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These
poems are more than somewhat private in nature; they are very intimate
and are records, or expurgations, of some of the strongest feelings I
have known - both good and bad. These are not love poems, nor are
they revenge poems, nor are they for the faint of heart or ordinary
sensibilities. My love-life does not fit any category easily and
as in all things these are beyond convention and may offend readers
used to more conventional modes of life and types of love and
loss than the ones I have endured. For those brave or
open-minded enough to continue, much may still seem cryptic or
puzzling, or simply overblown and melodramatic; but for me it was all
very real and quite often these words were necessary to get out, rather
than self-indulgent in any way as they might seem to the more cynical
reader.. I was not writing for posterity or for later generations of
critics, but to get things out of my own heart, in words that may be
mean something only to me. But here they are anyway...... |
Songs of Love and Loss |
I have wandered and sung
across a thousand worlds,
seemed a fool to all those of wiser tribes
for wanting what cannot be, what is long lost,
for forsaking all the jewels of this silver'd
galaxy,
for lack of faith in all the nameless gods.
I dare seek for love, for life,
I sing for eternity,
and everywhere but only a
surfeit of their form.
Even though he can sail the wondrous sea of
stars
(myriad with a thousand worlds)
No rest he has found in speech and sigh
(songs sung in an hundred tongues)
Rare is the gift: rare he who lives out its
trying's rough-lifed course
(sparkling in the night)
Rarer, rarest, she who could fulfill that quest
(blind lover to a human god).
Amid the flotsam of these latter days,
amid the strewn glories of our ancient Empire
that made the blood of Poets
and the deaths of all our Kings -
Did we love less that we knew Love no more,
or made greater Loss of all our Victory,
for but to reckon with our Deeds?
Waking from Dream within the Flesh
we found a Knowing too strong to face,
too Great to fear. Passion cast our burden
out before the eyes of Fate, Love
tumbled with the mountains of the Night.
Yea, that we might walk this way no more!
That all our Trying's but a foil,
to starve the World with Surfeit
and bitter Loneliness. The Gods of Anger
and of Love, and of the madness that is
Song,
stride forth into the rosy-fingered Dusk.
The horses of the Sea mount and rear, in foamy
mane,
ablaze with Virtue and with Might,
the tune of Heaven chording through the Sky:
Light, and Life, and Love the lash
to idle hearts aggrievened by the Weight of
History.
Touch me now, and bring here your side to me:
cleave me to the Knowledge of your Form.
Grasp me in the sweetness of thy sylvan strength -
Show mine eyes the Thunder; thy Skin, the Armour
of my soul.
(Eros, fevered, awakes)
(1991 or 1992)
We will eat of the hard apples
of the lake-land dale,
chew dry apricots -
in the desert, feast
Come, my love, touch
me through the water
running icy-hot
around our loins;
warm me
with your sinewed breast
heal me
in your strong embrace
The canyon: orange-green,
red, and purple-grey
in the windy dun, brown-umbre
amid an arid dusk;
the breath of sage
and pine-land towering,
our senses heady
with mountain-perfumed heat
I will show you
the high ridge,
the grey-blue sky;
I will lead your eyes
along the north horizon,
forest-girt
Hold my loneliness
in your stern soul;
Wrap me
in your folded flesh
Rock, soothe me
River, wash me clean -
cleave me to my lover;
take me deep
into the ocean-earth...
jasper, garnet, agate-fire,
serpentine, and red vermilion:
hard sand, warm stone, and flowered dust
You were
like rescue from a storm
Immortals say that human death is blessing
that eternal life be
cursed
(If, then so, was the titan's death a mercy
or a gift?)
Immortals say
they must forget to live
for they can never die
as you turn, taut,
and look on me
(1987)
Do you see my mind? Can you know my thoughts?
Would you tell me that all I have learned is
naught
and I am bitter without cause, that all is
sunlight
and rejoicing and fat life - like cattle chewing
grass
contentedly in a slaughterhouse's fields? That
sorrow
only falls on those who earn and deserve its pain,
that blithe ignorance is the surest cure for
destiny
and loud and false vulgarity the best antidote
for knowledge?
