Love can be complicated, but: Love can be complicated, but how well you turned the cyclone of the human condition into remarkable art! You spun some impressive word play in this hard-driving expression:
"Crushing the pages I used to hide in . . ."
"you struggle to continue a story that ends just like this"
"We love like weapons sing"
And my favorite:
"I want to love like I can't change"
It's true that, most often, we just need to leave our creations alone, but I enjoyed where you went with this. A pleasure to read and comment on.
I love the pensive realism,: I love the pensive realism, the intimate informality, the emotive undercurrent, of your words that are more powerful than anything that trumpets and struts with ornate poetics. With expert subtlety you illustrate the detachment in the relationship, reminding us at the end how those memorable words were spoken "Not to me/ But directly to me".
Then you hit us with that killer quote.
A streamlined, candid and beautiful window into the heart.
Thank you for this. I think: Thank you for this. I think this poem has been brewing in me since Autumn of 1976. During the first term of my freshman undergrad year, I was placed in three courses that were among the several required of all students in order to graduate (no incoming freshman selected their first terms' courses). The middle course of the day was a Religion 101, taught by exactly the same sort of pompous blowhard that I have tried to imitate in the poem. His very often repeated summary of his purpose was that since we still couldn't know what really happened to Jack Kennedy in Dallas in '63, we sure could not know what happened outside of Jerusalem in about 30AD on the morning now known as Easter. Because he did not seem to recognize the existence and purpose of Faith, he judged everything by the quantity of knowledge that could be obtained. When I watched him make one of my classmates cry because she could not express her faith in terms of historical knowledge, I felt the beginnings of a long and abiding contempt for him. It is his sort that both give scholarship a bad rep, and also deserve to be parodied and pilloried as I have tried to do.
Although brief, this poem: Although brief, this poem presents a choreography of multiple processes, and introduces them with the exquisite phrase "parallel shores of imagined worlds." The power of your verbal skill to evoke and deploy this kind of effect is proof, yet again, of the quality of your artistry. I was going to add that it approaches the effect of the finest instrumental music, but then I stopped myself because such a statement is inappropriate: what it should be, rather, is that the finest instrumental music can, sometimes, approach the effect of the superlative accomplishment that your Poetry is.
Satirical gold!
Your wry: Satirical gold!
Your wry wit crackled fiercely throughout your parody, cleverly enlivened with a realistic tone very recognizable as something spoken by an armchair historian. One can almost hear pompous, quasi-intellectual inflections and highbrow drawls in the diatribe. Beautiful!
And of course it's funny (And refreshing!) because that sort of biased and convoluted persuasion is identifiable and, for many people, it hits very close to home. Using this oration as a caricature of some Biblical "experts" was a flash of brilliance. Point made!
I devoured this with laughs and pleasure.
I applaud this very poignant: I applaud this very poignant poem, and its simile, but I dearly hope that you need not run back into the darkness, but into the glorious light of the next, and everlasting, life.
Been years since I have seen: Been years since I have seen your posts on this site, but this poem contains quite a bit of wisdom. Although my eye stumbled at the expletive in the fifteenth line, the final two lines just really knocked me over with their succinct statement of such profound, wide, and experienced advice. This kind of advice is always timely for all Poets, those who are long term members of this community, and those who are new.
It is not the Golden Rule,: It is not the Golden Rule, expressed by Christ Himself, that requires any amendment: it is human nature that requires amendment in order to observe the precept acceptably. And I speak as a very flawed and fallible (and multiple) failure to observe acceptably.
Thank you for the kind: Thank you for the kind affirmation. My failure embarrassed me twofold: I had neglected to reply a fellow member of PostPoems, which was compounded by being neglect of one of the most spiritual Poets on all of this site. Gosh, when I screw up, I do it royal, right? So, again, please accept my sincere gratitude for your reply.
Saiom, you have not merely: Saiom, you have not merely passed away
(as people who have no hope are wont to say):
rather (to use words Peter Cushing spoke of his dear
wife), you are not lost to us; you are just, at the moment, not here.
Starward
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