I’ve hated myself for so long
for other people
other opinions, other lives:
here goes my hair —
look in the mirror,
watch your steely blue eyes wink:
lighthouses to steer ships by.
Bring them home.
Home is the sailor,
home from the sea,
and the hunter,
home from the hill.
home to your heart.
Quit renting the space from yourself:
laugh and languish
with the rest of the apes called human beings.
Life is a dualism;
you are understanding
dum-dum balancing act of whatever.
Equilibrium is so nice.
So is the shift of the teeter-totter but
gain control,
remain under control;
O Captain, my Captain,
you are not yet cold and dead.
Breathe in and out,
live until the end.
It comes not from your hand;
it is not believed in your heart:
the sides of life and death
are one shot kamikaze missions:
one, then the other.
Enlighten the lighthouse.
Strengthen the beams of your winks.
Find meaning in living
to bank hard against the 100% house of death.
The Love comes:
a white ship,
a black frigate,
the swarthy faces of dream-lands sailors
set foot on the dry land
of your once-fertile imagination,
bearing gifts of gems and spices,
flowers silks and brocaded tapestries
unique to your mind and your magic —
so you trade them to the rest of the world.
These gifts are your giftedness;
these waves are your talents,
and when your life is lost,
you will trade no more in this heady marketplace.
Learn to be a good merchant of your wares,
a good businessperson,
a good man;
everyone barters and sings praise and stabs.
Be better: be the best
that your will and imagination can conceive,
then focus your lighthouse lantern
to illuminate,
to enlighten,
and to greater things to believe in.
Posts Tagged ‘Human’
Treaty
Posted: August 23, 1994 in PoetryTags: Ape, Believe, Black, Blue, Death, Dream, Eye, Flowers, Hate, Heart, Human, Imagination, Laugh, Life, Light, Love, Magic, Man, Mind, Mirror, Sea, Space, White, Wink
Sometimes I think about things,
and I’m embarrassed because
of the way I think.
I am just another person,
another human being,
and I’m sad because I’m supposedly
special.
I’m sad that I’ve been determined
to be smart or something.
I’m different, and that hurts,
and people need me because of my “gifts”
and “talents”.
I don’t refuse their necessities.
They need, I fulfill
and I’ll do my best.
But like any tool, my existence
is taken for granted.
We never thank the hammer
for hammering —
we don’t remember
how difficult a stone
drives a nail.
We don’t remember to thank ourselves for coping.
Candle Flickers
Posted: May 25, 1994 in PoetryTags: Angel, Believe, Candles, Children, Fountain, God, Human, Love, Magic, Man, Night, Science, Woman
a candle can
move its shadows
like the magic
of an angel
if you believe
that it might be so.
one word
one attempted
explanation
and it’s war
so I give up,
keep my mouth shut
and rot
from the inside
out.
page after page
of meaningless meaning
to myself
tonight
to forget tomorrow
to rewrite
tomorrow night.
Love is no longer
a good enough reason
made to bow to religion,
made to bow to science,
cheapened
and losing the battle
to the evolution of humankind
into the machines
they build,
the laws they build
to worship.
lost is the love of man
of woman
of children
and of God;
love is
the fountainhead
of meaning.
there is a love
for everything good:
if it is good,
then there is love.
some things that
have been found
to be good
are still used
but loveless,
lifeless,
perverted from
their original use
because
love is what
was original.
Humbled in an Easy Chair
Posted: January 24, 1994 in PoetryTags: Cat, Demon, Dreams, Gargoyle, Human, Night, Skull, Trees
Tonight the old feelings
come back;
the old feelings
of enemies — long ago
when humankind believed
and could see their mistakes
unclothed as Demons.
They crouch in tree foliage
and prowl like cats
or gargoyles on the roof;
they know they work through dreams
and they know we have forgotten
our humble beginnings
in the depth of an easy chair.
They come to crack skulls open
and to tinker with your subconscious,
safe in your self-imposed anesthesia
of TV dinners and microwaves,
of ottomen and furniture never used,
of blinders and bit and reins
grown familiar;
you’ve grown resigned.
Thinking About the Deed
Posted: December 25, 1993 in PoetryTags: Believe, Happy, Human, Love, Marry
I’m going to be married.
Sometimes I think it’s soon,
sometimes far away.
A quick decision?
The right one? Will we last?
Will we continue to be happy?
It all has to be waited for
and seen through –
there is no substitute,
there is no guarantee
that anyone can fully trust.
Love is a leap, a stumble, a fall;
a miraculous cartwheel
like you knew you could do it.
It seems to all be founded on
a paradox for humankind:
it’s all having to do with belief,
intangible, iirrational, immeasurable.
A human trait, regardless of
analytical lines, drawn to dissect
the whole of existence.
Belief unifies, explains on a different level
than we are accustomed to.
Our brains, our intellects are linear
and thus draw lines, cutting things
into pieces to chew on and examine
with precision.
The reunification after the repast
comes from belief – a gamble
on odds that have been thoroughly weighed.
And I believe
that I am going to be married
happily ever after.
