The Entropy of The Human Soul - Part I

Part I. The Dénouement

Beginnings are so gurgling, giggling new
And I’ve had one or two
But when the time comes to end
I find that it, I cannot do

And what will it take
To find my heart and mind awake
To make more (time) than I spend
And bring this entropy to brake?

Directionless I fear
I will not find my “Here!”
That special place to wend
And weave my way to in my end

I wander in my state
While my mind and soul stagnate
My heart a supernova
Yet this red dwarf hesitates

Endings are so flickering, whimpering slow
I have a lot to show
But nothing new to add
to fight the creeping veil of woe

My Choice Draught

I’m inebriated on life

And all it has to offer

I keep taking big gulps

—Coughing, spluttering, spilling—

Rather than sips and swallows.

There is so much music

Sights, smells, things to try

Tastes to taste

Feelings to feel

Thoughts to think

There are so many books,

Sports, jobs, games, skills, responsibilities

And the people!

The people!

There are so many of them

So many of us

So many stories,

Tales of families, sorrows, joys

Of evil, good and all that’s between,

Friends, acquaintances, lovers, and all who could be...

Why is it that so few will touch my life?

So few... and so many...

I am drunk on presence

And thirsting for presence

I vacillate between extreme loneliness

And a desire for solitude

But the people

I wouldn’t give them up

I wouldn’t go sober

For while they kill me, enrage me,

Love me, challenge me, seduce me,

Question me, inform me, teach me,

Learn from me, touch me, strike me,

Enable me, analyze me, judge me,

Forgive me, kiss me, speak to me,

Destroy me and rebuild me

I know that I would not be me

Without you.

Let us get drunk on our presence

On our very being, and that being

Together.

I Stayed My Eyes

I stayed my eyes from closing down

I stayed my head from rest

I stayed my mind from thinking till

I could cope with all this mess...

But all I do is wait and watch

And all I do is waste

While all I do is passing time

To seek a little taste...

The mess it stays upon my eyes

And it stays upon my head

It stays when I go down to rest

It will stay here till I’m dead

But when I’ve left a question hangs

Above my final peace:

Did this one, just like the rest,

Make this mess of man increase?

Ne Me Quitte Pas

I was walking through a blasted grove

Of figs and berries burnt to ash

This land once full of green and growth

Now brought that memory down to crash.

And in that land of blackened pillars

That seemed a Hades temple cold

I saw a flash of white above me

Too bright for prematurely old

Eyes that squint against the gleaming

Inside a world that has gone grey

Oft miss a beacon’s guiding

When from the path their feet do stray.

And here despite my squinting wonder

I saw alight upon a tree

A dove as bright as morning’s splendour

And brighter still than memories.

And there I froze awake in awe

To see so near such beauty live.

Why his pause and hesitation

Where life so long had ceased to give

Its hope and splendour at its being

It seems now just a heavy weight

But yet that bird came down alighting

As if defying seems of fate.

And here he stays nearby beside me

Though he seems so out of place

He should for every ’visioned reason

Take flight from this our burning race

Perhaps because he came to meet me

In this unholy blasted waste

He may remain right here beside me

To guide me to a better place.

(Ne me quitte pas)

You’re all the hope that I could find.

(Ne me quitte pas)

Without you I’ll just wander blind.

The Sounds of Fate

A roll of the dice

A flip of the coin

Red plastic cubes bouncing erratically

Across a felt-lined table

A metallic coin spinning end over end

In over oxygenated air

Thump.

Clunk.

They come to a stop

And you find yourself here

Free to flip or roll

Or stay and choose.

Yet perhaps your choice

Is but another’s roll

Across some cosmic table

Or flip

In some darksome void

“Nonsense!

I choose to flip or roll.”

Thump.

Clunk.

The Mark of the Raven

Ah, I see in your smile

A recent visit from the bird

Who marks our faces

Crow’s feet

Or raven’s

Around the eyes

He lands

And leaves his mark

Then flies

"Caw"

Shattering the sound

Of safety

Show your mark

Show your raven-scar

Show where he stood

And printed

Eulogies to come

Show your crow-scar

With a smile

And a wink

Laugh along with

The black-winged joker

His sign was known

Before it marked your face

His sign is hidden

In the soft skin

Of babies

He even lands on the womb

So do not fret

His constant flight

Overhead

His cackling

Caws

His dark aspect

Do not worry

When he comes

To mark your eyes

But laugh

Laugh with the crow

And raven

Laugh that soon this coil

Will unravel

And release

Its tainted captor

To what?

To where?

Perhaps some distant shore

Some sunrise

Or sunset

But never

Nevermore.

How It Feels Sometimes

I cling, white knuckled, to this supersonic freefalling animal. My fingers strain, in tufts of hair, to hold on. When my grip seems strongest I find out it is weakest. I nearly let go but still I hold on. This mad beast, this psychotic animal does not heed my call. I try to guide it, I try to direct it. It changes direction constantly. Its twitching leaps and jolts thrash me about. I do not know where it is taking me. The heavy shadow of an insignificant future weighs upon me dragging me down. Everything before me is dark. Yet the rampaging speed never falters as I cling.

I pass places I want to stop at and linger for too long at places I would rather pass through.  I learn things I should have remained ignorant about and remain ignorant about things I should know. This spastic creature drags me face down in the mud. I see the people, the skies, the buildings, the birds. They make no sense to me. The dirt is in my eyes and the mud is in my mind. I am travelling at breakneck speeds with no control.

