if I think it
it is
if I write it
it lives
keep your coins
you may pay me in wishbones
the wealth may be yours
but the power is mine
From my book Bohemian Scents
if I think it
it is
if I write it
it lives
keep your coins
you may pay me in wishbones
the wealth may be yours
but the power is mine
From my book Bohemian Scents
dripping with dreams
fluid notions paint the mind
subliminal art
(The following poem represents my 1,000th published post since I launched “Poesy plus Polemics” eleven months ago. I can hardly believe it. It’s almost as if my long retired and dormant mind has erupted with new urgent purpose. As I work on my third book of poetry, I realize I won’t be able to keep up this pace, but I fully intend to wade into 2014 with all the gusto I can muster. Thanks to all my dear followers and readers for your unexpected and most gratifying encouragement.)
I first lit this match
knowing nothing
of how long or bright
it might burn
in my time I have
held it to dismembered
faces of infamy
cowered in corners
believing their sins
and I learned from
the shape of their shame
with its meek lumen
glow I found maps
giving secretive routes
to indigenous purpose
for civilization and
syllabus families of
broken-sleep scholars
cold caverns
warm grottoes
revealed to my years
future histories
ringing in echoes
of batwings and
bailiff’s batons upon
cell-bars of quandary
it guided my climbs
over mountainous
creeds of philosophers
steeped in screed
rubble of rhetoric
sallied to mystify
dull-minded centuries
pirates and princes
bastards and barons
cavorted within
its free-curling smoke
painting hat-feathers
charcoal with products of
intrigue’s combustion
shadows rose
in oration
to mock predilect
faith in healing
by shamans
with rattle and bone
exhortations
aboard riverboats
stealthy incursions
enabled my espionage
into firelit heartlands
of madness
ensuing the failures
of putative titans
my dim circle of light
walked the wounds
of paved intellects
shone upon beds
banked in streets
bearing bodies of
unrealized dreams
it imagined vignettes
into sentient existence
pulled life from dead words
through the gasp
of slight finger flicks
shocked by their
first breath of air
but now and again
moreso lately
this trivial flame
flickers close to extinction
despite my best efforts
to shroud it from
ill-minded winds
at a thousand thoughts old
that it flickers at all
is some miracle
needing a younger
and hungry
new light
to illuminate
(originally posted November 2013, to mark 1000th post on this blog –
as of June 2017 I have published 3800 posts)
tribal rubble
foundational fortress
converted to
princely chateau
then through
elegant sprawl
became classical
renaissance palace
where kings
in their tenancy
firstly conceived
French identity
bold revolution
gave over its
rarefied grandeur
to commoners
wakened to wonder
invited to worship
the fine arts and
science in splendor
exquisite aesthetics
with eight hundred
years of patina
lend secular grace
an agnostic cathedral
wherein is preserved
in its acres of spaces
the deep fulsome
cultural memory
serving to nourish
a national pride
man is glorified
Frenchmen are
sanctified all in
corporeal context
of sheer creativity
if I think it
it is
if I write it
it lives
keep your coins
you may pay me in wishbones
the wealth may be yours
but the power is mine
fifty millennia ago
something somewhere
back there in the mists
somehow gave
homo sapien brain
a good knock
and its wiring got
jostled and crossed
revving up its innate
creativity quite with
astonishing speed
perhaps then
the poet
who suffers
the dread
writer’s block
merely needs
bang his head
on a good
sturdy wall
From my book Onionskin
where the pen goes
is self-evident poetry
why the pen goes
enigmatic the poem
a surprise to the poet
compulsively sketched
tangled tantrums of
meter and metaphor
notions escaped from
the prisons of passion
provoked upon paper
no thanks to the mind
of the poet but owing
their freeform discretion
to free self-expression
endogenous influence
flowing from disengaged
fingers to live on the page
luxurious liquid
of mornings
a smooth silky brown
deep as pools of
Italian-born eyes
rich aromas of lush
equatorial mountains
a taste that transmits
to the brain
a warm wakening
opens receptors
to savory words
of an organic muse
here is stimulus
eagerly drawn
from the pleasure of
daily familiar routine
creativity found
in each sip
ingenuity plumbed
from each swallow
a gentle dependency
bearing the traits
of a vice that
by my lights
conforms to a virtue
the mind is a lonely chamber
a notional womb-space
unquietly busy with purposeless
comings and goings of strangers
thoughts alien dispossessed
orphans of intellect
stumbling about unenlightened
bereft of connections
yet hopeful of being adopted
they jostle they manhandle
shove through the crowd
ever seeking positions of
frontal lobe prominence
wanting the slightest
acknowledgement knowing
that even a brief recognition
assures them distinction of place
in grand memory banks
here they’d live in indefinite
pregnancy waiting that moment
of formative candid nativity
fully emergent intact and discrete
as one cogent idea held aloft
on its very own brainwave
now ready and willing and able
to travel its way to expression
in audible speech by its host
curricular pabulum pours from hoppers of public school mills
laying feast for least hungry of immature minds
but the grist lacks two essential ingredients
crucial to right/left brain nourishment
skill sets for creative imaginations
and analytical critical thinking
leaving global arenas
unvanquished by
Americans
Writer Lynne Sargent
Poetry Puttering by Pax & Company
Sometimes everything has to be enscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. Sometimes it takes a great sky to find that small, bright, and indescribable wedge of freedom in your own heart. David Whyte
"drink from the well of your self and begin again" ~charles bukowski
no dust here
Looking ahead, without looking back (too often)
flights of fancy from New Zealand
You're never alone, if you've something to share
All you touch and all you see / is all your life will ever be
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I am where the valleys are deep, the mountains are high, and the wind moans through trees...
rejuvenatement - not retirement