The Pendulum

Happy Holidays to all.

A Dream

One day called life I walked the human zoo.
A lion roared, king to himself at least.
A songbird sang of heavens she once flew;
It saddened me to hear both bird and beast
Cry through their bars to one they thought released.

I answered them with thoughts such sadness brings:
“I also have a cage. Teach me your hearts.
What makes the song our little prisoner sings?
What gives the confidence the lion imparts?”

“Some days”, they said, “When we are fast asleep.
We dream a turnkey comes to watch and weep.
So let us dream a hope and hoping wait
For dreams in which compassion moves our gate.”

These hands
They are not as strong as I want them to be
Not as deft, not as dexterous, not as big
They are tough and calloused
But they let things drop
Things that I know I should be able to hold
Money, my family, my pen, hell…
Other objects just to keep me stable
Most of all, trust and love
All seem to slip right through my fingers
As if my arms ended at the wrists
Useless mounds of flesh and bone
Too rounded to catch anything between them
Even in desperation
These hands
The ones that used to grasp tree limbs
Softball bats, notebooks full of poems
Held books so big my arms got tired
Hands that melted lovers into puddles
Mended broken frames and opened locked doors
They are not now what they once were
These things that used to hold magic in their fingertips
Knitting blankets, sewing torn clothing
Hands my children loved to hold and comfort them
Tired out long before my heart and mind
Less than agile, broken with scars
Arthritic, slow, pained
Swollen and chubby, misspent
Not with use, but with misuse
Right tools that were never doing the right job
Climbing apple trees to get a better view
Instead of picking a few to share with friends
Holding bats and swinging for the street
Not getting the first base runner to second
Writing angry, sad poems to spill my soul into
Rather than bolstering up the heart of others
Turning the pages of books read for pleasure
Learning little more than how to laugh and cry
Molding lovers into what I wanted them to be
Out of lust and selfish desire but not loving them
Mending the frames of pictures I myself had broken
Unlocking doors that were not mine to open
The blankets are all unravelling, the clothing…
In the garbage instead of the secondhand store
My children fall now and I cannot catch them
Too independent to seek my comfort and guidance
No longer used to draw treasure maps
Or paint art projects, or write love notes
They have woven lies into my life tapestry
And pushed away everything I have held dear
These hands
Have made mistakes too numerous to count
So insurmountable that I cannot reach them
To pull them down and unblock the sun
Get the blood flowing, stretch them to the sky
They are cold, stiff and hardened
No amount of physical therapy can heal them
They need to learn how to live without fear
How to forgive and to plead for forgiveness
To love unconditionally and accept failure
To write those love notes not in secret spaces
But on the sky itself so the world can see
That these hands
Were meant to do something much bigger
To be stronger, to be softer
But they hurt instead of healed,
Held down instead of lifting up
All of those people that they should have touched
Family and friends that they dropped, they pushed away
Hands that gripped tight every steering wheel
Of all the vehicles I believed were out of control
And drove me far away to escape to hide
To keep my heart from facing the choices it had made
Some people wear their heart on their sleeve
But I have always held mine in my hands
Grasped tightly, squeezing it so that I would not drop it
Unable to pass it to anyone because I cannot trust
And it has held it out from me, at a distance
Kept my hands so full that it had only my heart in it
So I could feel it beating and knew it was there
I have always been someone who only believes what she sees
So I held it there keeping careful vigil as it is fragile
Because inside I knew no one else would, or ever did
I grew up with people who had bigger problems than mine
Who adopted me to save themselves and ended up in a bottle
Where we ended up learning to swim just to save ourselves
Times I did hold out my bleeding heart for someone else to see
They never stepped forward to claim it, or even noticed it was there
Maybe because I hid it under my blankets of insecurity and distrust
I knew of faith but faith is something I’ve always wished for that never came
Possibly because I did not have open hands to catch it
It wizzed by, faster than a shooting star
And slipped right through
These hands

The Addict

Because he could not stand,
They kicked away the crutch
He took to fit the hand
Their mind love dared not touch.

Because nobody sees
And no one cares that much,
They nourished the disease
That made him take his crutch.

God in Church
God came to church last Sunday;
Left early; reason is–
Looking at the program,
He found it wasn’t His.

published in DLAJ, 1968

Timequake

Jesus shattered time’s flat line,
Shook Sidhartha’s hopeful feet’
And, in this cluttered street,
Makes to tremble mine.

Through the fog of morning showers
It snuck up on her
The sudden recognition
She blinked
Her eyes brimming
Filling with awesome wonder
At the distance between them
Only inches apart
But star charts away
The heavy burden
The chasm of that separation
Worlds away from home
Small and afraid
It hovered there
Waiting for acceptance
Behind perfect human eyes
Only a speck of reminder
We are made of stardust
Of violent explosions
And cells that learn
Grow and adapt
Evolve to new life
Survive cataclysms
We are becoming
Explorers of galaxies
And every atom of our being
Is a miracle of happenstance
That waits for us to realize
We are more than we believe
It’s not a matter of faith
But a wonder filled chain
Each perfecting the next
Until we see in the mirror
Just how amazing
And how tiny
We are

If ever a poem belonged in the foreword of a Carl Sagan book it would be that last one.

