Who are you, anyway?

Who are you, anyway?

I've seen you from far away,

Quite a few times before I got to know you.

I always thought you were silly, or quite useless.

A waste of time chatting with you, probably. 

Flowers, leaves, no fruit.

Who are you, anyway?

I was the new boy in class, and was quite shy at first,

Trying desperately to make friends.

But I never went to the pains of talking to you,

Never even bothered making eye contact.

What was the point anyway.

I didn't want to hear your voice,

Or hear you speak. I've heard it all,

I know what sort of stuff you'd come up with,

I thought. 

Who are you, anyway?

I never really liked you.

And then one day you caught me unawares.

You said hi. You spoke to me with different words,

In a different tone, and it was as if I'd never heard you speak. 

Your voice was breaking, and breathtaking,

You seemed to be talking about many things at once.

I learnt that it was an insult to ask you

About the weather, when you spoke about things deeper than silence.

You spoke about such a wide variety of things, intertwined them.

You did the police in different voices.

For the first time,

I realised you were beautiful.

Who are you, anyway?

I began to hang out with you,

Speak more often. Talked about deserted lands and myths.

About paranoid love-songs. Talked about ashes and staircases. 

About time, beginnings, ends, stillness, dancing.

I fell in love with that broken voice

Speaking of unbreakable truths.

I too, began to speak in your language and tone,

First amateurly, then profusely, 

Whether what I said made sense or not.

Then I felt the meaning of the word graphomania within myself.

I asked you your name and you replied coyly

In the tone of the Sirens, "Poetry".

Who are you, anyway?

What have you done to me.

I never was interested in you

Till I heard that broken voice,

And now you have grown upon me like a disease,

And I keep on writing, and I then feel

That terrible ennui and exhaustion of poetry,

That frightening doubt of whether what verse

I have written is verse at all, and if there is any merit in it at all.

And yet you consume my thoughts, in my walking, my working, my eating.

What have you done to me.

And now I feel within myself

That artsickness, that homesickness

For the beauty of heaven my true homeland.

Who are you, anyway?

Hang on. You're not God. You're poetry.

You're like a muse. A siren at times.

Enticing me into the rocks. Making me feel empty.

It's because I deified you, so to speak,

Obsessed over you. All things in moderation,

In their place, and God in everything.

I sit here before God, my everything.

I'll use poetry now and then,

Not all the time, to describe the beauty

Of life, reality, and of God.

And I calm down now, and I see the sun rise,

The gentle waves of the ocean lap against my feet,

The lush green trees at the end of the seashore.

Quiet, breathtaking beauty. Forever and ever. In God.

I dream of wearing shorts forever,

Relaxing, letting go of control, trusting completely.

Tranquility. Serenity. Peace. A normal life,

Eyes on God, and occasionally chatting with poetry and art.

I could do this forever.

O'Connell's Bookshop, 19 Bank Street,

Adelaide SA 5000 - this was the address.

I went to this bookshop

and the bookshop devoured me;

there was an amicable fight -

ink was spilt and words were written.

I enclose those words here below,

addressed to you, dear reader,

within this frame:

After the last book has been burnt,

We will turn to insanity for comfort

After the last page goes up in flames,

We will warm ourselves by lightless fires

(And darkness will be our only light)

After the last word has been written and read,

We will cease to read each other

And then I will wonder at my ignorance,

In this age of perceived omniscience

Knowledge is power, but data is paralysis

Invisible terminators already choke my throat 

(Hark! hear me gasp)

Frankensteins we have so carefully designed,

Rise against us, reach for our minds

(And how the life of my mind is now waning)

Re-remember the temperature, they whisper sweetly, stuttering,

remember, re-remember! 451 in the Fahrenheit scale!

You will not have my attention,

Ubiquitous mirror, mirror on every wall

(Words are fairest of them all)

I choose life over death and words over emptiness

The last gasp of the mind

(The last twist of the knife)

Dead poet, you haunt my poems

(But I haunt my own poems too hahaha

Oh you snob of a poet, you meta-allusionist,

to quote yourself)

incoh

    eren

ce

something eats at my mind

    something

something eats

I cannot think

    think

cannot think

fear gnaws

    only love scares it away

        shakes me out of my mind.

obs

    curi

ty

And "ICTHUS meaning fish,

the word transcendence written in every"

poem:

Et clamor meus ad te veniat

So, then, teach me all the rules of poetry,

So that I may break them.

And teach me all the rules of God,

That I may keep them

Behold my incoherence. I call it poetry

I apologise for the incomprehensible,

I do not blame you,

You would have to read all my poems

To understand this

            one.

I write like a lover to his beloved,

only she gets the joke haha lol

fragm

    entat

ion

here I hide, behind the curtain,

furtively writing poetry.

don't notice me, just look at the words.

switch off the spotlight.

yet you ask:

and why again the wasteland as your backdrop?

because in the land of the dead, life is the resistance

and when darkness falls, light is appreciated

these are my word experiments in the 21st century

where everything goes wrong

because I'm all mixed up

bef

    ore the

des

        cent o

f intol

    erable reg

ret

You modern mirrors will not

    have my attention

I am the bookseller

    of the last million books

I am the reader

    of the last million words

I

    am

the

    resistance

Thus ends the frame. That narrator isn't me okay.

