A Poem Thread

Now

They noted a movement in the bushes,
For a man was trapped in those rushes.

He was snared in a web of promises
That weighed him down, by wishes,
For he’d always put things off the row,
One who’d ever waited for tomorrow.

They showed him a page, a quatrain in hand;
The web then collapsed, freeing the man.

Their was writing on the ground
Under his feet—words very sound:
They read ‘NOW!’ in big letters round.

The revelation hit him like an hourglass,
One made of the heaviest welded brass,
As a relief of realization washed over him fast.

They could hear him muttering to himself,
“There is only today! It’s the only shelf!
Why fret about other days that tweet,
If today can be so very sweet?

“Stretching my present row
To distant calendar columns so,
By all my tenuously made vows
Is what created the complicated web
Of promises in the first place bred—
A trap that took away all my ‘nows’.

“‘Now’ is the time! I’m sure.
I must seize the moment’s shore
Or lose its momentum forevermore!”

The man soon went running off,
Seemingly weightless, flying aloft.

He and she, the harmonic subjects of our story,
Wandered ever onward, past the path of worry.
Love was in the air, filling the space with glory.

“Never wait! It ever wrinkles the brow.
The only real time under our feet is NOW!”

“These lovely moments rife,
Are giving me the time of my life!
I savor each one, its treat—
And then comes another, just as sweet.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm_Y0FwHJIs
 
I wrote this when i was 17 and had a broken heart for the first time.


Broken Heart
The emotions which pull me down, which dip my heart into the pit of sorrow. Romantic memories sink into the heart as one starts to sob. Emotions roll down to the pit of the soul and words start to trouble the mind. Hopes start to crush as the future becomes no longer in awareness. scenes shift and there on the moonlit planet lies the heart broken man who has no future.
 
Loss of a Love

Happiness is a silk bubble today
That gently lifts you toward Heaven’s gateway,
But, just one raven crowing in the night
Can arrest your smile and swipe it away.

New love is safe awhile in paradise;
If it’s solid it will ever entice;
But, the smallest crack starts the rock to split;
All’s lost—for you can’t have the same love twice!

Fear before, guilt after, and then anger
At the loss leads to the senseless hatred
Of that which you loved; you give up on life,
And then die a little bit more each day.

Anger is a cover-up for the hurt,
A claim to hate the love that you invert,
The dream of your heart’s desire—the life
That you wanted so much, but now desert.

You will not lose, but you won’t win either,
In that gray safety zone that knows neither
Suffering nor enjoyment, neither
Victory nor defeat—where there’s no breather.

Love or do not! There is no middle ground,
Only back and forth and around and round
In safety’s circle of berm and bunker—
Ever trapped by the dizzying sights and sounds.

The deaf hear not the noisy wretched screech;
The mute neither good nor evil can preach;
The sightless are spared life’s dreary vision;
The love-impaired know not of love’s relief.

You say that you refuse to care and share,
So you can save your heart from wear and tear.
Real love creates—it never tears apart;
The alternative to love is despair!

Such, like a stained-glass window, the faces
Survive the loss of some puzzle pieces,
And still shine, reflecting all that remains,
When time bears you away a few paces.

Love is the ultimate reason to live.
To for-get, it’s necessary to for-give.
Habit bows to originality.
Emotion’s energy becomes motive.

Loss is painful when leaves fall, but you cope;
As always, new attachments form with hope.
The cycle of the seasons mirrors all—
Life is a generous kaleidoscope!

As falls the dusk, my reason’s light departs
Darkness sinks to ground, snuffing out my spark;
But rhythms soon rise out of sorrow’s depth—
I sing the song whose sweetness broke my heart.

Better that fear be felt as excitement,
That hurt remind you of where caring went,
That anger’s energy be used for change,
That you say, What’s my next experience!
 
NOW AND ZEN

Everything that is part of us—
Our cells, tissues, organs and organ systems—
Has come about over billions of years
Because it proved successful
In the great survival stakes
During our perilous evolutionary
Descent (ascent) with modification.

The brain, being no exception,
Evolved, in part,
To allow a creature to learn
From what happens in its life,
To retain key elements that
Could influence future actions.

We are geared for self-preservation.
We will do anything to avoid facing the possibility
That who we are now cannot continue.

We ourselves are mainly the cause
That we are interested in.
The self is preoccupied with staying alive,
Which is why our species is still around today.

