Poem Link

These are some of my poems that I've been able to unearth
from shoe boxes not discarded or absconded with by scorned women.
To see a collection of other people's poems that have moved me
and continue to move me, click here.

PRAYER WALK
© 1978, Troy Kevin Spears
Musical Excerpt HERE.

Take a trip, take a journey.
Take your time, there's no hurry at all, at all.
Hear the bluebirds, smell the flowers.
Feel the loving and the powers of all, of all.

Don't know where the world is going,
Heading for destruction at a mile a minute.
Don't know how the earth is turning,
All I know is that I'm caught up in it.

See the eons spread before us,
Turning to nothing in our lack of space.
Will the future just ignore us,
Will we even leave a trace...
When can I see Your Face?

When all on the earth have failed,
Take a step, just one more step, behind the Veil --
From all, to all.
That's all, that's all.

HORSE
© 1982, Troy Kevin Spears

Chomping the bit,
I rise from the ground for a moment like my masters --
two limbs for the earth and two limbs for the sky.
But as I fall, I remember
that all my limbs are promised to the ground --
good solid ground that has no place for skylimbs
or for wings.

Still Pegasus comes to me (as child or as father?)
whenever I chomp the bit and reel
beneath the shifting of grinding continents,
and I turn my eyes inward
to a gravity that pulls
up.

UNTITLED
© 1983, Troy Kevin Spears

Touching the circle of my head,
fragile circle of myth -

mother, monster, master, and mission -

pushing me thru amphetamine eternities
of memory and desire
tied and twisted into a being with little use
for a timeline or daily planner.
Goal-directed smile, inward stare, Oedipus-haunted eye,
tearful laughing moment of gods, goddesses, and godlings,
tearful laughing circle -

laughing god,
tortured myth -

empty circle of a head,
a head touched,
fragile.

It shimmered and rained thru air.
The shards of myth are now media,
are growing, obeying an inner law,
becoming childrened, populating themselves.
New nation, new priesthood,
glistening network, machine, contract, intrigue,
dancing beneath a too-young sun.

I touch the fragile circle of my head,
fragile circle of a myth, broken,
and voilà, is now media -
and the medium (median?) is the message.
Transcendent eternity and transfixed moment
find each other through oscillations
of mind and heart and sense.
Haikuist calls this "the thingness of things seen," and is done.
The Son of Man has no place to lay his head,
a head touched,
and must continue.

DINOSAURS COME OF AGE
© 1984, Troy Kevin Spears

1. Fugitives

Dinosaurs skip playfully through the trees,
stealing eggs and hatching lies.

2. Conversion

She sent him an image of herself,
and being the perfect camera obscura,
he sent her back.
She said, MY god's not dead.
He said, YOUR god just hasn't lived enough.
She forgave him this, his first poem,
for all the poems that would have died to be first.
Many poems die trying.

3. Development of a "human" eye

Aren't all gods poems so necessary
that we forget they are poems?
And isn't love the lust that is lost in thought?
Dinosaurs play in the grove,
dimly dreaming.

UNTITLED
© 1984, Troy Kevin Spears

Atop Sinai,
Moses' nodding and blinking head,
presides over the union of our cruelty and our humanity.
And he becomes midwife to the mountain,
as she gives birth to a god.
For out of the womb of uncertainty,
uncertainty becomes uncertain of herself,
and uncertainty hazards ...
an Absolute.
And the once holy marriage
turns to miscarriage,
becomes History
and Witch Hunt.

Hear my people!
The Lord, our Lord, was always, and only, many Lords.
And what is it that they ask?
That we shall put away these toys, these Absolutes,
and that we shall not live with the furnaces
of THOU SHALL NOT anymore.

DEATH
© 1985, Troy Kevin Spears

1. A room, a clown, a singer.
The crowd lounges, hungers, waiting for amusement and drugs.
But there is nothing for you here.
And digging with nailless nubs through the bluelit room's ceiling,
would only take you up to the surface of the city cemetary.
Then up through trees, back to the hunger.

