice
and how I took great care with words

all that was a picture

was a poem, was a poem
words were trees of brown, of gold
you were a place i had come to know

if the dark falls early
would you come in the night,
would you come with the morning,
come by fire or come by storm

when my days turn to gold,
turn to gold,
and pull to the sky,
to the sky,
i'll recall the time i was more alive
when i lose myself to words
did i die in your arms
or did i die alone?

when the dark fell on me
did you come in the night,
did you come with the morning,
come by fire or come by storm...

unremarkable

i've sat a long time, staring

at the roots of trees.

for me to see, they must be uprooted,

disturbed.

then i can imagine,

and they need feel no pain.

i smell the dirt

and touch the earth,

call up the mem'ry from every trip home...

the fallen tree that pulled with it an almost perfect circle

of ground,

a halo at its base,

lying by the road, tucked away

by the bushy arms of its brothers till winter comes

i want to stop.

i've wanted to for a long time.

months, years...

each time just a glance,

a glance at my holy tree.

now i need no picture,

just the memory.

and in me, i bear the halo,

i smell the dirt.

in the pavement and the florescent light,

i have the earth,

and shall not be uprooted.

thoughts in the not-quite-silent library

almost gone...

whispery voices to keep me company

as i convince myself

not to close my eyes...

i'm fighting,

in my corner,

with its little window and blinds...

the draft,

the lamplight,

and my reflection...

feeling sorry for her

because she's on the glass,

transparent,

cold.

i can feel her blowing on me,

blowing on my shoulder...

"go to sleep..."

she doesn't take or want my pity.

she wants to hide me.

she wants to hide.

in the darkness, she more than disappears;

she ceases to be.

but she likes it there.

unlike me, she can reappear from disappearance.

once i am gone, i'm gone.

the body, such a fragile thing...

inward pressures out, and outward pressures in.

so weak though "the spirit is willing..."

almost gone...

just barely here,

transfixed by dark reds and purples,

and poetry,

mine and yours.

"will you take me in your hand,

turn me over and over,

and read me

like the eyes that proofed my lines

once practiced?"

"will you have me then?"

you will have me then.

never gone...

in the city...

(this is me not doing the homework i should be doing... well, no. that's not completely true. it started as homework... then it took a more natural course and we ended up here...)

Cities Inside Us

By Alberto Rios

We live in secret cities

And we travel unmapped roads.

We speak words between us that we recognize

But which cannot be looked up.

They are our words.

They come from very far inside our mouths.

You and I, we are the secret citizens of the city

Inside us, and inside us

There go all the cars we have driven

And seen, there are all the people

We know and have known, there

Are all the places that are

But which used to be as well. This is where

They went. They did not disappear.

We each take a piece

Through the eye and through the ear.

It's loud inside us, in there, and when we speak

In the outside world

We have to hope that some of that sound

Does not come out, that an arm

Not reach out

In place of the tongue.

the words

i want to give you the words,
the words that will warm you like cider,
smooth, pure, natural...
the words that will make you well.
the words you can taste and breathe
and use.

11/1/09

"maybe i was born to hold you in these arms..."

a prayer

Jesus, take me o'er

and pilot now my course.

My hands, my feet, my mind, my soul

surrendered, I am yours.

Abide with me anon

and into every day.

Alone, awake, adrift, apart,

a sinner, I have strayed.

What voice disturbs my soul,

and wherefrom is my peace?

The same, from first and to the last,

my Jesus, my release.

behind my eyelids

sudden gusts from the storm outside
remind me that i am still alive,
still a part of this world that i see
and feel,
but do not know.
the earth is spinning faster
than this chill that finds my face,
bringing tears i wipe away with my wrist.
warm to cool, self to storm.
i have not thought as i usually do
about the forces pushing, swirling, and embracing me.
i have not been one for words.
no, not like i usually am.
yet i have not been in want of words;
they’ve come.
at my fingertips—
the same ones that freeze in my pockets now—
symbols spill and spew in some kind of meaning,
meaning i have chosen for you.
this is what i want to tell you.
what i cannot say
appears in the color of my eyes.
this i cannot control or describe.

