I don't know what this means but I mean it

I cannot seem to say exactly
what I mean
or what I want to mean
I think
It's like delirium came
and whisked me into it's
happy caravan
though really it's neither happy or sad
That analog was bad
I am slowly unraveling into
a pile of non-poetic brown yarn
woven of a strange lack of basic knowing

The impressive e.e. cummings

One of the things I really like about poetry is that it allows you to use words in a way that shouldn't make sense. By nature, this is a huge departure from my incredibly logical brain, so I occasionally have a considerable bit of difficulty with the practice of it. However, I still love to read it, (which is probably one of the reasons I didn't mind reading the first chapter of The Sound and the Fury, one of the most bizarre snippets of writing on the planet) which is why I thoroughly enjoy e.e. cummings(for the uninitiated, the name is not supposed to be capitalized). He had a way of playing with language that I find amazing, because he put words together that shouldn't logically belong and made them make sense in my head. In a way, his writing serves as a clinic on how the structure of a poem is as important as the diction, because his line breaks add to the message as does his syntax, (or lack thereof). Anyway, enough of my useless jawing about how awesome he was, see for yourself:

ITEM

this man is o so

Waiter  

this;woman is

please shut that

the pout And affectionate leer

interminable pyramidal, napkins

(this man is oh so tired of this

a door opens by itself

woman.)they so to speak were in

Love once?

now

                                           her mouth opens too far

and:she attacks her Lobster without

feet mingle under the

mercy.

                                              (exit the hors d'oeuvres)

Now, I have my own interpretation of this whole thing, but I would like to hear what you guys think this means. Don't worry, it's not an assignment, I just wanna know what you think.

Entrance

Whoever you are: in the evening step out
of your room, where you know everything;
yours is the last house before the far-off:
whoever you are.
With your eyes, which in their weariness
barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold,
you lift very slowly one black tree
and place it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world. And it is huge
and like a word which grows ripe in silence.
And as your will seizes on its meaning,
tenderly your eyes let go. . . .

                   -Rainer Maria Rilke

For M.W.

There is no transcience of twilight in
The beauty of your soft dusk-dimpled face,
No flicker of a slender flame in space,
In crucibles, fragility crystalline.
There is no fragrance of the jessamine
About you, no pathos of some old place
At dusk, that crumbles like moth-eaten lace
Beneath the touch. Nor has there ever been.

Your love is like the folk-song's flaming rise
In cane-lipped southern people, like their soul
Which burst its bondage in a bold travail;
Your voice is like them singing, soft and wise,
Your face, sweetly effulgent of the whole,
Inviolate of ways that would fail.
                 -Jean Toomer

Devastation

I am awake for months now
It is too painful for me to sleep
For love in all its subtleties
Has gutted me and left me breathless
upon your altar

A poem and a strategy

So, I've recently been a bit torn about posting my poetry here, as I am getting more serious about getting published. What I have decided to do is to post only those pieces that I feel wouldn't fit anywhere else. To be clear, this does not mean that I'm only going to post my 'bad' poetry here, but rather that I will simply be posting poems that don't feel to me like they belong in any journal for one reason or another. So without further ado, here's a poem on the Drake Equation:

The math is simple
The number of possible civilizations in the galaxy
is the number of new stars per year (big)
divided by the number that have planets(small)
then the number that could have life(just the possibility)
then the number that will actually have life(the reality of it)
then of those, the few that gain sentience (we are aware)
of these, the ones that can transmit
and last, multiply by their lifespan.
The universe is at least 14 billion years old.
There are billions of new stars every year.
We have been sentient for a million years.
We have been listening for 60.
But in all this numerical babble,
I learned something greater than science;
something as important as the knowledge that the soul
is infinite and immeasurable, and applied over all universes.
the point of the equation is not that the universe is very big
the point is that we are not
that life as we know it-
self-defining, self-organizing life-
is rare and significant.
The point is not to waste it.

Complementarity Pt. 13 (the end)

I just realized that I didn't post the end to my magniloquent beast of a poem, so here it is, the final piece of Complementarity. Comment, let me know what you think:

As I sit under the burning kerosene star

                Of my inspiring voice

Your face begins to be transfixed

Your slender hand, limply like a grain of wheat

Is moved by some unseen spirit

A touch then!

An inciting of the asphodel to blooming!

A word escapes you...!

I have gone ahead to light the torches West

I have lit out for the frontier which we have set no thought on.

For you the day has begun anew;

For you the river has opened itself.

