A new poem: "`The Only Secret Thing"

 

 

The Only Secret Thing

 

“The Three Great Secret Things,” said John

Hoyer Updike, the great American man

of letters, double winner of the Pulitzer Prize

and avery accolade save the Nobel, “are sex,

religion, and art,” and he devoted his life

to exploring the mystery of the human condition

through his poetry and alter egos, protagonists

of all his stories and novels, young David Kern

of “Pigeon Feathers,” Harry Rabbit Angstrom

of his Rabbit tetralogy, and his Jewish writer

Henry Beck whom he had win the Nobel Prize

for Literature, and many less well-known

fictional characters; but “there is only the self

and God,” said the mystic teacher of the way

of what is to come, whose nativity history

assigned to Christmas Day, the only secret thing

that is you and me, the Self that we are all born

to be when we resolve the perennial mystery

of the Three Great Secret Things.

New poem: "My Rant for Today, December 17, 2022"

 

My Rant for Today, December 17, 2022

 

I feel totally useless when I’m not writing,

like I’m wasting my life away; but I’m not, really.

I found what I came into this world to find, and I’m

on bonus time now; but good God, it’s boring!

I bought the pearl of great price and fulfilled

my karmic promise, and I while my day away

when I’ve exhausted myself of my creative energy.

I hate myself when I’m not writing, stuck in the never

world of a finished book and new one to come; but

I have other books waiting to be edited that I keep

putting off, not that I want to, I can’t because

I procrastinate. God, I hate being a procrastinator!

And yet, I have two dozen books under my belt,

a beautiful mortgage-free home in Georgian Bay,

a woman whose love I betrayed in our past lifetime

together that I had to win back, which, thank God,

I did; so, why the whining? It’s always six of one

and half a dozen of the other, and whatever karma

we are born to redress, life continues to be an

individual journey of self-discovery; so, chin up

as they say, and get on with my day! And that’s

my rant for today, December 17, 2022.

 

 

New poem: "The Mystery of his Inner Light"

 

The Mystery of His Inner Light

 I witnessed a soul waking up tonight

to the mystery of his inner light, the way

of soul that will take him back home;

and what a joy it was for him to see

through the ultimate human mystery.

He talked like he was entranced, but

the trance he was in was the light within,

and he frowned in wonder that the way

out of the human predicament found

him in the redemptive power of his own

suffering; and by the look on his face,

it was obvious to me that he had been

cooked enough by life to be called to the

final surrender, which will take him the

rest of the way home when he relinquishes

his most precious possession to the divine

imperative of the light within.

An old poem: "The Guru of Angst"

 

 

The Guru of Angst

 

Dressed in black with short-cropped hair,

he milks the udder of despair. A poet,

singer, lover, and thief, he turns the sour

milk of life into pure gold and lives like

a lavish prince. With a haunting voice he sings

of the pain that people want to hear, confirming

their misery and robbing their anguished

soul of every hope of being free. He drinks

red wine for breakfast and beds groupies

because he can, and to ease his ennui he flees

to a secluded monastery to study the ancient

teaching of the selfless life. But when he’s

had his fill of the selfless life, he returns

to the scene with new poems to sing, and he

reaffirms once again his icon status as

the insightful guru of angst.

New poem: "The Seeker's Plight"

  

 

The Seeker’s Plight

 

It’s commendable to be a seeker;

in fact, one cannot give enough praise

for the courage it takes to look for

answers to life’s big questions— who

am I, and why? And does God exist?

And what about the self, is it real or an

ephemera? And life itself, is it meaningful

or absurd? Who can tell us but the seeker?

