Revision,
and revision, and revision
clots
on this putrid piece from page to page,
to each
blasted syllable refusing to rhyme;
and
all my time is spent where blighted bits
drag
on to fusty death. Flop, flop, short scribble!
You’re
but a whining whisper, a saddo squiggle
that
mopes and pouts a path along these lines
and
then becomes a blot. Such is your life,
an
inked-on folly, full of rot and slop,
implying
not a lot.
If,
in walks on poesy’s paths, you see
a
hinterland that’s clogged with tangles, which you’ll
unravel,
don’t push past brambles, blackthorn or more
matter
that pricks. Stop at the edge of the flush
and
eye the easy; that you trust. Start there -
a
rhyming couplet, even upstart epigrams
or
free verse, provided the latter’s not cluttered
with
hearts or plodding prose hauled from thickets
guised
as rosy growth. There’re spikes enough
without
bristling, falling for the first fair you spy,
as
you’ll notice above. But do I care?
Blank
verse can be a bore. It flops along
its
footed way, all iambs when I am not
hooked
on stresses for ‘if’ or ‘be’ or ‘that.’
First
learn the rules, we’re told, before you find
a
way to rebel. I’m not so sure it’s true.
A
briar or three will leave you bloodied, sure,
but
bloody iambs will get you down at last.
Rebel
as you will. It’s your verse, after all.
For
me, it’s always buggeruppance time.
Attention!
Revision!
Some
tension?
Prevention.
Retension?
Distension!
Extension?
Dissention.
Pretension?
Detention.
Convention?
Contention.
Ascension?
Suspension.
Sans
vision.
Invention!
Fuck!
Gimme
my
pension.
I
found myself in a bit of a pother,
mazed,
frazzled when thinking
about
existence, a lifetime bother
that
has brief moods sinking,
so
turned to others to help me out
of
the dither and panic and flap.
A number are guides, well out of doubt,
and
some provided a map.
One says she feels a single notion,
answer,
faith will lead
to
harming mankind’s forward motion:
freedom’s
a critical need.
Another
advises making a choice –
evolution
or faith or chance.
Will
the best option give me a voice
or
end in a merry dance?
A
further adds that building awareness,
it’s
fumbling, stumbling, tumbling,
is
part of striving, but seeming unfairness
sometimes
leaves me crumbling.
Yet
one more says existence rose
from
me, from you, the living
and
non-living. Her pointer shows
what
multitudes are giving.
There’s
much wisdom to mull over here
from
this worthy band.
It’s
to end, cease, finish, I fear,
tramping
around the theme, and
my
conclusion about existence?
I’ve
too much time on hand.
It’s better by far to go life’s distance
than
writing on the strand.
Anac’luthon’s
nowt but pain
my
knee’s all achery just now
it’s
enough to drive you sane.
The
cure is tea. I make it how
my
mother did - there I lie;
I never
teapot it and sleep
but
mug a bag miss the high
it’s
time for up I need to steep.
Those who enter here
need fear no judgement
I may make.
I sit here ageless,
though ages pass,
moving past the reach
of each new thought
sprung at their request.
There is a way
that some minds’ manners
fall outside the known:
blank faces outer,
universes build, flash,
creator-conscious,
next plunged starwards
to destruction.
There is its telling,
back in the sold
world, in stories
for the old.
Such a shape
may be seen
in the tick
of a slim minute,
by those whose hands
beat steel or idiots.
There is another way
to hold a world
by those who mine
a way beneath the rocks
where magma wells
from where they walk
across the crusted road
as birds croak from trees,
roots upward forced,
from rooves of ice-cracked
igloos built beneath
a heavy-bellied sun
as cold as iron
and as old as hell.
There is no way back,
let alone the telling,
locked in space,
shared with self-creation.
This one form
is never seen
except in dreams so deep
they’ve died by day.
There is a way to weep
for worlds and weeping brings
a cosmic calm where dancing
stars thread slowly through the
wind between the worlds
that can create,
but, subtly so, destroys
the human toys laid
neatly out in rows before
the watcher of the worlds.
The telling of that
is to myself alone
where I sit immobile on
age-stripped stones
beside the door whose
hinges groan under rust
and no wide opening.
Such a shape is formless
To those who enter here.
I throw a thousand years’
long curses at the black
backdrop to the stars
where time beats echoes
of wailing still outside,
yearning long and pleading
unfulfilled, to cross
this pitted step. Unstoppable,
the cry. It rises,
dies unheard.
The door moans
from nothing to nothing.
