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.
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.
The Maw
Time’s maw is gaping wide
And her crystal arms are breaking off
Come with me! In the pale moonlight
And let us together lie forever.
Laugh with me for innocence
And for sterile beauty in your eyes
Let me in! Those lightened lips
Sing clearly through the modern noise
But run from me at the smile of dawn
I reflect the sun in rancid hues
I cannot trust you’d see the same
The fickle side of love remains
A million rills could fill but little
The sweet and total grasp of your embrace.
I’d scream it through the very earth,
And stand staring at the shaking hills.
Yet there is a pride that lingers close
That makes such feelings mine alone.
And her crystal arms are breaking off
Come with me! In the pale moonlight
And let us together lie forever.
Laugh with me for innocence
And for sterile beauty in your eyes
Let me in! Those lightened lips
Sing clearly through the modern noise
But run from me at the smile of dawn
I reflect the sun in rancid hues
I cannot trust you’d see the same
The fickle side of love remains
A million rills could fill but little
The sweet and total grasp of your embrace.
I’d scream it through the very earth,
And stand staring at the shaking hills.
Yet there is a pride that lingers close
That makes such feelings mine alone.
Wall
There is now, as there was once, a man
And there is still, as there was once, a wall.
And the man looks at the wall and says to it this:
I wish I could show you how beautiful you are.
Then the wall says to the man in a quaint manner thusly:
Do not be foolish, I am only a wall
And just then myriad colors burst forth
And cast hued light upon the skin of the man
Who sighs because he’s known these colors for a while now.
But the eyes of the wall stare perpetually upwards
And spy the sun as he arcs through the cloudless sky
How perfectly round! How radiantly bright!
I am simply a wall, built to cast your shadows!
The cold stone ripples through the fingers of the man
Who had long ago closed his eyes and begun to cry
His tears fall in torrents upon the cracked and colored earth
But the wall is looking upwards. It will never look back.
Yet the man in silence draws a long breath and knows
That a wall is quite a beautiful thing
Whose colors and shadows cast so sharply.
So fiercely.
And there is still, as there was once, a wall.
And the man looks at the wall and says to it this:
I wish I could show you how beautiful you are.
Then the wall says to the man in a quaint manner thusly:
Do not be foolish, I am only a wall
And just then myriad colors burst forth
And cast hued light upon the skin of the man
Who sighs because he’s known these colors for a while now.
But the eyes of the wall stare perpetually upwards
And spy the sun as he arcs through the cloudless sky
How perfectly round! How radiantly bright!
I am simply a wall, built to cast your shadows!
The cold stone ripples through the fingers of the man
Who had long ago closed his eyes and begun to cry
His tears fall in torrents upon the cracked and colored earth
But the wall is looking upwards. It will never look back.
Yet the man in silence draws a long breath and knows
That a wall is quite a beautiful thing
Whose colors and shadows cast so sharply.
So fiercely.
An Epic
A simple task, an inward nod
Set forth the ink of a sorrowed pen
To gain a remnant of forgotten times
To begin a journey of a thousand lines
Upon that soft winter’s night in solitude
With a single letter in flawless sense
He’d walked those paths before, he’d known
The stones beneath his careful feet
He’d smelled the blossoms many times before
And picked a few to keep forevermore
To walk, perchance to pen he knew
Led to all things beautiful and full of grace
So he walked, and penned, and lay his feet
In dancing lines upon the well worn ground
Ignored the ink as it ran softly out
Ignored the rising qualms of doubt
Ignored the silent stabs of pain
That before had never shown themselves
And then he fell, once, twice, once more
And threw his pen upon the stony earth
No words, no rhymes, no final verse
To describe the chains of love, his curse
Would reveal themselves to his frightened hand
As the pain, awoken, bared its fists.
With frenzied tastes the writer wrote.
His words no longer sang with warmth
His pen, it slipped, and cut in lines
A path through pages a hundred times
To write he thought, to write at all
Would maintain and honor the litany of love.
In desperation, the unattained
Wore a tattered veil of hope
Romantic visions screamed in haste
Seemed close enough to grasp, to taste
The writer wrote so fervently
The unheard screams of a dying sun.
