Poetry for the Brain Previews

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Fragile Theatre

 

When night steps down

and wild flowers recede

into the blessed calm of oblivion

like a hand forsaking desire, -

pallid under the cracked moon

shot with hints of blue,

the world resembles a pastoral

alien to tension of light and gods

drunk with distillation of thunder.

 

Shakes of leaves abate,

the unattainable perfection of thought

relaxes into the breathless peace

of void of mind,

whose positivity consists

in the negation of the will.

 

Impartial to things of stone

losing their stoniness

in the black stringency of night,

images dwell in the untextured air

like replicas of reality,

and yet the real imitation

is reality,

not the images.

 

At the edge of night,

the fragile theatre of life

crumbles to dust of light

and dark,

embracing each other

like Chinese symbols

uncaged into being.

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A Fastidious Vision

 

Spurred by a fastidious vision,

I walk down the off-beat path of an urgent purpose

at the crossfire of light and shadow,

leaving the business of words behind me

under the hard stare of possibility

and a babel of papers.

 

The clock taps out its usual message

of death and loneliness, loneliness and death.

It doesn’t sound like a refrain any more.

It drums on the senses like a priest,

with the insistence of hope,

hands pining up

in the guise of a last-minute prayer.

 

The vision assures me there is more to life

than coffined petals and sealed eyes,

or crossed hands holding a gilt-edged Bible

with a nice bookmark,

more than jails of shapes and montage of suns.

Should I believe this unfrocked minister

 hinting at something grandiose

 poking forth meanings like buds,

 tolls released from form and sound?

 

 The clock keeps spitting out its composed rage

 over vowels of sorrow

 refusing to swell into fallacy of words,

 in and out of trance like a poet.

 It doesn’t believe in visions any more,

 or perhaps it just doesn’t care,

 oppressed by a sense of columns and tiredness,

 the irksome regularity of the Swiss dream.

 

 The rattling lid in the kitchen

 suggests with the ludicrous democracy of politicians

 that time is real after all.

 Harsh angles soften in the twilight,

 and the phone is off the hook.

 

 

Reconciliation [1]

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It is here,

where North and South

reconcile                   

like two old buddies,

that the sun’s bonus

becomes tangible

and the riddle

at the cell’s core

lies naked

as in Eden –

untouched

by Adam.

 

 

Good Old Diogenes

 

He knew the trick,

the good old philosopher

unbothered by life and its fuss,                                                                                                                                                                                                 the tub-dweller bankrupting heaven

with a few staves,

he knew the trick.

 

The light of the lamp failed,

the righteous man was not found,

yet among the shards of shattered dreams

he found a clue.

 

Do not seek any more,

do not seek in the kerb-and-gutter

prosaicness of life,

its pleasantly stupid lies

and chequered freedom.

 

Reason’s click-clack won’t help,

nor will sham lamps.

The spark in the mind is stronger

than the flash in the jar;

it unleashes images that don’t go out

at the flick of a finger,

pinprick visions and sounds that stick.

 

So he laid down the sword and the lamp

and found the blameless white

he had so long been looking for

among the poor stepping barefoot into reality,

not the gloved applause of robed ministers,

their ball-and-chain bugbears.

 

There were no dark flowers

or sieved smiles

in his new private Eden.

He slept with his face

to the East.

 

 

Okaying Life

 

The centre you seek,

that sparkling little thing

that unriddles the Idea,

won’t listen to reason’s blah blah blah,

the Faustian fustian whose touch

topples the fierce incantations of childhood’s songs

fluting from the tree-tops.

It won’t swamp the alchemist’s Cimmerian

chamber with sham suns.

 

It defies the ramparts of logic

with all its clashing confinements

blazing with unbelief and unhooked moons,

the savage scrutiny of the untiring mind

occasionally throwing in a chuckle

for good measure.

 

The centre shifts

through the meanders of the mind

like grapes beyond Tantalus’ grip,

yet the stratagems of the spirit close the circle

and slide the centre to its proper place,

okaying life like a Bourdelle’s figure.

 

The bees come booming

when the mechanical nightingale

stops its click-clack.

