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Submitted by professor on 31 January 2008 - 2:15am.| Updated 31 October 2008 - 5:28am.
Style / Type:
freeform
What am I?
A gritted speck
lodged in the slitted eye
of a streaked infinity?
Ignorant of its blindness,
but pricked by its pain.
My mind’s shining tapetum
yellow with insight’s store
of collected fading light,
revealing each predator
caught by a slightest,
fear-practiced glance.
Or am I a dusty attic,
found empty by all
except for one dark corner,
damp from a broken tile?
Piled with the shrink-packed
detritus of yesterdays.
The stored slime-mould of
collective experience
where the deep-past has died
of deprivation and starvation,
but cannot shake the drip
of rainfall’s memory
bathing each hard,
forgotten mistake
with the slippery life
of newborn guilt.
Or am I the slow ache
that never leaves
my crowded head
as it lies too long still
on a cold, foot-worn stair?
The stair that marks the limit
of where feet and hands
have crawled on bloodied knees.
The stair I curl up on,
comforted, foetus-safe,
knowledge cocooned
but wondering still
if the stairway
has any purpose
but its climbing?
Is it time to go on?
Do I dare stand and ask
so many questions?
What truth am I?
What must I become
to be the answer
of all knowing,
the lasting peace of
absolute certainty?
Is it in that feeling
that the world is shrunk
to just two,
and in the urgent,
consuming need
of those two
becoming one?
Does it lie there
in the nestled warmth
of a soft pillowed neck,
pulse throbbing gently,
pale skin damp and slick,
pores suffused
with the aftermath
of frantic loving?
Or in the tearing wonder
ripping through the cord
that could once contain
each beat of your heart
with the shocked sound
of a first born’s purple cry,
as he takes his first breath,
and sucks his first teat
bringing that warm demand
of lifelong love
and willing dependence?
Or in the cool breeze
raising the down
on naked, bloodless skin,
hackled and pricked
with fear’s anticipation
as the ice wolf prepares
to launch its final strike
and rip out the vitals
of a body’s warmth?.
Or in the discovery
that makes sense
of the impenetrable;
that turns the universe
into just another
small, well trodden
tenement yard
tenement yard
hung with washing
and echoing the
simple innocence
of children’s voices.
Or in some compelling truth
that threatens understanding
will replace the hollow,
ignorant sound
of slavish nonsense
that gives no comfort
to questioning minds?
Perhaps all……
and yet none of these.
There is no answer
but the living
and the waking
from thirsty sleep.
Eyes and feet
turning each corner
as if the answer
will lie etched
on the smooth pavement,
or in the rain falling
from a cloudless sky,
or in the knowing
there is nothing
at the rainbow’s end
but the simple pot
that is our being.
I want the raw truth, feel free to knock me on my back
The truth according to Room 425. Written in a Hotel where time momentarily stood still and I wondered.
(10 votes)
What am I
I’m not sure sure there is no answer. I think each person is what they do. I don’t think what one does can be undone but rather it becomes truth. Things may be changed and even erased but what was done and what hapens because of what was done or is done by any person who does something cannot be changed (you cannot change history). I think I and you are made up of all the things we have done and hopefully at the end of our time all we have done will amount to a pot of gold or at least an amount of good or more good than bad and that would be alot regarding what we are. If we all felt what we are is that simple pot at the end of a rainbow (that does not exist) what desire would we have to do any good? I found your poem, professor, to be perfect constructed and thought through. I enjoyed reading it very much and I know there are many people with a drop in the bucket philosophy if this is what you are truly saying here (my comments have been known to be a bit off at times). You do not ask for comment and there have been 5 - 5 star hits on it without comment. I hope my comment to be entertaining to a degree.
