I don't write, I paint myself blind with words...diogenes herded...ignorance...gilded cages...filling up on beauty unleashed...free will's maddening fractures...eyes that need to smell to see...
December 16, 2015
'tis a bright blessing to be someone's pocket coal glow memory...
'tis a bright blessing to be someone's pocket coal glow memory...
this December
warm billows bellow
our wassailing
as seas be a-rising
and ye port towns
up river too
are full of drunks
and gifted dumbly
ne'er do wells
like me, wading
the after midnight(s)
before Yule, we are
wanting, to watch
how we navigate
the precipices
and the abysses
and perhaps
these drunks are
like you too
willing adherents
to the dying light...
most of us are reader(s)
of our underbelly places...
places, we most enjoy
whether in secret
ambles into
scenes stolen
or accidental expressed
or moments when
we catch sight
and scent
of something
we already know
or just discovered
that we covet
at our core
some thing shiny
or dark tidal briny
things sugary
or malodorous
and magnetic...
----------------------
from our cars
we are becoming
less migratory symphony
less leaf and seed
more automated motion
this narrows our view
has us leaning
in slow staggers
in sped up(s)
longing mechanical
truths and rituals
we fall for
chasing models
of blood and bones,
their journeys
and by-ways...
----------------------
no one sees me
on the slate wall
near the sculpted juniper
one purposeful drag
after the other
I ring out my dead
with smoke rings
cast to the streetlights
I am blending in, to
their yellow-ed world
it is a sodium sorrow
cloth cut nightshirt
and it seems to fit perfectly
around the bare armed
sentinel-deciduous trees
lining the street...
this modernity is odd weather
full of numb tingle tiny knives
lodged just beneath the skin
of our moving too fast
to catch hold
of what is going on, world...
when the dark becomes
mantra and hungry need
you are all to be merry, it howls
ripening inside, a growing
humid sky, it says:
"...to want to bud, this badly
at Winter's solstice
is to stand whispering
we want spawned almost there(s)
almost all the time(s), though
we will need a higher angled Sun
stuffed in our stockings hung
this Christmas..."
EJR ©
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I agree, on all counts.
ReplyDeleteAwesome!
ReplyDeleteFor me, the title might as well be the whole poem. It speaks to the elation one feels at knowing he/she lights up another person's life in the most beautiful way possible.
ReplyDelete"before Yule, we are
wanting, to watch" ... This is another one of those layered sections that embeds multiple meanings. Inside of "Yule" hides "you lay." "We are wanting" means that the group in which you include yourself is left wanting, craving, hungry for ... what/whom is not clear. But I'm picturing it being a woman. Perhaps a woman who can't be touched. Something in the vain of a stripper, that sort of energy/atmosphere, anyway. And if you can't have her, then you at least want to watch her. You and all these other men.
I love this:
"most of us are reader(s)
of our underbelly places"
"some thing shiny
or dark tidal briny
things sugary
or malodorous
and magnetic" ... I imagine this theme runs throughout your poetry, but here again, I see the sea goddess you're desperate to have but can't.
"less leaf and seed" ... This is a reference to Adam, covering his "seed" with a fig leave. Only now you're the ashamed, nearly naked man, hiding out in your car. A present-day Adam, feeling like he's going to get caught being naughty, disobeying God, letting his eyes/mind/hands wander. "Automated motion." Ha.
The section from "models" down to "by-ways" followed by "no one sees me" makes me think the speaker is experimenting with bisexuality. Maybe he's sneaking around to check out men as well as women.
"No one sees me on the slate wall." That's what you think. ;) This place is your slate wall. Your chalkboard. The white on black that you think no one reads or understands. That means that you think your poetry is your secret diary because (almost) no one "gets it."
"I am blending in, to" ... This is the worst feeling in the world. "I am blending into." By blending in, you're being ripped apart.
I love this line: "this modernity is odd weather"
And this:
"when the dark becomes
mantra and hungry need"
"we will need a higher angled Sun" ... This makes me think you're being funny, secretly picturing Jesus (the Son) as a "higher" (smoking pot) "angel." That hanging "hung" line break toward the end really highlights the theme of this piece, if you ask me. But you didn't. So I'm sure you're just talking about being joyful at Christmas. :)