4 posts tagged “poem”

This is my first revision of the first poem of 2008. It has gained a title (the parentheses added at the last minute).  It has gained an ending (though I fear it may be too simplistic).  It has gained a more rhythmic patter of line spacing (line spacing flow consciously inspired by Donald Hall's very natural style). 

Exempting Everything (For Ever and Ever)


What can a soul see in a black hole?
To that's where we're all spinning
Wrapped up in the gravity of the situation

The inevitable "To Be..." of this event horizon

Round it churns like some galaxy 
Flushing dust and chaos 
Down with you and me

But dizzy we're not
None of us
numb-brained as we freeze
All of Us

Tugged further from the sun

Oceans of intelligence turn to orbs of ice, 
All the seeds we've thrown and sown
Tamed as they grow, densening to mere debris

the ever-increasing clutter

Our only hope is in the hole
And towards it we invertebly sputter
About it we only can stutter

  A stream of light?
  A spat of disorganized matter?
  Evaporate in a singularity?
  Reborn through divine charity?

Or Alpha 
the Above, 
as my father and his science said,

  Stretched, compressed, singularized, 
  Expunged, expelled, reorganized

That must be the worst lie I've learned

The omnipresent torment I've earned
For seeing the other side of the black hole

Gazing straight through the Rent Veil: the whole

World As We Know It emptying
Prince Hamlet's dreams cemented
Our ignorance exempting
Physics and philosophy equally contempted

The Inevitable Tomorrow impending
Death Himself suicidally tempted
Both God and Man repenting
And Life Itself resented

For seeing the other side sees nothing
Feeling nothing
Voided in the voidless something

Rounded up and corralled in
the diaphanous Om 

of Amen.

Room

Cream swims through coffee;
Black bitterness queers
the sequins of fat.

Haiku's are fun. Haiku's are zen.  Therefore, I try not to think about them too much upon completion, but I must admit the egotistical part of me is fantasizing that my mundane use of the verb queer causes a row amongst future students of literary criticism. You can parse the many assumptions in that statement.

What began as two lines for a longer poem that I never was able to finish have become two lines of a short poem.  Is doing so a "cop-out"? Or a service to prospective readers?  I prefer to label this edit the latter, if only because it increases attention to the first line, which (as an alternative to "I wish I had spent more time at the office...") could acceptably constitute my Dying Words:

Riddle


I'm the tangled rope you wish to cut,

The minotaur's snort in the morning;

    Without trying, just by 
    Being I untwine
    the labyrinth of sleep.

No where near refined or publicly readable, I post this to remind myself how the year started, and how I need to hack, chip and sculpt continuously if I'm going to succeed.

What can a soul see in a black hole?
To that's where we're all spinning
Wrapped up in the gravity of the situation
The inevitable "To Be..." of this event horizon
Round it churns like some galaxy 
Flushing dust and chaos down with you and me

But dizzy we're not
None of us
Our brains grow numb
As we're pulled further from the sun
Oceans of intelligence 
Turned into orbs of ice
/Watching all the other formulated formalators/
Densen their debris
And all the seeds we sow grow
Into ever increasing clutter

A soul's only hope is in the hole
And towards it we invertebly sputter
About it we only can stutter
  A stream of light?
  A spat of disorganized matter?
  Evaporate in a singularity?
  Reborn through divine charity?
Or all of the above, as my father said,
  Stretched, compressed, singularized, 
  Expunged, expelled, reorganized?

That must be the worst lie I've learned
The omnipresent torment I've earned
For seeing the other side of the black hole
Gazing st through the rent veil: the whole
World As We Know It emptying
Prince Hamlet's dreams cemented
Our ignorance exempting
Physics and philosophy equally contempted
The Inevitable Tomorrow impending
Death Himself suicidally tempted
Both God and Man repenting
And Life Itself resented

For seeing the other side sees nothing
Feeling nothing
Voided in the voidless something