The writer now, an aged man,
Has his writing stopped to know
With age comes wisdom, with wisdom strength
With strength comes truth, to no small length
The last such verse from the writer’s hands
Claims a blank white page and thusly reads:
When the hands of time do lay us down
And brush away uncertain sands
When cancers grow and tear apart
The poet’s ink and the poet’s heart
When inspiration fails us all
What have we left but dignity?
Set forth the ink of a sorrowed pen
To gain a remnant of forgotten times
To begin a journey of a thousand lines
Upon that soft winter’s night in solitude
With a single letter in flawless sense
He’d walked those paths before, he’d known
The stones beneath his careful feet
He’d smelled the blossoms many times before
And picked a few to keep forevermore
To walk, perchance to pen he knew
Led to all things beautiful and full of grace
So he walked, and penned, and lay his feet
In dancing lines upon the well worn ground
Ignored the ink as it ran softly out
Ignored the rising qualms of doubt
Ignored the silent stabs of pain
That before had never shown themselves
And then he fell, once, twice, once more
And threw his pen upon the stony earth
No words, no rhymes, no final verse
To describe the chains of love, his curse
Would reveal themselves to his frightened hand
As the pain, awoken, bared its fists.
With frenzied tastes the writer wrote.
His words no longer sang with warmth
His pen, it slipped, and cut in lines
A path through pages a hundred times
To write he thought, to write at all
Would maintain and honor the litany of love.
In desperation, the unattained
Wore a tattered veil of hope
Romantic visions screamed in haste
Seemed close enough to grasp, to taste
The writer wrote so fervently
The unheard screams of a dying sun.
The writer now, an aged man,
Has his writing stopped to know
With age comes wisdom, with wisdom strength
With strength comes truth, to no small length
The last such verse from the writer’s hands
Claims a blank white page and thusly reads:
When the hands of time do lay us down
And brush away uncertain sands
When cancers grow and tear apart
The poet’s ink and the poet’s heart
When inspiration fails us all
What have we left but dignity?
To Speak of Gods
We spoke of gods, so long ago when
By night round fires we sat with spears of stone
And ivory fashioned in morbid primeval chains
To the beat of the drums and the sound of the earth by moonlight.
Yet even now, when past those times
We have progressed, to a higher plane
of something, just what, god only knows,
we speak of them still; just what is it we seek?
Whatever it is, it matters less
Than even the weight of the world itself
Than the burden of human suffering alone
Itself, a mote in the eye of the grand scheme of it all.
For how many others, out there in the stars
Also speak of gods?
How many are there that cannot see
The truth in the non-purpose, the beautiful complexity.
The spirit of the universe is nothing more
Than an enchanting dance of matter and energy.
By night round fires we sat with spears of stone
And ivory fashioned in morbid primeval chains
To the beat of the drums and the sound of the earth by moonlight.
Yet even now, when past those times
We have progressed, to a higher plane
of something, just what, god only knows,
we speak of them still; just what is it we seek?
Whatever it is, it matters less
Than even the weight of the world itself
Than the burden of human suffering alone
Itself, a mote in the eye of the grand scheme of it all.
For how many others, out there in the stars
Also speak of gods?
How many are there that cannot see
The truth in the non-purpose, the beautiful complexity.
The spirit of the universe is nothing more
Than an enchanting dance of matter and energy.
Those Eyes
A diffuse chill wraps around my being
as the snow clouds around me fall from
this sky; no sight; no longer seeing
what made me look upon
those eyes.
As the snow clouds around me fall from
Your soul, I know just what you
made me; look upon this scroll
and hope you’ll learn to love,
not prize.
Not mine, no rhyme, no reason to taste
Or sense behind some veiled ignorance
Why you don’t see yourself as you should
As if whatever those were, they weren’t
False cries.
I hope one day you’ll realize
Just why I say what I do, and what I don’t
To tell you what I feel, and why I won’t
Just let you drown in your own self loathing, closing forever
those beautiful brown eyes.
as the snow clouds around me fall from
this sky; no sight; no longer seeing
what made me look upon
those eyes.