 

 

Gifted Girl

 

She sits in a corner

staring at the other children,

estranged from their rompish-roguish world

of games full of marrow-bones, cleavers

and mechanical nightingales.

 

She doesn’t understand why

they chase each other laughing and screaming,

their ruddy cheeks betraying health,

the quick of life beyond heaven’s slipstream.

 

She stares and doesn’t understand their simple joy

free from the millstone of circumstance -

she, the poor girl trapped in a red-light world

full of barbed-wire visions

and questions eliciting other questions

- or a shrug.

 

She has been deprived of her childhood

by her intellect, the curse of difference -

different in a world of average people

pursuing average goals.

 

She looks at the other children sweating with life

and goes back to the Fisher library

to sit in a corner behind a pile of philosophy books,

hidden from the curious eyes of University students

still believing in that strange thing

called life.

 

 

The Poets’ Return

 

Plato won.

We have been kicked out

of his Republic,

our Republic,

our country,

we, the spinoffs of the mind,

the dark disorders of the mood,

the useless poets.

 

We have been kicked out

because we knew too much,

because we were dangerous,

bad omens

full of muddy nostalgias

and a certain radiance

that frightened the leaders

reluctant to share their halo.

 

We have been kicked out

because we were harbingers of truth

refusing to tap

into the reservoir of conformity

to get our point across,

our genies unstoppered,

refusing to shut up,

like a choir of cicadas in summer.

 

From outside the walls of civilization,

under a muggy sun

crying for attention,

we plan our return

quietly,

a sense of victory

already clamping our hearts.

 

 

The Goal

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Is the ultimate goal not having a goal?

Look inside you, vagrant.

Goal-setting builds walls

that don’t chime with the heart and its vagaries,

it builds fences that don’t make good neighbours.

It is the brute dancing in the brain.

 

The old Greeks knew the truth.

Live by the day and don’t worry

about a future that might never come.

Carpe diem.

The compass of change

will point in the right direction

if only you have eyes to see and arms to swim

through and against the cross-currents of life.

 

The uncut pages of the book of life

will open to reveal the truth

in the middle of existence

when intellectual jugglery bounces off the ego

and relaxes into light.

 

 

Hypatia

 

She was beautiful.

She was smart.

She was ahead of her time.

She had made thinking

a way of life

and refused to stop questioning

when ordered to do so.

 

She had tried to reconcile enemies,

men and women,

different religions, different beliefs,

but dogmas are tough devils

with immense power over people

who are afraid of thinking.

 

Thinking can hurt,

it can turn your life upside down,

it can ruthlessly reveal

what you don’t want to know.

 

So the powerful ones (priests et al)

simply decided not to think,

stop their ears to the unsettling truth

and stick to what they had been taught

without questioning.

If the Book said so, it had to be true.

 

And so Hypatia was murdered

without even a trial.

The powerful ones had won,

non-thinking had been awarded

the golden sceptre with the cutting edge.

 

Hypatia died as a martyr.

Her legacy lives on

forever.

 

 

Who We Are

 

We believe our stories

are as tall as myths,

a pollination of opportunities

that turned into the most

beguiling flowers,

gorgonizing our applauding audiences.

 

We believe we are the song that sticks,

the humming that turns into a boom,

a concentration of purpose.

We believe we are alpha and omega,

this and that,

the stronghold of life,

 

but we are just ordinary

delusional mortals

who turn their backs

to the Truth.

 

 

Eternity

 

I had been looking

for eternity

in the sky,

but the daylight blinded me,

and at night I was distracted

by a monotonous moaning

that could have been

my own.

 

I had been looking

for eternity

in the sea,

but then someone shouted

“Shore!”,

and eternity was shattered

into nasty instants,

the ticking curse of the clock.

 

I had been looking

for eternity

in the mountains,

but then my mind kicked in

almost ferociously,

reminding me of shifts and drifts,

and once again I shrugged

in defeat.

 

Until one day,

a day that had started

like any other day,

eternity unexpectedly

came to me,

and we walked down

the path of light

hand in hand.

 

 

Distances

 

Distances can be strenuous,

the goal unattainable.