The greed of the first mile from town lights upon you

Here is a diner by the side of the road

I will stop for a moment, have a burger, cross the street

Reserve a room, lay my hat on the chair,

Lengthen my skeleton and sinews upon the bed

And be patient until I hear you ambling into town.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son! 

 -Rudyard Kipling

Complementarity Pt. 10

O! of odors! O! of perfumes!

The musky yellow of houses at dawn is mine
The creeping synesthesia that accompanies a living
I love too the vacuity of the fresh atmospheric scent after lightning

the emptiness which is a purity
the purity which fills the sky with virtue
I am excessively pleased with these

Even my own smell after I sweat

I feel it and am not reviled by it

For it is mine

As much as language in my mouth is mine

As much as water is mine

I, the child of futures

The father of pasts

The circuitous nephew of presence

I stretch myself against the day and measure

My voice against its voice

Being both taller and shorter

I will survive it

It does not fit me like a suit that is not mine

I shall not be a guest of death today

I shall be a companion of the dying, and the forever-living, they are the same

Complementarity Pt. 8

I am far from you
And am fully contained
Somewhere in the periphery of your heart
 
Under the sea, life whirls
In the calming algae blue
I know the fishes here and there, I know them all
They began long hours before the sunrise
They struggle like you in the ever-illuminated sea
The sea which is always dark and filled with weight
The weight gives me form and flesh
The weight of the hammerhead smashing its meal
On the abyssal plain
Or of the brain coral slowly building from the detritus
Of the rich sea
 
Each man dying on the lips
Of his erstwhile friends
Loses first this weight of the waters
Then his own name
Then is no more found in heaven
And is at last banished from the heart of his loved on earth
 
You have walked under the sea with me
You have known what is my volume here
Perhaps this then will make me lasting as I die
As I continue to live
I am under the spell of this!
As the sunrise over the sea
 
And where have you learned to speak of death?
And where have you reckoned the end of things to come‽
How sudden and how far off‽
Do not equivocate the miles under the sea
For days or years, they are instant
At once alive and sustaining
At once murderous and inert

Complementarity Pt. 6

In the morning I begin an education

When at length I am awoken

After basking unfettered

I, Homo Naturalis

Against the stark moon

Am all alone

Companion of the stars

Likewise oscillating, differing slightly in luminance

Greatly in ancientness

And the wood whispers a vague rumor

 about the city

and the city creates a susurrus about the wood

and I alone under the night sky hear them all

and see the stars with ancient, wizened faces

as they chuckle softly at the ignorance of such temporary things

Complementarity Pt. 5

The following is the fifth part of Complementarity. Enjoy and comment:

Is my poem too long?

Then my poem is too long

The journey from me to you

Is immense and filled with freshly shifted eyes

Have you left your body behind yet?

Have you outgrown its conceits and melancholia yet?

Have you dug into my poems to dig me out into your mind’s eye?

I am imponderable there, loose in the rapidly bloviating forest

 

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

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

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.

Of myself

I am given to long poems

Which ramble on about loneliness

Because in the end I have considered all

And I am alone

If you find me talking at length about

This glory or that wonder

Do not stop me

For I have lost myself at the end of it

And cannot cease until I find myself by wandering

About the magical paths that my fancies take

I do not love the odd marvel

Of a perfect silence

Or the slowly expanding flame

Of a woman’s spine

Because it is primally enthralling

But because it is a strangely symmetric thing

Like the sea anemone, or the divided cell

Providing sustenance for my hungered soul

In the end I complain too much

I wander along fascinated with the joy of life

I focus too much inwardly

To the point of being stymied when others ask me things

As though it is impossible that they should not know me as well

As I do

I am fathomable, and often measured,

Mystic, and too rarely clear

Perhaps tomorrow I will have changed entirely

Perhaps I can shed this skin as easily as if it were a coat or shoes

Perhaps I will not be a poetic, perhaps not so much enraptured

Perhaps free, perhaps you

Perhaps

I haven't quite figured this newest one out yet, but it's been a while due to some yes-inducing occurrences, so I figured I'd throw it up.

drawing by Julia Randall via booooooom.com

Oh the brilliant bubble of space
Leaking out of God’s gaping mouth
The shimmering spit bubble of the universe
His crimsoning tongue on the verge of destroying it
Earth from the other side
She leans into it
She wants to French kiss it
She wants the saliva of the Lord
All over her lip
destroying the shimmering veil projecting space
just past the lips where God met Earth
and life passionately gives itself to higher power
the light harmonizing expectorating membrane of space