Found this in an old notebook:
Eyes blur
Shadeless tones of grey
Descend on loving roses
Petals weep
And so do we
For flowers falling over
Do so with such dignity
While we bend and crack
And bleed
Beholden to the last grain
Slaves to fortune
Fists clenched
Around our favorite faded memory
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
1920
William Butler Yeats
I’ve referenced it several times lately, and it’s one of my faves, so I figured I’d post it.
I cannot write a single word
You have not heard before
I cannot play the unheard chord
Bestowed by God’s great score
I can’t describe the colors,
for my colors aren’t yours
I cannot see the future, nor
tell you what’s in store
I can however read the dreams
the gods wove through our lore
and see between forgotten seams
toward that worth fighting for.
I jot them down in frantic streams
and pray the do restore,
to bless this sequence of light beams
and the feelings they outpour.
This is the poem I was going to read at the Creative Coffeehouse. Posting it here, lest it go to waste. It’s meant to be spoken, so it may lose something in the reading.
I walked away jaded
my faith so quickly faded
bubble wrapped and crated
to a place where it’s awaited
to be traded for fresh fish baited
with concentrated love so belatedly related
from a heart persuaded to trust
despite the girth of her bust
her palpitated heart was the size of a grain of dust
now deflated, I lack lust for sluts,
for such girls are nuts
and when it comes to pretty women I’m prone to act a putz
its complicated,
cuz life itself is implicated
when treacheries perpetrated
leave loved ones conflagrated
when even hope has been abated
and the pain feels integrated
with the way the world seems fated
to suck my blood until it’s sated
when the questions postulated
are returned with truth degraded
and the one you love looks in your eyes
and lies with love misstated
that was the day, it’s sad to say
that chivalry outdated.
And the golden armor plated steed
I rode disintegrated.
When the type of man I meant to be
Appeared uneducated
To the Fact that trust
Is built to rust
And liberty decays it
Sexuality delays it
My earthen soul hoorays it
On a pedestal I raise it
I get on my knees and praise it
But that FUCKING BITCH BETRAYS IT
Ya know,
It leaves me in amazement,
How one walks on love like pavement
And how opening my heart to her lead to my mind’s enslavement
As if my loneliness were payment
For her not so new engagement
While she’s swept away in her ‘secret’ foray
I decay in forlorn estrangement
