Some Short Thoughts on Thinking
I.
Yesterday has a queer sound
I thought I was thinking
But it was only the alarm clock
You can partner yourself
On either side of the mirror
I think it's bedtime
II.
Words spin off my brain
Like multicolored marbles
Ricocheting off one another
To skitter across the floor
And crouch underneath the cupboards
III.
I am lost
inside my house
outside myself
nowhere in between
lost
in the bottom of my feet
carving words with my toes
in the sand and stars
and lint balls on the floor
epic stories of
small accomplishments
and momentary truths
IV.
today is about shapes
the shape of the world
the shape of the nation
the shape of my finances
the shape of a melon,
cool on the inside
but not quite ripe
tasting a little of the earth
a little of cardboard
and me
Phlogiston (before Penance and Perfection):
An Infernal Attempt at A Comedy Snippet with a Smattering of the Divine
Canto I
One day like those that we have trekked before
I lose myself to wander lonely and alone
In no dark wood, alive with Pan and promise
But down dim chasms of deep concreted towers
Gray-trussed, long-still, and with no breath to hold
Back garish admonitions to accept
The platitudes of common stale desires:
I want, I wear, I will, I would, I wait
And take the pledge of acquisition as a truth
No wonder here, no awe, and no delight
Just some hollow revolution of appetite
Unfilled and unfulfilling, an empty snack of death
No tracks amongst these tracks, no passage on these roads
No visions past this simple stream of fate
Just that what I 'should' -- no matter love, nor even hate
Fearful now, I seek to find an edge
Of such dark ruins with no center and no end
I run down narrow, gory alleys, searching for a door
But only find dead endings, closed and trite
The random buzz of busyness eludes
A music of the spheres or any other shape
Hard-blown, with strong still wind effaced
I traverse towards a wider avenue
In hope to find a quiet cough of breath
A wider lens and wider thought I seek
And there I glimpse a flash of verdant glades
Just beyond my eyelids, pure and out of reach
I turn to run to scents cerulean and green
But see before me, quick and lean and sharp
Three screens, all-seeing, flashing from the dark.
Blocking sun with artificial prayers
Their faces lit with infinite dark grace
These monitors compel my courtesy
To stand and hold their message in my heart
Know-all, owed-all, they counsel me past thought
The first with colors bright and blithely wrought.
'We sing of gleaming smiles and jingling wealth
Of troubles gone and challenges effaced
By simple loot with consciousness erased.'
Comforted, I circle towards the next
Now sure that its deep wisdom will enhance
Seduction -- I will be still more entranced.
The second, though its colors are still sharp
Holds me with a piercing, cruel embrace,
A kiss of death disposing on my cheek.
'What right have other wretcheds to compare
Their wants and needs with our superb desires?
We'll smash them, crush them, flick them from the earth.'
Blood surges through my courage at the rights
Of might and glory, wheeling through the night.
The third will surely chant infinite joy.
But when I whirl to sip the visions sweet
Of this last teacher's glistening insight
Just ranks of numbers march across its face.
'Intellect-lost and market-tossed
We chant 'to have and hold' as sacred lore
Consumed by that we had consumed before.'
These canny visionaries then increase
Their dizzying distortions of the truth
Bombarded, I am thrust into the dark
Ruins further and the sunlight seems to die
My ears are cracked with my own cries of dread
My heart is filled with sullen loss of hope
Then through my blindness a figure, almost clear
With edges blurred and colors bleached away:
Like clarity of thought long-tucked from light of day.
'If man or hologram,' I cry, 'help me!
Don't leave me in this hopeless, howling place
Where crumbled concrete replaced all patterned trace
Of joy or breath or likeness of a human life.'
The shadow smiles, and asks me why I stay.
Amazed, I ask who this could be, a man
Who apprehends an infinite free choice
Of divine silence in this deafening city
And simply wonders why I stand and wait.
'I wrote a verse,' said he, 'of journeys done,
Of centers and fulfillment past the sun.
Past mortal griefs uncoiled to the One.'
He watches me, undaunted, and I know
He was the pilgrim, traveled from a wood
With Virgil at his side, and found a truth
'I'll go with you, back inward towards your death
For to reach the outward, first you look within.
I will go with you as far as to the one,
But further to the crystal myriad
Of all the visions making up the sole
I can not take you, another will go on.'
The monitors around us raise their shrieks
I stop in fear; he hardly turns around
'Leave them to the child who comes behind
Remote, unfettered, she will disconnect
Their discord from your eyes and ears and heart
Forget them, for we are turning in.'
Grateful, humbled, awed, I stumble down
The terror of the streets I'd just run from.
Towards the heart of the abyss, that was mine own.
All Poems Posted Here © Leigh Melander 1990-2005. All Rights Reserved.
