Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Blessed Are

I like the show Once Upon a Time.  I've said quite a few times that I think the show is incredibly cheesy.  I mean, it has unabashedly embraced (and I mean embraced, like a frickin' boa constrictor) the themes of fate, love conquers all, love is the strongest magic, and good always wins.  So you can enjoy this show a lot only if you blithely shrug your shoulders and accept that it's a ridiculously feel-good, predictable trip.

That said, I think I need to take a break from my cynicism--just a little one, for just a short while. :)  People need these kinds of shows, books, songs, etc., sometimes.  Sometimes they're not just guilty pleasures.  Sometimes something else breaks through.  Tonight, when I was watching Once Upon a Time, I realized that a lot of my cynicism comes from people spouting these maxims about fate and love conquering all not because they believe them, but because they think it's what they're supposed to believe, or they're trying to trick themselves into strength, into making others believe they are strong.  So much lying to ourselves--so much lying to others to make us seem like the strong people the world expects us to be.  And I get fed up, and I just want to tell all these people--just admit that you are broken.  Just admit it and then shoot for reassembly--somehow.  Just admit you don't have it all together yet.

But the maxims--themselves--are essentially true.  Or I think I believe that again anyway.  At the heart of clichés, of course, is truth--we just have to ferret it out of the words and phrases that have become so commonplace and automatic as to seem absolutely meaningless.  Is there fate?  I don't know for sure.  But I think so.  There are some things in my life that have been so brilliant and so improbable and so right all at once that they make it hard for me to believe that they weren't simply meant to be from the beginning.  And love conquers all?  Good always wins?  Yes.  Yes, that is most certainly true.  Just not necessarily on this earth.  Probably not on this earth.  I've been forgetting that.  Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . . Blessed are those who mourn . . . .

There is such beauty here on earth.  Find it.  Feel it as much as you can.  Create it--if you can.  But know there is something more.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Poems ~ Bleh

I have poem phases and non-poem phases.  (That was a brilliant distinction, wasn't it?)  Right now--non-poem.  And I'm also in one of those all-too-frequent "my writing sucks" phases, but for some reason I felt like sending a couple poems into the world tonight.  These are three I don't hate too much.

Older ones:


The Remains (A Moment
In Italy)

I see them in your eyes,
those women’s words,
ash of the hourglass
sifting away the minutes
before you’ll leave again.
Who knew the obsidian
of your sharp gaze
had splintered so long ago
even your laugh cracked
beneath the shards?

I knew.

You didn’t have
to tell me.

The dark of your secrets
has always shimmered,
opaque at the heart
of your dormant throat.
And your chest houses
the scattered remains
of pottery, clay figures,
torn papyrus scrolls
of ancient story.

I have always known
your age.

You don’t have
to speak it.

I have seen the graves,
loved each hollowed shape.
I will lay my flowers,
sing my prayers,
if only to calm your
sleep tonight, ease
the burden of your
breathing.

 

Midnight in Berlin

There is snow on the street in Berlin
You have left me in the snow on the street
You are gazing up at windows
Let me in

It is cold in the street in Berlin
And you stand with no cloak in the street
Let me wrap my shawl about your shoulders
Turn—

It is raw in the street in Berlin
You could go numb in the white of the street
What ghosts have you seen sleeping here
Whose face

There is a child in the street in Berlin
There is a child where you stood in the street
Let me wrap my arms about his shoulders
Come—

There is snow on the street in Berlin
You have left me in the snow on the street
I am gazing up at windows
Let me in



Newer one:


Rome

Someday the fall of Rome will fill my soul
and with every crumble of the Colosseum I will feel you,
I’ll feel the stone
trembling
beneath your chest,
and I’ll try to rebuild, reroot each brick
until you convince me,
until I really believe,
that you like the crashing better
and the roaring
through your heaving body.

And we’ll be gods
in tattered remnants
watching the gladiators fight in jagged amphitheaters
collapsing all around us.
And we’ll laugh
because we aren’t fighting—
because we are ready to fall
soul in soul
within a nation—

We are empires
We are nothing
And I feel you here
with me
and I will fall
and fall
and fall
and fall—
with you—

When the stones of Rome are crashing down around me—
I want to be with you.