I only spilt the ink.

written by th omas mele th

in the year of my fragmentation,

written for those who would care to read my broken verse.

References / bibliography: Mr. Eliot & myself & the Tridentine Mass

The last gasp of the mind.

***

Notes:

I wrote this piece of writing with no title and no 'by Thomas Meleth' as my name was in the writing itself. I felt like presenting this as a 'Fragment' rather than a poem (I got the idea of seeing a piece of writing as a fragment from the poet David Jones).

This 'fragment' above is an experimental sort of poem, enclosed in a frame narrated by myself. Within the frame the narrator seems to be a different person - the bookseller of one of the last surviving bookshops, or in a way every writer who keeps writing and keeps the language alive, despite declining reading habits in the 21st century.

Some allusions I have used to other texts or my own poems are below.

'So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing' - From East Coker, No. 2 of Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot.

Fahrenheit 451 - dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury where firemen burn books. At this temperature paper catches fire and burns.

By 'ubiquitous mirror' I mean the screens of phones and computers.

'The last twist of the knife' - the last line from 'Rhapsody on a Windy Night' by T. S. Eliot.

Dead poet - T. S. Eliot

'Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.

  What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?

I never know what you are thinking. Think.' - From The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot. I used this broken style (suggestive of a nervous breakdown) in one of the stanzas.

From my poem 'transcendence':

after the night of raging winds,

in the morning I head out to the street

and see a million paper cards

scattered everywhere by the wind

with the word transcendence written

on each one of them.

(...)

I take a breath above the waves,

immerse myself in God,

and I am under the waters again -

ICTHUS meaning fish, swims within

the deep waters, immersed in God -

and so I try to imitate Christ.

Et clamor meus ad te veniat - 'And let my cry come unto Thee', the response of the altar server to the priest's 'Lord, hear my prayer' in the Tridentine Mass - rough translations. Eliot used this line

in English in his poetry.

My poem Anguished Heart, the last line of which is used in the above fragment:

Today I cried out to myself, and imagined,

(Would it be God telling me something?)

That at my deathbed

I would cry out with anguished heart

That I had not written the words

God asked me to write

(Or that I had not lived out my days

In the noble ways

God asked me to live)

And so I now write, and now live

Before the descent of intolerable regret

Tridentine Mass: Traditional Latin Mass in the Catholic Church which is in Latin.

The themes of this fragment are perhaps the possibility of a decline of the life of the mind amidst the technological advances of the 21st century (the 'ubiquitous screen', a phrase I think I read somewhere). Also, perhaps the fragmentation of language, and my attempt to transcend the mortality of the brokenness of human experience by glancing towards God (Et clamor meus ad

te veniat).

I, earth

Do not call me death, I am no murderer

I only claim what was first mine

I, the earth upon which you trudge,

am only an observer. 

From my dust your body first came

and to me your dust will return.

I am layered with time

I do not have myths or legends or memories within me,

But am layered with history, reality, and the lives of many men.

Layered within me are the bodies of all mankind,

Except four, and how could I contain

That fourth one, how could I contain my maker?

How could I, ever changing one, contain the unmoved mover?

How I miss that last one,

How I miss your voice.

Sometimes I hear the chirping of the birds

And wonder if it is you whispering.

I have heard it whispered among mortals

That he remains here still, in another form,

Disguised and veiled.

Oh that I had mortal eyes to see him again!

It has been centuries since I heard his voice.

Back then I could feel him and hear him,

and he was not like the others, he was different -

He cared for me.

I miss him

Is that the chirping of the birds

or is that you whispering?

I miss you

the best thing that happened to me

Amidst the flames of agony and despair,

When all the world burned and all I had was you,

I saw you with me in the flames - 

Oh you did stand by me in the flames -

when I had nothing,

you became everything to me,

and so may it always be

And you, Christ, the best thing that happened to me,

Whispered to me, piercéd heart to broken heart:

"Keep

    your eyes

        on Me,

and I will be enough."

your words not mine

you, God, source of all light,

enlighten this dark whirlwind

of scatteredness that I am,

with your radiant wings, 

shelter me with your truth

enlighten me to divest myself

of all worldly desire,

and engage in the spiritual act 

of composing the written word,

to do the work and leave it unto you,

in the rich tradition 

of Christ the roaring lion of truth and beauty

O Christ, write through me,

and let me care not for money,

fame, publication,

but only for what word you want me 

to write next -

your will not mine

your words not mine

I tried to 

scale Everest,

find treasures,

write epics,

run marathons,

build monuments,

serve kings,

be the best,

but all I was looking for

was a little bit of love

remember me

Give me a list of all the people

who will remember you 

once you are dead and gone,

and I will go through it

and strike out the names one by one

Only God will remember you 

and constantly think of you.

Live for God, not for them