2. Death comes to those that wait in small packages.

3. This is not a poem. This is a drug.
Drugs don't lie, people do.
People are drugs. People are not lies.
And this is not a person.

4. Death means never having to say you're sorry.
Means never having to mean.
Having come to the end of your means.

5. This is not death. This is a drug.
This is a poem. This is a little death.
And you are a little drugged animal,
drugged with a poem.

6. Shut your eyes. The woodsmen approach,
and the sight of your own blood would only give you bad dreams.
Sleep, and after the sleep,
more sleep.

THE NIGHT'S STILL HOUR
© 1987, Troy Kevin Spears
Musical Excerpt HERE.

I turn to you in the night's still hour
in need of warmth and your gentle shower.
I turn to you, and I watch you dream
in your private hour, by your private stream.

I try to guess, but I guess I'll never know
what rivals pass through your midnight show.
You dance within, here I am without,
just rocking with this unforgiving doubt.

I study you beneath a furrowed brow,
trying to find a way to trust a kiss, but I do not know how.
You're so deep inside that soft warm skin,
deep in my black doubt, only the kiss of sin.

So here's a beggar's kiss for your pretty crown.
A sleepy smile from you, and I lie back down,
still tremblin' from this strange, strange power,
my love for you in the night's still hour.

LAZY SUSAN #7
© 1987, Troy Kevin Spears.
Musical Excerpt HERE.

Hoist the contraption into the sea swells.
The chum fills the water with tangible smells.
Circular motion and carnival sounds,
I cross the ocean, you're never around.
You're gone -- running an errand or two.
I'm done -- circling the cage, Hon, I'm coming through.

And Jesus ate red meat and taught me to swim.
The clearer I hear him, the more I need my gin.
His life muddled my poor little head --
Big, big life left us all a bit dead.
He's gone -- running from rent that was due,
I'm done -- footing the bill, Lord, I'm coming too.

And justice still lives here in Big Albie's world.
Through his logic's sieve come only the good boys and girls.

Throw your professors into the sea swells.
Their skins fill my gut with corpuscular smells.
I've cried an ocean, you've laughed at the sport.
Making no motion, yeah, I know your sort.
You show me where to look among seaweed and flowers,
And while I look away, you'ld chant your name for hours...
and hours. Our lives are made
of hours and hours.

THE CENTER
© 1991, Troy Kevin Spears

"That the center shall hold,"
the center, hmm ... we already have assumed quite a bit ...
perhaps "a" center would suffice to hold ... to hold what?
A passion? a thought?
But how can a thought hold without a passion?
Hero and saint and the poor creature they drive,
blurring the division, art and artist inextricably enmeshed,
god and beast, nothing and something.

How the emptiness fill the statue
turns mute rock into eloquent pose,
and what the poet didn't say
is still what we take away from the poem.

My Spirit as art? as résumé? as social function? as propogation of the bloodline?

God, who does not move, moves the world
as the Beloved moves its lover.
But sometimes the Beloved blows its lover
to smithereens.

That the beloved shall hold? that the lover be held?
Shall the world turn for one more day?
The sun, shall it feed tired plants and not breath all life away
from this thin atmosphere into its cosmic grin?

Now the razor sings to me from the bathroom sink,
and a fragrant Mediterranean breeze blows across my face.
A desire to travel awakens within me -- the desire to go home.

"That the center shall hold?" ...
the center is only center because we devalued the periphery.
The only task left is to devalue also the center.

POEM BEFORE BREAKFAST IN OAKLAND JAIL
© 1992, Troy Kevin Spears

The sad and saddest moment
is the one of realization when we turn
and turn the self-mending process
into the "thing" -- durable, breakable.
The actual breaking is only the sadness of the realization
come to pass.

God is just now emerging from his dream.
But the God who is, and is the same forever,
was already dead and was born dead.

What is most cannot be said and cannot be saved.
What is least, and the excretion of the least,
has been collected and catalogued as learning.
But our learning still stinks of the judgment of Christ,
and his carcass still rots beneath our too worldly gaze.

Who touches does not know, who knows does not touch.
And to hallow one moment is to be blessed forever.

