Poetry

“The Newborn Other in the Manger”

/ Brian / Leave a comment

There is someone in me who wants me dead,
some sadistic King Herod looking to behead
the newborn Other in the manger inside me.

It is unbearable to this King Self to be subordinate
to anyone, even someone within, and yet the King
Self cannot help but see all others as superior.

Everyone has something to kill for.
That one is more attractive, that one more spontaneous;
That one is kinder, that one gentler.

All are greater. The King is the least
of God’s doomed children, a lone creature,
a pitiful beast, destined to wander

like some grotesque Frankenstein
over the dividing mountains
with his unearthly self.

Walking with intent purpose to destroy
himself, King Herod, yet unable to bring forth
the Other while on this path of destruction.

Only by allowing Herod to be, it seems,
can the unseen one
find space to grow within.

There is now a vast chasm between Herod
and the newborn Herod wants dead,
but as the infant looks curiously into this void,

the space itself, and the violence
the space has created, borne of separation,
lessens. There remains always

a space, a space forever
large or small enough to ensure
the newborn in the manger keeps being born.

“More Than This I Cannot Say”

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I am not as I appear to be.
That something else I sense in you,
go towards that thing in me.

And if ever you wither in your solitude,
sense me there, withered with you.
I am never away, no matter your mood,
whether your heart sinks or your soul leaps.
Find strength in this.

And don’t worry, I will never reassure you
with: ‘you are not alone.’
I assure you I too am alone,
more alone than I can say.
I, with you,
am alone, except
when I am
with you.

And more than this I cannot say.

“What Am I But What Longs To Be”

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Is it you, the one
whose name rises softly to my lips,
who I am longing for?
You who are absent, while I am here.
If you were here with me, would I find
someone else to long for?

Today rain falls on the ground,
and from within my heart this longing rises,
like a river surging over its banks,
like an eagle soaring above its nest,
like a stone rolling from infinity to infinity.

Rain falls, stones roll, time moves on,
and all but this longing in me is still.
Yet: what am I
but what longs
to be?

Your name is like the gentle rhythm of rain,
falling, and my voice keeps speaking it,
though to speak it brings me pain.
Who are you, you who are
absent, whose name rises softly to my lips?
Are you the one I am longing for?

The rain comes down harder now,
not so gentle as before.
It is a day to love or to love
from a distance, which is to long.
No distance is far enough, no closeness is close
enough. There is no safety or rest or comfort

in distance, there is only this longing, this aching
unrest of being apart from, separated by
the river you once crossed to meet her.

“Where Are You From?”

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I can’t say.
Here, where I am now,
you see me, and I see you,
but no one sees
where I am from. I cannot see
myself here. I am not myself
here.

Who then, how then,
why, then, am I here?

Do you see the homeless man,
his hands shaking,
panhandling for change?
See him.
See that he and I
come from the same place.

Do you see the nameless wild-eyed cat
perched or trapped on the window sill,
certainly not in, and not quite out?
See her.
See that she and I
come from the same place.

I am not from here,
but I am here
to see
the man without a home,
to be
the cat without a name.

I come from the unknown
or from nowhere, or from somewhere
I’ll never know,
and I leave here as a great fool leaves,
I leave here like leaves of sage,
lit on fire to leave a circle
open, broken, only able to ache
its way whole.

I come from where I pass through
tomorrow,
where my lips pass from speech
to rapture.
Yesterday I walked like a camel.
Today my feet will not listen.
I have tried to walk in a straight line with them;
they can do nothing but whirl in circles.

I come from what I dance around,
what the wind and I create in our movement:
that’s what I’ve come to move into.
See how this creation creates the creator.

See, this body, it lives to leave,
so I’ve come here to move through here,
back to where I am from.
See me as I walk away,
moving forward, walking back.

See me as I pass the ones, so many,
who’ve forgotten where they come from,
that it is not here.
See each one.
See all these, and see me—
we come from the same place.

“After Death, The Great Silence”

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“To use words but rarely
Is to be natural.”
—Tao Te Ching, Book 1: XXIII

Some say: ‘Silence is death.’
Let these talkers live a day as I do,
My soul dying from lack of their death,
And they will refute themselves.

Dead, bloodless words
Aim in vain to compel me
To go against my nature and spirit
In untold ways throughout the day.

