by Stephen A. Meigs
These poems were written from about 1995 to 1997. Can't say I have much explanation of them.
(written June 11, 1997)
That day I forgot.
Wrote poems
Don't recall them.
Write for
myself
Or better yet
My intellectual
envelopment. [development]
How?
Don't care about 'net?[internet]
Ha-ha.
Not surprised.
Deeper, darker
longings
appear on the tongue
to trick me.
Same
thing all over my writings to pot.
A very blind faith this.
That I can
write without trying . . . right.
Slowly death coalesces.
The girl I love
is far away.
I realize
that
at times.
I suddenly
comprehend
the despondency.
Am
better
off
Cold.
Despair
to repair
the damage done.
My own
laughter
worst of all
I imagine myself
On a canoe
Paddling down
unaided
The rock
before
is cold
I want to
Be so calm
No rush of
water may take
me,
when I paddle straightforward.
I look straight ahead.
Each glance
same--
For living, for dead.
Who will stop me?
I paddle
straightforward.
I talk with the dead.
Hell's about other side
Of bend.
Been there.
Heard?
Done
that,
Will do again.
How?
Reckless.
I fear the lighter songs of the e'en more lightsome birds. They love me just cause they remember. I heard their songs and learned I'd die. Why? Because it follows from her indifference. Twinkles don't appreciate the lighter sides. Think God made 'em to make us cry. Laugh, laugh, laugh, I laugh as I die.
Birds of paradise they think do cause resentment I care not. Too much of birds it don't go as I thought.
Wish I were steadier. Liked to see me so. Don't know. Don't feel it proper to
expostulate. I'm going to bed now having failed. My mind is a wonderful thing.
She confuses me
When I think
I can do something
about it.
Better
off
despondent.
Accepting
at
Face
Value.
The same--all's the
same
But studying little characters makes it so.
(written about July 1996)
Greetings. Davy wanders off a new coon's cap for a ball. Roaming and wandering through the closes and hedgerows we silently listen the sparrows aimlessly the warblers less still so. Ease fills my voice as you stomach distends the shirt from hurries. Tassels fill the air from the brim of her hat she clicks heel back arm forward and presents. What? I do not know.
Lingering then on the last step she falters to take another. Kidnapped and a very strange phobia? "Go ahead." "No." "Then don't take another." "Don't worry, I hadn't intended."
The seagulls beat wings they think I have O no forgotten them. Their raucous cries as one belies the fell swoop from the overpassing eagle. You must understand it is their nature to ignore him so high. It's in their best interest as well. We wander back to heaven after leaving for hell.
(written in early 1995 or so. Kind of seems silly at first, but has spooky ending.)
Some seek decadence desperately, others only in song. People know the answers to the riddles, but they always say them wrong. I thought that I could gain a fortune in nice distinctions--so many people want life, and truly threatening are the extinctions. But no one really wants to understand. With understanding comes responsibility, with responsibility a life. You would think they'd want wisdom as much as a wife. I shudder at the disturbances in the ether, I wonder why no one else takes exception? Yes, I am interested in conception, and so are you--Hey, I know they thing to do! Take off your clothes and figure things out. Do it by yourself to feed the doubt, and when you understand, you can turn to a man.
Don't be a riddle to your own sense of humor, and do not be led by trite lies and rumor. Beware of those who seek without asking. You know they are basking in the hate they are masking. Be friends with yourself and return the guilt whence it came. Take in reasons and distribute the blame. Clouds may vary, but they always rain the same. The poem will end when I quit playing the game. Rhymes for no reason can I understand them? In high school I didn't know your name.
