poems on love and hate

by mike cleven
(2000-2001)

Blood and Thunder - I

Your love was sweet; by as much your anger burns;
but the maker of this truth was you, not me
and you chose this path you now walk down
our betrayals you shaped with your own strong hands

You hunt for me as I were still your easy prey
still your victim held at close quarters, bound with fists and love,
exploited for my very heart as well as gold and blood;
and so you earned who you are now, your broken name, your broken face

I did not make this mask, or your truth; they are both your own
and self-made from long years of anger and un-love
yet within our secret world you sheltered me with your strong arms:
You know you have felt the truth of yourself, warm against my love

Now, I hear you hunt and lurk
with the noise and fury of an animal
searching for its prey
or calling to a vanished mate

as so I was, and am; and for this you damn me
and hunt me in the night, and howl with rage
when drunken courage has made you man
and given voice to your fear of shame

Yet I till remember the calm twinkle in your eyes:
the clarity of your love for me spoken like a word
the close heat of your leg against mine
confident even in mixed company

You loved me then, and despite your hate
I know you love me now; I wish I were
what you needed me to be, but I am not;
you need someone mightier, more loving

who has the strength to tame your self-hatred
who has the bravery and command
to make you heed, and teach you that love is not a crime
that being who you are more than a choice; it is your destiny

*************

Blood & Thunder - II

I was your friend, and true in my love
and you in your own way yours, brutal as your loving was...
When your hate has finally burned from you
remember my vanished embraces as a salve
upon your long-wounded heart, that what goodness
you found in me may heal you yet.

Blood and thunder you were made of
but liquor boiled within your veins
from a life of curse and cursing; 
your soul burned with pain you needed share.
There will be no peace for you from hate;
only in finding love within yourself
will your angers cease to rage.

You have fought with everyone but yourself
and the bottle.  You have fought against your own truth
and resisted what you have known forever but held in secret;
that who you are is not who you have been forced to be,
that you know what it is that would make you happy;
but from which you would die of shame.

I was not man enough for you, but not as a fighter;
you needed a man who would dare the dangers of your love,
who could take the risk of your madness, be willing
to hold you in your long night of shame, and reckoning,
to have the strength to hold you down, to keep you
from the harm you might do yourself, and who would have
no fear of the harm you might do them, or they you.

I remember the sweet scent of your skin
your gentle words of reassurance
and warming touch, the calm that lay with us

I mourn your loss, and all you might have been.
Silence falls between us.  My life is changed, and yours.
Do you hear the call of eternity, where we'd sworn our trust?

I saw your destiny burning, ready to flower
as if from a fount of iron and thick-bound cane
sweet with humour and ripe with love

Beauty molded from the evil world itself
strong and bright yet locked in passion's forces
lost amid life's possibility and fevered dream.

Yet affection lay between us like a sea
our distant selves basking in the waters
of warm enjoyment and secret touch.

There was more to us than physicality,
despite all the dark psssions of love and fight;
healing and caress; acceptance and domination.

I held your inner heart, and you mine
we spoke that none should teach us a mistrust.
I knew your pain, and felt it well.

Violence is golden; your words so witty-made
that turned loving wrastle into malevolence
and intimacy into dangerous, silent greed.

My world is changed, a sweet friendship
lost to me forevermore.  I knew your soul
and wonder for your fate and end.

Our song is lost, a silence fallen
upon the rooms of our long-held love
Heal me my heart, that I may hear no more of this.

Oaths

You asked me once if we would always be friends,
would I always be with you forever, and love you thus;
I said that as always we shall talk we should, 
nd as long as you hold me as you did then,
and you agreed.  I should have said more
as I lay within your muscle-scented velvet arms
and learned to care for you, to cleave to your chest
and heart, to listen to your blood a-drum,
to know that my embrace could bring you peace
and keep you from your angers and your despite.
.
Long ago our promise of speech was lost
our embrace became too dear to hold or dare
- for you or me, I wonder?  I was shy of you,
and needn't have been, I think....
Could I have taught you the love you did not dare;
did I have the strength?  Did I love you enough
or was I always misled by guile or base need
or put off by fear of violence and insanity?
 

It's only hard love I have for you
and a hard love you were to have
and hold and know; Bitter is love
turned to untrust and unmade.

The Hardest Love

With wings that had never flown
a heart that would only beat
upon the victims of its love;
hands that needed tenderness
but taught in pure violence;
a tongue cast in cherished gold
and jaw wrought in classic steel -
a fine mouth spewing only filth and greed
seeking silence as a cure for truth

I felt your majesty flex its weight upon my body,
spread its mighty flesh upon my loving neck
covering my head in sweaty love;
the scent of mighty arms and thighs
wrapped around my injured throat
I felt your strong-thewed legs
grasp my own with terror, and with love .
.
I knew your doom, and still dared love your grim strength
and cruel-hewed face, and bore the burden of your blows.
 