My nature is a fire set ablaze by silence,
A storm bombarding a calm house,
A discordant note, restless as wind,
Wrestling harmony. Words fail.

To hear the storm, to feel the fire,
To endure the discordant note,
I must stay silent and listen.
If silence is death,

Let that death revive my soul,
So when Death itself comes to claim me,
I will know already how to love
The great silence that comes after.

“Like A Widowed Man Am I”

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Like a recently widowed man
Remembering nights of unbearable passion,
Fighting the impulse to end it, unable to mend
The widening hole in his soul, so he goes out,
And the sight of couples in hand is a knife wound
The doctors can neither see nor heal,
For the doctors can heal only visible and outward wounds,
And thus the widowed man’s inward grief continues
On its gruesome path of self-destruction,
And as the fear takes told of him he takes a lover,
And as this new and unfaithful lover takes hold of her lover,
Her other lover, he shows up at her house,
Walks into her room, and sees her making love
With another man, and the pain of it commands him,
“Do something!” but he stands frozen
In the clutches of her infidelity, clutching
The carpeting floor and then gripping his own hair,
Ripping it out of his scalp, his suffering resistless,
His lover’s body and his dead wife’s body together consuming
His mind, in a fire to match his heart’s desperate fire
That will not die, and in agony he cries,
“Strike me down! Destroy me!” If only to go down
And out in tragic if futile glory, caught in the grip
Of forceful sorrow, imposing itself upon him
And tearing his fragile heart open
Like a lion tears open a gazelle—
Like a recently widowed man am I,
Though I am young and never married, and
There is no outward reason for me to feel such grief.
Like a widowed man am I.

“The Dark Eyes of a Diarist”

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I look intently at the black-and-white photograph
Taken almost one hundred years ago,
And her dark eyes, deep-set and alive with mystery,
Look back at me,
And I fall back in time and in love.

Even without opening the book, I know
She is a poet. I am drawn and entranced
By the delicacy of her countenance.

A flowered hat covers her forehead,
And so her eyes, dark like the ocean at night,
Lie under shadow. Her nose is small
Like the nose of a sylphlike creature, and it magnifies
The purity of her youthfulness. Her lips are closed,
But only just; they are not pursed tightly shut.
They are almost open, as if she was on the verge
Of opening them to speak, but decided instead
To remain silent.

There is an air of silence emanating from the writer
In the photograph. As her eyes look out at the photographer,
Her other self gazes inward, towards her own heart.
Looking out, she looks within, and the silver necklace hanging
Around her soft pale neck cannot be as precious
As the buried riches that wait to be discovered
Below.

I look up and listen.

The fan is still spinning,
The cars are still zooming up and down the street
On this warm Friday night in early July
In this coastal town in the Northeast,
Where I exist now whether by chance or by destiny.
I exist now, and here, but as I look down at the photograph,
As I am drawn down once again into her dark eyes,
I imagine myself one hundred years in the past,
Knowing this woman, and loving her,
Looking into each other’s eyes for hours in silence.
Being seen.

Seeing her for the unique individual who she was, and is,
Seeing even the parts of herself she hated,
But with the painful aid of self-awareness,
That ruthlessly incisive knife, could not help but see.
I love what you hate in yourself, I would have said,
I love the parts of you that you think you cannot love,
I love you in the depths of your unknowable silence,
And I love the sound of your voice
When it is strong with the energy of intense passion,
When it is heavy under the weight of melancholy and sorrow,
When it is anguished with the endless turmoil of your sensitive heart,
And when it is light and vibrant with a joy as expansive as your deep-set eyes.

I love you, diarist I will know only through your words
And this century-old photograph, and I would love you
Even if I never opened this book.
Through your words I will know and understand your heart and your mind,
But through your ancient eyes, I begin to understand your eternal soul,
I seek to understand it like I seek to understand my own,
Which I do not own and will never fully understand.
I see you, I hold you in mind, and I love you,
Dark-eyed woman I will never know.