First let me say that this is certainly not a prophetic poem--I despise all things apocalyptic, and don't want this poem interpreted so. This is a poem about the past. At places it even sounds a little like I'm talking of past lives, though I won't affirm that to be so, and indeed even when it most seems like I could be talking about past lives, what I say I suspect concerns at least in part the past of my own life or the past of someone I know. The bit about a wallet containing a key concerns a small plastic receptacle in the inside of my wallet for spare keys. In high school, I kept a spare house key there. In college, I kept spare quarters there so when using the cafeteria I could use lockers if I didn't have change with me. The part about bathroom tile concerns my spending an afternoon in despair by putting my ear to the bottom of my shower stall (near the drain) in my apartment (that I was subletting one summer) and turning my head around in circles. I have subsequently seen dogs do that behavior, which is probably an instinct for cleaning the ears. The reference to five years really concerns something that happened in the late summer of 1989, so maybe this poem was written earlier than I thought, in late1994 perhaps.
Complain then, if you want what's coming to you. A bouquet of lilac and a modest silk easter dress of the same color. It is nighttime in Aries. The card of the aluminum siding salesman was long ago returned to the upper left bureau drawer. It stays there still forgotten by all the house remained undisturbed upon his death, the house of no gables. Look to yourself and beware the intrusion of the periwinkle in the living room. Don't think the plaster will fall in less than a century.
The surface of the lake is still while below it teems with life. The fish swims silently in murky depths, feeding on the luxuriant greenery that is vegetation. How now?
A weighty day of recollection upon me sits an onus for disillusionment. The wind blows through the crevices in the window the wall will fall some day. No more weightiness will live in the world; my love will go like the passenger pigeon. I don't want to think of the other now. A solitary path through weeds and thorns an dismemberment I recall it sadly. I don't know where the rest of me is. I thought it was here yet know it is gone now. I don't know why I stopped moving at a slow pace. It would be pretty I were more of dreary.
Twenty-five dead crickets in a pool of fetid water. I dealt with it. Perhaps I should have kept my nose better closed. Slime grows coldly on the walls of the dungeon I sometimes want to rest in. An oaken casket I shall hide in--no one will find me the crickets were dead. I long to find a deeper more varied profundity--I am afraid, afraid of the light that dances there. The devil in the daytime can find thee unaware.
I have no caution anymore of things flying through the air exploding to hit me. Like long ago I was in a rain storm I try to accept. My mind's excessively active, this poem-writing I don't desire a self-defeating state. The sadness of life in death I'd like to retain. Why must it go away, a glider in the rain?
Try too hard to be smart and exceeding clever a four leaf clover to the charmed? A shoveller of the ashes of the damned? A censer swings to and fro, the water drips from the beard into the pool of lost long ago reflections. Peer more deeply into the abyss of the ocean's deep. Toadstools and frogs and crabby creatures with pincers. What do they want in the ocean of the damned? Where is the harness for the loathsome horse of vitriol in the war of brimstone and Napoleonic evil. Curse them the French fighting napoleonic damned, they took my love my flower my hope and my life. The war of 1812 is long since passed, its riddles answered, it's questions posed by men of quick wits and little comprehension. Satan dwells in Napoleon's house, the house of flame his own. The Russian hussars ascend the throne and the ermine lives alone. Dwell not on past entreaties and try to recall the time before, when you were alone, starving. The grassy fence, the grapes on the trees unripe, whose fault were these the hopes of lost kingdoms undone the cherries on the trees? She comes you see to love and not to please.
Dwelled there on the mountainside a lonely hermit a friend to keep from danger and mystery a sideways glance of recognition. The truth was there behind the rock where the moss was do you remember? Remember well and all that's lost will resurrect a bright day of green sunshine we are tankful for the sadness there never again will we rejoice that way we remember.
The dead men fill the pits in Bessarabia. Grass grows there now except where the mud and gravel grows. Wooden excrescences suggest I travel an easier pace. I wish the pain were still there, oh why did you go away? To rejoice in a state like this after what has failed to happen and even if it did happen, I wish I'd never smile again. I actually did well then, you know, I passed my exam.
