Rm w/ Vu

I turn from where I stand at the window.

The pane is double frozen with the rime

of hard December.  Outside falls the shade

that marks the fullness and the fast limit

of these diminished days: the stunted light

that traps my vision and denies my gaze.

There is a fire to draw the spirits close,

and here in welcome silence have I paused

to call the murmurs of another world

that breaks its slumber when the sun subsides.

The gathered shadows whisper, and the flame

becomes a mirror for the soul's own light,

reflecting bold and bringing now to life

the shuttered vision of a heart's delight.

I have but to wish, and then to see,

catching each fleeting vapor at its dance;

and yet, how often fails my busy eye

to linger in this dreaming panoply.

There are hard limits to the use of words,

and in the silence that surrounds each thought

I play both sorcerer and crystal glass.

I am what shall, and what shall never, pass;

what soon will once have been, yet always is.

The memory of an echo of a song

tolls to proclaim an hour longtime gone:
the music of some quaint antiquity,

soft prelude to the chorus of regret;

it is all of me and all I know,

the silence and the song and the regret.

There will be song; there will be silence yet.

All this little world is still twilight,

and in the dizzy moments that lead me

to the ascent from daylight into dreams,

I rejoice to sing delights like these,

if only for a moment to assure

that I have grasped them ever as they are;

that something of the quaint eternal stays,

to salve the grind of intervening days;

that in the shapes of a receding past,

there might be found a moment set to last

more than this instant.

What secrets have we,

if such things reach the limits of their spell

with cooling embers, come the morning knell?

What memories of wonder have I kept

secure from scrutiny, thinking others slept?

Must it be vanity to wrest desire

out from the ashes of the midnight fire,

to wait, to see, to hear as I would do,

and trace a vision I might render true?

I woke to find full daylight on the world.

A backdraft from the empty hearth proclaims

the morning's greeting and dispels all dreams

that might have lingered to enchant a dawn.

The brittle music of the winter wind

sifts through the lapses in my dark redoubt.

Outside, a frozen light grips on the air,

one that would foster fear were I in need,

but there is kindling left to conjure dreams,

and last a season more against despair.

I am not fit for dreams or dreaming now,

and know not when nor where my waking leads,

for now the empty echoes only haunt.

There are others stirring in the house,

caught in the coda of their own silence,

fit music for the morning's overture—

though I have kept some few imaginings

to whisper bright reminders to the soul.

A challenge for the vision that endures:

the empty window frames a lifeless scene,

a fast and unrelenting monochrome,

a hieroglyph inscribed in ice and grit.

I shall find lingering charms

to caption it.

Surrender

-->

©  Steve King

All rights reserved

At last must I surrender all device,

though I shall have you here in any case.

Finally the evening’s crowd has passed,

and we are gathered well in solitude.

All things undone must linger in their place

and words unspoke must echo where they will;

large moments to give way to emptiness,

while we rehearse regrets for latter days.

This silence will beget the better voice

to move each note of mending through its way;

so between us there need be no cue,

no hardened rhetoric to stir the air;

just the knowing and the conjoinment

of old desires, ancient isolate hopes,

alive now in this spirit of new yearning.

Here then is the center we must hold,

and surety that we dare not efface,

no matter how the futures may incline.

We must abide while all old dreams unwind,

and as confusions rally in full throat.

This world does not offer us a choice:

all things move and we must stand aplace.

It is the beginning and end of time,

where all and nothingness at last collide,

where only instinct guides amid the rush,

and quick surmises serve forevermore.

I have never held to things so much,

nor kept a faith that served me all these days—

this sheltered hold alone must fend the fates,

and such adversities as may befall.

Though ageless dreams are all the while displaced,

and artifice has often sealed our ways,

this presence must endure, this hope remain,

‘til darkness does descend, and stillness reign.

Note:  "Surrender" will be posted on http://dversepoets.com/  Open Link Night.  Please visit there!

Clouds

©  2012 Steve King

All rights reserved

i saw

the rains had come

to chase the sun—

clouds

grey twilight wolves

moon is gathered in the veil

starlight tarries where it will

the shadows do come home to me

and so the room is empty no longer

no corner lit to hold a dream

nor the very thought of you

for long

this window

frames the perfect page

to save me the usual thousand words

Rites of Autumn

© Steve King 2011

All rights reserved

Leaves are fallen in the garden,

gone from lean black branches.