“Agony”

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‘Agony’: a word with three syllables. The same number as ‘contentment.’
‘Derailleur’ has three syllables as well, as in the device on a bicycle,
And not someone or something that derails.
Agony, though, that’ll derail you. Agony is the great derailer.
However well you detail your agony,
Whether you analyze it precisely with scientific language
Or you adorn it poetically with lyrical verse,
The agony itself does not go away. Agony is patient, and agony is not kind,
And once it lodges in the space between heart and gut,
The agony will remain there, whether you are aware of it or not.
You do not need to be agonizing over something in particular
In order to feel it.
The love of your life does not need to leave you
In order to feel it.
You do not need to become an alcoholic, lose your job,
Have your wife cheat on you, and be convicted of a felony
In order to feel it, though all that certainly helps.
But you can know agony without any of these things occurring.
Agony can drill into your skull when you have a secure job and a loving wife,
And you step outside the oppressing house to cry out to the 3 a.m. silence,
‘Is a job and a wife all I am good for?
Is there not something else, more exceptional, that I was made to do?’
Agony can suffocate you when you are recognized
For your exceptional contributions to society,
And you mutter in the misery of your celebrity,
‘To be seen and recognized: No imaginable suffering is more worthy of dread.
Fleet-footed dancers of fate: Hand back to me my anonymity.’
Agony can pierce you when you are alone, an anonymous man in the wilderness
Overwhelmed by the beauty of a desert sunrise, and even in your awe the agony
Does not leave you but speaks to you with a voice cruel in its soundless torment,
‘Would you not be still more filled with awe, that much closer
To being entirely at peace with yourself and the world,
If you were seeing this beauty with a lover, with one who sees you?’
To feel agony is to feel utterly incomplete, fractured in some way
Or in more ways than it is possible to comprehend all at once,
And to be unable to accept this state.
Agony is the unrelenting want, need, for things to be different,
The need to change what you cannot bear to feel,
And what you feel you have no power to change.
Striving to write the truth means all too often hearing the sobs
And feeling the throbs of an agonized heart,
And writing with the feeling.
In just this way I wrote this poem.

“Nothin’ To Say”

/ Brian / 1 Comment

The day has ended, but the cars do not cease
I sit at this desk, wondrin’ if anyone is at peace
I feel so far away from the only one I ever knew
I sense tragedy ahead, but what else can I do?
I need to move on, I got nothin’ to say
To stay’s to wither, and let the soul decay

The heart’s a labyrinth, the mind’s a black hole
You can get trapped in either, lose sight of the whole
To capture the foal soon to grow into a magnificent steed
You’ve got to go after what you want, and know what you need
I need to move on, I got nothin’ to say
To stay’s to wither, and let the soul decay

There’s never enough time, and something is always lacking
You’re not hungry, you’re not cold, but loneliness is attacking
In the heat of the summer, everyone’s ravaged by lust
Like a self-propelled incinerator, about to combust
I’ve got to get outta here, I got nothin’ to say
To stay’s to wither, and let the soul decay

Must my skin be touched for my passion to manifest?
Can I not touch it within, where the heart finds its zest?
What can I do when this restlessness never leaves me?
What song can I sing when even singing grieves me?
All I can do is move on, I got nothin’ to say
To stay’s to wither, and let the soul decay

Let me find a quiet place where I can think and chop wood,
Where I can feel the peace of morning, and say that it is good,
Where the fires that now consume me, can lead me to the light,
Where the one thing I’ll never touch, calls to me through the night
I hear the call to move on, I know there’s nothin’ to say
To stay here’s to wither, and let the soul decay

“Before Dawn I Tremble”

/ Brian / 1 Comment

Face feels hollow, chest collapsed in
Lines appearing through my sallow skin
Who’d want to pass these traits to their next of kin?
Before dawn I tremble

Terror returns like wind with a shiver
Let it be or flee, float down the river
Each man carries a message to deliver
Mid-morning I crumble

A race paced for impending fall
Heard the breeze in the trees, heard the call
As a chill ran up my crooked spine
I asked her how she was, she just said, ‘fine.’

The sounds of sirens remote and aligned
With the ghostly whimpers I’ve left behind
What is the thing I was born to find?
At high noon I question

In times mindlessly mundane
Callous jesters feebly entertain
Thoughts of weeping to the falling rain
After noon I envision

The thunder rumbles on inside
No one can see, there’s nowhere to hide
The emptiness remains, within and around
Hidden weight takes you to the ground

Neither soft nor easy, often I writhe
Faces around me look unworried and blithe
The women are graceful, lovely and lithe
In the evening I envy

The one I thought was The One she knocked
On the door to tell me I wasn’t, I locked
The door to ease my heart, it balked
At midnight I cry out