A silent wind blows through your hair.
The moon flits behind the fireflies.
I sit upon this earth and stare,
Into the sky, into your eyes.
You speak in wild and beautiful shades;
Reflections in the light of that hidden moon,
And the clouds themselves, as summer fades,
Shall break their own sweet colors soon.
As this all things are intertwined.
No reason save but reasons past.
No rhyme save but rhyme's versed breath.
The bittered waters of the river Lethe
Will wind themselves back home at last.
My love for you was love itself.
And love itself, it shall remain.
Writ in Water
How would I sing a song of myself? A poem, perhaps, read instead of sung? Could work. If I did have a poem to recite, it would most likely go like this:
If my name was writ in the fallen rain
And nowhere else
I ask, would you remember still?
The endless stars of this summer sky linger above and shiver
They cast pale light through the last of these nights
Because we are leaving this place, you and I, forever.
To you I may become less than a memory
Cease to exist but in the synapse of a mind
Who I am will become less important, then
Than who I was when you saw me last
Yes, a poem, that could do it. But what else? A poem seems so passé, so expected, and I am no John Keats. I have no true way with words. If my name was writ in water, I fear it would simply wash away. An interpretive dance maybe? No, I’m no dancer. I should have brought a powerpoint presentation. Musical stylings? No, I forgot my violin. Then how can one sing the song of himself? Is there even such a thing? Who am I? It’s the kind of question for which the skeleton of an answer must already be in place for its inquisition to lead anywhere productive. I have no skeletons of answers, not yet. Because I think that who we are, who we are at our cores, depends not upon self assessment, but upon the thoughts of those we influence.
In the beginning, I say only that I am a doctor. The young child whose arm I reinsert into its socket calls me a superhero. The middle aged woman whose baby I deliver says I’m a saint. The elderly man whose disease I rub away calls me to his bedside and thanks me for saving his life. So what am I? A superhero? A saint? A lifesaver? I’m certainly not just a doctor anymore, at least, not to the world in which I live, and no man exists in a vacuum.
And I didn’t want to make a flashy song of myself, because that’s certainly not who I am, so I decided to settle on the passé, expected poem to explain just what it is that I’m saying.
My song of myself is the song you sing
It is the song you will sing when I am dead and gone
And cannot sing for myself, cannot even think
Of life, of myself, of you
It is the song you will sing when you run into me
at the corner café as you order a tall chai and I turn around perhaps noticing you, perhaps not, perhaps saying hello, perhaps not, perhaps talking about my job, how it’s going, how the wife and children are doing, about your job, about your spouse and children, about the tall chai in my hand and how it’s quite good, better than I expected, better than you expected, better than we all expected, but not good enough. For a moment we’ll exchange a soft goodbye, shallow smiles, and I shall become less than a memory again.
And perhaps walking down the street you’ll sing my song, but it will be quite boring and droll.
The song of myself is the song you will sing when you hold my hand at the hospital bed and cry with me for the time will have come to say goodbye a final time.
And let me say as an aside
That I’m not fond of saying goodbye
And so I wouldn’t, but please know this
That with every breath and every glimpse
With every touch and whisper of your name
I love you more than life itself
And will end it quietly
With your hand in mine
I should hope, in that hospital bed, that you would sing some sort of song. And I hope it would be a beautiful song, a song of love, a song of life, song of myself.
And I’ll end it here save for a few last lines. I’ll leave it incomplete, rough around the edges, with very little revision, because at 17 years in, I’d have to say, my song of myself has hardly started. And true to this fashion, I’ll end with a snippet of a poem I’m still working on.
Watch for me in the water and the wind
In a whisper I may return to see you again
And if you forget, know that I shall not forget
But if you remember
And in some distant place find use of my memory
Then the hands of time shall forever know
That my name was neither writ in water nor stone
But in the hearts of men, and thus became immortal.
If my name was writ in the fallen rain
And nowhere else
I ask, would you remember still?
The endless stars of this summer sky linger above and shiver
They cast pale light through the last of these nights
Because we are leaving this place, you and I, forever.
To you I may become less than a memory
Cease to exist but in the synapse of a mind
Who I am will become less important, then
Than who I was when you saw me last
Yes, a poem, that could do it. But what else? A poem seems so passé, so expected, and I am no John Keats. I have no true way with words. If my name was writ in water, I fear it would simply wash away. An interpretive dance maybe? No, I’m no dancer. I should have brought a powerpoint presentation. Musical stylings? No, I forgot my violin. Then how can one sing the song of himself? Is there even such a thing? Who am I? It’s the kind of question for which the skeleton of an answer must already be in place for its inquisition to lead anywhere productive. I have no skeletons of answers, not yet. Because I think that who we are, who we are at our cores, depends not upon self assessment, but upon the thoughts of those we influence.
