Tag Archives: conversations

I Want to Tell You Something

I want to tell you something
in a few short locking lines;
you may find the concept shocking,
or reject it, but that’s fine.

You may not think it a poem,
for it doesn’t show a thing;
it does not just throw out pictures
like a TV set with springs.

It employs some form and function
(precepts you may not embrace),
and provides no shallow unction
or catharsis, on its face.

There will be no critics fawning
on its radical design,
its unorthodox construction
or bold use of the sublime.

It will never make a journal,
never win a poet’s prize;
it is far too straight and simple
and wears no arty disguise.

You may not think it a poem,
if you trust your teachers’ rules,
or judge it by its reception
from most modern writing schools.

I want to tell you something;
that’s my sole intent and aim.
Whether you accept the message
or not, to me it’s the same.

For I do not write for your sake,
to mesh neatly with your truth;
that you out of hand reject it,
without thinking, is my proof.

I want to tell you something,
but if you choose not to hear
it doesn’t really matter
for it’s only art, my dear.

It is not a revolution,
nor a glimpse of the divine;
not a new proposed solution
for the trouble of these times.

It is not some tortured pretext
by which I excuse my rage;
just a small and rusted latchkey
that I’ve used on my own cage.

I want to tell you something:
if you read between the lines
you’ll find I’ve communicated
more than these few words of mine.

26 APR 2005

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An End to Parables

I’ve spent a life in parables,
disguising my ideas
in costumes and strange metaphors
deliberately unclear

and so perhaps convinced the world
that I’m a harmless quack,
imagining just chimeras
with no spine in their backs.

But recently, while looking through
and sorting sundry stuff,
I’ve started thinking parables
are just not clear enough.

So I’ve decided to speak plainly,
well, at least plain as I can,
and for a while, pretend that I’m
a new idea man.

Besides, it seems at present
the world needs of bit of this;
so I beg your indulgence,
and hope you won’t find amiss

the fact that I’ll be writing things
to stretch your world, and mine —
and perhaps we together
can build a new paradigm.

24 JAN 2005

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On Dialogue with Self

When does a dialogue with self cease being a monologue?

At what precise moment does the epiphany conceived of self-deliberation end its foolish premeditation on some inner change of being and address itself to the self in others, recognizing in external, living beings that same life force that propels it along the path of least resistance to its indeterminate conclusion?

When does that personal philosophy (or love of knowledge) come into being that requires the death of philology (knowledge of love, one could propose) and must of its own accord stand naked, alone and shivering on the mountain of endless esoteric academic masturbation and let loose its seed to propagate the action of love?

On what basis is the foundation for living laid?

On the cold and calculating pillars of what we think wisdom, but is in reality mere logic and more of the same false illusion separating the observer from the observed?

Or on the fetid swamp, crawling with unseen slime-in-the-making that marks its time of evolution simply absorbing the dry coastline and turning it to scores of miniature Atlantis fragments?

When does the monologue, the endless harangue against unseen foes and perceived slings and arrows that pierce the wondering mind with necessary doubt and wavering conviction, cease to be a speech released to the waiting air alone, and listen, beyond the echo of its own Doppler castings, to the response in the ears (any ears — one’s own, or someone else’s) that comes back, like a Messiah encased in the triangulating pulse of myth’s strange sonar, like a quiet ripple lost in the cascade of the sea at high tide?

At what precise moment does the angle of the jaw when open start to close the portal of the ears?

When does a dialogue with self cease being a monologue?

18 AUG 2004

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No Small Talk Left

It takes perhaps at most an entire day
depending on the company and scene,
but at some point there’s nothing left to say
and words become superfluous, obscene.

It’s not because the topics have run dry,
or even that some common ground is lost.
More to the point, it becomes hard to try
to fill the void when all don’t share the cost.

And then, the simple comfort of two souls
that understand without the need to chat,
outside the ego’s posturing controls,
becomes a treasured place of beauty that

rejects the more gregarious and finds
in silence, peace, for body, soul and mind.

17 AUG 2004

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Dathy Pahka and the Couscous Bauble

We sit in circles, crop circles, like silver-clad heroes at Arthur’s table, dark knights of the soul of verse, our words colliding in the jousts of wit and criticism. Is it the flame that draws us moths to it, and so we dance in the flickering candlelight, hoping to stay entranced and yet remain un-scorched? Like ashes on the forehead can remind us of our lone and bitter days, days when we thought “if I could only be accepted, if they would only listen” and so drank ourselves silly in the inconsequentiality of the moment, we titter, stumble, laugh and tumble against the cold, hard steel of our truths, our realities.

