Are you scared?
Are you still there,
Or just fading away?
Are you scared on the road
Out there?
Don’t put me in no hole
No,
Don’t put me in no hole
When I’m gone
When I’m gone
When the sweet, sweet sun
Won’t never no more
Hurt these eyes that will no longer see
Don’t put me in no hole
No,
Don’t put me in no hole
When the midnight days
And the midnight years
Have dyed my breath, my soul
Don’t put me in no hole
No,
Don’t put me in no hole
Let me be where the rain
Can wash me clean forever
Where the sun won’t never let me freeze
No, don’t put me in no hole
Oh, God, please
Don’t put me in no hole
When I’m gone
When I’m gone
In this mock-celeb world
Where any random moment
May stream a flicker meteor-like
Across the world in acclaim,
How difficult must be the afterwards
Of a long life for an ever wannabe
Who remains only a once-was?
What pain comes from unrealized
Dreams in that long life outside
The clamor and light?
What anger comes with the permanence
Of an error reported and remembered
Merely for its wrongness
Though each ripple of memory
Tortures the scars left behind?
What anguish comes with the echoes
Of destruction reverberating
Interrupting the otherwise unremarkable.
Repeating every hour, then day after day
Into yearly anniversaries,
Pinpointed in every decade forever,
‘Lest we forget’—
As if the witnesses and victims
Every could?
They met at the cliff’s edge
Where she was still frozen
On a ledge just below the rim.
She had arrived there, breathless,
From a tortuous climb out of the terror below
With only the strength to stand leaning
Into the cliff wall waiting for the courage
To take that one last step into the future above.
He sat down, dangling his legs
Into the open air of the chasm.
Had he come to end her loneliness
To provide the support
For that last surge up over the rim?
For a while it seemed so.
He did not rush her,
Simply kept her company
Cheering her with his humor
And friendship.
Then when she was almost ready
To take the chance, trust him
To be there to catch her
As she made the frightening leap
Into the openness above the cliff edge,
He looked down.
His eyes in that downward glance
Revealed his hunger to know,
To battle the beasts in the darkness below.
He was there to make the journey down.
He hoped she would go with him
As she had been there and survived.
But she dared not return to the depths.
She might not return a second time.
This he could not see
Through his own desperate need and pain.
There they said their goodbye.
She turned away toward the future
Waiting above the cliff edge.
He stepped down to the ledge
She had just left, turning
To let her know
He would never forgive her
For leaving him to face it alone.
We cheered and applauded.
They gave all they had to give
And asked only for one answer.
We saw and denied.
They cried against the silence
And screamed their fears into a void.
We sat and watched.
They fed their souls to the hawk
And they died.
Who knows
what scars
the heart
of a man?
Scars deep
beyond forgetting
beyond hope
of disguise.
What cure
is there
for the wound
that ever bleeds?
What help
for the child
spitted
on the spear
of his fate?
*Charles Dickens
(Simon Schama, February 1970)
If the large crimsoned canvases
Had not just arrived,
He would not now
Find himself suspended
In their vast depth.
The sound that throbbed
In his head was crimson, too,
And had nothing
To do with the place
He had intended to reach.
Deep crimson rusted
Nearly to black,
Crimson fluxing as in mirage
Brilliant, dark, dim emanations
of Rothko’s silence.
The purposeful stride
That had brought him
Here—abandoned
His earlier goal—forgotten.
He was caught
In the pause
Between breath
And heartbeat
He had not expected
This confrontation.
Deep in angles of crimson
His mind staggered
With knowledge.
Swallowing in great gulps
The reek of dim red air.
He was pulled irresistibly
Into the emotional vortex
Of the murals.
Which had caught him
Unaware
And
Unprepared
No poetry, not today,
But a pen to dance?
To twirl and prance
Spinning into arabesque
And pirouette
Gliding over the tracery
The delicate filigree
The perfectly tatted lace
A net to catch and hold
To shape and mold
The sound and sense
That is the essence of poetry?
Ah, no. Not today,
Not yesterday,
Nor even perhaps tomorrow.
(Inspired by poets in oppressed nations)
Perched upon fretted, steel-beamed towers,
the carrion birds wait.
Their long, misshapen shadows seep
from the tower heights,
a creeping dark which tells the hours
of the city where breath alone
may be excuse enough
to die
Slow, in measured meter
the people move
through air so siphoned dry
that
to breathe at all
is pain
Here, in this violated cityscape
where wolf and hawk ceaselessly roam,
the poet may not dream of lyric pastorales,
But only strive to unspeak
the sorcerer’s spell
when with his heart blade
knife, the poet pens
the truth
You loved me.
Your anger wrapped me
In a softness, the delicate warmth
Of the receiving blanket
Comforting a newborn infant.
You loved me.
Fear for me birthed your fire.
I stood in your anger and
I was not afraid.