Sunday, March 3, 2019

Seven Things I Thought I Knew Fifteen Years Ago



.
(but first, whom is that a drawing of, or don’t we need to know?)
.
1
.
Everything a sentient human being does or is
depends on making manifest inchoate fizz.
.
And then unutterability transmutes into new mass:
with strange autonomy you hold the dark at bay –
see your hand is in the form, is part of it, at last –
and find your prints illuminate and mark the clay.
.
2
.
Go to Mass, observe the angel eyes around you
swerve, evade, retreat then peek out, press against
impenetrable corneas – like starving children
at a Christmas window, locked out, looking in.
.
Milton's Satan is the Midnight
Cowboy of the human soul:
He wants to taste each part of you,
he wants to eat you whole.
.
He wants you in his bed for pay,
wherein you hear him pant
he longs to give his heart away
(he thinks) to you, and can't.
.
3
.
To banish doubt we grew up learning
that we had to peel and parcel out
our feelings and our thoughts,
like oranges, into discrete
segmented parts – taught
that hearts were comprehensible
if we divided them syllabically with But’s.
.
But this is nuts.
.
The only worthwhile art is opening
and offering a hand. The central
alchemy of anything is And.
.
4
.
Sometimes you have to rhyme
and tap a healing meter,
beating out in careful time
your chaos. Find some neater
.
means of caging feeling
so it offers the illusion
of behaving. When I'm reeling
I hang onto form. Confusion
.
needs a bridge across its sea,
a span of words for order –
strict words make a milder me –
so I can cross the border.
.
5
.
I found the means to make
my fingers and my bow obey
my ear, and swoon,
by concentrating on a tune –
not disembodied black marks
.
on a sheet. To me, if you
can't find a way to play
a piece without consulting
something central in your heart –
to learn and ground technique
.
by making love – whatever you
create will be illimitably weak.
Run somewhere, not in place.
Give aimed and passionate
experience a shot at grace.
.
6
.
Soul squirms involuntarily:
I sit with it, forget it’s there –
it burrows down contrarily
then surfaces for air –
.
and prods me to enjoin
my heart to tell me what I think –
then floods from brain to groin
in answer – takes me to a brink
.
of unsuspected hearing, seeing
(when getting old is all I’ve done).
Then like some subterranean being
breaking through to sun
.
the odd thing worms up – blundering –
hellbent on being free –
and pops! – abruptly, wondering
how else to get to me.
.
7
.
I don't believe in innocence
as commonly portrayed -
the notion that we're all clean slates
at birth is retrograde to me:
we enter life uploaded
.
with a universe of stuff: genetic
baggage – temperaments, magnetic
pulls; splenetic – some of us;
and others - easy, light; we cart out
personalities full-blown –
.
fixed palettes offered up, whose
hues paint infancy in unmistakable
designs. By two, we're Machiavellian –
we learn to throw our weight around –
a tonic impudence intoxicated
.
by the thrill of saying "no."
Seems truer that our innocence
is earned: opposite to what we're told,
the task of growing up's to shed
inherited impediments that make us
.
sink back into infantile jaded ruts.
We work to learn to bring ourselves
a fresh sanguinity: to scrub out
stubborn stains, and find –
create – our real virginity.
.

No comments:

Post a Comment