Oral Judgment

“Freedom of Speech” by Norman Rockwell

 

like a toddler makes sense of the world
I put pieces of it in my mouth
random chunks of the cosmos
terrestrial tidbits a morsel of motion
taste texture and bite reveal truths
that refute the most trenchant
conventional wisdom
tongue tooth lip and cheek more reliably
sensible organs than eye ear and nose
less prone to be waylaid misled
by the spoor of unchallenged opinions
chew it up spit it out and move on
all the better equipped for the
self-made conclusions that mark
one’s authentic existence

 

 

From my book Bohemian Scents

Tempus Edax Rerum

 

Image by Wojtek Jarco

 

 

all my clocks
and my watchfaces
talk to each other
incessantly
sounding their
maddening chorus
of tick-tocking
stern inquisition
determined to find
which unsynchronized
self-expressed
time tells the truth

but in all of these
years with their
billions of seconds
not one has proved
guilty of virtue
and I am left
ignorant knowing
for certain if none
of my moments
are accurate
I must have
never existed

 

 

(originally posted November 2013)

Sartre

 

“Stormbringer” by George Grie

 

no exit
from open-doored rooms

no bars
like the cage of the mind

no death
worse than living

no hell
worse than thinking

no pain
worse than judgment

no freedom
like stark isolation

society
is itself manifest torture

existence
perforce precedes essence

and truth
ah the truth
exists only in action
independent of anything
learned or believed

the moral decision
is ever and always
the only real act of creation

Oceans

 

“Ocean IV” by Tia McDermid

 

oceans call me
cast their voices
on limitless
stretches of sand
and washed stone
breakers heave
tides of sighs
implore my return
to beginnings
to places so old
and so deep
no remembrance
survives from the
effortless traumas
of watery birth
slow surprising
recursive events
of creation
directly conceived
simple sparks
of complexity
fixing the form
that gave life
to the mind
of the world

oceans call me
as if to say
now would be right
to step into the sea
swim and dive
down and down
to those origins
underneath time
to return
would mean
I might remember
and in the
remembering
I could forget
whom I am
free to think
once and only again
of just whom
I would
rather become

Torment

“Abstract Portrait #6” by Lee Griggs

fuck infinity
I have known
too many journeys
run out of miles

fuck eternity
I have known
too many seasons
run out of days

fuck tomorrow
I have known
too many yearnings
run out of hopes

time and pain
inextricable
past present future
null concepts
a romance of words
existential conceits
in their essence
mere aspects of
one inescapable
blood and bone
agony born of
the knowing that
everytime
everyplace
everything
everyone
comes to their end
every voice
every song
every prayer
comes immutably
silent as stone

arbitrariness
tends to each end
with unfeeling
exogenous hands
no exertion of will
no expression of wish
no wail of despair
no tormented plea
will add time
to a clock
that’s come finally
fully unwound
fear of death
is the fear of
an incomplete life
and the truth is that
too many lives
are never fulfilled

time and pain
inextricable
what in the
damned bloody hell
is the point
fuck it all

*      *     *

“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.”       – Søren Kierkegaard

Kafkaesque

Assemblage by Laurie Dorrell

existentially brutal
ignoble surrealist
grotesqueries drawn
upon canvases
tortured by dark
abstract penmanship
granting sublime
antiheroes absurd
inescapable states
of distress within
mundane realities
bristling with blades
of degraded dystopian
culture where even
the commonplace
customs of social
community lacerate
unlucky souls with
a merciless mien

in other words
this is a bent
bizarre genre
profane to the holy
but sacred to
anyone lost
either way a most
dreadful provocative
narrative certainly
not for those born
faint of heart
except for the rare
stricken few who
who cast shadows
of giant monstrosity

(originally posted December 2013)

Terrible Truth

 

“Grief” by Vrindavan Das

a presence of absence
exists in the waiting
a thing of departure
that lives within hope
in the ache for return
a thing solid and stout
as the summer tree
felled for the firewood
wanted by winter

a tangible emptiness
stands in the space
of what recently was
but which no longer is
in the chair where he
lived and endured
all those difficult years
sits the substance of
yearning to have him
returning a need with
dimension and weight

such is artifact hunger
comprising the wait for
beginning of something
for ending of nothing
a desperate desire for
reprise of a yesterday
fulsome again with
good wood and good
blood in appreciable
bones of extravagant
blatant reality

heady persistent
corporeal memory
shimmers and shines
as a mocking affront
to the logical lucid
acceptance of loss
for she has neither
stomach nor spleen
for the terrible truth

 

Pieces

Portrait of Picasso by Juan Gris

sometimes
I feel incomplete
not unfinished
but broken

some parts
gone missing
or somehow
diminished

holes I can feel
but not locate
wells of aptitude
falling to dry

memories I know
I once had
but whose
substance is lost

more uneasy
déjà vu going on
where recall
was confident

I’ve lived
many places
traveled the world
time and again

while everyplace
added to me
did I also leave
pieces behind

do I fully exist
only everywhere
never again in
one somewhere

am I only real
during all time
merely a shade
on the present

(originally posted June 2013)

Solipsism

“Spiral of Life” by Oni

I need your eyes
to see who I am

you know me
in ways I cannot

my mind only knows
what it thinks

not what is
outside of itself

tell the truth
am I real

or is it that
truth is ineffable

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

“My life, the most truthful one, is unrecognizable, extremely interior, and there is no single word that gives it meaning.”     – Clarice Lispector

Quiddity

St Thomas Aquinas by Gentile da Fabriano

 

what am I
at my core
blank of color
and caste
unaligned
and unlabeled
without pose
and possessions
stripped of roles
and relationships

in simple
I am but
all that I think
in complex
I am also
all I believe