poem – Page 132 – poems 2 die for

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

Ah, yes,
you tell me
you are writing better now

finding perspective
keeping everything
in sharp,
sharp focus

how sharp I ask
you answer is
nothing but pure,
sublime
show
not tell moment

as you show me
the blood

running
down the page.

always a grainy quality
to life’s suffering

as if one finds oneself
ground to dust and pulp
between two
milestones

hence my abrasive stance,
as self-
defeating as it
may well be

in the battle with oneself
over cheished notions
of foolish identity

let it
be war perpetual:
no surrender!

it being
hard to breathe

I asked the I Ching
whether
to live
or die

the hexagram
told me
should strive for
consistency
am getting
torn apart

this the I Ching told me
what I share in this poem

a meaning less cryptic
than clear
for me alone

in this place of loneliness
only voice to answer

sunset:
the Earth and sky
bleed into each other

and as the Sun sinks
it wonders if all will
be blessed to
see him rise
again

be witness
to the glory of another day

having once been
so naive to
confide in us
that essential
truth, its
primal secret

whose release
has brought us in
terrible imagination to
this
moment of balance
where our entire fate hangs,
could not
be more precarious

in our
unwrenched minds,
own failing hands

and there is Cassandra
talking nonsense again

spelling out the text
of her crazy lunatic visions

the words battering against
our brains like sticks against
a drum

better
stick with the nonsense
that we know
our friendly nonsense

the nonsense we feel
most comfortable with

that makes us feel
even as the bombs
and missiles
fall from
the sky

so much at home; so
much at home