THE DESIRE OF BEING HUMAN

When there is stillness,
we desire activity.
When there is activity,
we desire stillness.
This is the great conundrum
of being human,
to only desire the things we do not have.
The desire of being human is only transcended
by those who know how
to desire the things they already own.

     - 6/7/2011

Invoking The Muse

One of the things I'd like to do on this blog, aside from going through my old notebooks and analyzing the stuff that's really old, is post fragments of new stuff as I write them, not complete poems so much, but the newer stuff in its embryonic form, stuff that may grow up one day to, you know, fork lightning and stuff. I figure it might be interesting to people who are fascinated about the writing process (or trying to learn about it) at best and at worse it'll be helpful for me on those days when I'm feeling somewhat low and looking for new inspiration. Writing in many ways is an unforgiving occupation. You can only rest on your laurels for so long; everything you write has an expiration date. It's that point where you can no longer look back at it and get any enjoyment at all from having written it, that point where the "look, ma, no hands" sensation has consumed itself utterly and all that remains is ennui and a sense of self-effacement.

At this point you have to re-invoke the Muse. The cold winter night comes in and last night's fire won't keep you warm. You have to do something new. In a lot of ways that's what all the old writing is good for. It doesn't matter how good it was. It's a body of work to draw from and once that pile of work gets large enough you never run out of stuff to write about.

So anyway today was kind of a productive day for me, not just because I got some poetry writing done, but because it reinforced the realization that I couldn't have done it without drawing on something I had done before - in this case something that I wrote a little over three years ago, a little bit of blank verse about Kratos, the God of War, from the video game series "God of War."

I won't spend a lot of time talking about how good that game was (it was.) Or how long I spent playing it (I did.) Or how much of an ass-kicker at that game I am (it's true.) But I would like to go on record as saying that it has the best - the very best - story line I've seen in a video game ever (it does.) The story was so good that I felt an irresistable urge to write it down. And given the epic nature of the game, and given how firmly rooted it is in the world of Greek mythology, any one of the'heroic' forms would suffice (and by heroic I mean any one of the forms that were commonly used in works of literature that address similar subjects.) I chose to work with blank verse. In many ways it was an obvious choice. At any rate it's a form I'm comfortable writing in, even though it's a form that I am far, far from mastering.

I enjoyed my little experiment in blank verse. I enjoyed it so much that I even considered working the entire story of the game into a longer version - an epic poem if you will. But I quickly pushed the idea aside. It would take too long. It would expend far too much creative energy that would be better spent on more rewarding projects. And, ultimately, it wouldn't even be mine. The intellectual property is still under copyright and will be for a long, long time.

But some ideas aren't pushed aside so easily. There are some things that demand to be written down. So I was at work today and the following line of iambic pentameter kept throwing itself to the front of my awareness: "Conan walks beneath the jeweled stars." And it occurred to me that it would be kind of cool to write an epic poem in blank verse about Conan the Barbarian. And no sooner did that thought occur to me then I started thinking about that old poem, the one about Kratos, and how cool it would be to write an epic poem about that too. I pushed all of this stuff into the background for a while, but when I got home I sat down and started writing blank verse in my Moleskine clone, not bothering to break the lines, just separating them with commas, all in one kind of continuous paragraph. When I got done I rewrote them in block print with all the line breaks in place. I sat back and realized I was looking at the beginning of a long poem about Kratos. I had invoked the Muse. I don't know, really, if I'll take this idea any further, it's an ambitious idea and a frightening, somewhat intimidating one, as well, but if I ever decide to, well, hell, at least I'll have something to work with, which is a hell of a lot less intimidating, less frightening, than, you know, just the proverbial blank page. And that's what the Muse is for, what it does.

It's just a matter of finding it.

- Jon-Paul Smith

- January 8, 2011

Here me, O Muse, in this my ministration -

the song of Kratos, loud in tribulation,

black in madness, ghostly in his mantle,

red in red revenge and long in labor -

of this I sing, of this I seek to bother

heaven high with my unworthy calling.