How many years of life are lived
before purpose flowers and fruits,
the heavy load of duty finding seed?
I walked in mountain dales where greed has
scarred the land;
I roamed the streets of cities seeking reason and
a friend;
I rode the great highways to fill out the
boundaries of my span;
I swam the coldest rivers, burned a fire to name
the end.
.....there is so much noise - disquiet is a
bane
for thoughtful speech.......
(August 1995)
And so to break
our love
for pain and dust.
and years turned
end to end.
For thee now lost,
most dear of men
that have to me
with love made friend
(and then denied),
I am turned and tossed -
by love untied, and lost.
I grieve for thee,
yet cannot weep
to vent my shame
or seek release,
to name the deep
where guilt was born
'twixt me and thee.
For I've all it wept
to burn thy name
and seek the deep
where answer to my hurt
might thy tenderness return
and rescue me.
For thee I've kissed,
and thou'st kissed me,
and our knot was made
of destiny, and deed.
Yet I love thee still,
so cannot keep
not sing to thee
of night-dark truth:
you came to me
and slept aside my heart,
and called my love
from out its shadow's tomb.
Spare thy heart for me,
when it can loving bear
the memory of our friendship's times,
the truth of our bright hours
that underly the darkened
pillars of our waking's world.
For as we reap, so must we sow,
And as love dies, so must we go
unto our fates, and destinies,
though we may fear our change
into yet newer years, and other souls,
and plant good ground with newer seed,
and bathe it in a freshet's cold.
I love the days
that were to me
the knowing of our world.
the peace of manhood's truths.
For loving me,
though harsh I spoke,
your sight
will ever tender me,
and make me mind my self
and guard its doors
from further love and loss like thee.....
(1991)
For what beauty is this, our pain?
For so easily love turns to anger,
sweet tenderness sparks dire jalousie
and hate abounds wherefore
faith had stood.
For in deep love is faith,
and in faith love,
and there we walk a-free
- together or alone.
For such a gift of love is freedom
that love must set love free....
Even unto death we know
and feel that love has been;
Even unto heaven's gate
we know that truth
can heal a ravaged heart
and sear the soul with fire.
Do you love me still, my long-lost one?
Do you want me in the winter night,
wake dreaming of my kiss on summer morns?
Would you be swallowed again into my love?
Mountains rear above the sheltered sea
winding deep into the monstrous land
hand breaks on rock, storm freezes on crag
Dry and drier and the lands beyond.
Do you feel my remembrances?
Do you wonder at our stranged ways
and hope to find my face again
upon where your shoulder meets its nape,
your leg thy loin?
The world around is is made end,
The forest falls to feed time's fire.
The sky opens to yet sharper stars -
yet no world outlasts even a long-lost love.
do you not feel the judgement
upon the god of stone, who knows no time?
Do you feel the gut, the fang?
(hand hacked by the cooling
fan
I feel the blood, the
spurt, numbing
out the lash and seek
out tending
for the wound, hand
hacked out in
grogginess by a lazy
morning god).
and then to say reality: Reality?
I have mine, you have yours - no more.
That gone - and do you feel me try?
By body coiled and bent, yet to rise
out the trap of life, and life's denials.
Body failed but hardening,
seeking out to stand new ground
I turn and say "Do you love me then -
So why was I let to leave?"
I would have stayed for
you
had your love been true
oh,
I loved you so.
If you came to me
We would both be free
Oh,
I need you so.
I loved more than love deserved
and so got the less of that.
A good friend
is worth more than ten miles of spit.
and so
if a good friend spits
on you
go walk ten miles . . .
Spirit transcends our sex,
yet flesh is the flame of spirit,
the vessel of experience
and love and war.
I held you, winsome-strong
and gentle-mouthed and gentler-loined.
Love unburdens us of mind,
but hurls our hearts with gravity
(our souls with light);
vitality frail'd and will a-broken.
Love me now as you did then:
these are our hours,
our gate in time
to know eternity
through power of our form.
Love transcends the spirit,
burns body with pain and heart with woe.
Hold me in the darkness;
unknowing hold me against the night
for I am shadow to your light
fuel for your soul
coal in a fiery lamp.
