Saturday, February 18, 2012

A Poem in Progress

I got to take a much-needed ROS this morning, and one of the takeaways was this poem. It's a condensation of a lot of my thoughts from the last month or so. I find that when I don't blog or write at lenghth in my journal for a period of time, the thoughts get more and more compacted in my brain, and finally explode in fragmented, poetic form.
This still needs quite a bit of work.

Their Currents Turn

That moment between time
A glimmer of a second
of existence of doubt
of suspension of disbelief.
The hard line of reality
Bends, Twists, Softens.

It was the best...  the worst...
Of was it at all?

10:58pm in the bathroom
in the dark to pee
before sleep the thought rises
like the return of a dream
from muddy water that
nothing is real.
The window; the toilet;
goosebumps.

Merrily merrily merrily merrily
I pinch myself and wake in pain
Staring into the confusion
Between night and day,
Unblind.

I am a bird alone on a roof
With seven thousand others
Singing to wake the world.

Blind captians lost at sea
What hope?
Still less for those who see
And seeing, dream.
The pain of the pinch to high.

O captain, uncaptained
Dream-life dreamer
In evening-shadow ship
What hope?

The mad unblind grope in darkness
Pinch-marked.
Some lulled or lynched
  To lose the name of Action
  Serial sleepers slayed with dreams instead
  Stoned seer, are you not entertained?
Some scream to wake the dead
  And how squirm the
  Seeing dreamers at their scream

But the screamers are mad, you know.
The screamers are all just mad.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

?? ROS (Robot Operating System)

Matt said...

ROS = Retreat of Solitude.

I used to call it a Retreat of Silence, but I'm usually not very quiet.... lots of singing, shouting, reading aloud, etc. I find it necessary to get away from everything once in a while for a chunk of solo time with God, more than just 30 minutes every morning.