Everyone gathers to hear the poets preen
on the source of inspiration:
how the athletes ran into
glass cases;
how the singer overcame
dead man’s notes;
how the clown croaked
on a moped’s swerving laughter;
how the skin of truth
peeled from our bones
as the noise of the streets
drowned our jail cell march.
Huddled over coffee and secrets
we agree only those without
stand alone.
That their haikus
lack the character
of conviction.
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Moon or Sea
within the crest lies my devotion
to the endless tuggings of that tidal ocean;
though revelations roll
they’ll drown our grim atolls
and somewhere in the repetition
we’ll dance the curves of our transition—
just debris.
The old man glimpses ore
in earthen womb, the stricken glint
illuminates thought of youth’s gold score
which held him up as on a splint
until time bore that nothing more
than dreams existed in the dint
of nothing, wielded like a whore.
A labor of the heart
Is fickle for breaks time may yet impart;
Yet hearts all given up to labor
May find that flesh bears yet no flavor
Such that withered bones
Gilded on those rusted thrones
Reach evermore for other’s flames
To find the hearth within lies tamed.
No soul, within mortality leashed
Can ill afford to rush time’s feast.
Ours may yet be to wonder why,
But think too long and there you’ll lie.
Life’s purpose is the lurking feeling
That man must find his own life’s meaning.
It seems only appropriate for Labor Day…
“Heaven is blessed with perfect rest but the blessing of earth is toil.”
~Henry van Dyke
"The Bootmaker," image property of Rob Hanson.
Stooped celebration
Thread by thread
Stringing out the walkers
Life of leather—
Toiling at the standing grace
Of other souls.
Breaths ride the strands,
Divinity locked in rasping labor;
Noon passes stained glass
With a smile—
the hands know but the one song,
they cannot sing it with regret.
* My latest work for One Shoot Sunday. Based on the prompt from my interview this week with HDR photographer Rob Hanson. Be sure to check back in next week as well, for part two of the interview and more of Mr. Hanson’s lovely work.
Time for another quote of the week, and this time it’s a long one, boys and girls, but a good one. The quote comes from one D.H. Lawrence, and it’s got all the things people quirk an eyebrow for these days: life, work, sex…
D.H. Lawrence, image care of Wikimedia Commons.
As we live, we are transmitters of life.
And when we fail to transmit life, life fails to flow
through us.
That is part of the mystery of sex, it is a flow onwards,
Sexless people’ transmit nothing.
And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through the days.
Even if it is a woman making an apple dumpling, or a
man a stool,
if life goes into the pudding, good is the pudding
good is the stool,
content is the woman, with fresh life rippling in to her,
content is the man.
Give, and it shall be given unto you
is still the truth about life.
But giving life is not so easy.
It doesn’t mean handing it out to some mean fool, or letting
the living dead eat you up.
It means kindling the life-quality where it was not,
even if it’s only in the whiteness of a washed pocket-handkerchief.
~We Are Transmitters by D. H. Lawrence
Just a moment
If you would—
Never dread the dedications
Just a moment for a lifetime
Bubble “D” for destiny—
All suits and servility,
Master of the masterless
Hordes your own deception
Initial here to sign
This life into the hands
Of an angry world.
Not to worry—
You weren’t using it.
Hunched shoulders to the
Sun of my iniquity,
The voiceless being cries “arise!”
And my back bows
Like a farmer to his plow
Repetition of identified
Annihilation of character
Gradually weans the child-mind
To thoughts of nonexistence—
Sometimes I think I’m going insane,
Then I wake
And do it all again.
* My latest contribution to the wonderful One Shot Poetry Wednesdays! Once you’ve had a look, check out some of the other One Shot Poets as well– they’re a skilled bunch of poets, looking to form a community and support one another. Enjoy!
What is a man but
Flesh and bone gave breath;
Such mortal beast
To buck beneath
The reins of my imagination.
Cry out for me, ye bloodied hands
I am the stones arise on emerald hills
My flesh the graven gold
Of toiling back and grinding axe.
My blood be thee and thine
All rivers flow to mine
Call me God, for all I see is all I am
A fire in the earth
Tempered in the sea of sable madness
Yet to swim, yet to circumnavigate
My ambition, this thing of steel
No land might ever satisfy
The hunger of my soul.
All songs, they sing for me
Each note a dirge unto my memory.
Each breath, praise, for it is mine divine
Providence, they say, a god-in-man
Whoso could ever hope to say
I could not turn the tides.
I am the horse that rides,
I am the bolt that flies,
I am the child that cries,
He whom only fate defies.
Behold my majesty and yet despair
Of he who masters everyone
And nothing, and no one, still.
For the latest Monday Poetry Potluck!
The Waking Den 