"Violence is golden"
 you would sing to me with charm
smiling at your evil poetry, truer-telling than you knew
(and peace is for whores and harlots
           from whose own masters they would steal)

Denial is the path of fools; to confess our love
and hold me close to your angel's breast
would have saved you from our end
made long a life in glory and good fortune
that only a demon, or one self-damned,
could see fit to mock, or self-destroy

It's only hard love I have for you
and a hard love you were to have
and hold and know
 

[santorini late april 00)    

Bad Advice

the bitter price
of bad advice
is what we've come to know

You'd cheated me
and beaten me
and we will both reap what you have sown

Know the price
of bad advice
and learn to know it well

A broken name;
well-earned ill-fame -
that's all there is to tell

Except for this -
a bitter kiss
a shadow of our fond embrace

Gladiator

Beauty is of light and dark, form made from spirit
and dreamt into being upon our fear and our desire;
our reverence for the moments that make up life,
our beings a vessel for truths said; or truth shapen
in the command of song or flesh or artistry;
for by such mean even gods can be men
and find their weakness in a mortal coil,
forgetting eternity's possibility, or price.

Fame is its own glory, and wealth its lust;
but not all fame is so wrought or sought, nor are all men so-made
true to their own possibilities, blind to their own seed
and to the dimensions of what could be made of life.
Since ancient times man has wrought in war and fought in sport
Since long before mind became time and words spun tale,
power and prosperity have flourished and failed
and yet - what stands of all this fate?

A statue here, a poem there,
names wrought on arch and trophy
or given to a babe to bless a life;
others found amid their dust
unknown even after death
but eternal still; these found fame, and perpetuity
aside kings and princes and the honoured dead
and the world's great wealth and science;
for what but common memory, sought or no,
is what is left to left when its final act is done?

Some nameless temple long blast to dust
will stand longer than most humanity
Some nameless form will seem a god
cut from the living stone, or painted on a wall
or blasted into bronze through fire
or laid in crops like earth-witch spells..
All this once was so, and yet will be, and is not a dream;
such men walked and breathed, fit name the gods
but born from among the common loam.

Something that lived and made;
a time unmade but still alive,
a face, a leg, an eye, a nose, a hand
or just a name carved on a painted jug
as a gift to a lover long-forgotten by ages since;
even when such have lost their names
their beauty still survives, their mark upon time endures;
more is left of them than many a mere king or wealthy house.

Those today who cannot see their own shape, and refuse to understand their destiny;
this is the essence of our age's greatest failing; greatness lost to irrelevance
overwhelmed by surface and by style and role and rot; unwilling to renew, to re-make
our time, our race*, our form and shape, to undertake the forging of a human greatness
fit to last eternity, but instead are blind to their own nature, and to this age.

Form and spirit, fire and blood
of these are crafted death and destiny
and molded living life and love
and given shape to last eternity
 

*used here only to mean species; to have to point this out a foible of the age's tensions and fallen tongues.

The Fear Within a Smile

Sometimes a moment's friendship is enough
those I met for an afternoon, or a few chance meetings
as much as any other I have loved or lost;
The knowledge that there is love in the world
that good people abound unlooked for
amid all the sordid quagmire of the modern age
is a balm amid a turbulent life
a warm eye amidst the cold and raging storm
of daily inhumanity, and unknowing's scorn

A smile given unasked for, an effort to build acquaintance
from someone just met; who came to me unlooked-for;
such faces are as dear to me as any
and will always be remembered as friends that were
rather than simply those that might have been,
and any are better than all of those others
that really never were at all

A moment's love is sometimes all there is
an eternity of simple bliss, untainted
by our daily lives and sundry histories,
a possibility the remains yet unfurled
a fondness that can endure forever
a welcome remeeting that might someday come
 

Amid all these lost but unforgotten smiles
perhaps the shape of a face yet unmet
the memory of a dream still being shaped
or a presage of life and lives yet to come
a happiness with friends that might have been, or might still;
yet for all of this one moment still has more value
than a glimpse of a future, or a shape from the past;
each face, each smile, each set of friendly eyes
as much in value as the longest love
and strong and vast as the darkest desire

So this I leave for you, who only smiled at me
and sought to make a friend; an appreciation
for your kindness, and kind intent; my life is dark
and my history has caught up with me
in the place where our acquaintance began
and was to so continue; and so it must end
for my own life must go on alive
without the brightness of your smile
to make a small happiness in my day
and your willingness to become my friend
as I would have been friend to you, and true;
another time, perhaps, when times are good
and speech - and life - is easier for me
I would not burden you with
the darkness of my times

Discretion is the better part of valour
and so I bid adieu until a time for living
and distance with the strife that hastens me away
I wish you well , and pray that fate leads us together again

Last day on Thira

Restless without heed; blown by the caldera's cold
winds that will not relent; howling in the wires
that carry only silence back from far-off friends

I begin my journey back to the doom of home
my morning low liquored by brown-thick wines
famed as the gift of the god of madness and of lust

You were the last of men to me; the one
I wished hold truer than all others known;
caught in my own contrivances, errors made
trying to mend a broken bond of trust

I heard your call; a summmoning
from one who has right
to claim the rule of master over me;
half a world of exile would melt for me
to service at your side.