Spirit knows no law, but cannot lie;
Love burns time; the body burns love.
Do angels weep when mortals die;
as hearts break, does heaven move?
I kissed your brow, and breast
and knew your strength stretched along my side,
our wills unbuckled as we dreamed;
poets die of Truth, athletes of their Youth.
I knew your love: do not haste me so....
or waste me for a fiend
or only seeming friend.
Then I was burned by love. Happiness is one thing, and bliss another, but beyond either is the gift of shared awareness, when hearts and minds, bodies and souls, are undifferentiate, their essences intermingled. My own beliefs and mind I could control, but when I was made two, the gate was open to the doubt and prejudice implicit in my former life, as my other had no walls to need. Preference, the enlightened moderns say, or destiny as those ancient can so easily proclaim. But I created my own fall through genuine devotion, not from all their insecurity or pride.
My vanity was in daring to unbind my soul and welcome faith into my heart. My undoing was playing host to that faith once shaken, to find preceptive biases choking me from within. Oepning the box of tortured dreams I had once made locked, my eyes were stained and my faithrul love polluted by yearning and by wanton abandon - and by the painful silence, sealed by love on awkward tongues, that marks the end of unspoken bonds.
We wear our dreams without a mask if we forget to hide ourselves, as is most the fashion nowadays. How can we help the wounds of brokenness, or wear the weight of strangers' words, if untrusted and untested is love now lost?
I tremble at my lost knowings, my wakenings, my changingness, transfiguration upon re-transfiguration. I embrace my shadows, enpurge my soul, wrestle with the writ of heaven and the might of hell. Only love can save the damned.
Fe veldr fraenda rogi; foedisk ulfr i skogi
("Worldly wealth (or worldliness) brings kin andfriends to quarrel; wolves whelp in the woods" - Norse Rune Song)
"What feels me thus, and touches
at my quickness, as a drum
or thunder in the heart? I am untaken,
alone, here on my godly bed where few may
linger.
Yet whose want have I
to urge me from my chasting slumber,
if you are here to bring me feel
and rise me to the inner night
that lies where long love ends?"
Rising, shamed, he looked about
the gloom, and stroked the salty dew
from off his hardened loin
(where heat and dream had brought forth
his fire-blessed seed). He lay, awake,
and wondered at who might fill his quest,
what manner to folly into loving's way.
He saw no face he knew, no smell familiar
in the flavour of the dead-dreaming's shape;
sinew without name, yet heart and mass and
greatness
and all of great love's tenderness;
"Premonition, and excited fear -
I feel no lust, yet pain
of physical knowledge and frustration.
A music of the flesh,
it stirs my skin
long-fmiliar yet still-unknown.
I wonder at this mystery,
know no god could ease it,
the ravish of my need: a mortal
bonds me so, beyond my memory
or dreamt-of discovery."
"Mortal love is mortal,
or so the ancient stories tell,
but love deeper-made immortal is,
unsullied by mighty Death.
Legends tell that even gods
might fall in love,
or lie for sake of it...."
There is no greater passion
than a strong, warm form
to shield the cold world away at night:
gods must feel the most stellar of chills
that only strong flames can warm.
He put upon a mortal shape
and went down into the human world:
he felt his innocence return,
let no corruption of divinity
stain his veneer of Thought
as used by mortals to turn away the Truth;
blind hearts fare better than knowing eyes,
and bid fortune from chaos' grace.
But will you pay bail
when they put be in jail
for the price of the calls
you had me make in the fall?
I made them for you
to try to get through
to the friend I had known
behind a cold voice on the phone.
This song has an end,
as did you, my friend.
____
I sensed I've been tricked
by a muse, or else kicked
by a friend into wearing a mask
that was what was asked......
My life was serene
ere I heeded your word,
and then off I'd careen
from the deeds you'd incurred.
Then you'd call mine the blame,
play a hypocrite's game
and accuse me of madness
and fill me with sadness
and make me try bile
to break through your guile.
On an on I could go
yet more stones I would throw
but your thought gives me stress;
I'm left with your guess
of what you decided I need -
someone who cares and listens to heed.