I do not think I'll consider my poems, perhaps that is the mystery, the lost key. I had a key in my purse. I placed it in the wallet and now it's gone. I should not have put it where it didn't belong. Funny I should have remembered that--hadn't though of it in many, many years. I put money there instead. I put money where the key was, I don't know why I care not. Dreadful happenings have occurred somewhere and some say they shall continue. I for one am sleepy and don't want to continue at this my untoward pace. A place of reflection is all that I dreamed of. I wanted a town of happiness to dance about in. Maybe I can be happy and still reflect. Yes I would be able to do that if the evil weren't there. The loathsome filth wreaks and messes up the earth. I have been too optimistic. Careworn I see myself rubbing the back of my left hand with my other hand. I am lost in daydreams there but there is a fire before me and I look into it and feel the warmth below my knuckles. Somewhere there, deep there, does there lie the answer. The mysteries that be will resolve themselves someday. Movement isn't evil if it's a flame. A flame of abomination is like an evil master devouring all the host and the evil woman. Breath gives to the flame a moment's pause for reflection. A regurgitated moss is for the dead a damnable (perhaps) infection. I remember that I was there I watched as the wafers were eaten I couldn't take the wine I thought. I would die I couldn't stand it my I wanted only to be left alone then. No one has ever given me what I needed I wish I had never lived when it happened I saw it I was mistreated to have it happen there I never asked for it or desired it I was just Gladdened by the warmth and kindness of all I kind of thought that life would pass a gladsome thing a breath for the expiration of I thought I remember I figured the mysterious spell the pull of the spell of the lost ages the times were to be but were not because of her I am weary of it. Do you remember the bathroom--the coldness of the tile on the face the sense of urgency did soothe not very much I am afraid. Time did what floor tile couldn't. I am happy now but wish I wasn't.
I could wander about in the shrubbery I suppose, but remember insanity is not all it's cracked to be. A steadier pace like the man in the museum would be better I pandered to my friend and was silly. I know tomorrow I will wake up silly as I always have save then five years past. Is it her fault or mine? Why am I so happy now when I have no reason to be? Why can't I be like Cathy? She was so pretty I want to be like Cathy I was I don't remember how the chemicals aren't there they only stay a little while I was pure then I don't know why I am not perhaps it was the cartrip--a certain moment there--"Stephen, I know you're thinking about Cathy." Why should that be it no perhaps it was more, yes, I guess but don't understand so.
Oh, happy is what happy does. The cold wind blows over the icy plains--up the hills and over the top, it never stops I really look attractive now, ibuprofen has made the nonsense go away. I should say I'm better now a while later--I want to leave a page to posterity free of sickness. I though, no really, the meadowlarks would stay away--fly to the moon as, you know, they may. I tarried to obtain the telegraph sent last century. The evening grosbeaks on the computer gave credence to a theory long since abandoned. On the advice of one I trust less, I'm glad I don't have to consider him somewhat.
Perhaps you have seen it--the painting of the cat on the wall in finger colors. Well, we thought it would turn out O.K. after all the excitement lifted, and so it has in many respects. I am perfect content to live a year or six months more this way. It is not as though I have an alternative. I wish I had taken less ibuprofen.
Doilies on diesels with daffodils for forsythias. Orange-red glow of musky embers for breakfast after little rest. The day nears completion I believe I shall leave this night for others. May gravestone shall be narrow and illegible; the dearth of aqua vitae for arbor vitae on an eroding hillside well-trodden by now distant footsteps. The soft echo of sounds off walls well wallpapered. The last reverberations of cries from the secretively plaintive woman. My, all the secretly hidden guilt that really would fly to a nest like nothing more ominous than your typical well-behaved sparrow or something more colorful. Snapdragons on sledges drove by Laps through scenes of frigid desolation. The last howl of the coyote awakens the explorer for supper. God what have I done? Only what is reasonable in a world one must so often guess at.l
Ruses are like this. So soft and red so willing to kiss you know her mouth of affection. Conjectures as to the remainder I am careless for. What does it matter to me who understand that they think I erred. No one remembers anyway, I suppose. Unless ice can remember.