Hear me, O Muse, and give my voice no bottom!

Make of my words a vortex of red woe

and wondor where the sons of children gather

until the stars that tremble on the firmament

go out into the cold and all is nothing

when even gods themselves lay down their heads

on fabrics made of long annihilation

and all the universe is gone to ruin.

Hear me, O Muse, bear witness to the stranging

of this, my lay, forever in the hallshine

of you, the sky, so great may its resounding

echo in the halls of time forever!

For Kratos all the gods abandon reason.

Zeus father casts the lightning of his judgement

on the fruit of his most noble seed.

Poseidon takes his sea legs to the land.

The thighs of Aphrodite softly tremble

while Athena forfeits wisdom and undresses.

Such is the power of the ghostly Spartan,

his might, his grandeur, and his bold enlargement,

that gods put down their doings just to hearken

this change that brings a wreckage to the world.

Such is the grandeur of the Ghost of Sparta.

Hear me, O Muse, that I may tell his tale!

- January 8, 2011

Zeus (A Prayer)

O great Zeus!
O great progenitor
of dark histories and lost faiths
give us an hour for magic
just to piss the Christians off.

After all,
they're the ones who put us here.

Together
we could burn the churches down
with great bolts of fire and sky.
Together
we could empty all the pews.
Together
we could make them cower in fear
behind ruined and bloodstained altars.
Together
we could yank the Nazarene from his throne
and cast him into
the darkest pits of Tartarus.

O great Zeus!
Hear my humble prayer
and be my god for just one day.
Come down from the sky.
Remind the world
that even gods can die.

     - 6/2/11

The Man Who Sold The World

Six million Chinese kids in Chinese sweatshops,
but Wal-Mart doesn't care.
Wal-Mart only cares about Wal-Mart.

So remember when you come through my line
I'm not the lowly Wal-Mart guy
who sells bananas
or feminine hygiene spray.
I'm the man who sold the world.

I'm the man who sold mercy and justice.
I'm the man who sold the middle class.
I'm the man who sold out the labor unions.

And one day
if the Chinese communists
and the good ole boys in Bentonville want me too
one day I'll sell you too.

     - 6/2/2011

Poetry

Poetry is a mystery to me.
Like a ransom note in binary
it's completely meaningless to the people
who need it most.
But for the rare few
who can feel the strange, first fire
the need is satisfied
and they turn away
whole - there is nothing to say.
The street is empty now,
only the blowing of loose leaflets
in the wind, unread.

     - 5/31/2011

Bukowski

Once I thought to myself
that Frost was right,
that free verse was like
playing tennis without a net.

But sometimes reading Bukowski
is like looking into Chapman's Homer
for the first time
and I think of writing
as an organic process
like cum-stained thank you notes
and Spanish bones.

I think I enjoy poetry the most
when I'm not thinking about it at all,
the way the deep sea makes a sound
that can't be heard
but we all see the rain
and feel the cold on our skin.

It's just something that happens
like an orgasm
or a suicide
or a murder
like weeping in a pillow
when no one is looking.

     - 5/31/2011

Wal-Mart

The Spartans were great warriors,
but time defeated the Spartans.
One day time will murder Wal-Mart too.

One day its shelves will be empty,
its buildings in ruin and decay.
Only the dogs will shop there,
feeding on the carcass that is Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart,
we are not kindred spirits, you and I.
Your face is not my face.
Your voice is not my voice.
Your life is not my life.
Your Nazi cheer's a goddamned fucking crime.

One day we will go our separate ways,
you and I,
and one day you too shall die
the slow, excruciating death
of tyrant-kings.

      - 6/1/2011

Wherefore This Hall Of Ghosts

wherefore this hall of ghosts; I go
walking half in shade; I am
what I become, I do not know
if it's becoming of a man
to reason beyond reason's power
when season's call for living showers.

if it be said that men must think
remember that they too must live
and by living come to drink
and by drinking learn to give
(these Lethe-like waters leave me dry,
unlearning joy, afraid to die.)

if thinking be the goal of men
we were to look on reason's face.
our single and unpardoned sin
would leave men hanging on in space,
a space of intellect that's cold
a passion blind, a heart that's old.
my becoming I would not berate,
for I can not escape this fate.