It is a prime biological function to be afraid of death,
And, so, the self, as thus contrived,
Is able to fully play its crucial survival role.

We want to equip our brain with a soul
That offers us an escape when the brain dies
Since the self cannot come to terms
With its own extinction.
From a subjective standpoint,

We are all born equal and undifferentiated
(Before that, ‘we’ were dead),
But, as mature selves we make a distinction
Between the individual and the surroundings.

Still, the brain keeps changing throughout life,
In a pattern of the shifting flux of its neurons;
We gain and lose memories and feelings,
Essentially creating a new person over and over again.

The self is thus not so rock solid as it seems.
These moment-to-moment changes differ from death
Only in degree. In essence, they are identical,
Although at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

So, we are not static things.
Other neural networks will come to be in other,
Future people, albeit with an “amnesia”
Of what went on before in
The brains of the previous others.

Why should we be happy about this?

We never can be, because the ‘I’ cannot operate
Outside of its own boundaries.
The only viable alternative is to think of a way
In which it is possible to ever continue on.

What will it be like to be a part
Of someone else after we die,
With our own particular
Narrative of life cast aside?

That is the ‘zen’
Of now and then and when.
 
WHAT REALLY HAPPENS AFTER WE DIE?

We die ‘little deaths’ all the time.
Our atoms change,
Some of our memories go away
And some new ones reappear,
Although we realize that it
Is the core of memories
That defines us as us.

It’s just that we are hardly
The same person now
As when we were much younger.

We had ‘death’ before birth, too,
And now there is life after birth.

Is there life only during life?

If one had amnesia and began
Learning the world anew,
Then one might say that
One as the previous person
Was ‘dead’ and that it is
Our new life that counts,
One not even missing the old one.

And, while the ‘big death’ is much more
Than any of these ‘little deaths’,
It is that our atoms then may go on
To reside in a new person eventually.

It’s not like there is any continuity of memory,
But more like that any narrative will do.


DEATH, DUST, AND TRANSFORMATION

All that we knew, even the loveliest and the best,
Decomposes into the dust of earth compressed.
Those songs we once composed now lie in repose;
With this dust the future may arrange and recompose.
 
Marching To Mars Lyrics
Sammy Hagar


Here we go Marching to Mars
On a Rainbow bridge
It don't seem so far
Steppin' into our Universe
Moving towards Life
To solve the problems on Earth
Marching to Mars
Everybody's Marching to Mars
Gonna settle down there
Get me a house and a car
Save each other from ourselves
Poke our heads out of the sand
Sayin', “Here I am
Marchin' to Mars!”
We're Marchin' to Mars
Whoa! Here we go!
Hollywood's Marching to Mars
For a Grand new movie
With some brand new Stars
Plastered on the Silver Screen
Gonna bring it on home
So you won't have to leave--no
Is there Life in the Universe?
Yeah, there's Life in the Universe!
We'll find God in the Universe!
We'll find God, but we'll find life first!
Whoa! Let’s go!
Marchin' to Mars
Marchin' to Mars
We’re Marchin’ to Mars
Whoa! Let’s go!
Whew! Everybody Now!
Marchin' to Mars!
We’ll find God in the Universe! We'll find God but we'll find Life first!
We’ll find Life in the Universe! Whew!
Is there Life in the Universe?
Yes, there’s Life in the Universe! We’ll find Life in the Universe!
Yeah, Marchin’ to Mars. Marchin’ to Mars. We’re Marchin’ to Mars
 
The Witch

They walked through the dense woods
Filled with mist and shadowed goods.
An old witch sprung up, to their rear,
She being the specter of fear
And of all that was worrisome here.

“What is your deepest fear?”
The witch asked of the air.
“Hell, death? Which shall it be?
How about Heaven? Is that it? All three?”

“I banish you,” said the man,
“For death is merely the natural end
Of all living things of nature’s blend.
What has no death has no life principle!
My turn to live would never have come to ripple,
If it were not for the deaths before of people.

“As for Heavens and Hells,
Those are what we create within ourselves,
As we can turn our souls outside in,
To create a Heaven or Hell from within.
Hell surely arrives when we make
Our own difficulties, in life’s wake,
When we our common sense forsake.

“However, I do have one fear that’s grown,
Although just one alone.”

“What is that fear?” asked the witch,
Her hopes suddenly rising in pitch,
Although her form was already ready
To fade away, for the lack of his anxiety.

