10-13-2016, 09:36 AM
Changing Guards
I remember the pure sensual pleasure
of resting my feet on the Ottoman.
Certainty is so assuring…but then nothing is assured.
I certainly wish playing guitar
did not make my hand ache.
I'd like to play piano in a Jazz band
like I used too; but now it always makes me cry.
Why?
It is not as though I am incomplete,
you transmit this to me with each hacking cough:
with each sterile stare.
I complete you,
you say
and you complete me like a PB&J.
No matter how much one may detest the sandwich
it is as complete as the eternal universe.
You tell me we are one and I know it to be truth.
You can no more lie to me than I can disbelieve you.
If we were physically light years apart.
I would still feel your hand in mine.
It is Rumi quantum entanglement .
Still I must admit to some small hesitation,
—along with veritable mental gesticulation—
when I came upon you and Simone de Beauvoir,
sitting on the beach, on the sand:
whispering – holding hands.
I'm surprised Jean Paul was not there for a philosophical three way.
What? No-I-Will-Not. I speak English and I will not use the French.
Too hell with your trendiness.
You explained—as though speaking to a child—that it was only politics
(since when did politics need holding and whispering) as you elucidated
how H.D told you when she came as a muse,
in a dream two years before
to bring down that Great Ironical Empire.
Chanting without a sound (H.D. was always that way, I thought it affectation, you worshipped her): Alexander–Catherine–Nickolas–George–Disraeli–Thornton–Jennifer–Pitt;
there have been so many across time I have forgotten them all,
but how can one know ashes?
Or one ash from another.
Is this ash greater than that ash?
("the road goes on forever and the party never ends"1).
An ever growing pile of soot.
Yet my hand still aches and "my guitar gently weeps"2
—who was that? Georgy Porgy, yet that empire also fell
to financiers and media shells, or visa verse—
All Apples rot in the end.
Never is Genius not always un-rehearsed,
although it is often edited just short of death.
Yet, who can argue with the conclusion:
clouds of cellaphnoid rust,
prop jobs from the sky,
magic fairy dust.
After all my love, sanctifying love
in non-sacrificial blood you should understand more
(that religion is merely theater)
than anyone else the black side of passion,
while pretending to live
in a white state of celebration
(staring with those does' caught in the headlight eyes, startled, surprised)
for good is assured in all of these things;
has it not been proclaimed by the Duke in the forest of Arden?
Of course all good things must come to an end,
yet such a phrase is only another idiom—still,
I wish my hand didn't ache when I play my guitar—
I've never had a sadomasochistic bent,
although some can only find enjoyment in making others hurt,
and then hurt themselves to atone—
or my eyes cry when I play the piano
in a Billie Holiday haunted Bar,
but in the end of the cliché,
strange fruit ripens every day
and I will eat up every one
no matter how many tears must be shed,
no matter how saline my head.
1 Song by Robert Earl Keen
2 A song by George Harrison
erthona
©2016
I remember the pure sensual pleasure
of resting my feet on the Ottoman.
Certainty is so assuring…but then nothing is assured.
I certainly wish playing guitar
did not make my hand ache.
I'd like to play piano in a Jazz band
like I used too; but now it always makes me cry.
Why?
It is not as though I am incomplete,
you transmit this to me with each hacking cough:
with each sterile stare.
I complete you,
you say
and you complete me like a PB&J.
No matter how much one may detest the sandwich
it is as complete as the eternal universe.
You tell me we are one and I know it to be truth.
You can no more lie to me than I can disbelieve you.
If we were physically light years apart.
I would still feel your hand in mine.
It is Rumi quantum entanglement .
Still I must admit to some small hesitation,
—along with veritable mental gesticulation—
when I came upon you and Simone de Beauvoir,
sitting on the beach, on the sand:
whispering – holding hands.
I'm surprised Jean Paul was not there for a philosophical three way.
What? No-I-Will-Not. I speak English and I will not use the French.
Too hell with your trendiness.
You explained—as though speaking to a child—that it was only politics
(since when did politics need holding and whispering) as you elucidated
how H.D told you when she came as a muse,
in a dream two years before
to bring down that Great Ironical Empire.
Chanting without a sound (H.D. was always that way, I thought it affectation, you worshipped her): Alexander–Catherine–Nickolas–George–Disraeli–Thornton–Jennifer–Pitt;
there have been so many across time I have forgotten them all,
but how can one know ashes?
Or one ash from another.
Is this ash greater than that ash?
("the road goes on forever and the party never ends"1).
An ever growing pile of soot.
Yet my hand still aches and "my guitar gently weeps"2
—who was that? Georgy Porgy, yet that empire also fell
to financiers and media shells, or visa verse—
All Apples rot in the end.
Never is Genius not always un-rehearsed,
although it is often edited just short of death.
Yet, who can argue with the conclusion:
clouds of cellaphnoid rust,
prop jobs from the sky,
magic fairy dust.
After all my love, sanctifying love
in non-sacrificial blood you should understand more
(that religion is merely theater)
than anyone else the black side of passion,
while pretending to live
in a white state of celebration
(staring with those does' caught in the headlight eyes, startled, surprised)
for good is assured in all of these things;
has it not been proclaimed by the Duke in the forest of Arden?
Of course all good things must come to an end,
yet such a phrase is only another idiom—still,
I wish my hand didn't ache when I play my guitar—
I've never had a sadomasochistic bent,
although some can only find enjoyment in making others hurt,
and then hurt themselves to atone—
or my eyes cry when I play the piano
in a Billie Holiday haunted Bar,
but in the end of the cliché,
strange fruit ripens every day
and I will eat up every one
no matter how many tears must be shed,
no matter how saline my head.
1 Song by Robert Earl Keen
2 A song by George Harrison
erthona
©2016
How long after picking up the brush, the first masterpiece?
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.