Who am I now?
I scarcely know!
But I will not bow
to a friend or a foe.
You say you're the first,
but you call me the worst
of fears that you see
the worst things that could be.
I usually obey
and become what you say -
do I give you a thrill
when you think I might kill?
I summoned this muse
to help me accuse
and divine in a song
what I always felt wrong.
Perhaps you might say
it's better this way-
for you don't need friends,
you only need ends:
the means but a ride
for a self kept inside.
Your voice is so kind
when you change your mind;
it makes me still feel
that I am not real.
But when you act, you forget
what it was that you said
and don't care if I fret
or have a storm in my head.
What matters is fear
that you feel being near
that which is just
the touch of my dust.
I feel sorrow and grief
and I moan and I beef
when you tell me I'm sick
or after your prick.
And now you hide
and tell me to bide,
that you feel fear for our trust
and tell me we must
not have more hurt
nor sling any dirt.
Did you feel my heart fall;
did you half care at all
for the sake of my heart
which you'd pierced with your darts?
do I give you a thrill
when you think I might kill?
How much is stilled?
How much yet would
be said?
Ungraced, thy will must self-shape
determine a
meaning undone.
Black broth of smoke,
ichor of bards and scoundrels -
taste my charred glass,
touch this care-hewn wood -
(is there naught
of god
in an honest
drink?
Is there
naught of earth
in urbane
mind or breath?)
Tell me that passion unleashed
still knows the harp,
still dances wild beyond reason
and hope.
Snapped, slapped, out of magic,
down from music....-
why should there be striving?-
why should there be memory?
Demon, are you dead?
Am I safe from
your beautiful need?
Dare I call you for a whim,
name you on my
cold monument?
Lesson learned, heart transformed,
slate cleansed with ale
and with a thousand roads...
( Hunter's Horn Tavern, Montreal, June 23, 1982)
The smell of cinder and auto-fumes, the rumbling murmur and rude chatter of the crowd, the warm breeze from off the bay that dispersed the firework-smoke, the odour of your heat: I remember all this, clear as the blemish on myh own skin that ages, deepens, like a scar, where yet the wounding is wihtin me, wondering if youuwould dare voice or act upon your instinct, realize love as simple, without fear or loathing or the other things that fester in the ignorance of our times, and in the evil of others' hearts and minds. Your skin and bone are like velvet and wood to me, your scent a rich and sweet perfume, yet I would no lust on your behalf, no sating of my unused loin; I would only know the comfort that was your side, the unquestioned, the unquestioning, bonding to my ribs as child unto a new-remembered womb: there is no shame in this, no need for fear or hurt. We watched the fireworks together, parted wondering at the nature of our love, each fearing loss of the precious heat we shared, fearing hurt for the other should our bond be sundered, or exposed.
Why do men love in such times, when distrust is posed as righteousness, and fear as rationale for greed? Why do we dare share our lives and dreams, when it must be kept secret from the bitter hatred and jealousy that frame our world and encase city and town alike in holy anger, even when there is no sin. Affection and affliction are made one: faith and trust accused of carnal knowing, shame laid where there is no guilt, embrace refused for fear of taint, or worse a fear of knowledge - our minds set free, our hearts unleashed, our bodies merged unthinking in our deepest sleep, then waking in a common bed. We share a soul, you and I, a thing beyond both our years and beyond all knowing, something we can only feel in dream or sense in each other's eyes, something no other should expect to fathom, something we should let none malign, so precious in these hateful times as love is.
Did I choose you as a friend
when you took me to your side
and asked my counsel for your heart?
Did youuchoose me outside your soul
when I dared tell you truth you sought?
How vain the contrivings and demands
we made to solve our festered wound:
I smile, you smile, we lie gracelessly
back and forth, for fear of insult
or for the resurrection of a nightmare.
I could bear a silent grace no longer,
took ouu the knife, and cut
ouu the heart of your sheltered happiness.
What devil made you call me less
than what you know I am?
What fiend taught you accuse me
of slavery to what you know I am not?
Nothing for all of this
is any better than you could do
and have never done.