Bright hours are gone, too;

lost amid the equinoctial shade.

You could not count the leaves,

but would recapture hours,

recall them all;

silent as you watch the leaves

run before an autumn wind.

You let the moments slip,

used them to savor yearnings,

distant hopes,

idle revery.

Yet still the pull of yearnings,

yet still, desires unmet;

no moments in your bag

to hold them now.

Now memory is lean,

would feast upon new days

were they at hand;

would gorge upon

the promise of new dreams,

yes, even on the promise,

were there moments for a dream,

were there moments for a promising.

Without leaves on high

there is silence in the wood,

save for the one song:

when winds sweep low,

falling from the mountain,

gathering its chill.

Alone in the garden,

heir to the song,

to vistas of lean black branches—

this song will not scribe a memory,

nor hold a moment rapt for you,

more than may the lean black branches

recall scattered leaves.

Borrowings

©  Steve King 2012

All rights reserved

How do you write this stuff?

Just words—

Not so!

 

Yes!                

Not so very different,

            than you yourself would use

            alone...or to yourself.

I don't do that so much...

            Oh yes.  Perhaps you just don't listen closely...

Suppose I did?   
How would it sound aloud

or to  some other?

You make words seem…different—

there's something lurking between syllables,

a kind of common code,

the way the words display.

Anyone can understand the heady spirit there.

I'm barely articulate—

words can't make their way across my lips

without a mangling.

Sometimes I wonder

if I know myself well enough to try...

So, how do you write these things?

            Ha!  I toss words in the air—

            each one falling back of its own mass

            into a proper place.

            Then I play a game with them,

            find a pleasing pattern;

            they have to suit the eye as well, you know;

            massage more than the one sense,

            assault them 'til they crumble

            powerless before the inevitable.

            But first, of course, there must be an idea...

That's no answer.

The question stays,

attaches to each glib evasion here.

I still can't understand the way it fits...

none of it explains

the way the words lie perfect on a page,

envelope me with pleasure...

and then sometimes the feeling that I get,

as if you've read my mind,

or fathomed something larger—

tapped into the full being of me,

my forgotten parts,

moments echoing from dark corners

I had never seen fit to explore,

and still don't know to comprehend…

If you're unknowing, how may I explain?

You've heard...something,

felt something;

taken something from a phrase:

the essence of some accidental truth

that I have stumbled on

in my candid peregrinations;

a truth that you've kept hidden,

precious for some reason of your own;

a dark facet, yes,

unused perhaps, abandoned or ignored,

but nonetheless a truth

because you know it.

But if you're asking me

how I might know it's true for you,

well, there is yet another mystery...

But you make me ashamed,

my feelings assailed,

left naked in full light.

How do you find these tokens?

How can you lash these nerve ends undeterred

by any sense of modesty?

Is there no shadow immune from this?

No sadness?

No secret?

You give me too much credit.

             I wish I could claim it,

             but the burden is all yours,

             and yours the prize.

             I can ill afford the drain of so much feeling.

             I'm only trying to get something right,

             less imperfect and more beautiful.

             It's work at its worst.

             If I had to pause at every couplet

             to take stock of deepest feelings...

             I don't know how the work would ever end.

             So complex, those things, and incomplete:

             a feeling never finishes, you see,

             it leads right to the next,

             hands off its emotion

             to be used again

 to fuel some other dormant mood.

             I must never lose myself in that,

             must note only the mood

             and not what underlies it all,

             not while there is paper left to fill,

             and some unknown waiting to read it.

             I'm a performer, see; a pro;

             deadlines and all that,

             even if self-imposed.

             No time to plumb the paradoxes

             of mundane despair

             and enervating ecstasies.

             No, let them settle elsewhere

             if they must.

I'm not sure I like you

quite so well as a moment before.

Just a trickster?

Is it all marketing and manipulation?

How do you choose your victims?

Why am I bothering to ask you?

Please, not quite like that...

            Does it seem so bad?

            I guess I was better off

            before I tried to shed the mystery.

            I would never play loose with your feelings.

            I just...borrow them for the moment,

draw them down from the common pool,

            mold them--just a bit--to fit my hand.

