
Its culmination, but a dream
This love is called agape
idolatry in all its forms
From here worship to the love of gods
between ritual and reality we are torn
We reach for the stars
and we call them by name
We hope to live among them
so we play ceremonial games
By following these rules
We create loopholes in our life
We can sin
again and again
and never pay the price
God of love
Shoots his arrows haplessly
He pierces hearts
and changes lives
casually and carelessly
His weapon is passion
His poison is desire
Inflaming and engulfing in a
never ending fire
The intensity of first love
has yet to be matched
The ecstasy of true love
can never be surpassed
Soul to soul
infatuation to adoration
token trust to complete surrender
From adolescence to the end of time
We search for a mate
and so begin
the cycle one more time.
ape to ape
The emotion of love
has evolved to prolong the race of man.
It has grown out of the instinct to survive
–beyond physical boundaries and
life threatening circumstance
to insure the longevity of the species
Other animals have claws and teeth
tough hide and fleetness.
We have love.
~88
The Poet’s Thoughts: There are to be five Idylls. Three are fully written, and two still need to be fleshed out and written. In the Idylls I take on the big ideas; the first is love. I draw on a lot of Greek mythology and thought and then add my own interpretations. I grew up looking at the stars and reading Greek mythology. In the Western world, those two are deeply intertwined and both appear threaded throughout my poetry.
~~~
April, the cruelest month
and systematically file it away
Delegate a month
a day
for sorrow
Our lives revolve around
the anniversaries of sadness
we have indelibly marked
on our memories
With what is our past written?
Blood and tears
a thousand sighs of pleasure, joy and agony
a thousand cries of anger and frustration
a thousand nights
a thousand days
twelve hours
or so
to each by the clock on the wall
But the mind’s timepiece
slows and hastens
haphazardly
sadistically
Agony is not a minute experience
and joy will not be prolonged
The distorted calendars
we keep inside our heads
are marked in blazing red
in a substance that will not disappear entirely
but will, with time, fade.
~89
The Poet’s Thoughts: April is my cruelest month for two reasons: it is my birth month and it is my daughter’s birth month. My 21st birthday was one of the worst days of my life. I was eight
months pregnant and the day ended with me being thrown around and my head being ground into the tiled porch by the alcoholic psychopath I was with. That particular memory I try to write over every year by celebrating myself. My daughter’s birthday is a different story. She was born and died in 1985. The anniversary of her death is October and that is always a hard day, but her birthday reminds me every year of how long I have been without her. Somehow, some years, that is just harder.
~~~
The pain of life
(A Calculus Poem)
The pain of life has worn me down
a grain of sand at a time
until the mountain of my convictions
is just a grassy knoll
A woman’s life is fraught with pain
replete with holes and wrought by man
wielding pins he draws the blood
until the life is drained
A drop of blood surrounds my life
A reddened haze, a murky cloud
Through the darkness pounding softly
a hammer sings a lullaby
and lulls me into sleep
~90
The Poet’s Thoughts: There are a number of calculus poems which have nothing whatsoever to do with calculus itself. They just happened to be written during my calculus classes. I left high
school at 15, took the California High School Proficiency Test at 16, and then made a half-assed attempt to go to college at 17. I ended up, instead, working at Jack-in-the-Box, drinking a lot of beer and smoking a fair amount of weed. Generally, I did a lot of self-destructive things and got to a very low place. In 1987, I started back to college. I started small by taking one class at a time, but by 1990, I had a goal. To achieve that goal, I had a lot of high school math to make up. It got to the point where the advanced math classes I needed were not available during the summer or at night. So I would go to calculus at 7 a.m. every morning, get to work at 8:30 a.m. (at a consulting firm by this time) and then, two nights a week, from 6 to 9:30 p.m. to a chemistry class. This is not to brag: I took five semesters of a three semester calculus class; it is just to let you know that I was really tired during the early ’90s. Somehow within that weariness I wrote a few poems that resonate with me still. I include The Pain of Life and Love as Zero.
~~~
Lila
before Adam’s clay form had dried
before Eve was carved out from his flesh
and taken from his side
Lila was in the tree of knowledge
as a seed and when it took root
her fingers were imprinted
on every piece of fruit
Lila crowed in the morning
and danced the sun midday
while the primordial couple struggled
with the words the voice had said
The trees were lush within the garden
with leaves that blocked the sun
and walls so high they hid the battle
that had just begun
in a frame of resined oak
the colors swirled a miasmic sea
to the tune the voice had spoke
And everything forbidden
flowed within the frame
All that was beyond their scope
was sacred and profane
They stood upon the shore
and watched the breaking waves
hand in hand, the voice’s words
still lingering, they turned away
her skin a honey hue
that shone like polished marble
in the faded light at residue
her eyes were hard like gleaming steel
her breasts were full and warm
her laughter’s edge would cut like ice
as she toyed with the woman’s form
Lila spinned an androgenous whirl
Man, woman, now both, now none
She takes from all a quality
and allegiance shares with none
it sparkled in the sand
The primal pair took breathless steps
to haltingly join in the dance
Then the voice fell like a curtain
with a wind that howled in pain
but Lila’s wings were gilted gold
glistening in that rain
She rose up, a bird in flight,
to dance above the moon
and the mortal couple wept and wailed
that the dance would end too soon
With a mighty blow the voice’s words
passed judgment in the storm
condemned them to the world outside
so bleak, the terror and the unknown
upon the garden wall
the crashing waves resounded
echoes of the voice’s whispered call
But in that ocean landscape
they could not find the key
to re-enter the fortress
and somehow be redeemed
and circled twice the globe
and ran the patterns to the core
of the swirling, sparkling code
The innocent two forgot the dance
as they mourned for their lost home
The only place in the cosmos
they were not free to go
The only place the voice existed
beyond the garden walls
and the only sound it made now
was a hollow lonely call
Repeating itself into eternity
beckoning and giving no clue
how to scale the mighty walls.
before the rest of the party arrived
Before the men and women all shook hands
and each one taken sides
Lila had dipped in the punch bowl
by the time the clock had struck eight
The people jealously averted their eyes
and morosely stared at their plates
~91
The Poet’s Thoughts: The first four lines of Lila pounded through my brain as I was watching a stark and somewhat eerie ballet of the same name. I misinterpreted the name as Lila with a long ‘i’ when it was supposed to be Lila with a long ‘e’. It was the Hindu idea of Lila that inspired the ballet but I got stuck in the garden of Eden as I watched the dancers and my interpretation of Lila was born. It was later that I found out about Lilith, Adam’s first wife. And, yes, I know, that’s really weird.
~~~
Love as Zero
lack of pain
and boundary
Love as the finite whole
in infinite parts
within which lies
the encompassing nothing
outreaching
endless
between which hides
inside the cracks
everything it is not
Love as unquestioned potential
all things
in their possibilities
and in their lack
zero
as whole
instead of nothing
~91
The Poet’s Thoughts: Another calculus poem. Love to me had always been painful, both physically and emotionally, and I felt it probably shouldn’t be that way, ideally. The concept of zero in calculus takes many forms and, when