Author: schnepp

New Year’s Eve

Happy New Year.

And to all the hurt,
The uncertain pain,
Farewell.

Happy New Year.
Glad to see the old one go.
Not my best,
You know.
You did better, it seems –
Or so you say.

What did we miss?
By how much?
Will it come again?
Or was its essence just that moment,
Real if taken, but
If not, then always gone?

And is it smart to ask
Such things
Just when you’re almost ….?

A few months ago
I wrote an angry poem,
And at year’s end –
Cleaning house – I read it once again.
I’d written it was good –
Not to have to love you anymore.

Threw it out –
Hasn’t been a day I have not thought of you.
Your body,
Or your thought
Or your smile.

So what?
Not much.
Platitudes never bought us much.
Self delusions,
All mine perhaps.

I once thought myself a coward.
Then, in defense, as brave.
Then, assailed.
And now, in this warm December
Wallowing in the muddy sense of martyrs?
Just selfish –
And therefore very cruel.

Don’t have a resolution
I trust myself to keep.
Continued self-confusion
Is all I dare to reap.
Just hoping for the nighttime
To end the day’s hard fear,
They’ll never be a right time
To say “Happy New Year.”

Two Views of Night

Night View I

I
torn by the promise
declaim to the winds:
Bear me forth
Up to mountains
Where peaks are as raindrops
(clean, unspottled
and not without sadness
unto the fourth generation).

Mark my words, law
is a law
unto itself
and life not much more than an echo.

Why do you wait, and for whom? ……

I
Understood
(once — eons past)
forces:
pushing
inter ac tion s s
BUT
now ho hum well what can I say save
save me lord god yes for I am not yet
of the winds
myself
and want to rest tonight,
lest I lose tomorrow.

 
Night View II

I
(slit by the claw)
Dug my nails into flesh
and shredded the beast
down to his tendons,
reveling midst blood
of martyred ideas.

I
am sick
in my way
(as who is not)
these days things being what they are and all
that.

I
laughed a bit
(why not, may I ask?)
and scorned tears of death
‘neath thin sheets at night
And fell asleep with fear.

I
know a thing
very worthwhile:
you act it
and feel it
but cannot believe it
inside…..

Whistle Down the Night

The sparkle of the crystals gives a vibrance to the snow
As reflecting stars at midnight lend tiaras to the glow.
Trees hide gentle goblins ‘neath their covert arms of gray –
The night takes full possession of the lands of conquered day.

The lane slides softly forward toward the rustling of the leaves
As winds whip wild patterns ‘round the brackets in the eaves.
Moon-glow creeps full-shrouded thru the autumn clouds of steel
While down the fog-drenched valley night-bells start their distant peel.

With trembling brow I plod on towards the fireside at the inn
Where I know the brew is burbling and will warm me from within.
But while I walk this roadway dank my eyelids quake with fright
So I strike a jaunty posture and I whistle down the night.

 

If I am Afraid

If I am afraid
It is for you.
The knot upon my chest is not for me.
I cope in my way, and tell myself I win, and am content.

But as for you –
I do not know …
Please nest beneath my wings,
I am afraid it soon shall start to rain.

Omar

Leaves powder yellow
Upon windowsills,
Drooping and cracking,
Rotting to dust.

Flowers curl brownly
Still on the stem,
Harden and sicken,
Flaking to rust.

Streams eddy grayly,
Brackishly dozing,
Weakly attempting
To regain the flow.

All pass on some day,
Pass into blackness,
“I came like Water,
And like Wind I go.”

Baudelaire

In this place I felt her coming
Clock-like, ticking, tacking, talking,
Crying in her whining stammer –
A promise broken before its making,
The small of wet-grass on an autumn morning.

They sung a Mass on Sunday last
With Medieval incantation,
Flat in conception, gross in pretension.
She was Christ in an aureole
And I – God the Father.

Now with darkness ring the Church bell
Heralding sinister devotions
Not unlike the pious suctions –
Sweat midst sheets with God embroidered,
We sing chansons of Baudelaire:

Alors, o ma beaute, dites a la vermine
Qui vous manger de baisers,
Que j’ai garde la forme et l’essence divine
De mes amours decomposes!

Do Not Call This Morning

I have slept well
In my personal hell –
Awoke to the bell
And the smell
Of coffee and the dawn.

Do not call
And undo all
That sleepy thrall
That makes the pall
Fade out at morn.

Distraction

There is a suspended hour
Hung twixt twelve and dawning
That, at the birth of morning,
Opens full the flower.

Here midst sterile pollen
Upon pistols of decay
I stripped the sword away
From the warrior who had fallen.

Scared rats dig slanting holes
Thru the frame of buried armor,
While those whose thoughts were calmer
Bored their tunnels through his soul.

Diffuse

I rolled upon pillows
And sloshed into sheets.
I was
indiscreet.
I bowed as willows.
I wavered as teats.
I was
incomplete.
I cried
and tried
But truth lied
And left me quite inept inside.
I am core without shell.
I am essence.
I diffuse.
You do not understand.

Better Worlds

Tho I could not see you til tomorrow
The certainty assailed my image of it.

If I should lose illusion,
Surrender to confusion
(of realities (yesterdays))
In many ways
I’d be the poorer for it.

The truth of what could be but for
Suffices
Entices
And turns out to be more.