Life’s too complicated and demanding

for most people, and it takes all we have

just to make a decent living and raise

a proper family; but all the same, we all

wonder what this life is all about, and we

look to the seeker for answers. But who

are these seekers, these brave souls who

traverse the worlds of the mind in search

of the master key to the mystery? Who

are these intrepid seekers, if not the writers,

poets, and artists who dare to explore beyond

the ken of human thought for answers that

nourish our hungry soul. And when they

do share what they find, how discreet they

have to be with the bounty of their quest,

telling their truth slant for fear of upsetting

the proverbial cart. It really is commendable

to be a seeker, but when they do find what

they’re looking for, how valiant they have

to be to share it with the world

New poem: "A Sacred Place of Resolution"

 A Sacred Place of Resolution

 

So quiet, after so many years—nay,

lifetimes of questing for the answer

to why and who am I? No more anxiety,

no more fear of never knowing, the

answer came when I became the person

that I was born to be; but not without

all the pain and suffering resolving the

enantiodromiac dynamic of my own

becoming. “There is nothing but the self

and God,” said the mystic savior, shower

of the way of what is to come, master

storyteller of the sacred word, dying

daily to be born again—oh how blessed

it is to be where I am today, a sacred

place of resolution.

New poem: "Waiting for the Snow to Fly"

 

Waiting for the Snow to Fly

 

All the leaves have fallen,

and the trees are bare, another

season’s gone and soon it will

be winter again. The wood is cut

and neatly piled, ready to burn

in the cozy fire, with many new

books to read and another book

to write. I long for the first snow

fall to herald my season to create,

but I wonder which book is calling

to me: a new memoir to advance

the tale of the hero’s quest, more

stories to tell the tale, or new poems

to soothe the aching soul? It doesn’t

matter what my muse decides, the

winter is mine to enjoy, and I long

to see the first snow fly from a room

of my own in our lovely home

in beautiful Georgian Bay.

New poem: "The Poet's Puzzling Vision"

 

The Poet’s Puzzling Vision

 

The poet applied polysporin on the crusty scab

on his right hand to help the new skin grow,

and in one day, the dead scabby skin began to fall

away. The poet fell off his trail bike rushing

to answer the mobile phone on the coffee end table

on his front deck, which rested on top of his Saturday

Star and National Post newspapers and the book

he had written on his mentor Gurdjieff, and he scraped

the back of his writing hand on the asphalt driveway;

and as the poet waited for his morning coffee to brew

the day after he applied the polysporin on his hand,

he had a vision of being so distant from the world

that no one could approach him. The black scab

fell off his bruised hand and the new skin was shiny

and clean, and the poet’s puzzling vision revealed

itself to him: he saw himself in the world but no longer

of this world, which was the very heart and soul

of his puzzling poetry, and he felt strangely good

for not being understood, because he knew that when

the world was ready for what his poems said,

he most certainly would be read.

New poem: "A Thought too Big to Even Think"

 

A Thought too Big to Even Think

 

There is something that I want to say,

but I cannot say it; it will not come

out the way I want, and I must find

a way to get it right. It has to do with

life—everything has to do with life;

but what wants to come out is terrified

of dying. It’s true what they say, writers

write what we’re afraid to think, but

this thought’s too big to even think: life

is divine, it is perfect, and it naturally

manifests the will of its creator, and all

paths in life lead to the thought that there

is nothing but the self and God, and it

presses upon me with tired vengeance. I

try and try to get it out—one more poem,

one more story, one more novel; but it

forever eludes my precious muse,

and renders me silent.

New poem: "La Forza"

 

La Forza

 

“He’s a wreck,” they all said, surprising

them all because they thought he was so strong;

but the shock of her loss took la forza out of him,

and it would take him a long time to recover

from life’s cruel blow; —

 

He took her for granted, obtusely blind to the fear

of losing her, and when she got hit with a brain

bleed and not expected to live, he reeled in such pain

it brought him to his knees and final surrender, and

he let her go back to God, who is our home; —

 

To the wonder of all, she came back to him safe

and whole, as he had prayed to the healing saint from

his native land, crystalizing his anguish and pain

into the precious gem he would love, of all the words

he has ever written, to be remembered for—our life

is a journey through vanity to humility; and la forza

filled the hole in his chastened soul and made

him whole again, stronger than before.