i have spoken of a place behind my eyelids,
and this wind feels like the wind of that place.
the air is black—
not polluted or clouded,
but black.
here, my eyes are open though i feel them closed.
here, i know for certain what i merely entertain in the light…

here, i come upon fields of tall grass,
dull brown and green,
in rows of waves that roll and sway
as though they were under water.
at the edge, the harvest has begun,
the waves have been driven back.
one man holds the blade,
and i know this man.
he reads and writes slowly,
pen and paper a hindrance rather than a tool
for his thoughts
just yet.
he writes to me…
he writes the truth,
and in the sun, we shed our tears.
his hands folded in their own struggle,
a picture of our hearts
as we part ways.

this is the place
behind my eyelids
at night.

the sound of silence
pulls the pen to paper now,
one lamp, my night-friend,

and the evening comes
like a soft, bewitching song
through my head, away…

strings recreate sound.
i cannot hold it for long
in my wrinkled palm.

it seeps through the cracks,
drips onto the page and bleeds
through several layers.

light, ethereal
i never owned it at all,
night inspiration?

call it lucky ink,
and the sound of silence rings,
one lamp, my night-friend.

"...Music, I'll call it music. It's what we need

as the sun staggers behind the low gray clouds

blowing relentlessly in from that nameless ocean,

the calm and endless one I've still to cross."

from Call It Music by Philip Levine

image by Zaria Forman

Love

simplicity

  balance

    CHRIST

image by ~dim ~baida found on favourite things...

"the hush of reverence is inappropriate for literature; great writing makes a great noise in the mind, the heart." 

~salman rushdie

reading and writing of writing

"... passion to proclaim the truth..."

don't try too hard, or you'll just dance around it. the search for profundity often ends in nothing. the exercise of one's God-given gifts to search, to communicate, to articulate, to feel, to reason--these combine to form the knowledge, even the wisdom, others may marvel at. these are the things that connect us to each other. passion is necessary. passion to proclaim the truth more vital still. if truth is relative, there is no end. since truth is not relative, the end is in sight, though still perhaps unclear. we write to it.

library

the first books on the shelf are never read,

though 'never' is an exaggeration.

someone whose goal it is to devour all 

might see them,

but 'devour' is an over-statement.

you want to look to the inside, to the next shelf,

and the next one.

who stops at the beginning?

i say, my friend, 

who starts?

i see you in the third row, the fourth row,

covers open, pages falling under your thirsty eyes.

but oh for a thirsty mind...

i am distracted by chatter and natural sounds that seem unnatural in this place. awkward conversation--she doesn't know that man, and all she can think of is her safety, her smile. 'please, someone, come to my small rescue...'

cart wheels

a courteous farewell, and then the laughter. 

"what a weird man..." lies under friendly laughter.

a place of income for those who can see past the shelves.

a heavier helping for those who cannot.

what does seem natural in this place?

the smell...

the smell of pages, lives, minds...

has it always been this way?

i can imagine it no other.

i suppose that is why i'm here...

the fear

i wish that element would leave,

or perhaps it resides only in me.

it is outweighed by my interest,

but it is still there.

the fear of seeing

and being

seen.

this is not my place,

but it is a place for me.

i came across a letter today. i won't tell you much more than that. but it sent me somewhere else, 

somewhere i haven't been in a long while. 

i put it away carefully, knowing i won't look at it again for who knows how long, but i will think of it often. i will think if it.

1. Vintage Letter - 1881 3. Letters from the past 

2. to send a letter  4. handwritten letter

love

love means to learn to look at yourself

the way one looks at distant things

for you are only one thing among many.

and whoever sees that way heals his heart,

without knowing it, from various ills--

a bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

then he wants to use himself and things

so that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

it doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:

who serves best doesn't always understand.

~Czeslaw Milosz

don't go away

it's raining, and though i cannot share the sound or the smell with you, i can share thoughts, memories of summers past and expectations of days and nights to come. rain is like a gentle friend, and gentle friends are good ones to have. even a heavy downpour is still graceful, still just as it should be. i have not yet been swept away. i have not been displaced by sudden waves. if i had, perhaps i would feel differently, but as it is, rain is my sole companion tonight, and a good one. it does not listen, though; only asks to be heard. as i have so many things to tell, but really nothing to say, that may be just right...

basically

i will try not to share too many mundane bits. but sometimes, that is what life is. and that is often what makes it lovely. something simple, unexciting to anyone but me. a sound, a movement, a light, different from (or maybe quite the same as) every other of its kind. i won't tell you to notice its beauty. if you didn't, you probably won't. but if i must be the one to set it before you, i will do so gladly.