Jaded

Don't stand in my way Don't steal my rage Don't think that you can manipulate the way that I inhabit my soul today I'm not here to step aside and watch the ride go by I'm not here to swallow light and gentle step the tense and trying times Step into my space and I'll show you my world today I'll show you something new, something the surface won't display Hang onto that truth like diamond and ring Parade it and I'll toss you like loose coins in a wishpond This is the way I handle myne This is the way I protect my truth I want to escape, I want to draw near So much to learn of self that I most fear Above all - to remain true and not to wane to pressures of the day To live To love

Broken Glass

My dreams are reflected in a fragile glass I can see through clearly and yet alas Try as I might, from morning till night My dreams are as high as a kite If the glass were to break Oh god! For heavens sake! All that reflected would be lost

Where The Mind is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my soul awake.

LITTLE LESSONS

THE love I bear you, dearest,

Would make the sweetest tale,

We'd sail upon a sea of bliss,

And I would lift the sail.

Our happiness would be sublime,

Surpassing tongue or pen.

You may as well learn things from me,

As to learn from other men.

"Oh! you have touched me--deeply--"

The young thing whispered low.

He pleaded: "Come! oh! come with me."

She could not answer: "No."

She said: "I'll be your pupil."

And softly added then:

"I may as well learn things from you

As to learn from other men."

They dined alone that evening,

And the young man got his wish.

They even broke the unwritten law

Of: "Nevaire before zee feesh."

At half-past three, next morning,

He staggered home again.

She had taught him tricks he never knew,

That she'd learned from other men.

Here I Love You

Here I love you. In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself. The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters. Days, all one kind, go chasing each other. The snow unfurls in dancing figures. A silver gull slips down from the west. Sometimes a sail. High, high stars. Oh the black cross of a ship. Alone. Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet. Far away the sea sounds and resounds. This is a port. Here I love you. Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain. I love you still among these cold things. Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels that cross the sea towards no arrival. I see myself forgotten like those old anchors. The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there. My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose. I love what I do not have. You are so far. My loathing wrestles with the slow twilight. But night comes and starts to sing to me. The moon turns its clockwork dream. The biggest stars look at me with your eyes. And as I love you, the pines in the wind want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful ‚ The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers. Faces and darkness separate us over and over. Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

The Fall of Man

HAND omnipotent, in endless space,

From chaos, formed a world and found a place,

Where, through the countless ages, yet unborn,

A star might shine from dusk to rosy morn.

Great mountains rose, majestic in their might,

And sun-kissed hills, aglow with mellow light,

And rippling streams went purling through the dales,

To silver lakes that glistened in the vales.

A subtle fragrance filled each shifting breeze,

The scent of flowers in bloom and budding trees.

So beautiful the earth, in Nature's eyes,

A soul was sent to dwell, in human guise,

A form of god-like beauty and of might.

To drink the sunshine and to dream at night,

In those old days, when first the world began,

Strange visions came to Nature's first child, Man.

Unclad and lone, he roved from spot to spot

And longed and yearned for something which was not.

Until, at last, a prayer went up to Heaven

And Nature's noblest gift to man was given:

A gentle, throbbing, trembling, beauteous maid,

Fair as the man, but with a softer shade,

Endowed with beauty and a thousand charms

That sought the sheltering clasp of loving arms.

As children play, in childhood's happy hours,

They romped and played among the sylvan bowers,

Or sported in the streams whose waters sweet

Ran cool beneath the trees at Noonday's heat.

And when night's sable banners were unfurled

And darkness wound her arms about the world,

On beds of roses, in some vine-clad nest,

Their drowsy senses found untroubled rest

And wandering zephyrs swetp across them there,

Unclad, but anashamed, in Eden fair.

No thought had come to them of wild desire

And yet, at times, a smouldering, hidden fire

Seemed slumbering deep within and fiercer burned.

When, in their sleep, they toward each other turned,

One ambient night of blissful summer-time,

A perfect night of Eden's balmy clime,

Eve stretched her languorous limbs in restless sleep

And Adam, at her side, sought slumber deep.

Some trifling thing, perhaps a wind-swayed fern,

A leaf--a bird--caused both of them to turn.

Eve's rounded arm was thrown above her head,

Her dimpled knee, just lifted from its bed,

When, by this chance, this trifle, light as air,

Their warm lips met, and, trembling, lingered there.

They slept no more from dusk to rosy dawn,

'Mongst roses red or on some grassy lawn,

But wakened often, from strange dreams of bliss,

To find their mouths all melting in a kiss.

Their hearts were filled with vague, unknown desire,

Nor knew they how to quench the wondrous fire.

A wild unrest upon them settled down

And Adam's brow would often wear a frown,

And then again, he'd stroke her glorious hair

And gaze into her eyes and call her fair,

Then clasp her fiercely, with encircling arm,

As though to shield her from impending harm,

Then wildly kiss her--eyes--mouth--neck and breast,

While she against him, tightly, closely press't.

Still waited, hungered, starved for something more.

Yet little knew what nature had in store.

Just how the fall occurred, so long ago,

The modern world should naturally know.

Not touching on his grievous fall from grace,

But just a hint at what we knoe took place,

And if his fall was premature, what then!

That sometimes happens to the best of men.

Eve's little, truant, tapering fingers slim,

Beloved of Adam and caressed by him,

By accident, one night, grew wondrous wise,

And found just where the trees of knowledge rise.

