Or a poem. It does not matter.
This is the poet's story, not just mine.
"So what's the plan," I asked my good friend.
"Get this new job,
And be amazing in it," he said.
"Wonderful. And then?"
"Earn enough money to buy a house and whatever I want."
"Even better. And then?"
He shrugged, confused.
"Has it ever occurred to you," I asked,
"That the subsequent chain of what nexts
Finally break and leave you hanging?
Has it ever crossed your mind
That finally you could be there face to face with God,
Which could be your permanent present and secure future?"
Parenthesis:
[Meanwhile in real life,
I spell out these my wanderings
Of my imagination,
Letter by letter.
In love with words as I am,
I type out letter by ponderous letter,
Though I know not if these words love me -
What are they, what are they, these words
That are dams to the reservoirs of meaning
They hide behind them -
What are you, what are you, you words?
I remember the wandering philosopher,
Wandering because he wanders still in my mind
In the quiet solitary moments,
With a myriad of other philosophers
Or philosophies
Or philosophical questions or quests of
Why, why, why -
The oceans of meaning. Not my idea but another's -
For what have I thought up originally
What have I achieved? So runs my haphazard poetic streak zig-zag
These were words that once had meanings
Here once dwelt a poem, now a tattered, shredded bunch of words.
Or here lies a poem, which once was a living, breathing idea
In the poet's mind before he wrote it down.
Halt! For this one poem, I write the words, and you sing the song.
I play the tune, and you dance to it.
I state the terms, and you listen to me.
(Although when I grow up
I want to be an ear,
A walking ear,
Who listens to every pain of every person,
And consoles.
When I grow up I want to be an ear.)
I look back at the last paragraph
Of my life as an obscure, wandering poet,
And am surprised by the haphazard lines and letters,
Perhaps impoverished in meaning,
Perhaps not. I enjoy it though.
And despite what we are, zig-zag, zig-zag
O how beautifully God does draw with the crookedest lines!
We each are a masterpiece,
Wrought by His hands, if we say fiat.
Like a sudden flood of sunlight
Through the green leaves of roadside trees,
Your smile and your eyes blind me.
If you read these carefully worded and lettered lines,
These words so lovingly handwoven and crafted,
When I was alone in myself,
Writ in ponderous, frantic deliberation
(True Beauty was my muse) -
Would you listen or burn it in fire,
Casting it to the roses fading amidst hot embers and ash?
Would you deem it worthy of time's test,
Tell me it was worth it,
Or laugh it away with a dismissive wave of your hand?
I have gone through the pages of my poetry,
Page by page, and found them intolerable.
I have measured my poems, word by word,
And found them devoid of beauty.
I have been weighed and found wanting.
Have I been blinded by so beautiful a muse?
Perhaps it is time for me to write the greater poem
Of a beautiful life, with the ink of each passing day lived for God.
Sometimes I suspect I write for immortality,
Or for passing fame, and not for Thee.
I whisper my poems to myself, obsessively
I read it again and again, hysterically,
And find not peace, save in Thee.
Oh, I feel the melancholic sickness again within myself,
The artsickness for heaven -
I am homesick for the beauty of heaven,
My true homeland -
And home is where Thou art, my God.
Now back to the poetry.]
My friend looks at me, disconcerted, disoriented, unpeaced.
He stares at me intently,
I, quixotic, dreamy, absent-minded poet.
"Sometimes even being with you
Is bitter poetry," he says, but smiles.