The man’s partner answered for him,
For she was his opposite twin
And could think his thoughts,
“His one and only fear besought
Is that of not living well, as ought!”

And with that answer furnished,
The specter of fear vanished—
Like mist on the morning wind unrolled.

( NO FEAR )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj2AqPgjKB4
 
Jesus on a morning star

Jesus on a morning star watches
as I’m lighting up.

But I’ve only got 5 bucks gas
in left the car!

Will I get to work today? I can’t
guess, who can say?

Tomorrow I will get my pay,
but I’ll eat no lunch today.

Lift me from this state I’m in,
O deity, please do your thing!

He looks like Christ and taps
real nice, at the sacred traffic
light.

With eyes like gems from
Bethlehem, he gestures towards
my Stuyvesants.

Yes Christ is at my door again,
I wish to God he’d go away.

Through the crusty dirty glass I
scream:

“I need my hits of nicotine!”

Jesus on his morning star watches
as I drive away.

Crucified on coffin nails, till payday
rolls around again.
 
Fugal Voices

They hummed the two-part Pachelbel canon’s words,
Its soulful music sweeping them onward,
Upward, inward, and outward,
As their voices blended and parted,
Weaving in and out, once started.

“When does the rose bloom?” she rued,
Seeking some general botanical clues
To the book’s mysterious and questionable rules.”

“The rose blossoms on the summer solstice even,
Arising from the only kiss that’s ever given
To the arriving summer from the vanishing spring,
A kiss of which spring dies in giving, as they sing.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48AarJZJdoo
 
“Hard Crossing”


"Hard Crossing"

Where is that daunting monster
Boogie man in life’s shadow
Master mentor and concierge
Whose touch I’ve come to know

To you I’ll waste no breath
Beauty is not long and septic
My daunting docent of death
Midwife to misery, work quick

What small dignities remain
Strung of vomiting seconds
Cultures a pearl of great pain
To ferry a man of no direction
 
Last edited:
“Finger Lick‘in Truth”


“Finger Lick‘in Truth”


If the truth was pretty
And it smelled just right…
Or it taste like a t-bone
And came in diet light…

If truth was static free
And came in easy stages…
Or in scratch n sniff colors
On large n glossy pages…

If the truth looked good
On my arm uptown…
Or sang like a bird
In a sequin gown…

But, … the fool is king, his folly law
His head is thick and fingers raw
Justice is blind and wisdom’s a pearl
Luck is a lady and Truth’s a girl

Her sister is good intentions
The procrastinating whore
Who knocks down the walls
And ignores all the doors

From her cuts I have learned
Truth is the flame, not the burn
She won’t change and she won’t bend
Way too uppity for my friends

To some, Truth is getting rich
And finding perfect mates
But Truth is just a lonely girl
Who never gets a date
 
Last edited:
“Life’s Soup”


“Life’s Soup”


When life comes it comes as a stranger
Trampling across the seconds of time
A question mark and its answer
Aggravating reason and rhyme

Oh but when light comes to me
I want to touch all the things I see
Pressing against the glass so hard
It’s just a lightning bug in my jar

Opening my mouth and not my mind
There were some things I never knew
Some things I never knew
Just things I never knew

When death comes it comes as a stranger
With great authority and little concern
For the carnival of fools and danger
Or mercies for which we’ll yearn

Oh but when darkness comes for me
I’ll remember all these things I see
Pressing against the window hard
As death shakes its bug in a jar
 

“ Graffiti Prophet “


From my window in the faces
As my bus drove other places
The graffiti prophet spoke
A gentle sermon in his joke

It’s not the questions, if you cry
It’s all the notions that are why
The passions of the moment pass
And so what’s left is so what lasts

Life flowed past the tinted window
Down a list of city noises groaned
Emptiness was my reflection there
And so to it my questions were

Speak some truth my public fool
Stand and make or break a rule
Share my head some ones and zeros
Show my heart romance and heroes

The river’s not too fast or so it seems
To stop the really mighty dreams
You don’t think the rivers wide
Till you need the other side

History shows in life’s attrition
Reality’s not just strong suspicion
So Plato’s light did come and fall
And throw the shadows on my wall

Rust and rot on gossamer wings
Dwarfs and Elves with magic rings
A smell of life a taste of time
Nine cents missing from my dime

Women bite and whiskey stings
All the bitters sweet can bring
500 channels in the sky
Showing us the vein’s run dry

