Poems, 20-30 March 2016

[ by Charles Cameron ]

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As I’ve said on rare occasions before, Madhu, a wonderful friend of this blog, encouraged me some while back to post some of my poems here. I don’t do it often, and I hope you will at least tolerate it when I do.

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Staring at a gravestone

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Staring at a gravestone as though the dead might —

contrary to science, in line with hope – break through death,

through death writ in stone, to speak, loom

grey under the sun like a hard silk ghost emerging

from granite, half nowhere half here, speak

out of beyond the thoughts of ever and one and no-one,

chant, perhaps, in some dead tongue, language

of the dead, of death, of one’s own family, intimate,

vast and impersonal.. staring with hope, grief,

a touch of rage perhaps, melded in incomprehension,

listening without hearing, seeing, though

dumb, by doubt and shroud clouded, deluded:

and all this observed from that all-knowing other place, by

the all-giving nothing to which galaxies are specks, lives speak.

**

Of, by and for itself: the poem

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Let me write a poem that has music to it, that conjures

images out of ink, that echoes into silence,

let it flow from me as the mind waves in the wind,

here and there, yet tethered, tethered, yet hither and yon,

veering away from and towards rhymes, swaying

itself, myself and the reader – your self, yourselves –

my son was pillowing his head on a weight-bar

a few minutes ago – drifting off topic and weaving

back in, let me write in such a way you will wonder,

will wander into wonder, whither wonder yonder hither,

torn, and suddenly so, asunder – may the poem

wrench me, wrench itself, wrench syntax, yourself, selves,

in the sheer mind play of itself on self, in the sheer

wind play, grass on grass, of itselves on our all selves..

**

Unbreakable mirror

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There is such ghastly blood spurting at home and abroad

I must get back to Pasadena, walk again down Marengo, take joy

in the living shoots breaking up the concrete paving.

There are such foolish beheadings, blood spurting, abroad

I must close my eyelids like rose petals, discern petal from thorn.

There is so much hatred spurting blood lost to kin flesh and blood

in the passing down of abuse across generations here at home

I must get to the pool in mind where breath moves, motion is still.

I must get clear past understanding to peace, wherein the face

of understanding is seen in the beloved face, mirror, love, lake:

and what if yours is the divine face, and yourself at war, in grief,

broken in broken marriage, fragmented by frag-grenade, lost

in self-esteem high or low, in alcohol, lost in lust or unloved,

if it should be your broken face i see, in the unbreakable mirror?

**

On the Thursday before All and Everything

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How sad can that woman be, painted, whose son’s eyes

know and convey that those creatures with bird wings and

Botticelli features who once told her “Fear Not”

arrived from a court or realm in which a higher octave

of fear named awe is the only octave ever sung,

came visiting a realm where the mother’s torn flesh

is the only sacrifice sufficient for the birth of the young,

how sad, seeing those eyes, can a woman be, her son next

to crucifixion, next to resurrection, next to literary

criticism, next to demythologization, next to indifference

by all but Bach, El Greco, Hopkins, Grunewald, how

lanced with grief can that mother be to see her son broken

and spilled, bones and blood, flesh and spirit, wine

and unleavened bread that is nonetheless risen, risen, risen?

**

One frail voice in a whirlwind

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Okay I am joyed to overflowing that enough dust gathers

and swirls here to formulate a momentary dervish,

crying “for love’s sake, love” against the world’s maelstrom,

one frail voice in a whirlwind, one small silence

amidst such shouting, shooting, eardrum-piercing sound.

I will love you before and after I am gone, I will echo

love on the drumbeat of your heart, I will dance to Bach’s

bacchanalian orgy of the divine love crucified, seated

in lotus, absolute, incarnate, flexible to each soul’s need,

tireless, fatigued unto death, l will dance my dust

into full-throated voice for you, quiver or quaver my wings

faster than birds hum, stretch like the night, warm

your heart at my hearth, I am none and gone, I am here

only to toll and tell you, you are beyond boundlessly dear.

**

How best to crumple your face

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Aging offers no guarantee of the desired effect

so clearly displayed in that photo of Jim Harrison — a poet

I’m told, and now I’ve seen that image a poet

I shall seek out and read – half blind, half drunk?

Withered as an old oak stump? Gnarly? A grump?

Attack through the voice, it strikes me, would be

the fast, best strategy – dumbfound but not dumb down

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