Requiem To A Suicide

Moments of a silent salutation
motionless upon an instant loud
and scattered in the intervals like oceans
hanging on the walls, unholy clouds,
composite, upright, bodily ungoing,
a tabernacle to its unbelief
in life and light, instead the silence growing
that must have rang its bell there like a thief
a victim of a subtle strangulation
he died a well-directed loss of breath
a chronic halitosis to the living -
trigger, finger, and a loud brief death.
He left me with a burning in my eyes,
and in my loud brief dream I hear a cry.

- 1989-ish

O People Of Time's Salutations

O People of time’s salutations, my love is gathering seashells by that hilled windy gathering place the sea (like dim worlds vexed with sound in the stuck conch, to undo this day the scaly wrongs that scuttle in the soul’s sea); for gull-winged griefs that drop their vowels on spat hills of light, my love is gathering portents like sea-made money for the truths found their in untruth, and hearing them there, I see them there:

Summer folk that come from cold to these great gathering hills and find one breasted ounce of ocean silver to keep like crying know that taut pants cringing came, the color of kisses, scattered on the sand grains like arms and legs. O People of time’s salutations, this shell and ear will bray there for the weeped hills that leaving love labored.

Folk of autumn come from fear, wracked by youth, grow old there where the hills recede — gather dust of water to glow the sun over with knowing that came too late. Sad gone days lean to and fro in the salutating tide that tugs the land for lack of care. O People of time’s salutations, this conch and ear will hear them scratch as the days go out to sea.

The morning folk that come from shadow gather wand watered proverbs in the still light. Great hills for these mad people who froth like waves for the sayings of ages. O People of time’s salutations, though eternities implode like new suns in their slow gatherings, shell and breath can not blow them out beyond sound’s ill reach where their sea goes endlessly rocking and mocking their finitudes.

The folk of evening come from labor, their wasted souls on hill and sullied waves dropped like shells in wrong places. Muscles matted on sanddollar days yield no virtue’s wages. Work is a shark’s tooth for the weary. O People of time’s salutations, shell and ear will hear them breathe though the sun going down can not.

Shell and ear for these splay sounds that daunt and dabble (by a sea of hilly days go on). But to pity and praise this great endeavour, my love is seashell gathering by that same great sea while the waves go pithily out on this hill and monied water like thoughts and implications. O People of time’s salutations, this conch and ear will trumpet eternities in the long-winded tides that walk there.

     - Spring, 1990

BLACK SONNET (I)

                     I.

the children gather on a hill in moon-
dripped masses while the evening slowly shifts
and scuttles in their eyeless faces, noon
is dead to their surroundings, and the rift
wrong sounds of owls beat in their open throats,
a parenthesis of consciousness, brief hope
implores the splay, skull earth - one knuckling note
enmeshed, incessant, on one hill erecting
one loud hill, a monument to ending
one loud grief; pity this human clay
that to the forces of one loud mind bending
these children resurrected from the grave
(like rain that's nowhere bound they hold their thighs)
one brief tongue to lick and curse the sky.

    - 1991-ish


Also see: http://abladeoftongues.blogspot.com/2011/06/epic-poetry.html

Megan's Lament

The snow is piling higher now
on the garden that was young
when pretty boys they gave me flowers
that I planted, one by one;

But the years flew by like summer birds
bound elsewhere, like the youth I knew -
now there's a pretty flower there
for every pretty boy I knew

when I was young. It doesn't matter now
that all the memories are buried
and none of them remember how
to save me from the one I married.

Winter scratches at the door with frosty fingers.
All the pretty boys are gone - but the snow it lingers.

