Tag: truth

To Ezra Pound

Were you to have seen the ovens
your hard tongue would have burned to ash,
you devil, lecturing covens
as the fulgurous blitzkriegs flash.
Across your adopted homeland
you exulted while others warred,
having no honor, a Roman
who would not fall upon his sword,
even after his unjust wrath
had been thwarted by apt measure
like Commodus slain in his bath,
a tyrant cleaved to his pleasure.
What good songs you sang are lost,
deafened by your erudite cries
of hatred, bigotry—mind lost
in rooms padded with your own lies.
The lunatics sang behind you,
electroshock troopers plugged in,
the asylum leader in view,
his thunderclap voice a loud din
that quickened Europe’s stagnant blood
and swept you across the ocean,
your own heart racing forth, aflood
with a Modernist’s crass notion
about “betterment”, “perfection”,
Aryan teleologies,
the irony of your lection
being bad Aristophanes.
Eliot, Yeats, Woolf, and others
embosomed you with their regard,
sympathetic to such brothers
who despised those whom were ill-Starred
and though I might forgive them such
as was wont in that insane age,
you, villain, were not half so much
repentant on your prideful stage.
Some claim you recanted your songs
so thunderous with cannon force,
but even if true, how can wrongs,
once done, not continue their course?
They are as birds within a cage
set free, their talons stretched apart
to clutch the world with a sharp rage;
thunderbolts thrown into the heart.
You cannot outrace the echoes
that fly away from bygone words,
no more than may a weed beck those
seeds carried far by passing birds,
or passing storms, or fell ages,
the seeds sprouting roots and shoots far
and blooming fast, necrophages
of blood and soil spilled from a Star.

Breakwater

Upon an island, you and I,
near the center of the ocean,
a storm brewing fast in the sky
and the waves hasten their motion.

Angry waves from the ocean’s heart
batter inland with such wrathful force
as could sink this isle, or a part;
the tempest in its destined course.

We must have the words which can serve
as breakwaters against such tides,
to soften the Truths and preserve
the shore where softer sand resides.

Truth was the thing that built this land,
the waves piling up sand and earth,
but warring waves can also strand
two lovers in the tossing surf.

See how the waves break long before
surging over the coast we share?
Let us speak softly on this shore
and let waves crash everywhere.

Storm

The trees danced lively with the wind,
pleased as a girl with princely courtships,
yet you stood quite still in the end
with a smirk twisting your scarlet lips,
and I knew, then, the truth of Love
and the truth of broken hearts and pain
as the thunder rumbled above
and the world was drowned in frigid rain.
The lightning cackled like a crone
and you left me in sleet-like silence,
unsheltered, wearied, all alone,
and so I would be for too long hence,
but I realized that this storm
existed always around your life
for you were the eye, calm and warm,
yet you were the storm, too, full of strife.

More Rhymes

Lucubrations

If science is still a candle

in the dark

then we must get a firm handle

on Truth’s spark

and grow it into a campfire

for the woods,

to reveal our world and retire

our dark hoods.

But politics are sunglasses

worn at night,

dimming the Truth as it passes

near the light

and veiling our eyes with shadows—

do not shade

your sight with how a mad-fad goes

(they all fade).

Beyond the tribal lenses

we all wear

we could gain better senses

for what’s there

if we could only hold the light

close and fast

we would nevermore fear that night

of Man’s past.

Rotgut

The rust-banded barrels

and rust-colored spiders,

rust-bespeckled heralds

with cocooned miters.

Rotgut whiskey, bellied

with gut-rotting venom,

insect innards jellied

and melting within them.

A Dead Horse

It is a dead pack-horse

for your grievances, your grudges,

beaten without remorse,

yet still it lays, never budges

beneath that scornful weight

encumbering its frayed saddle

as you spite its sad state,

not sparing yourself the paddle.

