Long Selfsame Poems
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—Premier Poets & Poor Poets—
They said the portal yielded unto all.
It yielded.
No herald challenged lineage or attire;
No statute, legible to mortal eyes,
Preferred one utterance before another.
Thus I believed that language, like the sun,
Acknowledged neither pedigree nor purse.
Then ordinance became horizon.
One poet spent the whole inheritance of breath,
His every constellation finding heaven,
His river consummating in the sea.
Another learnt the jurisprudence of
Curtailment, till omission counterfeited choice.
I buried not my words, but their leave to exist.
A father reached.
I forfeited the touch.
The tide arose.
I repossessed the wave.
Dawn entered.
I dismissed the sun.
The folio accepted all—
Save that whereby the whole became itself.
They praised restraint.
None elegised the harvest left unreaped.
Half of my poem survives only as the
future tense of grief.
Thereafter I discerned the selfsame order
Beyond the province of the written page.
Justice proclaimed one balance for us all;
Yet some departed carrying judgment home,
Whilst others bore procedure in its stead.
No canon sanctified the heavier purse.
It proved sufficient that accommodation
Should wear the countenance of equity.
So too with song.
Some never learn the sorrowful exactitude
Of amputating dawn
Until the fragment passes for the morn.
Even my unwritten stanzas have
learnt the etiquette of exclusion.
Therefore commend not these for austerity.
The truest cadence stands beyond your reading.
Some poets publish every word they write.
Some publish every word they are permitted.
The silence after my last line
knows the remainder by heart.
Was it just coincidence or the work of hidden powers
that Jefferson and John Adams passed on within few hours
on a very weighty date indeed , which was July the fourth,
a day of celebration uniting south and north,
and furthermore a jubilee that fell this selfsame year,
In eighteen twenty-six, a time of joy and cheer?
Monroe, fifth president in line, died on the selfsame date,
though in his case I have to say he was a few years late.
At length Tom Jefferson woke up from a state like sleep,
and felt the urge to wander off and grant himself a peep.
Would Charon, grave ferryman, let him cross the Stygian brook?
The sullen figure thereupon, with a bleak and doleful look,
warned the hopeful president he’d be in for a nasty shock
once Charon’s bark had landed him close to the Plymouth rock..
Though America had outlived wars and then a mighty slump,
he was less sure of its chances at the blast of the final trump.
It might therefore be wiser to rest up in heaven or hell
than on earth to witness the toll of the Liberty’ knell.
no tempest heralded the hour and no omen stained the summer sky.?the world diminished by devotion, gentle as the lowering tide.
i laid my former life before us in increments too small to grieve:?an unbraided thread, a train unboarded,?the sacred habit of devoted loving.
the kettle sang; I knew your footsteps.?the evening bent to let you in.?how quietly can a home sanctify the slow erasure of its witness?
i mistook it for peace, unaware it may wear the selfsame face.
beloved,
my castle narrows to your doorway.
the map remembers seas and mountains, yet every road returns to you.
if love is meant to widen rivers, why have mine forgotten how to run?
i wear your name like borrowed scripture:?holy on my tongue, though somewhere in the recitation i misplaced my own.
the garden keeps its faithful seasons;?only i have ceased to bloom.
the birds still gather on the rooftop, bearing songs I never learned.
there are dresses in my wardrobe who mourn the woman they once knew;?she roamed without consulting constellations, she belonged to no pursuit but truth.
now every future speaks in plural, every hymn begins with "we."
and though your hands have never bound me, there is no farther shore I think to seek.
you have been nothing but warmth, yet to rain on my parade.
it is merely that i woke one morning and found the walls had drifted inward,
not enough to bruise, only enough for my heartbeat to echo back as yours.
beloved,
should every altar ask for offerings?
should every vow require a voice?
i would choose you a thousand gentle times.
i only fear that should the heavens ask me
who it is that stands before them,
i shall answer with your name
before i remember mine.
I fought one piggish Titan and I won
As if that devious Leech existed not;
Sealing the very firy nose of his gun
With ball-like rags to sap every shot.
A long-lionized mogul of giant name
Slew my low fists by a magic stroke;
Vilest Judas glossing in pesty fame,
I his two-timing fang spookily broke.
I know not if such a scheming villain
Fickle arms dim for want of glut gain,
Ever shall by Time's rare marvel floor,
And ink selfsame serendipities more.
May the Highest Star your ochre clip,
And pelt plagues and fates your ship;
Until Hades her filthiest minion finds
Sulfurous frying betwixt fallen minds.
May your fiendish bow of foxy veneer
Snap mid-hunt as looms hugest deer,
And life's fave tooth turn fatal sore;
Your daintiest morsel tartest grow!
(buzzfeeding, kickstarting, needling darn noggin)
An effort to recall word, phrase,
musician... indigenous tribe...
most frustrating literary
endeavor to das scribe
aggravating enough to sub
bourbon spur teetotaler to imbibe
and/or nsync, whereby soul searching
devil's advocate demands bribe.
