Tag: Poetry

Experience

On By Jacob A PauwelsIn Poetry2 Comments

A hundred thousand lifetimes have come before, yet we get no better at living.
Each of us has to figure it out for ourselves.

We have no way to pass on the information but crude language, either scrawled with a hand on paper, or pushed from the lungs and shaped by the tongue, teeth, and lips. Ham-fisted, barbaric, we try to draw out the internal and catapult it to others, only to have it look nothing like it did inside now that it has seen the light of day.

We can pass on procedure and meter and rhyme. We can pass on ideas, though less effectively so. Down through the ages we build on broken brick, on the splintered timber of the houses of thought that were erected in the minds of our ancestors.

But experience is something we must each earn for ourselves, and it is not a kind teacher. It does not hold the hand and guide the stance. It slaps the face and burns the field.

Then, the day we perish is the day we have gained as much experience as possible. The minute before death, we are as experienced as we will ever be, save for knowing the experience of death itself, which is impossible to relate.

If only one could live forever, constantly accumulating experience; knowing all that could be known and able to endlessly cross-reference the ocean with the sky.

Salvager’s Shanty

On By Jacob A PauwelsIn PoetryLeave a comment

Afloat in black and inky seas,
pocked with distant plasmic beams,
I limp.

Through graveyards of abandoned junk,
salvage work is never done,
I hunt.

The decompression klaxon sounds,
should’ve put this old bird down,
I spit.

Rustle up replacement parts,
hunk of junk, my work of art,
I fix.

Unruly, wild, and lawless place,
skin of teeth, another day,
I live.

Hurling-metal-comet-home,
small and utterly alone,
I limp.

Permanent Objects

On By Jacob A PauwelsIn PoetryLeave a comment

We spend eight hours a night, on average, practicing for death.
Letting go of the consciousness we fight so hard for in the end.
We slip into the unknown, night after night, with no promise of waking.
Am I not the only one who thinks that should be terrifying?

Have we developed such overwhelming object permanence that we believe not only that everything will still be there when we open our eyes in the morning,
but that we are, ourselves, permanent objects?

We wear the evidence of our impermanence on our faces, first in laugh lines and freckles, then in wrinkles and liver spots. We slowly gain experience and wisdom and lose days…

But I digress, of course the typical mind would not dwell on these questions,
lest it be robbed of the very desire to continue chasing continuity.
We crave infinity. We cannot grasp immortality, but we all run towards it.
Some have resolved themselves to the reality that it is not truly attainable,
but most are still quietly dowsing, at least internally, for the fountain of youth.

That practice of divination points us instead towards other more immediate pleasures, and as the drink and the lust make us forget, they draw us nearer still to that which we are running from.

So what are we to conclude? I am no sage or guru, but I will tell you this:

I think an awareness of the end is important for the journey. Knowing something is temporary allows us to pay attention while it is present.

So keep a hand on the wheel, watch the stars at night, gauge the wind, and keep the figurehead pointed toward the mark, lest you wind up adrift and find you are no longer practicing.

The Trampled Hearts

On By Jacob A PauwelsIn PoetryLeave a comment

Oh, chiseled marble, pure and white! Oh, new and stately tombs!
Within you, piles of rotting flesh, the rat and fly consume.
And writ upon the wall the words, a pledge forever ‘true’,
‘In God We Trust,’ collecting dust, new avenues pursued.

‘Of course we love our fellow man, as long as they can pay,
the widows and the orphans are just getting in the way.
The progression of this nation great, a dream for everyone.
There’s automatic membership for every highborn son.’

A monumental outcry rings of languages confused,
Resounding in conflicted din, their unity removed.
For chaos now has overcome those men that would be God,
the rug pulled out, the floorboards rot, a crumbling facade.

The Parthenon is waterlogged, the Sphinx sinks in the sand,
The Hanging Gardens, Babylon, a blighted withered land.
Still they offer up their tithes and gold, their bodies and their minds,
And in the idols’ molten hands, their burning children lie.

A sundering is coming soon, injustice can’t prevail,
the Year of Jubilee is due, a tearing of the veil.
The family will be whole again, the ledger set aside,
This wall you’re building cannot stand, the trampled hearts will rise.

A Liturgy of Ash and Dust

On By Jacob A PauwelsIn PoetryLeave a comment

Brazen spires and steeple fires

and ash Wednesday

and ash Thursday

and ash Friday

and ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Saturday is a smoldering coal and on Sunday we bathe in the bonfire glow, and then heap Monday and Tuesday upon the pyre.

Remember the sabbath day and keep it smoldering.

Fan the flame.

Prime the ignition.

Stoke the coals.

Fill the bellows with holy oxygen, breathed from the very tree of life, the air aware of the heir up there, hissing like a leaky balloon, like the hissing breath of the forked-tongue-one who licks the dust, and bites the heal and rears his ugly head to strike…

That poison-pocked-viper-bite breaks the apple-skin of Granny Smith, the grandmother of original sin, as sweet juices dribble from the first-mother’s chin, and overflow in the knowledge of the things below, because she will be like God!

God!

She’ll be like God!

She’ll be like, “God damn you for lying to me! God damn you for bringing deceit, for lying through your hollow teeth, for dangling tricks disguised as treats, and tarnishing the golden streets.”