I work hard/ To understand/

But then I don’t know much about it all/

Someone at my night job/

Was all about  this bible’s myth of Jacob/

One where he wrestles an Angel/

I’m not sure why or what

transcending,  intended

glimmer  &  glow

One   was  to get  here

(But this one at his break-of-day job)

But I got puzzled  at the wrestle/

If there are angels,  I need them

To lead me to bed,

A warm  arm/wing  around me,

Mercifully,  off to our bed.

SOME STOICISM/ (3) “Stoic”

I  contend

I can maintain  mainly steady motion,

As a  seastorm wreck  under ocean.

I’ll  extend

My hand humanely.  Mainly obligation.

I must offer up, against the grain,

To dare offer  heart,

That light  from a slat

In a self-styled safe cell that

Will spill and splash

On  still quite a quiet crash scene again.

SOME STOICISM/ (2)”Off-On”

Have staved off   lost passions

I’ve held on cold cliffholds

I stayed and endured elements,

Harsh, and all part of a hard whole

Where   lost passions

Sounding far, in the fog,

Meaning more in a quiet man

Than a kind word,

Can  work

To urge  his stoic stand

On

.

.

.FROM 2009

SOME STOICISM/ 1)Tangled Double

TANGLED  DOUBLE

.

.

Stoicism is a prison

Though I break out

Though I break down

Through the pull of a merciful act

Then I’m old and too weak to hold back

I can imagine a troubled

Panicked angel tangled double;

One cat caught in a grate

A girl unfair in a wheelchair

Nears and dares her balance, her endurance, her tolerance

Strains all of her weight

Shows the pain that she’s used to on her face

Then relief, and they’re both free

She and the cat both refuse to

Cry more,

Like those that might see

.

.

.

FROM 2009

THE NECKLACE

Loosely  translated

But in no uncertain terms  she stated

But in her own tongue  in cheek

When I hesitated

Then she said, she had “inherited the meek”

.

.

An inch of ice on a streetlit windowed morning

We were caked in our come

It was what she wanted, and wet.

Her romantic zeal  wanted us in a  seal

Like a locked document.

She meant that love was all it could have meant.

.

.

I traded off half my gear to help me pay off the rest

For a necklace  not noticed on no neck

One with wondrous  burnt stones

Ones only buried deep

The market woman wanted only what

Would keep her from keeping it

A sum greater than a grow house utility tab

.

I should give what I could to show her

Fixity

It’s that

T.S. Eliot

Went on and on

About the here and now clock,

Taking disjointed, angled notions.

I’m not talking about Prufrock,

But Burnt Norton.

.

It’s that

This   idiot

Wants one and all

To ride to just this side of  shock.

Close eyes.  Close in on  seas and oceans.

I’m not talking about

Anything that can be talked out.

.

&  for  sure,

Don’t confuse my composure

For knowing the   now.

.

.

.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time. The inner freedom from the practical desire, The release from action and suffering, release from the inner And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving, Erhebung without motion, concentration Without elimination, both a new world And the old made explicit, understood In the completion of its partial ecstasy, The resolution of its partial horror. Yet the enchainment of past and future Woven in the weakness of the changing body, Protects mankind from heaven and damnation Which flesh cannot endure. Time past and time future Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden, The moment in the arbour where the rain beat, The moment in the draughty church at smokefall Be remembered; involved with past and future. Only through time time is conquered.

-T.S. Eliot, from “Four Quartets, Burnt Norton

.

.

Erhebung

Er•he•bung    f 

a  (=Bodenerhebung)  elevation

Translation German – English Collins Dictionary 

HEIGHTENED UNFAIRNESS (or Yelling At The Wrong Side Of The Bed)

Blunder & black clouds staged themselves overhead./

Unsteady steps proved as wrong-ass moves up ahead./

Misunderstanding stood up, grandstanded./

Opening statements thru to imposing arguments,/

Mishandled words erupted, were interrupted./

Heightened   unfairness./

.

It gets so/

It aches so to talk,/

It’s taking shots at no/

Targets.

one assigned soothe rhyme

.

.

On a phone faraway

When you cry in a way

Just soft enough I won’t hear you

.

My  chest  is  for

Yr  face  and  for

Yr eyes  to dry every tear of you

Wetten  my  shirt

Let me  and my heart…

Let  rhythms rise to soothe you

.

When you hear this song of mine

It’s true, Not too long you hurt

You’ll like the line

Of wetting  my shirt

“The Knew Where It Is Bent”

Those days

Why did my Daddy

Want me to put up my dukes?

He didn’t know me

I needed answers, not anger.

You told me to hit you

On yr only cleft chin.

Confused, I refused,

Then I cried, then you laughed.

.

These days

One punch

Is all a backed-up drain like me…

I’d kill everything.

Furthermore, my diatribe here

Was directed

To my father’s spectre.

And he didn’t know me either,

‘Cause he said, “Go ahead”.

He thought & said, I’d be quite mad

All these days

With his violent abandonment.

I still need answers, not anger.

In that afterours club, in that cloud,

I asserted, “Are you still sick?” right out loud.

“Haven’t you watched me, or can’t you look out?”

WILLOWS

We’ll go back to the willows

And to our river’s still,  no,

It’s constant as rivers go.

We’ll lend our laps as pillows.

And watch our water

Littered with new leaves

Wet on just one side,

It’s lit…a sun jewel

& you’ll be sunny too.

.

.

.

.                                                                                                                 from 2009