Truely,
Mark
Be as honest as you like
Hi Mark, feel free to be as honest as you like about anything I write, I dont invite any specific comments because in the main I only want to know whether someone likes what I have composed or not….and preferably to say why. As for the philosophy expounded it is I suppose one of simple existentialism and I am fairly comfortable with that now, whereas when I was younger i felt a more urgent need for something more external or tangible. It can bring an amazing sense of peace to accept that life needs only to be about the experience of living it and the people you meet along the way and your relationships with them. Not, I agree something that all would feel satisfactory, but for me it is. Keith
Hello...
If a poem is long I sometimes will read some and if it doesn’t grab me, move on. I started this one and the first line got me, great poem..welcome to Neopoet..
Long poems
Thanks for the welcome and kind comments. I too have concerns about long poems but am glad you feel this one justified it. Keith
This is an intricately woven
This is an intricately woven [virtually seamless] blend of imagery and philosophy … the half-answers cleverly build up a kind of tension, or at least a stubborn persistence, in the reader to find out your conclusion. It’s almost an intellectual strip-tease - but none the worse for that. Highly entertaining and certainly seminal.
Thank you.
Mike
“not all matterings of mind equal one violet” ~ e e cummings ~
Intellectual striptease
Thanks for your comments Mike. Yes I suppose it does come across as an intellectual striptease but it is also a stream of thought leading to the invitable conclusion that life is just about the living of it…..if i was going to intellectual i would perhaps call that existentialism but i prefer not to. Keith
A great poem
Greetings my lord, howz livity(life)? Give thanks fe such a great poem, kept me glued to the screen going over it again and again and again… Give thanks my elder,
Much love and Nuff Respect fe de elder
TuffRoc
If we focus only on solving life
we miss being part of the equation.
In ink,
Dabbler
ps Spotlight well earned.
We are...
And we all are part of the equation whether we want to be or not. Thankyou for your kind comment. Keith
I have read novels, good
I have read novels, good novels, that have not provoked as much thought as this work has. My god, do you have no limits? Simply staggering, a tome of a poem.
I look forward to your work, and jump on it as soon as I see one pop up (and know I have time to savour), but I did not expect this. I Have found your work to be so incredibly lyrical, with a sense of place I can only dream of. But this is so different–internal meanderings of the mind, metaphysical to the extreme. You give it a haunting sense of antiquity and wonder, but that is in the background–as it should be in a work like this–in the forefront is the questions we all ask, when alone with our thoughts, and perhaps our god.
And in the end, this truly spiritual statement, this truth:
there is nothing
at the rainbow’s end
but the simple pot
that is our being
I bow to you sir, your mind and your talent.
A lifetime's experience distilled
It is for these kinds of comments that any poet dreams Alobar although a poem such as this one can be rather too heavy for some. I wrote it off and on for nearly 3 months which is very unusual for me…although revisions can of course go on for years. lol. All I can say is that I did pour a lifetime of experience into it and although at the end of the day its final existentialist message is quite simple it does not make it any less true…at least for me. And of course as many like to tell you it is the journey itself that is most important rather than its conclusions. This poem is a journey and I want the reader to travel it with me and each can make their own conclusion at the end…or even agree with mine. There are no universal truths just the musings of individual experience that hopefully lead you to a conclusion about the meaning of life that you can actually live with. Thanks again Keith
Keith
I was here.
Always, Cat
Cat
That you were here makes a great difference to me…and i hope to you too. Always Keith
Hi Prof, So here I am now,
Hi Prof, So here I am now, what can I say OR ask that you haven’t… that pundits, masters, metaphysicians, scientists and the broken-hearted fail to answer?
“There is nothing
at the rainbow’s end
but the simple pot
that is being.”
I have called it the cosmic soup…and like the Campbell’s soup commercial:
“It’s in there.”.
Well done, sir.
~A
Indeed you are Anna
Thankyou as always for such eclectic praise. lol. The can of soup may come in handy, hungry work tracing the source of that rainbow and man cannot live on living alone. Prof
grabs
reading wasn’t the soothest, but the feel and power make up for it. the grit, quest, angst. nicely done
N/MM