Poetry

“The Dark Eyes of a Diarist”

/ Brian / Leave a comment

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”

/ Brian / Leave a comment

‘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

“Below Her, Another Self”

/ Brian / Leave a comment

Below her, there is another self, the self she searches for,
But will she ever learn to receive, to let the other open the door?
She searches for one to save the self she wishes she could leave
How long in her loveliness must she search ‘till soul and body cleave?

She and I, we once were one, but split apart like conjugal twins
Racked with the pain of Catholic guilt, she asked pardon for her sins
“Pardon me,” she spoke in French, “je pense you’ve lost your sense,
Forgive my greater intelligence, I’m sorry you are so dense.”

So that was that, the thing was done, I wept and laughed by turns
Though many years have come and gone, the sting of loss still burns
A friend told me he met her in Japan, working as a geisha
If he had the choice—Cat’s Claw or her—he said he’d choose the Acacia

Below her, there was another self, and that self eluded my reach
Like silence in the city, like a distant island from the rocky beach
She was like Nietzsche: she hated to follow, and she hated to lead
She could live with very little, for to be herself was her only need

If I cannot be with her, at least let me find her likeness
I’m nowhere near midlife, so why am I always in crisis?
By the cypress trees, I feel the breeze touch me, like a long-lost soul
Touches a lover, desperate to feel the sensation of being whole

In a time of silence and waiting, I waited for a moment too long
Since my body lacked clear weakness, I was praised for being strong
In the darkest moment of the shortest day, I awoke to the nature of light
By the bark of the oak tree in the shade, I decided to rest for the night

I long to be at ease with another, the way I used to be with her
Alone together, we remained ourselves, neither needing to defer
Below her, there was another self, and such beauty is far above words
I hope she is free, free and unfettered, that her spirit soars with the birds

“Hard Hot Summer Blues”

/ Brian / 1 Comment

Well, I’ve been walkin’ down the city street
July heat’s been makin’ me sweat
I’ve been walkin’ down the city street
July heat’s been makin’ me sweat
Tryin’ not to look at a single face
Every glance bears the hint of a threat

The hard heat of the sidewalk
It burns the soles of your shoes
Yeah, the hard heat of the city
It burns the soles of your shoes
And the hole in my soul man it’s burnin’
From these hard hot summer blues

Well, I’m walkin’ down the city street
Lookin’ for a place to dance
Well, I’m walkin’ in the merciless city
Just lookin’ for a place to dance
Longing for a mystic gypsy woman
To put me in a walking trance

The nights are torrid and lonesome
And the passion is never real
Nights so torrid and lonesome
And the passion never real
I’ve got a need to dance my way
Through these feelings as strong as steel

Walkin’ down the city street
Burnin’ the soles of my shoes
I’m walkin’ down the city street
Holes in the soles of my shoes
My soul is hungry, a hungry ghost
With these hard hot summer blues

“The Day The Music Ends”

/ Brian / Leave a comment

I dance to move into the stillness,
To lose the thing that must be lost,
To choose to live, to thrust my self
To where trust counts for more than cost.

I caught something, I catch it each time
I dance in time to music that never ends.
Yet why when silence returns, do I fall apart?
Why when the body stops moving, does the heart
Fill with sorrow and grief, with the tragic jewels
That adorn the dances of sages and magic fools?

The heart fills with what always returns,
And until I am empty, will I always yearn?
In the silence of this movement, lend me a moment,
Turn to me, Lady of rhythmic serenity,
Lend me the key to see into your heart,
The gift that shatters what it later mends,
The soul still dancing when the music ends.

I dance to admit the gift, and to give it,
To give the thing that gripped is lost,
To live at last, be stripped of self,
Throw off that whip at any cost.

I held something, I hold it each time
I loosen my hold on what holds me under,
On thunder road I forget myself and stagger,
I trip over my feet, and a man with a dagger
Wakes me at sunrise on solsbury hill;
I look into his eyes as he goes in for the kill.

I have no things, and I have no home,
And until I find her, I will always roam
In this movement of silence, through the noise with the word:
I will write, and I will dance; my voice will be heard.
I will search for the key to see into her heart,
The gift that shatters what it later mends,
The soul still dancing when the music ends.

