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Best Poems Written by Jeff Rich

Below are the all-time best Jeff Rich poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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The Book of My Soul

“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst 
not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.” John ch 3. vs 8.

In a plain bound book
I tattoo white paper in blue
Then wrap myself in this shaman’s cloak
To fly with the eagle to a sky renewed.

I sing words salvaged from the press
In the intervals of Te Deum,
Stolen from its church,
Sung so only its melancholy shines.

Pärt turned to church and tradition
Amidst a century of horror,
And I turn to these conjured spirits
In a world polluted by podcast trash.

Inwardly, I turn – not without question.
The simplest words are sewn with elaborate doubt.
But into the image of inwardness
I dive deeper, and there find reasons to go on.

In the mandalas, strange mazes, of this book
I encircle, tame, and then hold fast
The sound of the blowing wind.

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Borderlands

I read a journalist’s quotes
Telling a new theory
That depression is good for you -
At least, good for the species.

All that rumination -
some scientist on the make
reckons in his latest piece –
Sets us free.

Most remarkable of all:
They are dogged, the depressed – 
he says, this scientist who I ain’t met.
They crack through with new ideas.

Well, nice theory, mate:
But you never asked me.
And if persistence is the same as being stuck,
I guess you’ve got me.

But depression gives me no 
evolutionary advantage for art.
It does not serve this artist’s work.
It has cursed me.

Thirty years of wandering now
- lost, not persisting - 
In the borderlands
Where reason and his twin fight.

Not knowing which is which
for days at a time.
Forgetting all the great plans
Laid but a fortnight ago.

Eternally disappointed.
Ever distrustful of the latest thought.
Each day of life needing
More simplicity -
A list of simple tasks – 
a run, good sleep, small sessions of writing.

Yes, literature and creation
Loom large to keep this life going.

But without my pills
Those creations would have sunk 
Under the weight of my own confusion.

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Dream Less Nights

Sealed in white cotton
Bathed in SSRIs
My nights have forgotten dream.
Notebooks stand at the ready each morning,
Uselessly covered in dust.
Once I filled them remorselessly
With remains of the strange woman,
The snake-haired temptress,
The ashen guardians walking in shadows.
Now, I know only that memories
Fail me each dawn.	
Each day, each night 
I wait, anticipating irruption.
Each morning I wake to just routine, 
just chores, just the next piece of reason.
Will the night play dead until I die?
Will the guests of my buried soul
Escape their early grave?
Am I condemned to an artless list?
No. No. And no again.
This blank page
Demands writing.
A rite of sacrifice must begin -
So from  this death
Dream spring again.

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Dream Life

I

In that small moment dream takes
to fly from memory and become
the nagging image of forgetfulness
the muted clank of psyche's hold
I can turn too well in bed
and learn the pains of comfort.

II

Whenever these rivers of the night
Dry hard into red scorched beds
Depression takes over my daily self
Like the avenging angel of time.
Scouring winds rub out the image
Leaving behind the carcase of summer.

III

Suppose thought gave way to dream.
Bridges would collapse. Our simple talk
Would become a spree of metaphor
Not even poets could afford.
Self would reign over all meaning
And again the tower would fall.

IV

But why do these solitary creations
reveal their meaning first to others
as if the dreaming tongue betrayed
its beloved solipsism? Eyes wrapped
in fabrics of truth and lies,
the dream asks its interlocutor: who?

V

A tree springs from my stomach.
Nebuchadnezzar's madness overcomes time and reason
to plant itself in my soil
to come alive again as if
all history is compressed by night
into an image none can forget.

VI

This drowning boat, this fish river,
this medusa returning as a bowl
of squirming snakes which I eat:
these dreams lie like abandoned gifts
but still share their secret being
with listeners to my night's echo.

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Gould's Humming

In the first aria he begins to hum.
This is the trace of true art and magic.
Ghostly. 
At one with the music but different and beyond. 
An hors-texte someone might say.
I ponder the enduring nature of this experience, 
this ghost of the artist, 
unbidden, improvised, unscored, not even beautiful, 
but it becomes what I listen for each time:
To search again for the traces of the dead in our lives.

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The Burning Archive I

At last the Grand Inquisitor said:
Let the archives burn.

The paper of history weighs us down.
Virtual memory will be the way from now.

A solitary voice rose in protest:
With our memories burn our hearts.

The Inquisitor acted swiftly:
He unleashed fires, controlled and savage,

Beneath the store houses,
Threw Molotov cocktails in libraries.

A billion pages of etched life
In minutes, memos, letters -

The familiar writing of everyday,
Few metaphors, many more lists.

Within a day, ten thousand years,
And more, gone, gone, gone.

The cord that held us to them,
A line of white ashen hearts.

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Monday Morning

Three strikes on the snooze button
Then unwilling, still dark within,
I step out to stretch my stiff back
and you tell me - time to wake up.

This day I might return to bed;
Other days I will trudge to work.
But the self is the task today:
Verse, rest, reflection, dreaming on

These shards that dwell within my mind,
The unbuilt felt magnificence,
Looming over the central square
Announcing their will to be built.