New poem: "In the Wonder of God's Grandeur"

 

In the Wonder of God’s Grandeur

 

There’s a personal story in every story that tells

the real story of everyone’s story, and no two

stories are the same, but as dissimilar as every

story may be, none is stranger than the story

of prize-winning poet Stanley Kunitz.

 

At Harvard, where he earned his bachelor’s

and master’s degrees, by happy circumstance

he chanced upon the poem “God’s Grandeur”

in the library (it was the merciful law of divine

synchronicity calling him home), and he fell

into a life-long trance writing poetry.

 

His entire adult life, he wrote and taught poetry

to find his way through life, a blessing that came

to him “like rapture breaking on the mind,” a

habit dangerously seductive to the creative spirit

that transformed his individual experience

into the meaning of his existence; —

 

But not enough to satisfy the longing that Gerard

Manley Hopkins had awakened in his undergraduate

soul with a poem that inflicted him with an immortal

wound of wonder, and when he was asked by Charlie

Rose, “Are you a believer?”, the 10^th Poet Laureate

of the United States, 95-year-old Stanley Kunitz

reflected, and thoughtfully said:

 

“I’m a believer in the energy and value of the spirit,

but I have no deep conviction about the Godhead,

if there is one. I’m willing to be persuaded, but I’m

not ready yet to say yes,” and he went to his lonely

grave at the ripe old age of 100, still wrestling

in the wonder of God’s grandeur.

New poem: "The Promise of Literature"

 

The Promise of Literature

 

Literature is all about story, the more personal

the more satisfying the story, and it’s so easy to fall

in love with literature that it can become an obsessive

passion; but it’s not the stories of literature—

 

Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, Jane Ayre,

“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,”

the Rabbit Angstrom tetralogy, Dickinson’s “letter

to the world”— it’s the promise of literature that pulls

the inquiring mind deeper into literature; —

 

And story after story, the search continues for the sacred

piece of knowledge that will pull it all together; but

as obsessive seeker of story’s secret New Zealander short

story writer Katherine Mansfield came to see, as will

everyone obsessed with literature,

 

Literature is not enough to soothe soul’s longing for more

story. But where can one go to fulfill the promise of literature?

“Give me life,” said Sir John Falstaff, and as brilliant as he was,

even the immortal bard failed to resolve the mystery of story.

We live, we die, and “the rest is silence,” said Hamlet;

that’s the promise of literature.

New poem: "Such is the Way of Life"

 

Such Is the Way of Life

 

Nothing brings people closer together

more than a great disaster, be it a global pandemic

or catastrophic weather, —

 

And nothing will cause people to rise up and rebel

more than the suppression of their freedom

to be who and what they’re born to be, —

 

Just as nothing will teach us how to grow in love

more than suffering, whether it be self-created

or inflicted upon us; —

 

Nothing that is wrong, and nothing is right,

it is whatever the individual needs to further the

personal maturation process, —

 

And the time will come, as sure as 2 + 2 = 4, when

our world will be turned upside down to set us

right, for such is the way of life.

New poem: "A Pillow to Rest My Weary Head"

 

A Pillow to Rest my Weary Head

 

Where can I find a pillow

that will rest my weary head,

support all the thought’s I’ve had,

and let me fall into a blissful sleep?

 

I turned to Harold Bloom again, Professor

Emeritus at Yale, who died October 14, 2019

but did not believe in the afterlife, just

to stimulate my mind; —

 

His posthumous book, Take Arms Against a Sea

of Troubles: The Power of the Reader’s Mind Over

a Universe of Death, found immortality in the poet’s words,

but not in their immortal souls; —

 

And as exciting to read as his writing is, it only filled

my weary head with needless dread; and I turned to the author

of the popular When Bad Things Happen to Good People,

rabbi Harold Kushner, —

 

In the hope that his fourth book, To Life! Celebration Of Jewish

Being and Thinking, might give me a pillow to rest my head;

but the Jewish way of thinking proved much too busy

for the rest I badly needed; —

 