            After all, you can't begrudge a tradesman

            burnishing a product with his brand.

            When I've come to the end of figuring

—as best I can—

            I give those feelings back to you

            with just a little dressing up.

            Any value added is my gift,

my thanks for the motive,

            for the quick use of your soul,

            which, itself, has helped me see

            to where I've never been before.

            At least, that's the plan.

            Nothing insidious there, I hope.

            I need levers outside myself

            to orchestrate this world

            in a way that will make sense.

            So you have helped with that.

            In return you have a glimpse

            of what it is I've seen.

            Not the truest world perhaps,

            but one that must suffice until the next idea...

            Yes, you see...the idea…

            If you’ve been tricked to the misuse of your feelings,

            I have at least shown something back:

            that idea that must lie at the core,

            framed in a sharper focus

            than you discerned before.

            My vision is the prism.

            Your soul provides the ready light.

The way you talk,

it’s one allusion then the next,

points hidden in obscuring metaphors;

a graveyard for common words and meanings.

            Well…you’ve surprised me.

            You’ve forced me to improvise,

            no time or method to make clear

            how I may truly mean a certain thing.

            I’ve told you, poetry is work,

            the worst I could devise.

            I try to gather minute meanings

            magnify them to infinite form,

            give you all a chance to share my mirror—

There you go again!

            Amen.

            I’m guilty.

            How may I amend?

I have still the question:

How do you write these things?

            You must find your answer in my silence.

            I can’t exchange this alchemy for science

            the way your wish intends.

            You must grant me magic, at the last,

            where, I fear, both question and answer

            do surely come to a dead end.

            For I still marvel when you see

either charms or mystery

            in any thing that I compose.

            It’s there the magic lives for me…

            For now, let conversation close.

Afterthoughts

©  2012 Steve King

All rights reserved

When you labored your last breath,

I had long been elsewhere.

Bad news, they say, travels fast,

though it seems, not far:

I, who once knew much of you,

was then unknowing.

What are lifetimes, looking back?

Yours read well enough to me

even without note of us,

or other quondam artifacts.

No indeed--our trove lay deep,

hidden in the secret bottom

of some misplaced trunk,

while others that I never knew

gathered then to carry you.

Better to have never heard:

another year—who knows?—

might well do all for me;

or better yet a courier

less inclined to squander news.

Nothing now points much to old scenes—

though I still choose my moments

to puzzle over absence,

and the haze of ancient afternoons,

or sometimes on fabled afterlives

and happy tales of immortality,

which have always seemed to be

no more than an apology

for absences writ large,

unbreachable.

Yet will I hold these things aside.

and let the skeptic's surety be tried

upon the very thought—

that there may be

a shadow of forever clinging near,

so long as this remembrance visits me.

To The Fair

©  Steve King

All rights reserved

We walked the road through twilight,

nightingales teasing from small shadows;

the emptiness ready for all bold spirits.

There were faint stars enough

to draw thoughts of a deeper night,

and of summer pleasures to be gathered at the fair.

As we rounded the last curve we passed the tree—

the grave and heavy circumference;

slowed our march,

so quiet.

The tree was a killer.

We saw, the week before,

the carcass of the ‘65 Corvette

as it was towed to town:

covered with a shroud of canvas,

hidden in the furthest corner of the salvage yard.

But we would see beneath it, and we did;

marveling with high amazement

at dark stains spilled across bucket seats

as if by some new miracle

of upholsterer’s art.

Marvel we did, but once,

joked just once,

timid laughs falling to a kind of sigh.

In our retelling to the less bold,

we spoke brazenly of gore,

as if we had become attuned

to that kind of death,

or to any kind;

spoke the way we thought

the others would best hear,

the way we thought a soldier

might have spoken of his battle ground;

or the way a cop might talk of routine carnage;

spoke of bits and pieces that were scattered in the car,

pieces not all metal or at all mechanical;

intoned at length on what the scattered pieces might have been.

The tree at dusk on a country road.

The tree had only done what a tree must do:

stood its ground,

age and dignity unshaken

by the race of passion or hubris

or even careless indifference.

And the car had only done what a car must do—

yielding to great stressors that were never meant to be.

