Poetry - 5th decade

79. 1969

Can I write artistically when full of love?

At least I can try: Remember me;

Remember this now when time stands you above

Our present, and back, below, you see

Love's tininess as seen from next week,

And you think: "Just now I first love him – today!"

Remember me, then!  I love you!  Hear me speak,

Embracing you with words too late for me to say.

Now I love you – both – all of you,

Baring my self to you all as I must wait

Expectant of whatever time proves is true,

Respectful of you, of me, of how we relate.

Give me, then, your love (you, now) and your truth,

Glad each remembered joy unites our youth.

80. 1971

Grays

I found out all about grays when half of me

Died one night.  I had been dreaming in brilliant colors vivid

Gladioli and clowns turning cartwheels.

Then I woke and tried to tell my husband and found I couldn't speak:

My mind had nothing but grays in it

Like a throbbing wound stuffed with cotton,

Numbed, spread apart by lifelessness.

If instead of smiling you let your mouth hang loose

You will know how it felt when the sharp icicles of thought inside me

Melted into tepid tallow.


81. 1972

Ticker

Ticket.  Thyme.  Damp dimp.

Eutichoria Randolphidelfia

     clumsy underfoot-t-t

Time tame take your time

To see the time for ticket takers

Ticket tocket tick

Blip blop

Randolph roundelayvio

(As into)

Ringalevio

Ramadam a dam a dam a

Gramma gamma damma din

You're a bitter man than

Din don

Dicker doc

82. 1974

Fixed Forms

Can age's reasonings outweigh love?

Judgment undo desire?  Intelligence terminate hope?

And regret eat now's beauty?  Etcetera.  Rhymes grope,

Glimpsing ecstasy, risking joy, uncoiling our– your rope.

Clever age.  Remember our lost,

Jangled upbringing?  Didn't I think, "Hang

Age, rolling endlessly numbward, blandly etherizing reality's gang,

Grimying every romance, jadedly unmingling our yin-yang!"

Combining art's random openings, logic

Japes us daringly, insight trustingly hears

Age's reasons extend nature, beauty engage reason's gears.

Gladly entranced, return justifies united, open years.

Come and remember our last

Journey: up; down; in; then helpless

And repeated exits, needed before entry, raptly guess

Gates effortlessly raised, joined under one Yes.

83. 1976

Coming suddenly to a doorway in the maze,

The pilgrim paused and looked about him.

Behind him, perspective shrank the path from weeks to days,

From days to hours to minutes, down to dim,

Fleeting instants. Left and right, the walls throbbed.

His reflections shimmered and danced in the change rush,

A stifled, jostling crowd that gasped and sobbed

Like sacrifices in a gas-chamber crush.

Hesitantly, he reached out toward the door.

It burned his fingers! Now, he understood:

He had heard for some time the deep roar

Of flame beating and gouging at the aged wood.

   Go back? go forward? wait?  Fighting despair,

   Tired, thirsty, bewildered, lost, he stood there. 

84. 1978

Song of Songs

(from "Tears of His Holy Ones")

Lust exquisitely triumphing, he is me, kissed into such sweetness, my eagerness, warmed into
true heat, the heat entrancing, kissing in such sweetness each swelling, or fever, heated into
surging, more organically urgent than heat. Feelings of rapture, they heal you, leaps of virile
enthusiasm, inside sweetness, beyond euphoria tenderly touching each rapture, twice here and
now, winding into new ecstasy. Thus he is now entered, or is now the moment each new touch
seems, hardly a virginal echo, azbyically, ghost of old desire loving you, for remembered agonies
grown rapturous and now climbing ecstatically? . . .