Promises

Shall try, no promises

Meaning?

You needn’t wait for me

Meaning?

You can leave anytime

Meaning?

Just do what you like

All right

Just one thing

What?

The draft I sent you

Yes

Give it a read, ok?

Shall try, no promises

It’s urgent you know

Shall try, no promises

Very important

Shall try, no promises

Meaning?

Shall try, no promises

Meaning?

Just doing as you said

Meaning?

Just doing what I don’t like

 

Happiness

 

I collected Happiness, of my own

And that shared with those I’ve known

I preserved it for then

Misfortune would visit me when

 

And on a certain day

When I wasn’t particularly gay

I sought to draw some

From my store of Happiness handsome

 

True I came upon a good deal

All insubstantial, I couldn’t feel

And I knew Happiness came and went

Never lasting, but evanescent.

 

 

 

A Conversation

He said “I’d be devastated if you said No.”

She said “No.”

“What do you mean ‘No’?”

“I don’t mean ‘no’, but I’d like to see how you look when you are, as you say, ‘devastated’.”

“Come on, don’t play with my emotions.”

“I am certainly not playing with your emotions. I merely want to see and understand them.”

“Why? What on earth do you want to do that for?”

“To know and understand you. Because, as you say, you are basically a very emotional person.”

“This is not a theatre workshop. Am I in for an audition or what?”

“But this is surely some test. A trial of truth. True Emotion versus Declared Emotion.”

“Meaning you don’t believe me when I say I’d be devastated if you said no?”

“Yes. No, I want to see you truly devastated.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“But how? Until… unless you really say no, I wouldn’t really feel or be devastated.”

“Then I’d really say no.”

“No. Don’t.”

“How else would I know that you’d be devastated if I said no?”

“Why do you need to know? Isn’t it enough if you simply believed me?”

“No, it isn’t enough. I wouldn’t believe what I didn’t know.”

“All right, Say no, really no, and you will see and know me devastated.”

“Great.”

“But let me forewarn you. When you see me devastated, I would be useless. As good as lifeless. You must then Not want me.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d be practically gone, my senses totally benumbed, and even my sanity completely and irretrievably lost. The only practical question would then be: Burial or cremation?”

“If you were to be reduced to something like that, I wouldn’t want you.”

“How could you say that, without really knowing what it would be like to be reduced to something like that? Like senseless and insane.”

“I’d know. I can quite easily imagine what it is that I’d positively Not want.”

“Then why can’t you possibly imagine what it is that would cause that which you would positively Not want?”

“Well… all right. I guess you’d be devastated if I didn’t say yes.”

“Yes to what?”

“Whatever it is that you said you’d be devastated if I said no to.”

Poetry, Poets and My Poems

Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heaven’s joy,
Sphere-born harmonious sisters, Voice and Verse – JOHN MILTON 

A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder – JOHN KEATS

 

 

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry – W. B. YEATS

 

Pithy prose indeed from poets! Here’s a poem of mine.

 

A Pebble 

Here a pebble, there another,

A cluster, a scattering,

All in agreeable anonymity. 

Pick one up, and study,

Close your eyes, and

Toss it away gently,

To occupy a new location. 

If you trust your eyes,

Try to retrieve it, or

If you gave it a secret name,

Whisper it, to elicit a subtle response. 

You pick one anyway,

Does it feel the same?

Can you sense a communication? 

If you ask me,

A pebble is never the pebble,

A pebble is always another pebble. 

 

If you feel like another, http://pensonfire.com/archives/December/beautiful.html

 

 

Supererogation

Why not rhyme?

Is that a crime?

Why not be kindly and noble?

Is that unfashionable?

Must one conform?

Is that the norm?

Do I break the rules?

Are they made by fools?

Do I make the world better?

Do I keep doing that?  

When do I stop?