A Prelude to "Conversation With the Madhi"

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For the Wednesday Challenge at Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads

http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/

©  Steve King

All rights reserved

How shall I know when all is right;

where goodness gathers by the way;

where darkening souls imbibe new light;

when new desires define new days?

                                    1

I am no stranger to strange places, ma’am.

I’ve been a-seeking since this life began

to find a place where I could play my hand.

I come here not bereft of gifts or grace,

for I can turn my hand to anything

that can be dreamt of.

If a thing be dreamable

I have held it somewhere in my mind.

Somewhere soaring in my vagrant time.

But I forget myself again

and speak of lingering dreams in vain.

I will ask you…

I will ask you…

ah, but I forget again…

Such an inconstant star that leads my tracks!

How’s that for an epitaph?

I’m thinking tombstones more and more these days.

I’ve chiseled out a few across the years,

but always someone else to wear the suit.

You’d never know from looking out

upon this wretched ground

how rich it is in corpses.

Why, I’m afraid to break the surface

scratching a latrine

for fear of being dragged

into some wretched thing’s Hades

before my righteous time.

Ah… “ …’Ere my righteous time…”

How’s that for an epitaph?

Someone else, of course.

How many lives I’ve led,

how many different paths I’ve taken now,

out and away from the ancient matrix,

new treads rutting down the score

where others’ fleeing footsteps fell before.

Might I retrace my steps to find

proof that a life was onetime left behind?

And where then would that journey carry me?

And what sense would it make to ply

a path of least resistance in reverse?

Oh, ye of certain provenance

ought to rejoice the fact.

There is at least one terminus

to anchor your track.

You cannot fault the world-forsaken man—

who knows not whence he came—

bewailing the night sky.

Those who ask ‘What’s in a name?’

most often-time own one.

There’s something more in place for them

than two eyes and a grimace

peering through the mirror’s vacant visage.

Yes, someone put a word to me, back when.

I started out as somebody, but don’t know how I’ll end.

I’ve since worn a score of names,

and by any remain the same.

Without a doubt, no ordinary Joe;

no Tom nor Dick nor Harry that I know.

There should be words for everyone.

including those of us that run,

callow orphans of the sun,

random atoms,

it’s all one…

Taps

©  Steve King

All rights reserved

Each note gathers

to lift the last song,

like bright birds at twilight

soon to shade gone.

Like the faint sound of cannon

now drawn to retreat,

or the old battle’s echo,

at last complete.

Like the voice of his captain,

the final command,

to call fallen comrades

from all the far lands.

Then the song slips to silence,

the flag put away;

the caisson stands ready

to carry the day.

He surrenders at last

to the earth’s warm embrace,

that impregnable bunker

no pains may displace.

(Note:  Reflections on the military funeral of Joseph F. Clancy, US Army

for Imaginary Gardens…)

A Slight Engagement

 

©  Steve King

All rights reserved

I was passing easy,

close, but no cigar.

‘Paté or champagne?’

competed briefly in the mind.

Then I reached with both empty hands.

The music was distractive:

there was no rhythm in the to and fro.

And all the while the host debased himself

to fawn before the preening A-list show.

It was all chatter and smiles

shaped by the slyest of surmise.

I thought that I could read all in her eyes

while she did surely look through me,

perhaps to gauge some other mingling prize.

Even so, I sighed to speak and listen:

‘So pleased…’

‘What…?’

‘How…?’

‘Really…?’

‘I never knew…’

‘Were you there too?’

There is a kind of solace

even to indifference,

an easy sequestration of the self

to guard against the rush of ill-forming desire,

weaponry to shore each unsettled need;

a sweet cache of certainty

of how one does surely surpass

those least of expectations;

a bulwark set to fend the sting

of all irrelevant unsought truths.

(‘True to whom?’ it asks.)

The bulwark firms with each slight engagement,

with each exercise of that secret certainty;

a welcome defense to dark incursions

of indifference and disregard;

against each mindless courtesy,

those pure rote reveries.

‘Champagne or satay?’

Another question set to stave

grim litanies and wearying regard…

Thus fortified against

all threatening clichés,

I look to find another set of eyes.

And move again

attracted still to bright things,

relentless, as a crow to copper;

just as a sundown flower

might briefly nod

upon the brilliance

of a coming moon.

The Pedestrian

by Steve King

©  2013

All rights reserved

Her eyes, and only those,

out of all the others on the street—

held distant in the depth of thought,

cold as stars,

caught up in a fastness out of reach,

so very far from words,

focusing on nothing

as they passed.