And in the end, we want of wealth, of fame, of power, of “don’t I know you from somewhere” and “weren’t you with…last seasons” and “oh, I thought your last…was simply marvelous” and so on and so forth and furthermore and insofar and even if it mattered, even just one smattering of an insignificant jot of ink that spilled on blotting paper or stained the index finger rather than died its immortal death on the crucifix of watermarks and typesetters’ thorns – yes, even if that could save our tortured souls from waking in a world we could not evade with our descriptions, make light of in our comedic stances, would we want to pass it by, relinquish our hold on that which makes us realize how much we need to simply create, to form, to place under our power that experience of living, of dying, of falling down drunk in an alley watching our world crumble in half empty tea cups?

Written, it seems so concrete, so decisive and bold – yet it is the journal of a hallucination, created in our minds and carried out on the gurney of the flesh into the streets we barely recognize, and the stones in the pavement do not glint or glitter as we remember them, nor so brightly as they can.

An in our drunken haze we drop our curtsies and highballs half-full of the contraband elixir we consider our inspiration – and we ask for it by name in the password prose of prayer: give me three or four rounds of Dark (and often cloudy and thick swirling dark it is), and then a couple of clear and crystal Brights for the road, the road I must trod down in inebriated, lucid celebration of my inhibited yearnings. I want, I announce to the “wicked and expedient stones,” the world of my choice, of my creation: a world where one can morally possess a mind and venture to speak it, a world where social conventions are gatherings of gregarious and yet not sheep-like folk who know not only which fork to use with the salad, but which one to take at the bend in the road that leads to funny or witty, separating dull chortles from mirthful laughter.

Laughter, yes, and tears that come from excess – these are the signs by which we will be known; and they shall sing our praises while they curse us, hound us for mementos while they scour the tabloids for our inadequacies, and read until the wee hours of morning each drop of saccharine and strychnine we draw from our veins with the prick of a vengeful pen.

1995

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Building Around a Thing

“I know it when I see it,” said the man
who vainly tried conveying truth to friends.
“When it is absent, the space that it leaves
unfilled describes it clearly, end to end;

and though there are no words to put it plain,
nor etchings I could render without flaw,
there is a quality about a thing
that you would grasp at once, if you just saw.”

“Alas,” replied one listener, “when you speak,
I can appreciate your sense of it;
it vibrates through your being with each word,
as if using yourself as conduit;

but sadly, in the context of your speech,
the futile nature of your quest is seen –
to clothe in logic’s frame that beyond reach
one must assume a great deal in between.”

“And, too,” answered another, “there is this:
that beauty is too frequently construed
to be only one aspect of the whole:
the menu, presentation, or the food;

but when it crosses our familiar lines
and cannot be contained in narrow themes,
the most common reaction is disdain.
We dare not seek for substance in our dreams

beyond those limits, set and firm, agreed
by all to guide where useful knowledge ends.
True, by this means we seem to guarantee
that we are not evolving.” “It depends,”

the first man answered, holding up a rose.
“There are some constants, in spite of our toil
to obfuscate our instinct’s depth of field.
At some point, reason’s gifts begin to spoil

and eat away at simple, common joy.
We lose that sense of awe, and we are doomed
to live as if machines, devoid of cause,
the boxes that we build ourselves, our tombs.

23 APR 2004

When I am working on a problem
I never think about beauty.
I only think about
how to solve the problem.
But when I have finished;
if the solution is not beautiful;
I know it is wrong.

— Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

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The Shallow Water

a poem in blank verse

Again, the conversation turned to fate;
and as the group was interested, to chance,
the lines of battle drawn between the ones
who thought the world predestined yet misshaped

and those who found perfection or kismet
in random acts and notions of free will.
The problem, said the former, is the lack
of evidence to justify our claim;

and to rebut, the latter said, to wit,
all evidence is houses built on sand.
For after all, our frame of reference fits
inside a thimble floating on a sea.

At best, we know our own spot on the shore;
and of the entire ocean only guess.

04 APR 2004

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