Poetry Revision
I don't know that I've ever really gone back and edited any of my poetry before, but I stumbled on this by chance tonight and took the opportunity to tighten it up considerably. This is less to say that it is brilliant now and more to say that there was a lot of really obvious junk in the last version and I am much happier with it now. I believe I posted the original version when I wrote it several years ago, and perhaps I even pledged not to change it because it was such an 'in-the-moment' sort of thing, but I so rarely feel inspired to edit past work that I decided to go ahead and post it again here. I'm sure that anyone who bothers to compare the two versions will see that this one is superior at least in length if nothing else.
Pinnacle
Today is a day of creation
Mine is life and mine is the world
Anyone would fall in love with me today
for to love me is to love the world
and there is no other joy but mine
You can see at a glance that the door is open
and once you look through it
regression becomes impossible
There can be only forward and upward and inward
with the song of the feet
and the beat of the words
and the string of the drum
giving
How curious the power
in a moment of hours
when soul quivers and skin shivers
until nothing is without grasp
and release
and I want to weep for fullness
Can I cry?
Can I scream?
There is a scream in the set of my shoulders
You can see it
Aren't you looking?
How do you watch without moving?
How can you sit and think and ponder?
This is life
There is no thought but birth
Have you forgotten so soon?
You stare at me
You cannot see my face and tell me you despise delight
Have you never seen what someone looks like
when they are alive?
Pulse, tone, rhythm, rising
translation to the beginning
not of this moment but of the first
and the last
for this is it
It fills you up and then adds more
so that good and evil drown in joy
and you smile because you've forgotten
forgotten that people don't do this.
but we do
Is there anything you can't imagine?
I dare you
Contract my infection
Let it sicken your world of stress
and make your unhappiness bleed away into the past
until you are dead to the computer
and alive to the wind
on its race to the sea
Oh, don't lose it!
More precious than you will find
in any tenable thing
beauteous above vision
harmonious beyond hearing
the melody of a child in love with a tree
This is all but a drop
so catch it and make your own delirium
for only then will the rain turn to flood
and the rainbow arc achingly
bending to reach the earth at its heart
Life boils over into the body
it stirs within us
energy beyond peace
bonds of memory
to the thing we are
Another time, another day, another place, another language
No difference
We breathe you.
Pinnacle
Today is a day of creation
Mine is life and mine is the world
Anyone would fall in love with me today
for to love me is to love the world
and there is no other joy but mine
You can see at a glance that the door is open
and once you look through it
regression becomes impossible
There can be only forward and upward and inward
with the song of the feet
and the beat of the words
and the string of the drum
giving
How curious the power
in a moment of hours
when soul quivers and skin shivers
until nothing is without grasp
and release
and I want to weep for fullness
Can I cry?
Can I scream?
There is a scream in the set of my shoulders
You can see it
Aren't you looking?
How do you watch without moving?
How can you sit and think and ponder?
This is life
There is no thought but birth
Have you forgotten so soon?
You stare at me
You cannot see my face and tell me you despise delight
Have you never seen what someone looks like
when they are alive?
Pulse, tone, rhythm, rising
translation to the beginning
not of this moment but of the first
and the last
for this is it
It fills you up and then adds more
so that good and evil drown in joy
and you smile because you've forgotten
forgotten that people don't do this.
but we do
Is there anything you can't imagine?
I dare you
Contract my infection
Let it sicken your world of stress
and make your unhappiness bleed away into the past
until you are dead to the computer
and alive to the wind
on its race to the sea
Oh, don't lose it!
More precious than you will find
in any tenable thing
beauteous above vision
harmonious beyond hearing
the melody of a child in love with a tree
This is all but a drop
so catch it and make your own delirium
for only then will the rain turn to flood
and the rainbow arc achingly
bending to reach the earth at its heart
Life boils over into the body
it stirs within us
energy beyond peace
bonds of memory
to the thing we are
Another time, another day, another place, another language
No difference
We breathe you.