In the beginning, I say only that I am a doctor. The young child whose arm I reinsert into its socket calls me a superhero. The middle aged woman whose baby I deliver says I’m a saint. The elderly man whose disease I rub away calls me to his bedside and thanks me for saving his life. So what am I? A superhero? A saint? A lifesaver? I’m certainly not just a doctor anymore, at least, not to the world in which I live, and no man exists in a vacuum.
And I didn’t want to make a flashy song of myself, because that’s certainly not who I am, so I decided to settle on the passé, expected poem to explain just what it is that I’m saying.
My song of myself is the song you sing
It is the song you will sing when I am dead and gone
And cannot sing for myself, cannot even think
Of life, of myself, of you
It is the song you will sing when you run into me
at the corner café as you order a tall chai and I turn around perhaps noticing you, perhaps not, perhaps saying hello, perhaps not, perhaps talking about my job, how it’s going, how the wife and children are doing, about your job, about your spouse and children, about the tall chai in my hand and how it’s quite good, better than I expected, better than you expected, better than we all expected, but not good enough. For a moment we’ll exchange a soft goodbye, shallow smiles, and I shall become less than a memory again.
And perhaps walking down the street you’ll sing my song, but it will be quite boring and droll.
The song of myself is the song you will sing when you hold my hand at the hospital bed and cry with me for the time will have come to say goodbye a final time.
And let me say as an aside
That I’m not fond of saying goodbye
And so I wouldn’t, but please know this
That with every breath and every glimpse
With every touch and whisper of your name
I love you more than life itself
And will end it quietly
With your hand in mine
I should hope, in that hospital bed, that you would sing some sort of song. And I hope it would be a beautiful song, a song of love, a song of life, song of myself.
And I’ll end it here save for a few last lines. I’ll leave it incomplete, rough around the edges, with very little revision, because at 17 years in, I’d have to say, my song of myself has hardly started. And true to this fashion, I’ll end with a snippet of a poem I’m still working on.
Watch for me in the water and the wind
In a whisper I may return to see you again
And if you forget, know that I shall not forget
But if you remember
And in some distant place find use of my memory
Then the hands of time shall forever know
That my name was neither writ in water nor stone
But in the hearts of men, and thus became immortal.
1 words of wisdom
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Orchid
Dusk scarred with shards of the sun
And the scattered light of ice laden clouds
Looks nothing like love on certain nights
when the darkness and calmness and sickness are absolute.
As the orchid spreading its tattooed petals
And stretching its curled anthers towards the sky
Looks nothing like love on certain mornings
when the world and the self feel stale.
As you with your cheap and subtle expressions
Unmistakable scents of cuteness and candy
Look nothing like love on most normal evenings
When the candles burn brightly and the stars shy away.
Yet I hope upon hope and hopeless remain
That on some starry evening when the darkness just creeps
You’ll show me the truth of how love really looks
And tear the sickness and the staleness of doubt to pieces.
And the scattered light of ice laden clouds
Looks nothing like love on certain nights
when the darkness and calmness and sickness are absolute.
As the orchid spreading its tattooed petals
And stretching its curled anthers towards the sky
Looks nothing like love on certain mornings
when the world and the self feel stale.
As you with your cheap and subtle expressions
Unmistakable scents of cuteness and candy
Look nothing like love on most normal evenings
When the candles burn brightly and the stars shy away.
Yet I hope upon hope and hopeless remain
That on some starry evening when the darkness just creeps
You’ll show me the truth of how love really looks
And tear the sickness and the staleness of doubt to pieces.
Catacombs
If I in somber silence
Walk slowly through catacombs
And play my fingers across the soft and silken muds
And lay my feet in light spoken steps upon the ground
If I in quiet solitude
Stroll through glowing meadows
And drag my arms through the sharp, swaying grass
And whistle songs of sadness to the dancing leaves
If I in blank expression
Smile at shining stars at night
And wonder when the sun will rise the next morning
And wait for the horizon to burst into flames
Would you still walk with me?
Would the catacombs be mine alone?
Walk slowly through catacombs
And play my fingers across the soft and silken muds
And lay my feet in light spoken steps upon the ground
If I in quiet solitude
Stroll through glowing meadows
And drag my arms through the sharp, swaying grass
And whistle songs of sadness to the dancing leaves
If I in blank expression
Smile at shining stars at night
And wonder when the sun will rise the next morning
And wait for the horizon to burst into flames
Would you still walk with me?
Would the catacombs be mine alone?
(Blood) On a Stainless Steel Pan
I was hit in the face with a pan today.
I felt the steel puncture my upper lip
To your early morning assault I say, flippin’ A!
I served you in bed a piece of toast and some whey
Yet through my mandible you did so savagely rip
I was hit in the face with a pan today.
The stainless steel spotless as your Teflon soul remains
And I tell my friends that down our stairs I did flip
To your early morning assault I say, flippin’ A!