Saw it through the chain link
Tween the crack and boards
Heard it on the radio
Tween the minor chords
 

“Internet Campfire”


The world peeks at one another
Reaches out or maybe not
To a stranger or a brother
What is get and what is got
In our virtual melting pots

Everything is something like it
In all the places we’ve been
Across the fire we all sit
On the other side of a screen
Where we can’t be seen

Calling soft, cry or shout
There’s darkness out there
While the world is all about
In the cyber night beware
If it’s your soul you share

Once upon a time ago
We called from tenements
To bricks and windows
To ourselves in lost lament
As early proto blogs went

With a voice in the night
Drawing flies and crowds
The world just out of sight
Gave the night its lowly vows
“Really” laughing out loud
 
Stranger In A Strange Land



How many days, has it been since I was born
How many years, till I die
But I know anyway
I can make you laugh
I only know how to make you cry

Babies on her way downtown
Such a sight to see
Shares a simple secret with a wise man
He's a stranger in a strange land
Stranger in a strange land
Stranger in a strange land
Stranger in a strange land
Stranger in a strange land

How many years, will it take to see the sun
How many days till I'm done
It's only my confusion
Waiting in the night
Lies by my side when the morning comes
Baby looks around him
Shares a simple tale
Shares it with the fables of a palace with a king
He's a stranger in a strange land

Stranger in a strange land

Don't know what there is to say about the world today
Don't know why people are treating each other so wrong
Not like sisters, not like brothers
No, No, No listen to what I say
Beatles take us far away
From our ecology, our theology, our technology
I said, what a sad, sad state were in
We gotta sit back, relax, get back on the human track
The love, baby, I'm gonna make more time
Yeah you know, I hear the truth, I hear the truth
Would I know if I hear it ring
I hear the truth, gonna hear the children sing
Said a stranger in strange land

Stranger in a strange land
Stranger in a strange land
Stranger in a strange land
Tell me why
Stranger in a strange land

Leon Russell
 
Reincarnated Cat
Last life I was a cat,
but now my purrs turned to words
so in this life I speak truth,
like I couldn’t with fur.
see I’m calm like a cat,
Dao, I follow The Way
and I’m quick like a cat,
when I pounce on my prey
but my victims aint mice,
they aint game, no cooked meal
see, this cat preys on lies
to uncover what’s real
I poach greed at night,
I hunt lies at dawn
my words speak truth
like a Cherokee song
In my dreams I soar
and when I wake I’m still flyin’
cuz my spirit is high
like the belt of Orion
my spirit is incorruptible
but my bones are frail
sticks and stones break flesh
but my soul aint for sale
 
Last edited:
She, A-Rose

Before she could ponder the song,
They came upon a cemetery’s yawn,
And therein stopped cold and abrupt,
For there was an empty grave, opened up.

They jumped right into it,
To better read the script.

It read:

The Last Remembrance

En-graved is “THE END” of your earthly sigh:
Six sides ’round you: five are dirt, one is sky.
Shov’ling, Death talks to you at last, and cries:
“What were you doing during all of nigh?”

A little girl soon arrived with a withered rose,
“Those who live must learn of death told,
So that all the better they may breathe.
Run along now, you two, with ease,
Before Death himself, a sight,
Arrives with his shovel’s plight,
For you are standing in a grave site.

“Which of you is ready for his scythe’s tooth?
Behold my rose as you go, for sooth,
And take note of my eternal youth—
For that which never can die
Must be forever young and spry!”

They hurriedly continued on, to strive,
A bit shaken, but feeling much more alive

“One must be aware of death espied,
In order to live life more fully,” he surmised.

“How then shall we live?” she asked.

“Let us live each day as if it were our last.”

“I can improve on that,” said she.

“How so?” asked he.

“Let us also live each day’s sun
As if our life had just begun!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUuna9QnrlE
 
The Book

“May I look again at that living book of philosophy?”

He handed it over to her, softly.

“It has words with matching pictures in it!”

“Or perhaps it has pictures in it
With matching words,” as he countered it.

“I am neither,” the living book said,
“Yet both, for the pictures drawn, and the words read,
Offer mutual support, going together,
Each reflecting off of the other,
Thus building and spiraling in the mind’s area,
Into a more complete perception of the ideas.