Great write, Aussenseite!

Belonging

I was made belonging,
But learned a lie.
When I saw you
With what I learned;
We separated.
When I saw you
With what I am,
We moved together
In orbits around
A common star.

Walking downtown
Between steel structures
I’m reminded of your eyes
Their shallow vastness
Void of any emotion
No stars to shine
No planets to observe
Just the steel greyness
With the black hole center
Staring at me without blinking
As you held my hand with obligation
Not want, or even the neediness of closeness
The words you spoke spat out like shards of rust
A termination, a cessation, a denial of responsibility
Floated down through the cold, damp air
Landing on city streets like ash
A once burning sun imploded
Trampled by masses as they passed by us
And took you with them
Fading from my mind
My memory sits now in his eyes
The birth of a new star
The one you passed by
Faster than Light
And now that you are gone
Buried deep beneath the earth
We can finally see the stars

Cheatham Hill Easter*

In the shade of Kennesaw
Where they shine the cannons now,
Where the wheel’s unchanging law
Beat the weapon to the plow–
We went hunting Easter Eggs.

How the sun had gilded Spring
While we joined the children’s play,
While the planned remembering
Hid behind our joyous day.

Here the blood of Illinois
Flowed into an open field.
Here embattled man and boy
Multiplied the reaper’s yield.

Here the pines of Cheatham Hill
Shed to stuff a trench’s mouth;
And the children, never still,
Could not stop for North or South.
We went hunting Easter eggs.

*Civil War battle of Kennesaw Mountain and Cheatham Hill. We hid Easter Eggs on the battlefield.

Essence Unalterable (published in DLAJ-1968)

It’s sad to see the old woman dance–
Almost like the little girl in high heel shoes;
The same trance
Only
One is lonely
For the one thing the other wants to lose.

It’s sad to see the old soldier’s beard,
White against his youngest son’s bright, brown face.
All is cleared
Within:
Where love has been;
Where love will go; and time cannot erase

The sadness of change which take a soul
From where a child might wear it, from his former smile
To his whole,
Seeing, Inner being,
To the essence of his outside while.

I like some poetry, just not pretentious poetry that doesn’t make sense. I just got out of bed, don’t have time for deciphering all that. Poetry is supposed to have a flow, theres no flow if you have to constantly pause it, backtrack and decipher meaning from it at each line. Like, I can tolerate Random Factor’s poetry, because it actually has a discernable output when you read it. Where as I cannot tolerate jerkey’s, or his predeccesor, Orbie’s, poetry, because it intentionally looks like it was written for Thorian Greys and tries to make no sense.

My mentor was once approached by a student who asked her opinion of a poem the student had just written. My mentor noted that the poem would be better if certain changes were made. The student said she would not change a line. “It flows!” she said. My mentor replied, “So does diarrhea; but that doesn’t make it good.”
I’ve published in five literary journals. Thanks, so much to my deceased mentor, Amelia Jo Weir.

Only the most flippant poetry can be read casually. At least give the poet enough understanding to appreciate his/her understanding. This may involve mental work that the casual reader will not do.

Being in someone’s journal doesn’t make it good. Like, Call of Duty is a popular game, but it is not actually good. That being said, I would say your prose is a bit better than jerkey’s. My hypothesis is that the 5 journals you posted in, the people were already in that “frame of mind”, ie. reading butt tons of poetry everyday, so their brains already had the flow to match the flow of the poetry. Those who don’t have that mindset, just don’t get it. I would be like trying to teach an old man how to appreciate the different nuances and glitches of the physics code to beat one of the top 5 world players of Smash Bros Melee. He just wouldn’t get it, because their brains are already hardwired, so much so that medium skilled players, can’t even deal damage.

My poems have been published in Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and California. I have won poetry contests nationwide and have published in a national anthology. I have no need to defend them to non-poetry readers at ILP.
Speaking of decent poets, I miss Rainey and Jonquil. There used to be some good poetry at this site. Aussiente and Arc are left to carry on the tradition.

- Ticking Time -

I would give you back the long sleepless nights
Where I paced the floor in worry
The hours of panicked pleading phone calls
Hoping that he could answer
To wind back the covers of your steel trap bed
Un-silence the treasure that lays within
The unmoving arms of ticking seconds
I am stunned by the cruelty of moment
As each and every minute known
Painfully pushes me closer to a limit
Tightly wound and ready to break
You stole those nimble hands
From the womb in my heart
Where he could have put it back together
Inside the case, who’s face lies empty
Bleeding gears and jewels lay scattered
Senselessly pried out by a knife
Never again being able to hold him
To put my ear against his chest
And hear his loudly ticking future

Welcome back! Good poem!