Others would call me slave, or fool;
I claim myself a servant to a destiny
and would surrender all I am or own to that, and thee.

From this ancient place, blasted long ago
by a throat of fire and thick blankets of flame-hot dust
I return to a land of suffocating darkness
and endless rain, and ever-glooming fate.

Can I be washed of this?  Do I worry without need?
Will I live to tell my tale, and serve with thee?
The wine's sweetness stings my starving throat
I want the rest that other men call peace

I am not a simple man, nor is mine a simple doom
My fate is cloaked in mystery, foreknowledge is great peril...
I know you have no mercy, and that silence is a judgement beyond all words.
To no other would I give my life, to end it or let it go or keep
it close unto your heart.

If my time is come, then make it swift and sweet;
for I would love no other after thee.

***************

Other poets seek to wrought words to purpose
aesthetics a mere surface; the soul transmuted to mere art.

I am cursed with my fluxom heart, and a wanton tongue
and weakness beyond all estimate
for those stronger but less knowing
than myself

The strength of lies, and of command;
I have heard their call, and too often spoken my case out of turn
and now to bitter end.

From a world-wandered journey that had no goal
but refuge from a broken land, I am left to the burden
of a homeward flight, into the very maw of death

No chance left to expound my case;
no judgement that will hear out my voice.
No curse that will spare the knife
of righteousness, nor any blessing left
that would not carve a deeper wound
 

(Akrotiri, Santorini, late april 00)

Moments

A smile given unasked for, an effort to build acquaintance
from someone just met; such faces are as dear to me as any
and will always be remembered as friends that were
rather than simply those that might have been,
and any are better than all of those others
that really never were at all

A moment's love is sometimes all there is
an eternity of simple bliss, untainted
by our daily lives and sundry histories,
a possibility the remains yet unfurled
a fondness that can endure forever
a welcome remeeting that might someday come

Amid all these lost but unforgotten smiles
perhaps the shape of a face yet unmet
the memory of a dream still being shaped
or a presage of life and lives yet to come
a happiness with friends that might have been, or might still;
yet for all of this one moment still has more value
than a glimpse of a future, or a shape from the past;
each face, each smile, each set of friendly eyes
as much in value as the longest love
and strong and vast as the darkest desire

So this I leave for you, who only smiled at me
and sought to make a friend; an appreciation
for your kindness, and kind intent; my life is dark
and my history has caught up with me
in the place where our acquaintance began
and was to so continue; and so it must end
for my own life must go on alive
without the brightness of your smile
to make a small happiness in my day
and your seeming willingness to become my friend
as I would have been friend to you, and true;
another time, perhaps, when times are good
and speech - and life - is easier for me
nI would not burd.en you with
the darkness of my times

Discretion is the better part of valour
and so I bid adieu until a time for living
and distance with the strife that hastens me away
I wish you well , and pray that fate leads us together again

Dancer

We felt each other dance
felt a shared rhythm
in our limbs;
knew each other
as if a mirror
stood between our eyes

I wanted nothing more
from you than that -
for love built and grown
on learning
and on laughter
not on lust or longing;
for friendship built in honour
that makes the other strong
that makes the dance
more fervent
a unity

Confusion and others' envy
and the novelty for both of us
made us fear to speak
and intruded on our dance
taught you fear my face
and worry at my intent;
I ached at loss
of a new friend
newly unmade
and tried too hard
to breach the new distance
that others threw between us
and seemed a fool
or a madman
or bent on a heedless seduction
when innocence is in truth my way

Your robust youth
will last you long;
stay with the dance
and learn to trust
those who let the music move them
into ecstasy and unity;
ignore words made of jealousy
and spite for others' good fortune
or who resent your beauty, or my respect,
or the simple benefits of friendly love

I would be your friend;
if the world leads us together again
remember my words; more rememeber
my eyes, and the way I moved with you
remember the way you felt for me;
I know your face was built on truth
and that your heart was free of guile

A few hours
was all our friendship was
without words
only through the dance
and with strong looks
that came from you
into me, and back:
stronger than your arms
or god-wrought shoulders
stronger than the beat
that brought our paths together

I despaired to see
your promise fade
I wish you well
and bid you keep your heart
open and unburdened;
surrender to the dance
let it free your mind;
revel in the rhythm's glory;
it will take you far.......