Amazed, surprised, confounded, if you please,

But, womanlike, inclined a bit to tease,

She tried experiments of many a kind,

To learn by which she most delight could find.

And Adam, dizzy with her new-found charms,

Gave way to every pressure of her arms

And gave her childish innocence full sway,

Nor cared to check her or to say her: "Nay."

Then suddenly, with savage, passionate clasp,

She drew him to her with an eager grasp

And sank exhausted, yet with cheeks aflame,

Athrill with feelings which she could not name

And Adam, swept away, on seas of bliss,

Poured all his soul in one, long, clinging kiss.

'T was pain, 't was pleasure, 't was a joy intense.

It seemed as though along each quivering sense,

Swift rivulets of fire had found their way

And burned their hearts. The knew not night nor day,

Nor life, nor death, nor aught that mortals know.

They only knew they loved each other so.

Nor dreamed they, even yet, of further joy,

The one swift dream that comes without alloy,

And blends two loving natures into one,

Too sweet to last--that ends ere 'tis begun.

It came to them like lightning from the sky.

Each thought the very hour of death was nigh,

Yet longed to live. Delirious pain

Went sweeping through their inmost souls again

And black oblivion brooded for an hour,

O'er passion's birth in Eden's rosy bower.

And when, at last, Eve wakened from her swoon,

The night had fled. The glare of Eden's noon

Sent showers of golden light through wavering trees,

And subtle fragrance lingered on the breeze.

Throughout the realm of Eden's joyous bower,

All things that lived were happy in that hour,

For, led by sweet desire, example given,

They found, on earth, the one foretaste of Heaven.

And since you must know all there is to know,

When Eve awakened, in a blushing glow,

Her thirst for knowledge, seeking to know all,

Discovered first the secret of the fall.

She sought the source of her new-found delight.

Turned pale, grew faint and trembled at the sight.

The Tree of Knowledge stood--ah! yes, it stood.

Past tense, you see--and while the past was good,

The present need was great, without a doubt

And pretty Eve began to fret and pout.

She wept and sighed and said "I see it all,

For here was death and there, alas! the fall."

The Enjoyment

E Gods! the raptures of that night!

What fierce convulsions of delight!

How in each other's arms involv'd

We lay confounded, and dissolved!

Bodies mingling, sexes blending,

Which should most be lost contending,

Darting fierce and flaming kisses,

Plunging into boundless blisses;

Our bodies, and our souls on fire.

Tost by a tempest of Desire;

Till with utmost fury driven,

Down, at once, we sunk to heaven.

AFTERMATH

AST night, we fled, close locked, in sweet embrace,

Across the empty kingdom men call "Space."

So deep the solitude, I could but feel

Your fear within. It made my senses reel.

I clasped you closer, with encircling arm,

As though to shield you from impending harm

And like a zephyr, from the sun-kissed South,

I felt the pressure of your trembling mouth.

A flame shot through my soul, in that first kiss.

I was on fire. I knew no thought but this;

I loved you--mind, heart, body, brain and soul.

And had--since centuries first began to roll.

And when your melting mouth had answered mine,

Within your eyes, a new-born light divine

Proclaimed the wondrous miracle was done,

And our two souls had melted into one.

Oh! idiot Earth, to waste the dew of youth,

Along the borderlands of perfect truth!

Oh! dolts and dullards, with your feet of clay!

To shun the glorious light of perfect day!

In that first kiss, the past was all laid bare.

The future years, transparent as the air

In swift procession, swept across our path

And left me drunk, with love's sweet aftermath.

Love

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming Flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring. I have forgotten your face, I no longer Remember your hands; how did your lips Feel on mine? Because of you, I love the white statues Drowsing in the parks, the white statues that Have neither voice nor sight. I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten your eyes. Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to My vague memory of you. I live with pain That is like a wound; if you touch me, you will Make to me an irreparable harm. Your caresses enfold me, like climbing Vines on melancholy walls. I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to Glimpse you in every window. Because of you, the heady perfumes of Summer pain me; because of you, I again Seek out the signs that precipitate desires: Shooting stars, falling objects.

Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars, and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance." The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights like this, I held her in my arms. I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky. She loved me, sometimes I loved her. How could I not have loved her large, still eyes? I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her. To hear the immense night, more immense without her. And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass. What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her. The night is full of stars and she is not with me. That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away. My soul is lost without her. As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her. My heart searches for her and she is not with me. The same night that whitens the same trees. We, we who were, we are the same no longer. I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her. My voice searched the wind to touch her ear. Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once belonged to my kisses. Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes. I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her. Love is so short and oblivion so long. Because on nights like this I held her in my arms, my soul is lost without her. Although this may be the last pain she causes me, and this may be the last poem I write for her.

So You Want To Be a Writer

if it doesn't come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don't do it. unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don't do it. if you have to sit for hours staring at your computer screen or hunched over your typewriter searching for words, don't do it. if you're doing it for money or fame, don't do it. if you're doing it because you want women in your bed, don't do it. if you have to sit there and rewrite it again and again, don't do it. if it's hard work just thinking about doing it, don't do it. if you're trying to write like somebody else, forget about it. if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. if it never does roar out of you, do something else. if you first have to read it to your wife or your girlfriend or your boyfriend or your parents or to anybody at all, you're not ready. don't be like so many writers, don't be like so many thousands of people who call themselves writers, don't be dull and boring and pretentious, don't be consumed with self- love. the libraries of the world have yawned themselves to sleep over your kind. don't add to that. don't do it. unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.