poem – Page 142 – poems 2 die for

UPSIDE DOWN

TOGETHER

FOCUS

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.

ILS NE PASSERONT PAS

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!

ANSWER

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

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

AT HOME

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

WHAT THEY DO BELIEVE

your flagrant lunacy
what it led to

must, I admit,
took me by surprise

left me
speaking to the wind
trying to
survive
the freezing night

reciting
teaching poetry
to the stones

which firmly,
politely refused
my tutelage

asking what my
Ispecies of death
might
teach the relics, remnants
of a shrouded sky,
a destroyed world

authors of this and other
litanies of atrocity

tank shells aimed
at a
six year
old girl

story that tells
it all
what the rocks
and stones say

what
they do believe

IRRELEVANCE

some searching for the love
others headed
to war

Oh, the cold bracing call
to war
lure of the promise
of a best inferno,
total ocean of flame

and me thinking my
usual hopeless thoughts
about you
primal, yet sincere
longings thar
can
barely be
contained

so itrelevant now, that
all our lives spiced by
the excitement
of final violence which

in our nature, has
always been so written

putting the shallow texts of
love and truth and beauty
and kindness

to much
deserved shame

TRANCE

I love this trance
feel it tingling
presence
in my bones

beyond belief
that we are
all stand so
mesmerized
together

except we
are never here
ever
allowed
to stand

always
carefully positioned
to
lie down.