As the snow clouds around me fall from
Your soul, I know just what you
made me; look upon this scroll
and hope you’ll learn to love,
not prize.
Not mine, no rhyme, no reason to taste
Or sense behind some veiled ignorance
Why you don’t see yourself as you should
As if whatever those were, they weren’t
False cries.
I hope one day you’ll realize
Just why I say what I do, and what I don’t
To tell you what I feel, and why I won’t
Just let you drown in your own self loathing, closing forever
those beautiful brown eyes.
An Ode to Splintered Tartlets
The great divide, the fractured crust we grasp
As the fruits spill out and leave their stains on you
The clean and gleaming marble; they poison and clasp
What remains of dignity, of trust and truth.
Yet when this divide I cross to reach that plane
With open arms and open hearts am I met
And the sweetness remains on the most heinous stain
As the fruits, though spilt, upon my plate softly set.
Then to which false conscience do we turn and shout
Perfection and virtue is the only way to stay?
When a pastry itself may turn our minds inside out
And on our tongues a slice of vagueness lay, you see:
In the face of all the maddening waste we eye
human suffering and love in a broken pie.
As the fruits spill out and leave their stains on you
The clean and gleaming marble; they poison and clasp
What remains of dignity, of trust and truth.
Yet when this divide I cross to reach that plane
With open arms and open hearts am I met
And the sweetness remains on the most heinous stain
As the fruits, though spilt, upon my plate softly set.
Then to which false conscience do we turn and shout
Perfection and virtue is the only way to stay?
When a pastry itself may turn our minds inside out
And on our tongues a slice of vagueness lay, you see:
In the face of all the maddening waste we eye
human suffering and love in a broken pie.
Blackened Love
If I could tear from you your false encumbrance
I would rend the shadows through and bring forth the real
And if in turn I soared away to the edge of distance
I would soar with the stars and the void at my heels
If I could peel away the chains, the restrains
In a moment, if I could, I would change the world
And if in that moment, a blank white page I became
In your open hands I would in happiness unfurl.
But you are bound in blackened love it seems
To troubles that love you more than I ever could
And the void, with razors clenched tightly it screams
For how could I in your limp hands have truly ever stood?
So I’ll dream, I’ll feel, I’ll love, and I’ll heal
Until the end of time, until my time love steals.
I would rend the shadows through and bring forth the real
And if in turn I soared away to the edge of distance
I would soar with the stars and the void at my heels
If I could peel away the chains, the restrains
In a moment, if I could, I would change the world
And if in that moment, a blank white page I became
In your open hands I would in happiness unfurl.
But you are bound in blackened love it seems
To troubles that love you more than I ever could
And the void, with razors clenched tightly it screams
For how could I in your limp hands have truly ever stood?
So I’ll dream, I’ll feel, I’ll love, and I’ll heal
Until the end of time, until my time love steals.
A Cerebral Dance
A cerebral dance, there was no movement
But my imagination began to run, what could it be
That set such lingering beauty free to me?
what warm reminder of our meaningless torrent?
A hand divine, or a structured abandonment?
What could it be? What had it been
That unto these heavens sprayed such a scene
Of motionless chaos, such inspirational stillness?
I look in your eyes, and these thoughts are borne
Forged deep within my heart; to look alone
Would have been enough, but I could have sworn
I saw you look back; and for a moment, our thoughts were one
Till then your eyes with my own sight I’d filled
But when you looked right back, my heart lay still.
But my imagination began to run, what could it be
That set such lingering beauty free to me?
what warm reminder of our meaningless torrent?
A hand divine, or a structured abandonment?
What could it be? What had it been
That unto these heavens sprayed such a scene
Of motionless chaos, such inspirational stillness?
I look in your eyes, and these thoughts are borne
Forged deep within my heart; to look alone
Would have been enough, but I could have sworn
I saw you look back; and for a moment, our thoughts were one
Till then your eyes with my own sight I’d filled
But when you looked right back, my heart lay still.
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