I dance to turn my sorrows inside out,
To earn the thing that has always been lost,
To learn how to move within my doubt,
Spin closer to the thing that has no cost.

I felt something, I feel it each time
The music takes my feet away from me.
I cannot say what it is that keeps touching me,
Or why I move like some demon is clutching me,
Or why when I return to the silence of my room,
I hurt like a man dragged by his hair into her tomb.

I will die someday, and who knows if these words will endure?
They may stay unread, unsung and obscure,
But the unsung can still sing, can still dance in their way,
So when the last hour strikes, on the day before decay,
I pray I have found the key to see into her heart,
I pray the gift that had shattered has healed, and transcends
And that the soul still dances the day the music ends.

“Take From Me This Need to Flee”

/ Brian / Leave a comment

When she looks away from me, my heart’s encased in ice
The moment her gaze returns to me, I’d take her worst advice
This dependence forms a bed of coals, it walls me off from her
Take from me this need to flee, take me back to how we were

The fire within, it needs a way out, and so I write these words
To find the way, I need to be led, at least that’s what I’ve heard
I’ve got no new solution, all my problems, they always recur
Take from me this need to flee, take me back to how we were

I always see her from across the street, walking the other way
She always pretends I don’t exist, to my undying dismay
Today I swore I would enjoy my time, the entire day was a blur
Take from me this need to flee, take me back to how we were

Far I traveled to a lonely isle, to leave all my troubles behind
All I found was a mermaid lover to caress me then rob me blind
My friends they tell me to take it easy, and man I wish that could occur
Take from me this need to flee, take me back to how we were

She’s never so alone, she told me, as when she’s out in a crowd
Her soul is pure, she rarely speaks; to be true she cannot be loud
I think of her from time to time, and can feel my heartstrings stir
Take from me this need to flee, take me back to how we were

The thirst for liquor is a thirst for spirit, this I know deep in my blood
On thorn-filled trails I’ve tripped and stumbled till my face was caked with mud
I’ve drank away my share of days, like Kerouac at Big Sur
Take from me this need to flee, take me back to how we were

Other people: that’s hell, wrote a man skilled at expressing his own
On many days I agree with him, and wish I were miles from a phone
But I know I’m slipping when I start thinking that others can only deter
Take from me this need to flee, take me back to how we were

Well, the snare was set, and I walked in, thinking the trap a boon
The one I love she loves another, though in my arms she once did swoon
I’ve walked the sands, I’ve been to sea, every shore falls short of her
Take from me this need to flee, take me back to how we were

“Tears in the Desert”

/ Brian / Leave a comment

I.

Tears in the desert, streaming down
To fall onto the dry ground,
They will not be dried.
I could lie and say they are a fluke,
Because they come from nowhere
I can perceive. How can I see
What exists within me, invisibly?

When I smile, I seem to smile, or so it seems.
When I weep, my tears are real, or so I believe.
The cold day threatening rain feels more real
Than the cloudless day of sunshine in springtime.
I could try to align my tears
With the gnarled juniper bark I lean my back against.
I could try to make sense of what I sense,
What I know, is true, but knowing its truth is enough.
Not understanding, but knowing, is all I know.

The wind comes and makes me shiver,
It moves the leaves on the tree above me.
I sit below and look to the cloud to know
Myself, and in knowing myself I bestow
This knowledge, this tragic knowledge,
Onto the dry ground.
I close my eyes and feel the wind.

How to feel the reality of each day, in each moment?
How to be in touch with what is real,
And in that touch, in that moment of connection,
To feel oneself to be no less real
Than what one touches?
How to touch what cannot be touched?
To feel what cannot be seen?

I look up at night to the stars,
I cannot touch their cold magnificence,
I lie firmly on the sandy desert ground
And wonder about the limits of sound and vision.
I wonder about limits as I wander
Through a land without them.
I wonder about fragility as I ride
Through a land both fragile and hostile.
I wonder and I wander and I ride,
Searching for what is and what has always been,
What has never been limited by its mystery.