I wondered if it was for me alone

to feel a sadness there.

Though I have sometimes tried,

I have never been the one to answer why—

why there must be sadness in the world,

or why it should have gathered on our street,

crying out through all contingent cares;

why it should have settled as it did,

this alone of every near despair,

prisoned in the confines of that soul,

reaching through the windows of those eyes.

Nor had I consolation for those eyes.

I inflected only

the ordeal of witness

all the while the darkness passed,

a current coursing quickly

through quieter tides,

brushing at the stream

of unsensed travelers

moving close beside.

There was nothing to allay

the hold of sadness,

no word to wrest a gladness from the air,

no way to touch that trouble,

or amend brooding care.

I wondered of the troubles

caught up in the train

of that determined step,

now hurrying away;

so quick, but such a silly race to run:

as if a trouble might be just a thing

to be abandoned and undone—

discretionary destiny

whose ending might be forfeited

without regard for how it had begun.

As if a sadness might be satisfied

by quick exits and hard designs—

or simply by the click of heels

beating out the tattoo

of some unrelieved goodbye.

Dreaming of Something

by Steve King

©  2013  All rights reserved

(Note:  I was honored recently by being invited to present “Address to a Haggis” at a celebration honoring Robert Burns.  In the process of preparing “…Haggis” I flipped through many pages of his verse.  Brother Burns’ poems are among the most musical ever written.  His song and tenor are infectious.  Here’s something of mine specifically in honor of him.)

Dreaming of something, O what could it be…?

Dreaming of candles and music and thee.

Thinking of fences I might look beyond,

someone to favor, so pretty and fond.

Dreaming of no place that I’ve ever been;

dreaming of journeys that never will end;

of visions to grasp all I’ll want to see;

dreaming of someplace that you’d go with me.

Wondering how every dream comes to pass;

trapped in these habits that hold me so fast.

Can I soon undo all I’ve now become,

and follow my dreams so we may be one…?

Dreaming of something, O what could it be…?

What others call joys are trifles to me.

No need for fences for I’d never flee,

nor seek far favors, once you’ve come to me.

I Welcomed You in Other Times

©  Steve King

All rights reserved

I welcomed you in other times

when words ever sufficed

to cover all small things.

Nowadays, words gather

in such crazy ways—

like birds that marry to a flock,

clinging to the latest wind,

lifting quick away.

Like stars that paint an emptiness

for a time—

bright, distractive,

then so sure in their decline,

heavens emptied sudden then.

An old stillness rising,

again and again.

Walking Under the Eclipse

© Steve King 2012 
All rights reserved 


So many ways they find to ogle their occult, 
while there are closer shadows,
darker places to explore. 

This artificial slice of night, 
that gives no pause
nor time for rest or cure— 
it is wide-eyed dreaming 
and they are all up-looking, 
outward and away.
What do they claim or hope to claim, 
with the mirrors of their eyes? 

It is still imagination,
this science of theirs,
more art than they would say: 
fixing eyes upon extinguished stars, 
searching for the certain fire-god
in beckoning vacuum,
a now indifferent Shiva
cutting loose all hell,
many arms weaving merry ends
to a posited fabric of creation. 

They ply the universal,
infinity their unit of regard,
squeezing inferences
out from nothing,
next to nothing,
indeed, the very ƒ(unction) of a nothing. 

How they do define us in that nothing: 
from the fire did we arise;
unto flames will we thus be consigned— 
all to cinders,
ash to ash,
the way it always was 
in the old books. 

How they do define us,

they who are agnostic
to all outcomes. 
What do they see,
or hope to see,
in the mirror of the sky? 

Along the Boulevard

by Steve King

© 2012

That frigid season had come,

each dawn with a shiver.

He tended the bleak hours

with all that habit could engender.

Despite best efforts not to call

on memories unfit for words,

his ghosts still played a-foul in the air:

intoned the rustle of dead leaves,

songs of whithered birds.

Unfinished Lines

by Steve King

©  2012

All rights reserved

Death shall punctuate our lines,

granting prospect of new song

to a readied empty space

waiting to enfold new life.

But new life is isolate,

only briefly in its place:

inconstant, unmemoried,

just a sketch wrought all too quick,

no right of rhythm or rhyme

inhering in its leavings;

no entrée to high design

save by good fortune, perhaps,

or if that final hard mark

should fall on a random grace,

sanctifying that last trace.