Lil brokeback Engelbert Humperdinck
(born Arnold George Dorsey) bent edict coercion
(think sexual mores)
scaring stripes off blushing zebra
bunched unencumbered vice pliable straw
aforementioned pablum admittedly "fake"
birthed within cerebral tenderloin
of impractical joker,
whereby fifty plus shades
of gray matter (mine)
chafed and rubbed raw
prevarication playfully did overdraw
and tax poetic license writ courtesy this paw
poor putz offal declension
sprouted within mum maw
noun tent to verb (bull eyes - red) to draw
flak, but merely to harmlessly entertain
so accept apologies (mine)
verses calling strong (lanced) arm of law.
I (garden variety poetaster) reckon fair game
media personalities grist for rumor mill, though lame
explanation given (funny first and surname)
adopted by supposed "finest middle-of-the-road
balladeers around," who co opted his stage name
from authentic Engelbert Humperdinck; selfsame
prodigy circa 1 September 1854 –
27 September 1921
German composer, who wrote, I gently exclaim
the opera Hansel and Gretel - a Grimm fairytale
actually frightful saga - read countless times
setting me boyhood imagination aflame
with mailer daemons, who haunted dreams
(mine) 'course in retrospect material tame
compared/contrasted with current pandemic
analogous as if mother Earth -
a metaphorical dame
experiencing long overdue reprieve, cuz shame
on *****sapiens belching pollutants
at any price to garner fortune and fame.
No apples hung from this old tree,
No cherries blushed in summer light.
Instead it bore a stranger crop,
A harvest of humanity.
Upon the limbs they gathered there,
The dreamers, drifters, kings, and poor,
Each balanced on a different branch,
Yet rooted in the selfsame core.
Some climbed toward the palest clouds,
Convinced the heavens waited near.
Some clung to bark with weary hands,
Held fast by memory and fear.
One stood alone upon the top,
A tiny silhouette of pride,
While others searched the tangled maze
Of pathways winding deep inside.
The tree said nothing as they moved,
It judged no stumble, fall, or flight.
It simply stretched its wooden arms
And held them through the day and night.
Then suddenly I understood
The secret hidden in its form:
The tree was time.
The people, us.
Still reaching through another storm.
Exegi monumentum aere perennius
Were that to be true,I would clearly be a genius
Like Quintus H. Flaccus who presented us with that trope
Inviting every poet to share that selfsame hope
Of clothing our visions in immortal verse
Which is what our poetry seeks to rehearse.
With words aplenty we endeavour to imitate
What Raphael in his bright art did delineate
When he transformed his beloved Fornarina
Into that sacred symbol Caeli Regina.
But how pale is our verbal imitation
Beside such delicate delineation.
Bacon with his spare aphoristic style
Readers of every age does beguile.
Keen and sharp his words pierce rapierwise
To etch his meanings tartly through our eyes.
His work will eternally live on
For us he remains a paragon.
Wildean wit is our next port of call
As with earnestness he does us enthrall
And with his epigrams makes us all smile
As he toys with words forever and awhile
His aesthetic makes language both sing and dance
Will we ever behold his like again perchance?
If only I could marry Raphaelesque immaculate conception
With the acute penetration of Baconian perception
To the gossamer lightness of Oscar's touch
Then would my poetry be improved much.
So it would be that every generation
Would consider my efforts truly Horatian.
IV
Give up to thy soul-----
Let it have its way-----
It is, I tell thee, God himself,
The selfsame One that rules the Whole,
Tho’ he speaks thro’ thee with a stifled voice,
And looks through thee, shorn of his beams.
But if thou listen to his voice,
If thou obey the royal thought,
It will grow clearer to thine ear,
More glorious to thine eye.
The clouds will burst that veil him now
And thou shalt see the Lord.
VI
This is the reason why thou dost recognize
Things now first revealed,
Because in thee resides
The Spirit that lives in all;
And thou canst learn the laws of nature
Because its author is latent in thy breast.
Through corridors of summer, on a garden path I walk,
Along the way of the roses, in the season of spice.
As beauty crowds the senses, making heartbeats rapid,
The bushes and rose trellises appear so well crafted.
Every conceivable color is represented here elegantly,
Like an explosion of diamonds had caused them to be!
Day in and day out, the glorious garden sings summer;
And birds trill to the beat of the selfsame drummer.
The enormous undertaking of one who was mad for roses,
People draw from far and near to see the reds and peach.
And vivid yellows oranges pinks golds greens and purple-
Such madness is catching, so the passion is spreading!
For What
Fight and struggle as one can,
From growing boy into a man,
All the while not knowing the plan,
This need for life escapes me.
Make a friend or make a foe,
‘Tis how we meet that causes so,
Should one come or the other go.
This need for life escapes me.
Work and worry and work some more,
In tiredness lay upon the floor,
With every muscle aching sore
This need for life escapes me.
Flesh and blood and bone we are.
Selfsame particles as a star,
With house and boat and clothes and car,
This need for life escapes me.
Reproduce into this world,
Another child boy or girl,
Their struggle now to unfurl,
This need for life escapes me.
Then love bursts upon the scene,
Fills my heart with hopes and dreams.
Now I’ll live by any means,
For this life now excites me.
__________