Lady luck is not a lady, maybe a bouncer led astray
Who bounced off my chin on a most manly trip.
I was hit in the face with a pan today.
You tore through my heart like an angry gamma ray
And across my skin I felt the lash of your whip
To your early morning assault I say, flippin’ A!
But even though you came close to closing an airway
I still love you without bounds, without regret or remorse.
Because even though you hit my face with a pan today
It was our best pan, flung with love’s true force.
I felt the steel puncture my upper lip
To your early morning assault I say, flippin’ A!
I served you in bed a piece of toast and some whey
Yet through my mandible you did so savagely rip
I was hit in the face with a pan today.
The stainless steel spotless as your Teflon soul remains
And I tell my friends that down our stairs I did flip
To your early morning assault I say, flippin’ A!
Lady luck is not a lady, maybe a bouncer led astray
Who bounced off my chin on a most manly trip.
I was hit in the face with a pan today.
You tore through my heart like an angry gamma ray
And across my skin I felt the lash of your whip
To your early morning assault I say, flippin’ A!
But even though you came close to closing an airway
I still love you without bounds, without regret or remorse.
Because even though you hit my face with a pan today
It was our best pan, flung with love’s true force.
Sandalwood
In another time it might have been
The fig tree under which the Buddha sat
Or the pulpit from which great caesars reigned
Or the sword in the hands of many a visionary rebel
In another place, it might have spoken
Of Hannibal’s army as it crossed the alps
Of the last stone affixed in Hadrian’s wall
Of incomparable love quilled on an Elizabethan scroll
Yet now it remains forlorn in the corner
And speaks no more, not of armies nor love
Of nothing, its voice stolen by the tides of time
And passed on without hesitance to abler minds
Its grain is worn, cracked and at points removed
A black mail surrounds its most visible side
As if to say, “Within, there sleeps a resting God,
Who will awake once more in a surge of lightning”
And will speak again, in a time as distant
As the day that fig first stretched its roots
As the moment Hadrian dreamed of his great divide
And set the first stone upon its righteous mortar
And we are left to wonder, as it stands quite silently
If the forgotten speaker will indeed speak again
For the black mail is but cold metal, uncertainty
Nothing more than a veil, nothing less than a cage.
The fig tree under which the Buddha sat
Or the pulpit from which great caesars reigned
Or the sword in the hands of many a visionary rebel
In another place, it might have spoken
Of Hannibal’s army as it crossed the alps
Of the last stone affixed in Hadrian’s wall
Of incomparable love quilled on an Elizabethan scroll
Yet now it remains forlorn in the corner
And speaks no more, not of armies nor love
Of nothing, its voice stolen by the tides of time
And passed on without hesitance to abler minds
Its grain is worn, cracked and at points removed
A black mail surrounds its most visible side
As if to say, “Within, there sleeps a resting God,
Who will awake once more in a surge of lightning”
And will speak again, in a time as distant
As the day that fig first stretched its roots
As the moment Hadrian dreamed of his great divide
And set the first stone upon its righteous mortar
And we are left to wonder, as it stands quite silently
If the forgotten speaker will indeed speak again
For the black mail is but cold metal, uncertainty
Nothing more than a veil, nothing less than a cage.
ScAtTerEd
Scattered through the dark, you smiled at me
And I smiled back, in a pained reflex
Like a shrike that alights on some strange thistle tree
You reached goodbye, turned, set your feet
And I turned too, let my pride affect
Scattered through the dark, you smiled at me.
Why could I not see, what you were telling me
Beneath that pale winter moon? Winter’s cold reflects
Like a shrike that alights on some strange thistle tree.
The fragrant scent of lilies now covers that street
It leaks from the cracks in visible specks
Scattered through the dark, you smiled at me.
If I had known that smile just a little more deeply
To that distant scent I would not object
Like the shrike that alights on some strange thistle tree.
But you are now gone, you’ve fled from me
And I remain, unable to crest love’s vertex
Scattered through the dark, you smiled at me
Like a shrike that alights on some strange thistle tree.
And I smiled back, in a pained reflex
Like a shrike that alights on some strange thistle tree
You reached goodbye, turned, set your feet
And I turned too, let my pride affect
Scattered through the dark, you smiled at me.
Why could I not see, what you were telling me
Beneath that pale winter moon? Winter’s cold reflects
Like a shrike that alights on some strange thistle tree.
The fragrant scent of lilies now covers that street
It leaks from the cracks in visible specks
Scattered through the dark, you smiled at me.
If I had known that smile just a little more deeply
To that distant scent I would not object
Like the shrike that alights on some strange thistle tree.
But you are now gone, you’ve fled from me
And I remain, unable to crest love’s vertex
Scattered through the dark, you smiled at me
Like a shrike that alights on some strange thistle tree.
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