I can survive the lack of control.

Not knowing the destination is what gets to me.

(I wrote this last year, the title is all the explanation that is necessary) 

Over the Void (With Apologies to The Pixies)

The clock keeps on tick, tick, ticking and I think about thinking.

I juxtaposition my thoughts against my actions: One makes a glorious mountain and the other a dark desolate valley; One ablaze in sunglow the other fuming in dark ruminations. And I ask that aging question: Where is it? Way out in the water, I see it drowning.

Is it water? It’s so hard to tell when there’s no light. Perhaps it’s alcohol or gasoline. It certainly smells. The vapors drape their heavy tendrils around my nostrils like fish-hooked chains. Oh the cutting stench! A smell of dried vomit and stale excrement wafting from listless hours and indolent acts.

Act I: The clock keeps on tick, tick, ticking. I can’t think about the thinking when the clock keeps tick, ticking. Or thumpy, thump, thumping like a burdened train over the tracks. The tracks are disappearing over that swampy miasma. All aboard the time train! Next stop: fate.

Hey look down there! Beneath the strained struts and warped beams. There, in that bubbling potion, it’s my mind. Ah! But if it’s there then where am I? Am I not there with it in that poisonous froth? But if I know it’s there am I not here and it with me? Or does it remain, loosely connected by tenuous nerves across the void of air and darkness and time, still in that thickly pitch. Does my notice of it bring it back or is it just a self-awareness that there I am, in the moonlit waves of unknown horror, drowning. And time keeps on tick, tick, ticking and thumpy, thump, thumping over the void. And I think about thinking and thoughts and actions and mountains and valleys. Can one be there while the other is where?

Where is my mind? Way out in the water, I see it drowning while time keeps on ticking I’m thinking of thinking. That sunglow memory must have been self-delusion. You never can tell down here. When will this thinking of thinking move to thinking of acting and on to acting on thinking and then to thinking on acts. Or will I just stay in Act I while the clock keeps on tick, tick, ticks—like a buried head in my skin boring in for blood and who knows what else. Think about this while looking through a scratched and smog slimed train window:

Time, like a tick, bores.

Ode to the Soldiers

The bells! The bells, they toll for victory

Hard fought and won upon the heaping fields

Of mud scorched black by emptied armories

And blood of bodies brave who would not yield.

To them, to them they toll for all but naught

Who fought and died there in the worst of hell

Those dead; the brightest of the hope-lit souls

To walk the twilight of ’shrined progress fraught

With blinding pride and hubris great to knell

The gongs of war: the bells, the bells, they toll.

And throbbing now upon November air

A cry goes up and mingles with their sound

A scream of joy, perhaps, or bold fanfare

To ’nounce the end of war and loud expound

Relief for lengthy tension snapped at last.

Yet there among the joyous clamor bright

A sorrow note clashes ’gainst glad revel

Dragged slow through sky, its wake: a silence vast

Just broken by a wailing wordless fright

Of dreaded news now brought long to level

A heavy blow upon the grief-bent head

Of one lone mother who long wrote and hoped

To see her son return from war to wed

The girl who short would find her throat tight groped

By wracking tears and strangled falling moans.

The bells toll hollowly for past-known sons

When war yet won is lost when best is burned

On pyres of pride and greed that flaming groans

Beneath the weight of sacrifice in tons:

The lives not lived and futures never learned.

The bells! The bells, will ring for something bright

When men and sons will die for more than naught

They go forth bravely who for others fight

And stand upon freed lands that their blood wrought

Where peace will spread across a land once bound

In fears, despair and mercy lacked by those

Who led for gain to self and not the whole.

Those men who died in wars some base, some sound

By duty called decisive they arose

To fellows guard and reach the crucial goal.

The bells! The bells, still toll for mothers' sons

And daughters brave who gave their essence all

Against the threat and thund’ring of the guns

And raging death where they did lastly fall.

So lift the mothers and the dead sons high

And Daughters, fathers we remember too

Write fading names upon your mournful soul

Lest we forget the past in last goodbyes;

Do not erase that bleak November view

Of fallen souls for whom the bells, the bells,

They toll.

(On this Remembrance Day I dedicate this poem to all those who serve, or have served, in the military. Also, I dedicate this to all those who have relatives who serve or have served. Your sacrifices will not be forgotten.)

Sunfall

The birds have flown to Florida

And we begin our quick ferment

The days are falling faster dead

The cresting light is nearly spent

The failing sun long rests his head

So looking westward we still wait

Not trusting he will rise again

We’re in the waxing night of fate

The veil of darkness hides our plans

But thinly from nocturnal eyes

In pitch we’re strewed forgetting light

In love with bright but rotting lies

And when the winter meets its height

We frozen in a death unseen

Horizon’s edge of glowing sun

Will bleed out warmth on the obscene

And there will burn on all and one

A blaze to light the dark afar

But most with eyes fast shut will fear

The dawn so bright it leaves a scar

And sad it is in all this sphere

There will be just a remnant few

Who overjoyed will stand at spring;

Most will long for winter new

So they will crawl far from the ring

Of sun that burns their frostbite faint

Preferring just the dark of space;

They hide enamored with their taint

Yet those who stood in warmth of grace

Will find they’ve grown new leaves and roots

And not lament the night’s demise

When tasting winter’s ripened fruits

(The birds flew down to Florida

But will to reborn trees restore

Ferment is foiled in the rise

Of spring that comes forevermore.)