    - Fall to Winter, 2000

Lines

Cupping candles on the open landscape,
marching to the heartbeat of the earth,
head hung low I hold the empty plate
that carries my last meal, the vanished mirth

I knew before the terrible black promise
of days that have been too long in the night
that I would never see the fabled summit.
A phosphorous reminder of the light,

Solemn-eyed the moon proclaims my doom,
my quiet song on this unhappy moor,
as I who move from chaos into gloom
light candles and bring darkness to the world.

If I could find within this grave omission
the fortitude of strength to stay the hand
that trembles with an urge to amputation
on the backdoor of tomorrow where I stand

How I would walk then as the need arises
and before the looming mountain make my plea
as far away the sun it blithely rises,
but I do not think that it will rise for me.

I do not think that it will rise for me.

        - February (22), 2002

Bike

thru my window I have watched him
whose secrets blew open and unafraid
before when gripping handles with both hands
    hair hung like hickories on a sylvan wind
in the street of the neon gods

the little boy that broke his vows
whose secrets stood staunch and mighty in the pirate wind
    parks his bike in the drive of dying
stoops low to finger the muddy pool
    and see himself
when the street lights close their eyes

I have grieved a thousand times
for the face gone gray with childhood's end
for the rusty steed and its rider
    lord of the pirate queens grown old
I have grieved for the secrets that raced the vagrant leaves

by signs that stop the rivers of smoldering stone
    I have held my fists and dreamed
of the smoky fragrance of May lying low in the valleys
devoured by the dog winds of February
    of a dream that ended,
    of a wind that blew the world away
of autumn on the little boy's forehead
    and in his eyes


    - Senior Year, 1986

Silence

I, having succumbed to the noise and the bustle of the corporate world, have forgotten the great power of silence. Silence is all that matters.

I, who should have known better, who once made silence his master for three long years, whom silence now serves - I, who have grasped the awesome power of silence, unlearned the lesson that is remembering and remembered to forget. This I tell you.

Now I tell you this. That silence is the great slayer of tyrants. That silence is the voice of the grave. That silence is the source of realization and that silence is the noise of noiselessness and should be remembered and I would give everything I own for a little more of it.

I tell you now, in the spirit of Sandberg, that silence is the great denier of evil, for evil is a hungry beast that feeds on the noise of men.

     - 11/15/2010
     - (12/6/2010)
     - (1/14/2011)

Wal-Mart 2010

so much depends
upon

a yellow pallet
jack

glazed with rain
water

beside the black
stackbases

LINES 10/6/2010

Hell is just a disconnected place.
There is no secret. It's something you have known
deep in the mystic stomach where you feel
the truth of things. It is the purple tongue
that licks the rusty razor blade and bleeds.
You will die when you read this.

The world is long and loud and labyrinth.
Water is death, the pain is everywhere.
The hair is on the skullplate, but the face
is made of bone. The skin that still hangs there
is made of murder, but the deed has perished
and no one cares.

This is the horror living things must bear
before they die and every death a plate
of food for the umbilical feast of famine.
This is the supper that is set before them.
No one can live in such a place and still
be any more than food for what is eaten.

    - October, 2010

For So Long Now

for so long now I have feared the cancer of silence,
the fall into the chasm of one’s own mind
and the absence of all distractions –
where there is no escaping the inward gaze
that finds oneself gazing out;
here is mindfulness of mindfulness;
here is the hand
that groping in darkness,
clenches and finds itself.

this has for some time been my most secret
and intimate fear –
for the hand that is there
is mauled and fingerless,
and the face that is there
is waxen with screaming
at the sound that it itself is making.