Carducci could not rest

by the cypresses and the sparrows

on his weary journey,

and driven by evil phantoms

from the heart’s black depths

he rushed on quickly

even if he heard them cry.

 

When the agonized goal

wickedly grows into utopia,

not even seven pairs of iron shoes

will take the weary pilgrim to it.

The object of desire will elude our grasp

like Tantalus’ succulent fruit

and at the same time increase our desire,

make it unbearable,

leave us grasping in the void,

cursed by the human condition,

the mockery of it all.

 

Rest by the cypresses,

pilgrim of life,

rest by the creek and the fresh-cut grass.

Enjoy simplicity here and now

rather than striving for gold

far, far away

in the cold realm of possibility,

where gold may just be

mud in the sun.

Enjoy the moment.

 

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Distances (2)

 

Distances can be soothing

when you finally

get rid of the undesirable

and all the nastiness of sorrow,

and Over ends

Tantalus’ eternal torment.

 

It takes courage

to finally recognize distance,

reject mocking memories

and the perpetuation of pain.

Pain can be a stubborn soldier.

 

Distances can be a relief,

but it takes courage to learn

not to look back

and to ignore the alluring

whispers of the wicked past.

 

Distances can be soothing,

a handshake with a future

that can still make sense,

the place where implausible

dreams

can still come true.

 

 

Paper Scraps

 

Plagued by dreams,

we keep going

without knowing why,

drifting into the future

like paper scraps.

 

Prodded by the heart’s whispers,

we long for the peace

we will never attain,

the juicy, succulent fruit

Tantalus is still

trying to seize.

 

Plagued by dreams

that don’t come true,

we keep going

trying to convince ourselves

that they will eventually comply

even if we know they won’t.

 

Maybe dreams

are just craving for attention

and don’t give a damn about us.

The mind is slowly swallowing us,

our arms still stretching

towards that damned fruit.

 

 

The Word

 

In the beginning was the Word,

but the Word encountered Man,

and Man turned the Word

into a sword

and wounded his own kind,

and if you asked him why

he would just shake his head

and turn away.

 

In the beginning was the Word,

but the Word was not enough for Man,

so he invented double meanings

to deceive his own kind

because friendship was not important to him,

only power and money,

money and power.

 

In the beginning was the Word,

but Man did not know

how to listen to the Word

and got confused,

and in his eternal wanderings

he lost everything,

and his feet hurt,

and his shoes wore out.

 

Surrounded by silence,

with nothing but poverty

and pain as companions,

Man sat down,

head tight between his hands,

and cried,

cried for many hours.

Then he fell asleep on a rock.

 

And when he woke up

he heard the Word again.

And the Word was clear.

And the Word was powerful.

 

And Man finally

understood

and walked up the hill

one last time.

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The Word (2)

 

In the beginning was the Word,

and the word became a sentence,

and the sentence became a paragraph,

and the paragraph became a page,

and the page became a book.

 

Then more and more books were printed,

and people argued as to who was right,

and confusion ensued,

and nobody understood anybody any more,

and the Word became undecipherable,

just a cute (or not so cute) hieroglyph.

And man hurt man,

and neither he nor others really

knew why.

 

And the Word shrunk back

to a seed,

but man did not water the seed,

and hope became just a word too,

but man

- again –

did not understand

 

and sank in the drought

of his own feelings,

and darkness reigned.

 

 

Clever Charade

 

Jewelled beauty,

the Moon sits on her velvet throne

impassible as an Egyptian queen,

flickering light on puzzled mortals,

untouched by their concerns.

 

Shiny bone or sickle,

her tough love can cure or kill –

where is your harp, Orpheus,

where is your canvas, Artemisia?

 

No antidote for your sting,

be it the wolf’s howl

or a whimsical Muse –

your tough love can cure or kill.

 

Is your unconcern pretension,

a clever charade,

or was Leopardi right?

I can’t hear you, Moon.

 

Magnificently silent like a Sphinx,

you go your way like everybody else,

head high among the clouds.

 

[1] Inspired by Miro’s Nord-Sud.

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