This morning the sun shines again in the desert,
The tears of the sky fell last night,
And the dry desert ground received the gift:
The gift of rain like the difficult gift of pain,
Difficult to receive, difficult to perceive
As a gift, creating a rift
Between who we are and who we wish to be.
Do we wish to be beyond
What forces us to go within?
Above what we need to see
The confusing forces that lie below?

II.

Some days I walk the streets of nameless towns,
Not remembering how I got there,
And all I see is unacknowledged suffering,
Clouds of pain that hover just beyond awareness.
The clouds can neither recede to admit
The light of the sun nor open to relinquish their gift,
Until they are seen, acknowledged, even praised.

In my mind’s eye, I raise my hands to the sky
To give praise to the clouds that give me pain,
To the storm in my soul that unsettles me,
Forces me to seek shelter.
Can I find that shelter or must it find me?
Even when I find it, or find what I think it could be,
Temporarily, I find myself unsatisfied still, still
Aching without just cause, bereft
Of any physical, visible wound.

As the day warms up, the stillness intensifies.
The clouds remain motionless,
The storm has passed, for now.
Warmth again overtakes the world.
There is no wind to force me to shiver,
No dark clouds I am forced to struggle with of against.
There is only my bare chest facing the sun,
And the force of this pen pressing into this page, a force
Necessary and indispensable or irrelevant and excessive?
Is it a force to be reckoned with and recognized for,
Or is like the force of an axe that only divides further?
The divided wood, split into thin pieces,
Helps to start the fire, but once the fire begins to blaze
The split wood gives off less warmth than wood undivided.

Voices drift up from below to the hill I sit and write on.
Divided souls seeking unity, the voices
Beckon me to come off the hill, come closer.
Why is it that the closer I come to the drifting voices,
The more divided I feel? What is it in me
That divides me when I am with others?
What in me stays in one piece as the axe
Continues without sympathy to split me
Into uneven pieces?
Is it clear now why I cannot rest?

The sky is mainly clear now, the clouds have drifted
To the outskirts of my vision. We made a decision,
They tell me, after we came to believe.
‘Yes, I believe,’ someone once said,
‘Help my unbelief.’ Yes, I grieve, I told her,
And as I look to the clarity of the sky
I can find no reason as to why.
Someone has died, and someone still lives,
And I grieve for all the gifts I will never give.
Yes, I grieve. Help me grieve more deeply.

III.

As I again wandered through the town
That had lost its name in some long-ago season
Of forgetting, I felt like I was exploring a deep well.
I did not know where the bottom was,
Or what spring the water came from.
I asked one woman whose steely blue eyes
I mistook for the source of the water
I was searching for, to help me be honest.
She looked at me and her eyes turned raven black,
And she turned her back on me
And disappeared without a word.
I did not know if she meant for me to follow her,
Or if she meant anything at all.
I made a decision to follow her,
Believing I might come through her to the spring,
By following the eyes that had turned on me.

After a long and fruitless day,
I returned to the now-empty town square,
And a raven in a cottonwood tree
Did not fly away upon my arrival.
There were no clouds or stars in the sky,
And the moon had not yet risen.
I did not understand why the town had no streetlights,
And the one car I saw went through the broken stoplight
Without headlights. I wondered how the driver could see.

Distraught with my failure to find the source
Of the water, weak with thirst, angry at myself
For losing the track of the woman whose eyes
Had turned to black, I lay on my back
And stared at the blackness of night. I looked up,
Hoping to find there what the day had kept from me.
A well this deep could not be empty.
Was my search preemptive? Did I begin too early?
Darkness enveloped me, and I lost my faith
That the moon would rise and shine
Its light on this strange and nameless town.

As I left, I wondered about the raven
In the cottonwood tree, and why the tree
Was so far from water.
I left to walk with my thirst,
At times finding small pools filled with rain water,
But never finding flowing water, never water
I could follow to discover its source.
I returned to the desert, to a land
Where what I was searching for was scarce.
I hoped to find gratitude amidst scarcity,
Fulfillment within the emptiness.
I ceased my endless struggle, for a moment,
And sat, and waited, and listened,

The wind seemed to be battling the stillness,
Or else its intensity was an integral part of that stillness.
All the human power in the world
Could never stop the spring wind,
And all the human knowledge and technology
Could never penetrate the mystery
At the heart of the stillness.

