On Voices One Only Dreams Of

-- Eliot, Frost, Hass, Butterworth --

I’m not one of them
But I want to be.
Here I am among them,
Yet I’m so far away.
Their words pound over me
Drowning me in their brilliance
Almost too much to bear –
I hold my breath, waiting
Waiting for that moment
When I won’t have to go back
Won’t have to meet with
My inadequacies.
Won’t have to hope that I too can say so much
Won’t have to be
Me.
Wont have – to be.
I want to break through the surface
And come back up again,
Because it hurts so much being battered
And I can barely breath and
My head – my heart – is filled to bursting and
There are so many things I think
They might come rushing out of me in torrents
Raising primeval forests black and brilliant – but,
Emerging, spews forth from me
Not Golden-tongued Glories
But coughs and sputterings,
Violent vomitings from a soul,
Sick at heart,
Discordant,
Dry heaving. Dead.
Life pounded out by poets.

"We are only falsehood..."

I wont stay here, you know, I said.
But here I am.
Here begging to leave, yet unwilling to go.
I wont ever go, you know, I said.
But there I go.
There hating the darkness, yet unwilling to see.
I wont fail, you know, I said.
But down I fall.
Here lying on the ground, confused.
What happened, do you know? I said.
But I dont know.
Cant see it here in the darkness
Here on the ground
There in my heart
Cant see it.

"The Road to Awe"

Burst bubbles
Broaden horizons
Hurting horrendously
But bringing
Brazen Life;
Liberating like
Swelling symphonies
Tearing to
Terrible bits
But Ah! Building
Such sweet
Sounds that
The thousand
Parts pound
Parched Souls
With water
Wrought from
Flaming Fountains
Sparkling Springs
Shining dark --
Dreams,
Crying, copper
Coated, for
Fortune, Friend,
Love, Life,
Light, Magic,
Magnificent
Meaning.

"Sing, O Muse..."

Is my muse a pagan beauty,
A Helen come to launch a thousand
Ships against my sorry self?
A heavenly arch come down
To sing in words i learned in Youth
Of things I'd found and lost
Or left behind?
Or only just a whirlwind -- a mind
Divided, resorting, stirring up
What had been left to lie?
Or maybe no muse at all.
Maybe no song.
Maybe words on words
On paper on thoughts
Fragmented dreams
That never mean a thing.

On St. Johns on the South Hill

How the clouds can drift from place to place
Before the tower, behind the spire and now beyond
And yet the others lie like barges there
Heavy, down-cast and woe begone...?

Whats this? Have they begun to shift?
No, its but a fleeting sail gone whizzing by
Like children's hopes and dreams and play
To catch the wind or race the birds on high.

And now they're gone, passed on for greater things;
But still that tower there and heady fog
To crowd my thoughts and keep me from my dreams?
....

*and then i had class... so much for inspiration :)*

maybe: and bring me back to dark and dreary bog ???? lol

Meditations on Donne

"Send Not To Know for Whom the Bell Tolls..."

It tolls for me?
Am i so dead as that
That a stranger shake his head
At the shortness of the tolling bells'
What was life that meant so little
Little use for weeping now --
Tears never paid for anything,
Anything worth anything, anyway.

It tolls for me?
And do those tolling bells' carry --
the soul to heights unreached
Or merely show its sunken depth
Like soundings to the ocean floor?
Carry far, carry on, carry me?
To disipate like sound on wind
To nothingness and forgotten reality?

It tolls for me? --

It tolls for you.
It tolls for nothing.