Punctuation without care

to how that next waiting space

might serve then to rectify

forgone lines of yesterdays—

so many acts left undone,

and so much nearly complete,

all so suddenly effaced,

silent in unfinished lines.

'Unfinished Lines' to be shared Tuesday at dVersepoets Open Link Night.  Come Join!

http://dversepoets.com/

Harvest

(c) Steve King 2012

All rights reserved

The first chore in the morning

was to gather our tomatoes.

Night bestowed new color:

each fruit in waiting

blushed in its awakening,

yielding easy to the hand.

Footprints in heavy dew

attended on my solitude,

and I would smile

imagining that one had followed:

you.

Something like a dream,

to find a way

through the in-between

of starshine and dawn.

There is a poet’s word

for that kind of light,

but needless—

I had already seen.

And I would linger,

waiting while you dreamed,

pausing in my pleasantries,

harvesting the fruits of morning light,

while you clung to our shadows,

cleaving to the bounty of the night.

Seeing Stars

©  Steve King

All rights reserved

She closed her eyes to find a dream again.

Tears stung like the sea she a-drowning.

She would recall the window,

and the looking far to darkness,

and to distant stars.

Her eyes felt so small,

surely she was at fault, too,

for seeing nothingness that side of stars;

sure that emptiness

was part of her, too…

She disappeared as clouds closed on the night,

body nothingness in grip of shadow,

mind a lens for somnolent senses,

and for sharp aches that gather to the soul.

She could yet stir to wonder:

‘Is this how dreams are lost?’

Empty window and the dampened stars—

There would be that clinging memory

when waves of heartache

came to wash her soul,

over time smoothing sharp breaks

to a plainer anguish.

Empty window and the dampened stars:

irrelevant blind view

she tried so to ignore

yet strained to see.

Another moment and it all sank in.

Much as she thought the wash of dread

must lave across the leaving dreams

of the condemned that one last morning,

sudden waking to brightness and the brimming bladder 

and normalcy and all else except for...

All so sudden

all like a madness

all at once like that fear.

She blushed in her pain to think of the condemned:

There could be no otherness for them,

no beckoning twilight future

to suit a need as time might yet allow,

no delicate and balming rationales,

‘til rationales surrendered to the end of expectation;

‘til memory itself was finally gone.

Not at all like death or what she imagined.

How was one to know?

For what had death to show?

The heart might cease, yet still not fail to beat.

Not like death, seeming a dream at the far other end.

Only love, and best to lose it young;

superfluous innocence

that would not stay nor even bear the course:

better than at age in the grip of dread,

as old love, ancient and familiar,

drowned in a stew of cataracts and catarrhs.

Catacombs.

Mausoleums at morningtide.

All desire and dream,

she sang through darkness

heard the song, not the singing

knew she must be dreaming

or else be a dream,

even as she felt him move,

felt him hard in her dreaming world,

even as he stayed leaving,

hearing her song in the singing dark,

not then even knowing his musing lark.

Out of Amnesia

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© Steve King

All rights reserved

It surprises so:

the very thought

of capturing the thought—

as when unseen winds

purge heavy clouds

to bare the sky;

all sudden,

all surprise.

Like working through a kind of amnesia—

a something from a nothing,

rising like dumb luck,

too quick a moment

to have planned it all.

What once was void

at last a place

to cultivate the fruit

of one’s un-axiomed conjectures.

As if the air has substance,

a dream weight.

The stubborn blank,

now with full character revealed,

unobscured,

even by the heavy lines

and crude designs

my vanity would scribe.

Bit by bit arriving at a state

that must have always been a destiny;

not just evolving emptiness,

not just a thing unstructured

in its order and command,

but real forever,

biding for its time,

submerged within the interstices,

laced among the things we think we know;

waiting for a moment, just so;

vamping in that offstage blackout,

ready for a cue light to show.

Like lifting amnesia:

reaching through the thin air

of an empty height

to stir a stew of myth

from teeming shadows far below;

that nothing rising to a surety,

desires fulfilled

in the act of desiring,

drawing out the faint shade of a hope,

finally, the outline of a thing

that must at least be called

the stepchild of a dream.

Out of that amnesia,

that emptiness alike to death,

where this strange thing must wait,

for the one right moment,

to gather in a kind of puzzling light,

hovering like one’s own shadow,

yet poised there quite alone,

now whispering old secrets

that you are so surprised

to call your own.