And I opened up Next Door to Heaven, by S. G. Thigpen,

a record of personal anecdotes told by the elderly folk of the Pearl

River, southern Mississippi region; but it, too, grew wearisome:

different, but same old, same old; —

 

So, I tried once more with libertarian commentator, the sagacious

George F. Will, a syndicated columnist I’ve read off and on for years,

with his collection One Man’s America; but, sadly, this brilliant

soul-crafter too did nothing to ease my mind; —

 

And I turned to C. G. Jung, whose thoughts always comforted me;

but how many times can I read Modern Man in Search of a Soul

and not get bored when I found my lost soul long ago?

I do so need a pillow to rest my weary head.

 

New poem: "A Crisis in Confidence"

 

A Crisis in Confidence

 “Reading you when I’m at work

discourages me terribly—that fucking

fluency!” wrote award-winning novelist

Philip Roth in a letter to his no-less

distinguished fellow author John Updike,

which resonated with me deeply. All

the same, I took a deep dive into his life,

the multiple works of John Hoyer Updike,

to overcome my life-long fear of reading

him, five months of steady reading, short

stories, novels, poetry, book reviews,

essays, travel pieces, lectures, personal

reflections, introductions, promotional

talks, interviews— “Does he have one

fucking thought that he hasn’t published?”

decried Roth; all of his prose, so clean

and tight with that New Yorker polish

where he began his prolific career under

the tutelage of some of the best editors

in the business; but so brilliant is his

writing and so copious his erudition, that

 it snuck up on me and caused a crisis

in confidence, and I had to put his writing

and my new book aside until my confidence,

more bruised than I wanted to admit, was

well enough to come back to me.

New poem: "This Need for More"

 

 

This Need for More

 Is it enough to fill one’s life

with the activities of daily living

to give one enough meaning

to go on living? And if not, how

much living does one have to

do to fill the hole in one’s soul

with wholeness? Must one endure

this need for more and leave

this world wanting? Another

round of golf, another cruise,

another fortune; how much 

life does one need to satisfy 

this need for more?

New poem: "The Curse of Every Writer's Genius"

  

The Curse of Every Writer’s Genius

 

“Don’t be afraid to be personal,

because the personal speaks to the universal,”

bid the imperative of his guiding principle,

his creative muse and love divine, and he wrote

stories on his life to give the mundane it’s

beautiful due; that’s what made him so popular,

so true. I read him in the morning, afternoon,

and evenings too; but the more I read him,

the more he entranced me. So, I asked my muse

and love divine, and what came to me was no

less of a mystery: his mind is his to explore,

as is yours; but the more he explored, the more

Mind he had to explore, and that’s the mystery

of his unplumbable genius. But is it not written

in ancient wisdom that Mind is the Great Slayer

of the Real? He wrote poetry, short stories,

novels, essays, and an idyllic stream of book

and art reviews to explore the existential limits

of his thinking; but his sinuous mind refused

to let go of it’s intimate hold on Ego, and that’s

the curse of every writer’s genius.

New poem: "It's Time to Start Over"

 

It’s Time to Start Over

 

When life becomes

an endless stream of platitudes,

you know you have stopped learning;

 

When an irascible person resents a good

person and complains out of petty

spite and it bothers you, you

have stopped loving;

 

When the books you read, and the movies,

documentaries, newspapers, and daily news

no longer speak to you, you have

outgrown yourself;

 

And it’s time to start over.

New poem: "Awesome Responsibility"

 Awesome Responsibility

 “Poetry does our thinking for us,”

said Zen poet, Jane Hirshfield;

but so do our belief systems think

for us. Poetry does our thinking

when do not know where to go,

always searching, searching for the

way of what is to come, the path

to our true self, and how difficult

it is to let go of our belief systems

that do our thinking for us too—

religion, politics, fashion. Not

that we don’t want more freedom;

but because we cannot bear the

awesome responsibility of thinking

for ourselves.