I heard a plane soaring overhead,
Heard a car on some nearby road,
Heard a human whistling to a dog,
And decided it was time to move on. I packed
What I had left of what I no longer called my own
Into a rucksack, and set off south,
Towards what I hoped was a deeper emptiness,
A more real and alive nothingness,
A richer poverty.

I walked with my thirst, and often it seemed
To walk ahead of me. Led by my thirst,
I walked south, the sun beating on my back
Like a silent drum. I walked south, and felt my feet
On the ground beneath me; I walked south,
Seeking the source that would give meaning to my thirst.
When I grew weary with walking, I sat
For a day or a week, and waited,
Immobile like a rock in the sand.
When I grew weary with sitting I began again
To walk, awaiting the day when neither
Walking not sitting would exhaust me,
The day when what I sought would find me.

This day I sit, and wait, and listen
For the silence that no one can speak of.
What can I speak that can point
To what cannot be spoken?

This day I sit, and wait, and listen
For the sound that will still my speechless cries.
How long must I wait before
What I cry for finds me at peace?

This day I sit, and wait, and listen
In the space between silence and sound,
Between tears and laughter,
Between hatred and love.

If I listen for long enough in that space,
Will I find what I am searching for?
If I listen in the space between self and other,
And hear what I am searching for in that space,
Will I have come to the end of my journey
Or the beginning of my true pilgrimage.

This day I sit, and wait, and listen.
I close my eyes and feel the wind.

“Mystery wraps me in her infinite embrace”

/ Brian / Leave a comment

I sit and I wait for the music to enter
I listen to the water; my eyes are closed, and the sun is on me
I search in the day for the unnamable center
And the night comes like the dawn, singing

The song never ends, but few are the ears that hear it
I came upon a blind beggar, and saw that he was rich
The path ahead is unclear, but why should I fear it?
I climbed out of the hole and found the world my niche

Mystery wraps me in her infinite embrace
While what I can’t see traps me, and I search for an escape
I’ve been discovered by Beauty
I’ve been loved by the sea
Those who talk to me of my duty
I see they are far from free

The pond glints and sparkles in the morning sun
In its daily dance with the clouds where neither wins out
I will write till the last, I will never be done
I will write with my longing, I will write with my doubt

Mystery wraps me in her infinite embrace
While what is in me traps me, as I search for some place
To be discovered by Beauty
To love the ever-restless sea
To find what is my unique duty
To sing and dance till I am free

Let the current take me home, wherever that may be
Let the Light rising over the mountains rise also from in me
Let the road remain open; let the words stay unspoken
Let the souls that seek to be whole admit that they are broken

I prayed without words; in my rhythmic waiting I prayed
I waited like a deep pond waits, reflecting the world above
Below me was the unseen, what in me I had not made
I looked to the pond and my gaze fell upon a rising dove

And I felt Mystery wrap me in her infinite embrace
As I remembered a strange young woman with an ancient face
Who had not discovered her own Beauty
But yet she found it in the sea
Who felt that to fall was her duty
But only by rising could she be set free

The stillness disintegrated, rose away like the mist
I saw the reflection but the Truth itself was evasive
She disappeared like a gypsy with a brief, fleeting kiss
My heart moaned to the moon, its sorrow pervasive

And I let mystery wrap me in her infinite embrace
And I felt floods of compassion for the human race
Whose cruel ugly acts conceal a deeper Beauty
Yet ugly or beautiful, it all returns to the sea
A race loving to talk of patriotism and duty
Talking so much of freedom, so never breaking free

Time plays its symphony on the timelessly still waters
And like an athlete I strengthen myself, determined not to be destroyed
But Time is ruthless, it has seen fall many martyrs
Fall like pebbles, like raindrops, made vague by fog, into the void

The vogue now is to ignore rather than face the implacable
But I must face it, I must taste for myself what kills and what gives life
With my pen and my restless feet, I will track the intractable
I will cut through to the eternal with this finite ink knife

And I will love Mystery as she wraps me in her infinite embrace
I will let her trap me, if only to see her face
I will walk with purpose towards Beauty
I will ebb and flow with the sea
To discern the true from the false will be my duty
To see through Time’s unending march, and so from it break free