A Difference Of Character

Some wear their petty little griefs

as if they are acclaimed war scars,

listing long their aggrieved beliefs

as if Purple Hearts, or Gold Stars,

while others, with true wounds to bear,

hide them beneath thick, modest sleeves,

afraid others will glimpse and stare

at what never fades; never leaves.

“God-Given” Gifts

He visits museums and art galleries

to see the master works of sculptors and painters

(because they have a God-Given gift, too).

He goes to concert halls, opera houses, jazz clubs,

to hear deft musicians play songs

(because they have a God-Given gift, too).

He attends theaters and goes to the cinemas

to watch brilliant actors become other people

(because they have a God-Given gift, too).

He watches comedy shows and standup routines

to laugh at the witty jokes comedians tell

(because they have a God-Given gift, too).

He looks after the runaways, the prostitutes,

the transvestites and the vulnerable,

enticing them into his car, talking to them like

an old friend, kindly neighbor,

philanthropist in times of need,

taking them

somewhere remote, quiet, and alone,

and he bludgeons them, stabs them,

strangles them, rapes them, kills them,

chops up their bodies, takes

souvenirs

for his own home gallery,

disposes of the remains

and then he calls their relatives on the phone,

mocks them,

tortures them with his firsthand accounts,

relives his depravity through their fresh tears,

and he

leaves complacent clues at the scenes of his crimes

to taunt the cops,

watching the News media

to rejoice in his grand debut,

becoming famous as the anchors

talk him up to

Godzilla proportions of destruction,

and then, satisfied, he

lays low for a year,

waiting,

watching,

returning when the ruckus has subsided,

cultivating his celebrity once again

with a second season of murders,

elated as his alter-ego alias

passes along the lips of those who

pray against his trespasses,

and eventually he

betrays himself,

outs himself so he can be celebrated with

loathing, with infamy,

with international intrigue

through books, movies, cult status,

fan mail, declarations of love,

becoming a cultural phenomenon

as famous as Raphael or Elvis,

and all because

he has a God-Given gift, too.

The Lowly Holy

It is the thought of some people

that the grandest part of a church

is, in fact, the skyward steeple,

that tall symbol which does so perch

to watch over the flock each day

and to remind the flock of the cost

of salvation, and why they pray,

so their souls will not be thus lost;

yet, what would be any building

without support from pagan earth?

What foundation is unyielding

when winds test its structural worth?

Try to build the church upright, strong,

on the steeple so respected

and it tumbles at once, ere long

what little will be erected,

for the bedrock of all belief

(no matter how skyward-gazing)

requires the lowly earth beneath

to support a temple’s raising.

Lineage

Lineage is, at its core, a bloodline

bleeding onward from the ancient ages,

and blood, they oft say, is thicker than wine

delineating history ’s stages;

and to know what oceans of blood were spilled

so we, Modern Men, could live on this day,

is to know all whom our ancestors killed —

sacrifices we may never repay;

sacrifices of countless men, dead men

whose hearts were pierced and whose guts were torn out,

their loins castrated and their heads smashed in

as they screamed and moaned and thrashed all about,

meanwhile, the women were raped, forced to bear

the seed of invaders whom they abhorred,

men who raped while black smoke still filled the air

from the fires and pyres after armies warred.

And those children who were often captured

to be fed to dogs, or gods, for a laugh,

or enslaved to serve ever afterward

as bound wombs for breeding yet more distaff.

What horrors, bloodshed, and living nightmares

bleed through today, swelling Time ’s crimson flood

so we may live in our complacent airs,

thinking ourselves ripe with innocent blood.

Encoiled

Split apart, right down the middle,
between inertia and action,
confused as if by a riddle
and divided like a fraction,
you speak to me with a forked tongue
of your loyalties and the law,
but this is not what truly stung—
it was how you unhinged your jaw
to consume the totalities
and digest the contradictions,
the post-modern modalities
like coils fattened on such fictions,
all the while engulfing your tail
so as to not lose track of it,
the recursive act soon to fail
as you eat yourself, bit by bit.