“The words appeal, at first, to the logical kind—
The intellectual part of the mind.
The pictures appeal, at first, to the passionate,
Artistic, and sensual portion of the sensate.
The two mind ‘images’ then merge
Into the wholeness of truth and beauty converged.

“The intellect can ‘sense’ without the senses’ sect,
While the senses can ‘intellectualize’ without the intellect.”

“It’s a rather thorough experience,” she commented.
Enlightened, they gave each other a hug and on continued.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY4_t8iNRmk
 
Eidolons
by Walt Whitman
(1819-1892)

"I met a seer,
Passing the hues and objects of the world,
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense,
To glean eidolons.
Put in thy chants said he,
No more the puzzling hour nor day, nor segments, parts, put in,
Put first before the rest as light for all and entrance-song of all,
That of eidolons.

Ever the dim beginning,
Ever the growth, the rounding of the circle,
Ever the summit and the merge at last, (to surely start again,)
Eidolons! eidolons!

Ever the mutable,
Ever materials, changing, crumbling, re-cohering,
Ever the ateliers, the factories divine,
Issuing eidolons.

Lo, I or you,
Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown,
We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,
But really build eidolons.

The ostent evanescent,
The substance of an artist's mood or savan's studies long,
Or warrior's, martyr's, hero's toils,
To fashion his eidolon.

Of every human life,
(The units gather'd, posted, not a thought, emotion, deed, left out,)
The whole or large or small summ'd, added up,
In its eidolon.

The old, old urge,
Based on the ancient pinnacles, lo, newer, higher pinnacles,
From science and the modern still impell'd,
The old, old urge, eidolons.

The present now and here,
America's busy, teeming, intricate whirl,
Of aggregate and segregate for only thence releasing,
To-day's eidolons.

These with the past,
Of vanish'd lands, of all the reigns of kings across the sea,
Old conquerors, old campaigns, old sailors' voyages,
Joining eidolons.

Densities, growth, facades,
Strata of mountains, soils, rocks, giant trees,
Far-born, far-dying, living long, to leave,
Eidolons everlasting.

Exalte, rapt, ecstatic,
The visible but their womb of birth,
Of orbic tendencies to shape and shape and shape,
The mighty earth-eidolon.

All space, all time,
(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,
Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use,)
Fill'd with eidolons only.

The noiseless myriads,
The infinite oceans where the rivers empty,
The separate countless free identities, like eyesight,
The true realities, eidolons.

Not this the world,
Nor these the universes, they the universes,
Purport and end, ever the permanent life of life,
Eidolons, eidolons.

Beyond thy lectures learn'd professor,
Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope observer keen, beyond all mathematics,
Beyond the doctor's surgery, anatomy, beyond the chemist with his chemistry,
The entities of entities, eidolons.

Unfix'd yet fix'd,
Ever shall be, ever have been and are,
Sweeping the present to the infinite future,
Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons.

The prophet and the bard,
Shall yet maintain themselves, in higher stages yet,
Shall mediate to the Modern, to Democracy, interpret yet to them,
God and eidolons.

And thee my soul,
Joys, ceaseless exercises, exaltations,
Thy yearning amply fed at last, prepared to meet,
Thy mates, eidolons.

Thy body permanent,
The body lurking there within thy body,
The only purport of the form thou art, the real I myself,
An image, an eidolon.

Thy very songs not in thy songs,
No special strains to sing, none for itself,
But from the whole resulting, rising at last and floating,
A round full-orb'd eidolon."
 
The Bird

A nightingale was flying by the plain.
“Look, it’s the bird!” he exclaimed.

“And someone is chasing it, in vain.”

The wingéd creature past
Was carrying an hourglass.
The bird was evidently one
Of eternity’s livelier moments shunned,
One that had resisted or escaped capture, won.

A man was running after it, winded,
But the bird never landed—
It just flew higher and higher,
And then, finally, disappeared altogether.

“That was my momentary bird of time,”
Said the running man, with rhyme.
“One of eternity’s moments was within my grasp.
I had seized it, however, I then lapsed,
For I had then decided to wait
To view it at some later date,
But, in the meanwhile, it flew away!
That bird stole my time of day;
Now I am running after the moment
And trying to recapture it this instant.
But the bird never lands; it went!”

“Time flies!” she said to the bird chaser.
“It’s gone to never-never land, an eraser!
The moment is lost, unknown!
The bird is flown.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNF2uvQY20Q
 
Back
Top