The unknown couple, too, complied with due necessity:

shattering—not neatly, it was said,

unjoined, but not at logical places.

We counted out our steps,

knowing the roads intimately,

knowing steps and distances

from one place to the next.

Headlights marked us.

We might lose our number,

but there would always be,

away in the near distance,

hovering above the forest line,

the glow of the fair,

faint music growing stronger step by step;

and finally the great wheel,

alive with rainbow lights,

coursing a path skyward,

to yield it’s shining vessels to the night.

Talk soon overtook the nightingales,

and rapt imaginings

made bright the evening sky.

We moved in a strange kind of present

that held a dawning future in abeyance:

knowing we were doing all that we were meant to do

that summer, that night,

along that chosen road,

the summer sky a canopy

for all small charms so soon to be embraced…

I looked back.

Our road had left that tree behind,

just beyond the reach of the long curve,

lost in the tide of encroaching shadows.

The music louder now—

that eternal present soon set to pass

into the lightness

of a temporary balming dream

of many brief inviting moments

all at once just waiting…

Away from the shadows,

and the grasp of hard necessity;

away from subtle curves

that skew even much-traveled roads.

Then quick steps and laughter,

the pull of vesper gratitudes,

for what an evening might beget…

I prayed that I would one day

better care for a Corvette.

Driftwood Dreams

©  Steve King

All rights reserved

bright sands raked by an unyielding wind

grey sea trimmed with white breakers

gulls adrift pure of flight on their distant azure plain

and the driftwood holding at the center

still through tides and gathering dunes

unmoved

as if in rapt dreaming

of dark mother forests so long gone

and damp wooded ground

a hint in its sere core

of the taste of ripe loam

from some other distant shore

dreaming all one

bright sun and sands

‘til it becomes a hatrack

             in some idling tourist’s hand

Preposterous Analogies Drawn From Late Night Reflections On Gravity

©  2012 Steve King

All rights reserved

The highest laws notwithstanding...
there are things 

that accelerate to vacuum,

hurtling straight through complex time and space

across the undisplaced fabric

of infinite emptiness—

unbalanced quanta at the helm,

terminal velocity,

scanning for some fixed horizon,

tumbling to a missing point of mass—

ah…these vectors of surplus desire!

Each habit of affinity

instills a mad sense of place,

even to uncentered orbits,

even in an empty room.

It’s easy to remain relentless

on well traveled paths;

dying hard, the  habits,

tracing new maps written in old scars,

so many things so well-survived,

scars so profoundly you,

there would not else-wise be a you.

So forget that silly inverse square—

just another law that begs repeal:

things at the furthest distance

always pull the most,

and absence yields the one metric

to reckon all strong forces of the heart.

The Fire

©  2012  Steve King All rights reserved Well— this fire begot something to trim the leavings of the night: ancient spirits in the smoke; rekindled hope speaks from each tongue of flame; ember upon ember, old inclinations leap to light, then sift their ashes through my heart again. I know the fire shall shortly die, just as all regret is said to wane. I taste these ashes one more time, and know there is no reason to complain. A taste of ashes may remain, but no one ever need explain; I would relive it all the same, and take no moment to complain

All Is Well

by Steve King

© 2012

All is well, I promise you.

Do not be concerned by my

sometimes detached bemusements.

These are but easy retreats

to unspoke and stubborn dreams

where the past pursues new forms

and new wants reshape old charms.

You must not think ill of me.

These diversions inform but

my own still imaginings—

sparring with my old designs,

sanctuary from keen foils,

or just finding silence there—

call it whatever you will,

it is just a tiny step

removed from your waiting world.

Yours is no thin shadow place

to leave behind.  No burdens,

satisfactions unfulfilled,

no wasted unique glories

to drain the measure of me.

All is well enough, I know,

there in the outward brilliance

of common sight, where you wait

for my strange quiet to end.

I would explain everything

of this musing well within;

but there is still mystery

lying at the heart of it.

This mystery, this darkness

will not yield to my desires.

It’s a backdrop set against

somber glows from ancient pyres,

whose light never penetrates

inward from its waning fires.

And so shall the darkness grow

with accelerating years,

swallowing whole things once known,

making my dreams slip their grasp,

while old songs reprise as sighs.