Family you cannot choose,
except to leave, or love, or hate,
but friendships you must must forge
and mend once chosen,
or all your life is worth but spit.
And these lonely words of mine -
why do I bother further 'neath their strain?
For even if you read these lines
their meaning you would never hear
for you have stopped your ears
and sealed the chamber of your heart
wherein you once bid me dwell.
Betray me not with furthur smiles,
and cry for pain to bring you deserved tears.
My own heart I have found again,
the sureness of my own footing
in the acid quicksand of our lives.
I see the sky, I see the land,
I know I shall rise to fill
out my shadow's form again;
I have 'scaped the snares and evils
your folly sent me to, and damned me for.
Ask your brother for word of me,
if ever he learns to speak the whole of truth
and not just the sharpened bits he makes to use...
ask him of the trouble roiled through me
for sake of you, and him.
But ask me not to give you time
to ask me of my life's urgency;
tell me not my hours waste,
as you know nothing of my task,
and even less the hard trueing of my course
that your anger has so cruelly forced.
How long ago this must seem to you;
for me it has always felt just yesterday....
| Apollon (The Spheres) |
Orbital
roads roaring the great wheel's rumbling noise |
| The Canyon (Minerals III) |
We will swim together in the waters of our jade-black river; |
| To the Centaur | Give me of thy stallion-strength and rear upon the breaking night |
| Demon (The Hunter's Horn) |
In airs of dark molt dead demons remembered |
| Eros I (The Fever) |
What beauties have we squandered, what gifts spoilt and ruined |
| Eros II (The Fever cont.) |
Eros, fevered, awakes, tosses his head within the darkness |
| The Fever (Eros I) |
What beauties have we squandered, what gifts spoilt and ruined |
| The Fever
cont. (Eros II) |
Eros , fevered, awakes, tosses his head within the darkness |
| Fireworks, Vancouver (1991) | We walked among the throng-pressed crowd, you and I, sat quiet amid the swarm, |
| Fragment
from a Play (I) (Strophe) |
Some men are
made of stone and steel; Others born children of the pure fire, |
| Fragment from a Play (II) | Who is this
man Why does he stare? He stands alone as if a dagger lay |
| Godhead | Transcendent, in the flesh . . . |
| The Mask of Hippolytus | Dare I wear the mask of Hippolytus to dance and sing out, on stage the error of his ways . . . |
| The
Hunter's Horn (Demon) |
In airs of dark molt dead demons remembered |
| Lament | Oh, for that friendship is more precious and rare than brother-ness |
| The Last of the Revenge Poems | With all the furies on you, feeding on your flesh . . . |
| The Mask of Hippolytus | Dare I wear the mask of Hippolytus to dance and sing out, on stage the error of his ways . . . |
| Minerals
III (The Canyon) |
We will swim together in the waters of our jade-black river; |
| The Music of Stones | The music of stones, mute but turned to
wind. We empty out our souls into the tones that command |
| Pathetique (I) | All well and good because I really should stay away... |
| Pathetique (II) | Why did you ask me to take off my mask? |
| Rebuke (The Scythe) |
As ye sow, so shall ye reap let me not weep for thee |
| Revenge Poems, the Last of the | With all the furies on you, feeding on your flesh . . . |
| The Scythe (Rebuke) |
As ye sow, so shall ye reap let me not weep for thee |
| Serenades (I) | Golden, sere, taut and still, sweat moist and drawn... |
| Serenades (II) | We wander in the night together, sleeping |
| Serenades (III) | Draw away the curtain between us - Have I not seen... |
| Serenades (IV) | Shaking, shaken, I held you in a long-gone night, darksome, hot |
| Stones, The Music of | The music of stones, mute but turned to
wind. We empty out our souls into the tones that command us |
| Strophe (Fragment from a Play I) |
Some men are
made of stone and steel; Others born children of the pure fire, |
| Untitled | Lo, I have been long upon this earth. I have felt the rain |
| Untitled | I had come to know myself anew, moving into a new experience... |
| Vancouver Fireworks, 1991 | We walked among the throng-pressed crowd, you and I, sat quiet amid the swarm, |