NOT MY CIRCUS, NOT MY MONKEYS: Five new poems...

11

                                                 

 Out of the Ashes

The nastiest,

beastliest purgation

striking from God knows where,                                                         

combustible spark, cigarette butt,                                                        

lightning bolt from heaven—                                                        

eighty-eight thousand souls                                                          

displaced from safe haven,                                                         

forfeiting happy gain—                                                        

God knows when the purging will end                                           

and life reclaimed from the ashes                                                        

of their weary soul, but the spirit of wild                                                         

rose country cannot be broken, and                                                         

the Phoenix will rise again.                                                       

12

Mount Ulysses

Sunday, May 8, 2016, 8:51 A. M.

Mother’s Day, Penny hoisted her

book into the air and declared,

“Yea! Done!” That was her reaction

to the greatest novel of the 20^th Century,

Ulysses, by James Joyce, and when

asked what she thought of it,

she reflected, and said,

                                                          “Yea! Done!”        

  13

On the Menu Today

Coincidence or editorial play, I do not know,

three articles side by side in my Sunday Star;

in the middle, wedged in like a freshly dug grave,

90-year-old retired senator and his 40-year-old

male lover, 15-year affair now marital bliss. The

senator was married before to his great love

of 38 years, their children older than his lover

who filled the hole in his life when his wife died

of acute leukemia, the second great love of his

nonagenarian life; to the left of Harris and Matthew

an article on the Freegan Pony restaurant in Paris,

meals prepared from dumpster food from Rungis

international food market, and to the right of

Matthew and Harris an article on Laab dib,

a northern Thai specialty of raw blood, bile,

and herbs, an acquired taste—

“a meal to die for.”     

14

My Struggle

“What emerged from this

was myself,” wrote the voluble

author of My Struggle. “This was

what was me.” But how many pages

did it take the Norwegian writer to

see himself as his life had shaped him?

I know the story well. Book after book

after book my struggle told itself, but

never in full; until one day, I don’t

know when, Old Whore Life

showed her face, and I saw

that she was me!

15

Alchemy of the Self

The agony of my life was being

a stranger to myself, because the

person who was me was not the

person I wanted to be; so I broke

the mirror of my life and suffered

the pain of putting myself together

again into the person I was meant

to be; and now I no longer suffer

the agony of being a stranger to

myself, because I am me.

                                           

NOT MY CIRCUS, NOT MY MONKEYS: Five New Poems

6

Silver Lining

The longest journey

is the shortest way

when you don’t know

how to get there.

Why me, God? you shout,

and storm away in anger.

And then you die the little

death and thank God

for your suffering, and

you go the rest of the way

joyful in your blessing.

7

The Thirtieth Bird

I sipped my coffee, pondering,

wondering, wondering, wondering,

when all I really had to do

was to just wait and see.

Like a bird lighting on a tree,

an idea always comes to me;

and I gratefully study

the new bird in my tree.

A bird lighted this morning,

a bird I knew too well,

but the emotions it awakened

overcame me.

It takes grit and sensitivity

to tell this bird’s story,

but few poets have the courage

to bare their soul this way.

A million birds of every feather

went on a quest for their Creator;

only thirty completed the journey,

and looked into the Face of God.

The Face that these rare birds saw

was not what they expected,

and they rested and grew strong

in their great realization.

I took another sip of coffee,

and one more for good measure;

but before I could steel my courage,

my bird had flown away.

8

Wasteland of Misery

I’m stuck in a crack

between this world and that,

and I fear stepping into my life.

This happens every now and then

when I have things I don’t want to do,

and the longer I put them off the wider

the crack gets. I used to fool myself by

replacing one responsibility with another,

but the crack only got wider; and now I

bite the bullet and suffer the conflict

of not doing what I have to do and just

going out and doing it, and I pine my

life away in a wasteland of misery.

 9

                          

Tough Love

“Stop cheating,”

said her grandmother,

for the third or fourth time,

but Kelly May, who loved to win,

reacted like a spoiled child,

“Then I’m going to play by myself

and cheat all I want!” Three weeks

later, Kelly May called her grandmother,

bawling on the phone, “Grandma, the

cat ate my bird,” and grandma replied,

“Tough luck kid, that’s life.”

10

God Within

Flat, existential plane

of life and limb,

toiling, toiling, toiling

for profit unseen.

One day a voice speaks

from within:

“Go to the casino,”

and all the profit

that you win

goes to life and limb,

and the voice confirms

God within.

NOT MY CIRCUS, NOT MY MONKEYS: first five poems.

1

WHAT THE HELL IS

GOING ON OUT THERE?

Hierophants of the world,

what the hell is going on out there?

Your antennae are out of whack,

and all you report is madness,

madness, and more madness, or

am I too blind to see?

Hierophants of the world,

tell me the truth, has the world

gone mad or is this some new sanity

beyond my ability to process

and understand?

Hierophants of the world,

I’ve lost all faith in religion, science,

and politics, but not in the better nature

of my fellow man, so please tell me:

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON OUT THERE?

2

Interview with a Shaman

“Only ignorance                                            

denies these things,”

said the shaman to the head                                           

on the pole;

“I don’t need to believe,

I know.”

The path was difficult,

far away and deep, and

his guide a winged fantasy;

but archival wisdom and

serendipity saved the day,

and sanity prevailed.

“But surely, death is an end?”

the head on the pole refrained;

but with a twinkle in his eye,

the shaman replied: “Yes,

it is an end. “And there we

are not quite certain.”

And so it went…

3

Life

I

The pressure is off,

the path is no more;

the dandelion and the rose

breathe the same air, and

the path begins anew.

II

Ten thousand acorns

fell from the oak,

five took root

and one became

a tree.

4

Mary, Mary, Mary

There’s a line you cannot cross,

not for want of crossing it,

you dare not! — and the sacred mystery

remains sacred, all the food you crave

to feed your famished soul.

They flock to you like errant flies,

in the misery of their broken lives,

comforted by your sapient words because

they have no words of their own.

“I don’t know what a soul is, or even if

we have one.” — So profound, so profound!

And the merry-go-round goes round

and round the sacred mystery

of your famished soul.

                                

5

Birth of a Mystic

She did not want to,

she had to! —

the way was too steep

for the great unwashed,

and her daemon

pleaded, —

“Tease them, tease them!”

But the more she teased

them, the more they needed

what she could not give

them, —

Sorely, she dropped hints

and clues aplenty, but still

the world puzzled; —

And when she died,

oh so weary, oh so weary,

leaving a trail like Ariadne,

the world conceded

and the lady was reborn

a mystic.