I would trace each scattered spark,

and would try to harmonize

each echo, each fading note.

So far will my eyes not see,

nor ears own such reverie.

Yet all is well, believe it.

All remembrance must be so.

And so indeed, I wager,

are the unsung harmonies

a-play beneath your calling.

I will wait when it must be,

while you linger inwardly,

while you the passing choir

illumine with the flickering

of your own secret fire.

No Man's Land

©  2012 Steve King

All rights reserved

It seems I’m caught between competing instances,

the push of past and pull of future,

nearest bit of each disguised as ‘now,’

the mask of an eternal present.

And here I stand:

empty as the eye of a needle

through which the thread of all must hang,

history and destiny drawn slack,

‘til someday they shall serve to scribe a kind of ragged seam,

and unify this narrative of dreams.

Here,

a patient link

in the contingent tale,

cleaving to each instant, first and last,

listening for fanfares and echoes

of distant ends and fast receding means;

spinning a biography

to binding futures

sprung from some unknown predicate;

working through familiar inklings

though without a syllogistic claim…

The racing times clamoring to distract:

new and new and new,

whole worlds turning in the instant,

madnesses and bright imaginings—

I would be grateful even for what madness would convey.

Now, sharpening my seeing to that needle’s point,

finally to know those things my fates may soon endow,

when—

far too soon,

each dawning moment

slips to some other

now…

Goodbyes

©  2012 Steve King

All rights reserved

So much formality I should not force—

this coolness and austere reserve,

the unrelenting conversation

disguising just how little

there is now to be said.

Soon there will be silence,

and phantoms better suited

for this ceaseless shadow play;

the shrinking reservoir 

of common memories

must serve to drain the leavings of each day.

Then shall I drink quickly of the lees,

and wonder freely of what might remain:

listening for echoes where once were sundry sounds;

inventing better days that should have been.

John Brown

©  2012 Steve King

All rights reserved

I sing only of a man—

the rage must find some other muse.

Of arms and readiments for war,

the patient reader must excuse.

I seek one spirit of that time,

to wonder how it so inclined.

True, Harper’s Ferry had the guns,

bristling in a phony peace.

There was fratricide enough,

and death was hard upon the land:

the time was torn, the spirit fouled:

while Kansas bled, Missouri howled.

A house divided must soon fall.

How sooner must a man decay,

no passion there to unify,

to pull and pummel and upbraid

when destiny would sound a call.

All high-born aims must come to naught

when deeds undo promises made.

And so he felt his place and time,

and raced a path his heavens laid.

How empty is the soul that goes

to any easy pathway shown,

but hesitates at the Abyss

and trembles at the great Unknown.

Like Abraham, like Joshua,

the million stars would light his way.

A black tide rising to reclaim

its covenant would seize the day.

The problem left for later minds

was how to gauge competing crimes:

did subjugation and the lash

bring on itself the fatal clash?

Did slavery itself reward

with bloody recourse to the sword?

Could any reason yet accord

the place of minion, right of lord?

He led his sons through Treason’s gate,

held them all as ready tools,

as acolytes who would delight

their father’s will and share his fate.

In the old Books, fathers are stern

but few would so expect this faith,

and, contemplating on their ends,

seek sacrifice and not amends.

No plan is safe that must depend

upon the vagaries of men,

and so the army he would raise

was lost before his rifles blazed.

This blow to challenge infamy

was short of force and long of pain;

the dreamy triumph was undone

and only martyrdom remained.

Then it was over, he was gone,

or so they thought who strung the knot:

the great uprising would abate

as only force might demonstrate.

As if his gravestone would provide

a dam against the coming tide;

as if the blot the nation held

might, without bloodshed, be expelled.

       *   *   *   *   *   *   *

And now the bones lie peaceably

as far from rage as they might be,

forgotten in the farmstead turf,

his blood a fountain to the earth.

(Executed in 1859, John Brown remains one of the most important interlocutors in the United States’ continuing moral dialogue.  Those who are interested in particulars should refer to W.E.B. Dubois’ biography, John Brown, and Thoreau’s A Plea For Captain John Brown.  The John Brown Farm near Lake Placid, New York, is the final resting place of Brown and several others—including a number of his sons—either killed at the raid on the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, or hanged soon thereafter by the State of Virginia.)