     - Winter, 1991

Kratos, God Of War

Brave Kratos stood above the raging sea,
in the night as storm clouds cracked and groaned,
poised to fall and softly cried “the gods
of Olympus have abandoned me,”
then forthright threw himself beyond the cliff
into the dark and violent sea below
to find the peace that only death could bring.
But the immortals high up in Olympus
had decreed that it was not his fate
and so Athena came down from the heavens
with godspeed to arrest the Spartan’s fall
and bring him back to the great golden halls.
She said to him, “you will not die today.
Nor shall you die at all or perish ever
not since you slew my brother, evil Ares.
The gods do not forget the burning deeds
of Kratos who possessed the Blades of Chaos,
nor his fateful quest to kill a god.
The songs and lays of Kratos shall forever
ring and echo through the halls of time.
The gods do not forget the fallen Hydra
nor famed Medusa with her wild hair,
the Minotaurs that crashed the walls of Athens
where the Oracle was lost in seeing,
when taller than the city Ares stood
his yellow mane companion to the clouds
of smoke above the burning city that
did echo with the clang and crash of war.
They shall not forget the desert Sirens,
nor the Titans of which Cronos is the last
bound by manwide chain links in the desert
where the hot winds bite and sting forever,
nor Pandora’s Box whose seal was broken.
Long shall great historians remember
your evil pact with Ares, God of War,
the mighty chains he grafted to your skin
with blades that wander but can not be lost,
how your skin was painted by the ashes
of your wife and daughter that you murdered
when Ares tricked you. Thus the song is told
of how you died and yet refused to die,
of your brave journey and of your escape
from Hades, how you climbed the tree of pain.
The gods do not forget the song of Kratos
nor do they forget the death of Ares
and thus decree that you shall take his place.”
So it was that Kratos took his mansion
above the sea where he had sought to die.
Now Kratos wore the title God of War
and as Athena gazed the Ghost of Sparta
took his seat on that immortal throne.


     - 2006, 2007 or so...

A Shadow Play

I see the shadows playing on the water zone
as by the fingered waterside I go alone
where the running hands of days are walking low
on fingers moment, instant, slow.

I see the stars are cradling on the water cold
where the fisted river locks its hands to hold
kilowatts that keep the numbers safe from harm
and frees them from their dark alarm.

The dam that’s on the river keeps the night away
two hands I rub together keep the world at bay
and fusing with attainment I would have them say,
“this is the day that hope is like a shadow play.

This is is the day that hope is like a shadow play.”

It was a nothing nihilated by the womb
that held me from that blind first spinning light too soon.
I rose to meet the colors of the day away

and could not keep the monsters there at bay,
those spinning horrors would not put their hands away.

My fingered eyes with which to apprehend the night
are pupiled hands that feel with their external might

the fingered crevice of the world to find what’s right
again to hold to that first spinning light.

My senses bind me to the living world (like rain
that’s many-fingered on the hands of sky) but then
I would that I would find the will within again
to keep my eyes wide open to the world and then
undo all that has been.

The dam that’s on the river keeps the night away
two hands could (rubbed together) keep the world at bay
and fusing with attainment I would have them say
“this is the day that hope is like a shadow play
with hands that make the shadows go away.”

I-75 In The Gloom

Autumn has not come and built a room.
The windy hills are not less mighty things.
I-75 is not gathering in the gloom.

My eyes are not as willful as the rain.
I do not think the ground has touched the sky,
(my heart is not a blind, unseeing thing.)

Far off like hills that beckon blood to fly,
the high and windy leaves aren’t what they seem.
They are not there to make me wonder why:

only in sleep do I approach the dream.
The high and windy hills of Tennessee
do not retain the echo of a scream

I did not propagate so suddenly
to wrap around the world (and build a wall.)
I analyze its abscence – just to see:

the world, it did not spin here like a ball.
These things – they did not happen here at all.

     - Spring, 1991

In Deep Water

Only the fish have come this far where the long sweet tides walk out beyond the boundaries — I think that I have gone too far this time. There are no hands to hold me back as I walk here with my arms and legs. I am in deep water where the fishes go.

Everyone told me — and it’s true — that one’s affairs can’t be carried out in this peopleless realm. But the long sweet tides have arrested my attentions, and they have brought me here. I am in deep water where the fishes go.

There are no colors here — only an endlessness. I have assigned myriad names for their absence. I have said too many things that have no meaning here. I am in deep water where the fishes go.

To be caught on the hook — to come swimming in like a caught fish — gasping at life — this is my secret chore, my secret dream. But the long sweet tides have taken me by the arms and legs, and I am here, in deep water, where the fishes go.

Spring 1990 (?)