Complementarity Pt. 4

The following is the fourth part of my long poem, "Complementarity" :

The light begins to dance its way through the dying rain
It begins to settle itself upon the morning
I sleep but dream the dreams of those
who busily begin about me

The jogger on his way around the green lake
  the mother packing extra pudding for her child
    the business minded gentility on their way to an early meeting
     the baker beginning his bread, the night watchmen closing his orbit
all with a similar dream which I dream
I don’t need to describe it to you
you dream it too every sleep
And are likewise disturbed when awoken by the real sun
Which is unlike the rosy dreamscape
in which the mothers, bakers, guards, and businessmen, and you
and I are more free, more electric, and of newer stuff
Happy as in the old ages of a fairy tale

Or do your nightmares wait within your heavy eyelids?
Where only the closeness makes them more real?
What more than a veil is your eyelid? See through mine instead
and I will reveal to you what only you have truly seen
that only I have understood

And now, for something entirely different

Well, not entirely different, but I figured I'd take a break from what is shaping up to be a post-heavy month, to mention a few basic things about myself and why I started blogging in the first place.

• My name is Leonnie Dickens, which you already know, I feel no need to hide my identity as this isn't a terribly personal blog anyway.
  
• I don't think I'm a very interesting person most of the time. Now, don't misunderstand that; I'm a very confident person, and I think of myself as being very smart and very funny, I just know that I tend to be very excited by things which most people don't comprehend/ care about.
  
• I am preparing to attend UC Berkeley in the Spring to obtain a B.A. in English (w/ a minor in linguistics). Before people ask, yes I plan to teach. Hopefully, I can pursue my Master's at Berkeley too.
  
• I wouldn't be pursuing this degree if I felt that being a writer was a viable career decision, but clearly it takes a lot of luck to get Dan Brown rich.
  
• I obviously like to write, mostly poetry because it has always come easier to me, but occasionally fiction, which may pop up here if I ever finish one of the 20 stories I've started in the last 6 months(sadly, that's not hyperbole, I have at least 20 stories at various stages of incompletion on my computer right now)
  
• I like getting critical feedback on my work, and I haven't found too many places for that to happen out there on the interwebs, so I decided to start a blog where I could post most of my pieces without dealing with the hit or miss internet poetry scene
  
• I seriously dislike what I have witnessed in the past year while looking for people to share my poetry with. I appear to be much less thin-skinned about my writing than other people, although I just think that criticism is necessary sometimes if you want to improve.
  

So that's a bit about me and mine, and I'm sure that I'll elaborate on many of these points as time goes on, but for now, I think that those will suffice to explain my motivations, as well as to give an idea of the writer behind the writing. Oh and because I know how tedious all this text looks...

Image via Wikipedia

Banksy, I am such a fan

Complementarity Pt. 3

Part 3 of Complementarity, or A Song of Us

After work it begins to pour
The rain rings heavily on the rooftops
In echo of my sweat falling
In echo of my toil’s engendered fluid
The sky is sweating deeply in the night
I smell the perspiration and am invigorated
Each drop of mine a fractal brother of this
Each drop a bulbous fractal of a liquid fig
Returning the cycle as quickly as I began it

It began me long ago
It was begun long before that
All have begun again a million times
All have a million more beginnings
The rain proves this

The water which comprises it is not new to the universe
The water is comprised of antique hydrogens
Primeval oxygen
There is only so much stuff to be had
Yet there shall continually be new waters
New oceans, new seas, new tides
New men and women with original energy
And new poetry, the rain is a new poem every time
Giving the earth a new sensation every time
Breeding new tubers and roots and imaginative flowers
Feeding bees, feeding birds, feeding life
With new waters until it is time to return them
The sky is filled with new waters
Heaven’s face staring down at its produce
It is new like my face is new every morning
When I am shaved
And when my beard is full at night and dark as the blackened sky
My skin covered in rain proving
New universes from old waters every hour
The apocalyptic dance of a trillion veils of the universe

Contemplating a Spine by Daylight

Another from my cycle of poems, Of The Women, and a companion to my previous one

Can I lift your slender form?
Can I pick the fruit of your shadow
      When you are stretched cat-like in the sun?
Can I cause the excellent extension of your vertebrae?
Can I daydream of your stretched silver silk blouse
      When you shrug off sleep in mid-lecture?
I must have pondered too long from where I sat
For I was awoken from this by a voice
which tore my questions, unresolved
spilling back into my mind
like the sun, dripping lightly
upon your small back

Complementarity Pt. 2

The following is part 2 of my long poem, entitled Complementarity

Happy am I as I work
As sweat gleans my substantiveness
As I vanish into the toil

I am the vacuum humming as I enjoy my work
The symmetric lines are my Socrates and Sappho
Knowledge passed in the carpet
I am the plate, the fork, all cutleries am I
All feeders, all silvers, all irons, all!

This is to work
Have you earned the liquid monies of the spirit?
Have you seen your currency spent to moisten the earth beneath?
The replenishable forehead of the galaxy?

Have I not sung in the noon heat while working,
If not more, as much as in the Sunday reverie?
Have I not lent my baritone to the eternal harmony of a laboring universe?
What I have sung, youth and love, you shall sing
What I shall echo, you shall my echo ring

A Backbone by Night

I've recently been working on a cycle of poems, entitled Of the Women. The following is the first piece,A backbone by night:

I sit idly on the grass
And watch the night sky reflecting on your back
Your blue back under the moon
I watch the exploding universe upon your narrow frame
As you exhale, nebulas collapse in on one another
Take in breath and restore the shape of things
As long as your spine is blue
I know the safety of all life
And can stare at the terrific expanse of your ribcage
For as long as the Night lasts

Complementarity Pt. 1

Okay so the following is the opening of a longish poem I wrote a while back. I will post the rest in pieces every so often.

We are differing, you and I
I sing our sameness out of the swirling sky
Here is the river! Here is the discovering of life
I, the child of this song of songs,
In my 24th year, with fiery muse begin

Is it me you love?
Then you love nothing
Less than the whole cosmos
Is it my heart you have striven to reach?
Then you have reached across yourself
And within yourself
To escape yourself

Follow me a little way
And I will peel the veil
Like a ripe orange on the universe
I will show you whose heart and how
The where and when will wear out at this
The nature of things

You will not need to know when we will lose the moon
Only that it is dancing away
Until it is free in the void

glory

Curious at the stinging majesty of life,
I begin to sleep less and less
until I am consumed
by the rain
in a fluid torrent.
As though it filled me
until I overflow
into the street
and wash down the road endlessly…
until
under the universal genius of the starscape
I am hailed
by conquest
by fire
by a minor miracle.
There on that quiet
beach or bed
or midnight road,
words fail
dreams fail
my own wearied hands fail
and the beauty of this ashen night
sings a hallelu upon my eyes.
How peaceful then is the night.