I Can’t Breathe
Posted: September 15, 1993 in PoetryTags: Candles, Circle, Crickets, Dog, Dream, Echo, Fire, Fireworks, Honesty, Human, Joy, Lightning, Moth, Ocean, Rhyme, Sea, Sky, Smoke, Snake, Stone, White, Woods, World
why can’t I
just be another guy?
but I’m a person
with a snake-sharp tongue
and I’m a ripped flannel…
I shoot my mouth like a shotgun.
riddles and rhyming and rhythm,
not taken seriously enough to stay honest
just another number in the GTE phone list.
I lie and I lie and I lie
to convince you all
that the poet is just another human being;
that I am just another guy.
I thresh through these lines
like a dog wrapped in seaweed,
thrown with stones in the ocean:
I can’t breathe –
there’s all the smoke from the fires I’m lightning,
I’m telling the sheriff that I’m struck by lightning.
when does it all stop echoing ‘round in circles?
I think it’s just another dream.
I’m on a porch with a candle and a carpet;
there’s crickets all around
and I feel wonderful without the world dragging me down.
look, I see you don’t understand with a frown.
I can’t even repeat what I’ve said.
I can’t think of a poem I’ve written,
then read,
and thought that this is it, this is perfect!
I’ve even given up trying to rework it.
I don’t want to write for a living anymore
I feel like the homework that’s always lost to the dog
and I don’t remember whatever
I expected from myself anymore.
these fireworks of joy that I wished to paint the skies with
are nothing more than explosions
of white-winged moths from a log
that I’ve kicked walking alone in the woods.
Opossum
Posted: August 29, 1993 in PoetryTags: Beauty, Bird, Bones, Cigarette, Godzilla, Human, Leaf, Light, Opossum, Point Loma, Silence, Waterfall, Window
on my driveway in Point Loma,
smoking 3 cigarettes,
I thought it was my cat Ferguson
cracking bird-bones at four in the morning,
but the white and grey patchy creature
was a shiny eyed opossum,
who moved off as fast as it could
back down the sidewalk
after discovering its way back to its lair
in the college leaf-lined drainpipes
was guarded by a flannel-skinned human.
insomnia can be a great thing
when the TV isn’t running any Godzilla movies
or Kung-Fu Theater;
then the silence outside, the cool air
can be heard straining to beckon
with no mouth, no gestures,
just an often overlooked phenomenon.
some will travel huge distances
to find beauty in waterfalls and vistas
that are easy to pretend that no one else has seen,
yet the early morning hours of solitude
and a token nightlighting of vapor lamps on telephone poles
is the hush of the spectacular
that not many appreciate,
right outside their heavy-lidded windows.
why do I have to walk around
with the anvil of potential suicide
balanced on my head?
some people ask themselves
why aren’t I normal? or
why aren’t I like the rest of them?
well, this is not normal.
the human being would not have evolved
as far as it has if it had a normal drive to suicide.
I honestly think about it most all of the time
and once in a while
it is more than a shadow;
isometimes the whole damn monster
comes out of the closet
and crouches, towering over me, whispering
about the unseen benefits of suicide.
how many years will I stick around,
waiting for things to get “better”,
always listening with half an ear
to the crack of the closet door?
somewhere I have left a coal,
a cancer, burning; fond memories
concerning my love for you
and I am loathe to stamp it out
or fan it into flame.
there is a sadness in my eyes;
they’ve watched the indecisions
that make me so utterly human
– this is how I make the time
that is worn on my face.
standing and staring alone at the clustered skies
…crowded with high rise…
terrain made human by the wind blown newspapers
and the heaps of old trash
gravel in piles and A-frames knocked aside
a car rusts away with one door open wide
grey prestressed cement leans over
and oppresses the air from the streets
I walk like a shadow searching for cover
I’m another moving bag of meat
brains packed on lungs packed on stomach, intestines, guts
and I’m bumming cigarette butts…
science is so far gone
it cannot see the point.
if love is natural selection
and just a chemical in the brain,
do marriage counselors just prescribe it?
do we spray it on our neighbors?
if a computer can write these poems
and ask these specific questions,
then what good are we
the imperfect human being?
if our drive to truly learn everything,
then why do we only look here, in science?
are we trying to make the perfect being;
it will be better than us.
I gnaw my way through coffin ends for him.
By night I stoop my way through hallowed tombs.
He waits below his house in shadows dim
In corridors I’ve hollowed into rooms.
He waits and watched me return with spoils
I’ve taken from the dead’s eternal gloom.
Beneath the graves, there in the endless coils
Of tunnels carved through earth without a tool,
The Bishops keep us slaving at their toils.
They don’t believe we feel; they think we’re fools
And that because we live in places dark,
Nobody thinks we love, they call us ghouls.
Degenerate, perhaps; a canine mark
To my appearance, but I still feel.
I wish I was human, to walk the park
And had not fell so far to sadly steal.
[terza rima]
some frogs
toyed
with the human
by croaking
once, twice.
then being quiet
as he looked
around.
I believe in who you are.
It was you I fell in Love with, before we began to speak.
I do not ask nor want any change,
Just the pleasant surprises I’ve come to know you as.
I fear, yes I fear, that I am only human
and that this human makes mistakes
is certain and well documented.
We both need reassurance.
So simple, a gentle reminder warms the soul
like a real smile in the eyes.
I like just watching you do the things you do.
This is how I know that I Love you.
Never mind me.
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