I am and still only cannibal,
and I am last of my species.
I decree the blessed eucharist
and wither beneath my too cultured taste.
I starve without kindred.

HAIKU
© 1995, Troy Kevin Spears

Tangled in vines,
Sad hut forgets her old man,
Moonlight, the grave weeps.

Honeysuckle breeze
blows through broken white buildings.
The old home is gone.

Ancient oak calls down.
Cries of war blotted my heart,
But again, I see you.

Chirping and flying,
Boy and Girl keep their secret.
I ... keep only time.

Be this dream,
'tis a good dream
that make me also good
by its charms and mystic devices.

Be this foolery,
History is full of fools, loudhearted and big,
and falling at the feet of my dream,
still I would be in good company.

Be this falsehood,
'tis false as the moon is false,
who must show her several faces
in order to be comprehended whole.

Be this truth,
'tis a dangerous truth,
for each flower and gentle word,
each look and fond remembrance,
brings its own chance
of collapse.

Dream of me. I dream of you.
Turn my back, tear my heart in two.
Oh, I'm lazy and can't understand.
Let me come back, I am at your command.

Leave my heart on yonder porch.
I am bearing a single torch.
I wait and I worry while you are his.
Don't you know how it hurts me when you kiss.

Dream. Oh, I can dream.
Oh, I've worn my welcome it seems.
Lord, have mercy. Dear Christ, have mercy.
I'll wait for you here in my dreams.

Love so hard it breaks my bones.
Oh, I shy from the way I've been shown.
No, I have never loved this way,
Alone in this room where we once worked and played.

Walk all night, get home the next morn.
Wishing that our little baby were born.
Don't you believe what they all say about me.
I've hung up my guns for a sad melody.

Dream. Oh, I can dream.
Oh, I've worn my welcome it seems.
Lord, have mercy. Dear Christ, have mercy.
I'll wait for you here in my dreams.

Singing my songs, I don't do much more,
Drawing with pastels, sleep on the floor.
But oh, there's something I need to believe,
And you've got it there, pinned on your sleeve.

And it's a sad, sad heart of mine,
Rocking a cradle here in my mind.
Sweet little baby, all washed and fed,
Slumber till morning time kisses your head.

Dream. Oh, I can dream.
Oh, I've worn my welcome it seems.
Lord, have mercy. Dear Christ, have mercy.
I'll wait for you here in my dreams.

The ocean opens its eyes, the waters sing in their chains,
and I've been changing my size to let your love in again.

But I know that the odds are against it,
and I gotta get back to sensible seaport.
There's a little cold shanty on the edge of the wetdocks,
and it isn't very much, but I think it's a sure shot.

My trav'lin' days are through, and yes, I wanna lay down
between joy and despair in a comf'terble town.

Cuz I have entered in the Holy of Holies,
and I couldn't look up, cuz I was comin' down hard
from a soft summer night and your bottomless kitty --
you see, lookin' at the truth sometimes just isn't pretty

Down on my luck, and I'm livin' on redbeans.
There's a run in my nylons and a hole in my wetdreams.
So I'm walkin' at night with the garbage collectors
and ghouls in the graveyard with their metal detectors.
I'm puttin' all the fishheads in a bowl for the kittens,
little lost kittens fallen into my mittens.
They help me forget you while I'm strokin' their fur,
and I love to watch 'em roll on their backs and purr.
Yeah, I'm feedin' the cats, and the cats are fat.
Yeah, baby, I'm feedin' the cats, and the cats are fat.
It's a natural fact when you feed the cats,
the cats get fat and keep comin' back.

The world continues to turn, and yes, I wanna forgive.
Your crimes are just in my mind, but that's the place that I live.

And I dream of a way to forget you,
but I don't think I can since the day that I met you.
There's a pit in my heart that is pullin' me into
another lost weekend with a bottle of gin.
The boys in the choir sing a latter-day fib,
and I'm ready to heave the baby out with the crib.
I'm suckin' my strength from the mouth of a schoolgirl,
and turnin' my anger on an oblivious world.