Homage to Delphi

In Delphi, seeking to revive the oracle, to banish silence from the altar of the god of song.  I always come here in the search for truth, for the way of life and light, for sake of freedom and endurance, and the strength that lies in wisdom, the beauty that lies within the heart.

Of course it's modern Greece, and roars with noise and revving bikes and cheap-sounding radio.  The serenity of the sacred ground broken by the guzzle of diesel and gasoline motors, and chattering claques of tgourists - for whom the past is but a postcard, a thing long cut-off from their lives, somewhere to have been, not a holy place to be revered, not a majesty and eminence to be celebrated and exalted.  Instead, a casual defilement by banality, and racuous with the machineries of tastelessness.....

But this is mighty Delphi, and transcends all mankind's boorish ways.  The potency of its god undiminished, still waiting for the songs of tribute, the hekatombs of youthful flesh and vibrant flowers brought to the sun-blessed altar that still defies the vagrant bastardy of time in all its stolid majesty, the oracle's crypt is yet secret from the prying truths of science.  This is sacred ground - know this, ye mortals who tread its path and understand these words.  This temple of the earth and sun is still alive, its secrets unsurrendered to the mob, or the cold hard eye of science and its blasphemies of mercenary truth.

For this is mighty Delphi, the navel of the world, the pith and pit of the glory of this ancient land.  Nowhere else on earth has seen such light singing on such holy stones.  Nowhere else has heard the god-wrought lyre, or known such an oracle to sing.  Even Alexander could not resist this spell, even the Romans were called to heed its glory.

The time to sing has come, the song awaits its voice, the dancee its drum.......
 

Taverna Omphalos, Delphi
July 2, 2000
 

Homage to Delos

For what else could Death be
than the completion of Life itself? -
Knowledge of the One:
the release from Experience into Knowing?

Unbound, unbeing, unmade;
Eternity become visible
all Sorrow merged to Joy
all Days into Endless Light

Who can quail at this
but those who live Untruth?
Who can fear the Light
that illuminates all Unknown?

Faliro/Mykonos July 7/8/00

*******

On Delos
 

Delos waits, serene and bright
an island blessed by Light
a vessel made to hold the Day
and wrought of Song and Prophecy

where Shadow cannot rule
and Suffering's forbade:
a blue-girt, sunlit Jewel
of love and splendour made
 

Mykonos July 8/00

Anti-Delphi

A solar storm, the sun's black heart, weather swirling;
the sky dark and northwest-wet, half-lit by distant glare
shining off the troubled sea..... shadows draw across the world;
nature's full powers over us greater than any we yet conceive.....
 

I remember my own plague in Athens,
my pride before the gods I sought to name and honour,
my own strivings caught up within the weavings of the world,
my long stomach-ill the manifestation of foreknowledge
my dried-up song caught up in desperation, and in vanity.
A sacrifice was taken when none was right-proferred; too much was asked.....
....only one boon could be grant that night, not two......
I invoked four great gods, and left no sacrifice, yet thought of one; immoderation
the gods know their due, and took it;
I can only stand before them humbled
and seek to serve them more......

Leaving Greece by air, I saw Delphi in grey shade at one last glance, far below,
across the Gulf of Corinth's steel-grey waters
before the airworld lapsed to cloud, and sleep
and the perils of the road, somehow known already;
this journey Delphi I did not visit,  my songs went unplayed beneath the Pheidreades;
I poured no wine there, nor in Athens where the god's altar is defiled
by night and human squalor and danger;
I heard the call of peril and did not understand; heard its call but did not listen;
and then walked through what I had known, foreseen; now I must heal my regrets,
and salve my heart, and faith, for to remember feeling that knowledge;
I must build life now, not live out a mis-taken past that cannot be undone;
only the future can be made, and the present lived;
our history is immutable, possible only to out-do, and overcome, not un-make.
The very gods offered me reprieve, I see it now,
and sought open my self-blinded eyes;
it was my own doing, free-willed, and so ever-done.....

New Westminster, March 16, 2001

Time and Death

Time and death and love and fate; what else is there that maps us out
with such brutal force and fervent faith?  Is there a path upon which
there are no such stones?  Is there a tree that does not bear this fruit?

On some nights we are alone; utterly, without reprieve, even if a dearest one has just bid us adieu.
On some nights we are in grief; utterly, without reprieve, even if a dearest one has given us embrace.
On some nights we are dried-up, without reprieve, even if a dearest one has left us filled with comfort.