Eos laughs, lifted by her progeny,
Dusk receives; his hands don't reach
The wind blows; laugh for this
Grand Citations of The Still Sober
In Neared Radios of Fresh October
And one had in mind a Graham Greene
But - Lo! - Some Newly Discovered Being:
“Greene had a bit got sensational,
His rejection not intentional.
Next, Some Writer with Proverbial Gun
But-Sorry-Rubber Bullets of Fun
A Gordimer Admirer piteous
But to Nobel “Pharisee-Righteous”
And therefore, should not cross The Gate
At its Precincts continue to wait…
A Rock Musician surprised by it:
He hadn’t realized The Candle lit:
Said to have delayed Letter of Thanks,
Afraid of Enemies’ Armored Tanks!
But his had been Years of Passion
What he did poetically fashion.
Churchill for “Speeches that fought Hitler”
How dare you hold such effort littler?
Pleasantest Surprise: Albert Camus?
With Dagger-Point Sentences he slew;
Calculate it: at just Forty Four
Clarity had him pushed to The Fore…
Nobel Prizes don’t aim to surprise
But might keep coming as A Surprise!
Since we are all going to die
It is obvious that when and how does not matter
The years the years they whittle at you
The persons on whom I have bestowed some of my dearest love
Lie deep in their graves
But although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there
I have not made a coffin of my heart to it too
Sealing up forever my best affections
Deep affliction has but strengthened and refined them
I want the dead to be dead
Forever
And I want to be one of them
Eventually
Except that of course you cannot be one of them
You cannot be one of the dead
Because what has no existence can have no community
No community
My heart warms
Just thinking about it
Silence
Blackness
Aloneness
Peace
And all of it only a heartbeat away
My time will come
Since we are all going to die
It is obvious that when and how does not matter
The years the years they whittle at you
The persons on whom I have bestowed some of my dearest love
Lie deep in their graves
But although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there
I have not made a coffin of my heart to it too
Sealing up forever my best affections
Deep affliction has but strengthened and refined them
I want the dead to be dead
Forever
And I want to be one of them
Eventually
Except that of course you cannot be one of them
You cannot be one of the dead
Because what has no existence can have no community
No community
My heart warms
Just thinking about it
Silence
Blackness
Aloneness
Peace
And all of it only a heartbeat away
My time will come
Camus-Pieces
by Odin Roark
Might it be…
Lives are merely spent
Putting fragments of one’s picture
Into place?
Is it random
We seek as children
Blocks placed to spell a word
In order to garner a smile
From Dada
Mama?
We seek a fit
By adolescence
Specific images dominate
Opposite sex
Same sex
Extreme sports
Identity sports
The journey is complex
Foreboding midlife
Roars onto the puzzle board
The making sense
Of love
Career
Images
Enigmas
The jigsaw no longer entertains
Inordinate curves
Corners
Subtleties
Don’t want to fit
Yet
Innate persistence
Shuffles old with the new
Determinate-sense the mission
Just like we were asked to believe
Our pieces were made exclusively for us
After all
We’re told
The puzzle maker is omniscient
He designed it all
He created this image
In a likeness
So…
How come the last piece
Always remains a ***** to fit
Camus, I wonder,
Did you live your greatest wish?
Lucidity during ecstasy.
I have.
Ecstasy wears a blue muu-muu.
Opens her door to me,
Uninvited,
Bike sweaty,
Late
In the evening.
Hurry, the bugs will get in!
Ecstasy
Shows me a book.
Offers me a drink.
Tells me a story.
Hugs me when I leave.
Hurry, the bugs will get in!
Lucidity during ecstasy…
Comes with dog hair,
But no bugs,
And an ongoing critique of the city council,
That I would not have
Noticed,
If not for you,
Camus.
Turning, turning, burning, burning
in a Pharoah's dance
marking the rising, rising
of the Nile's advance.
Great Khan's mandating, mandating
heaven's acceptance.
Shamans and priests ritualizing, proselytizing
for imagined power's embrace.
Poets and musicians futilely divining
partial patterns from a trance.
Scientists and quacks hypothesizing
from an always limited sense.
Officious leaders ignoring, deploring
reliable evidence.
All of us hoping, wishing,agitating
for revealed intelligence,
thinking, believing, always conceiving
humanity's importance
in a world revolving, evolving
without a backward glance,
within a cosmos expanding, expanding
way beyond our insignificance.
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