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 new 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.
 

Neatly pinioned in between

things most felt and those unseen,

carnivore’s howl of blistering wind,

roiling sky full Pleistocene.

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

 

© 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;

a 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.

Fast Dancin'

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© Steve King

All rights reserved

The thumping of the bass-man

speaks a-common with my heart:

I am but a pair of anxious feet

milling in the rhythmic stampede

just waiting for the rock and roll to start...

The face of my enraptured partner

bends in the mix of sight and sound and smoke.

It is the blessed imagery

of the creed of the almighty flesh,

in an ionized cathedral

where twelve-bar hymns are spoke.

I will forgive the critics

of this sometimes less-than-art.

I leave to them the objects

that bemuse their higher powers,

those subtler fantasies

fit for idling daylight hours.

But for now there is a wonder

and a powerful delight

in mimicking the thunder

of this strange and wild night.

And until the night is over

and those critics make me see,

this devil with the blue dress on  **

is good enough for me.

** With a 'thank you' to Shorty Long and Mitch Ryder…

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

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©  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.