Life is All

Super-realism pervades all essences.

It’s the image sought for the

Image’s sake. Tonight it is

The forgotten sentiment,

Its ease in growing until

The pressure vents.

An impotent nostalgia builds

Until the soul flares dangerously,

Unable to shake the hopeless sense

Of created alienation.

Lost people sigh and the found ones crow.

No other way to consider it tonight.

The surreality of ultra-joy

Bordering on hysteria

Renders all dreams fulfilled, thus null.

Death comes and life is all.

The moment expires,

more rapidly than we imagine.

Hold joys closer, they renew.

Release old tragedies, they deplete.

That woman has heaven in her chest.

She loves; that’s enough.

She’s dying and she doesn’t give a damn.

She told me so, a thousand times, if once.

‘I don’t want no one’s pity’ she said

As she looked into the eyes of compassion.

We drank until her head nodded.

‘Get you a beer, kid,’ says she,

‘I shouldn’t have done it, but I did.’

Then she lay down to rest.

Actually, what has been iterated here

is merely the culmination of

the history of

the enigma.

Imago ignota,

That incomprehensible suggestion,

second language of the self-declared.

Cries of joy beneath crowded midnight skies.

(Or is that too hopelessly poetic?)

Is the image of a woman crowing too much?

Should her utterance be a sound

Slightly more than a sigh?

No squeals of pleasure!

This is no Sensual Delight.

This is the sexless joy of one woman’s reality.

(It could be one man’s)

It is as if within the breathless candor

Of one’s life there resides an eternally

Unanswerable question. One considers,

Then reconsiders, the muttering replies

That rise in the brain like the steady

Ferment of blackberry wine, hidden in

Cool cellars; always working, never at ease.

Is it the image we have of ourselves that eludes us?

Or does it delude us?

Self-awareness.

Stage fright: mystic delight.

What are you, the saints’ little cherub?

Overawed, certainly

Severely dazzled.

To the podium. Find thy soapbox!

What was it you had to say?

That marvelous message

Bursting

from your being;

Has it dissipated so quickly,

With no explosion?

Lost your prime target, you say?

What? Stepped out of range?

Are you sure you just didn’t

Lose your sights? Or your nerve?

Crowing. You spoke of crowing.

Isn’t the image of a woman crowing too much?

Shouldn’t her sound be slightly more than a sigh?

No! If it’s crowing she wants,

Let her crow. But for God’s sake

No squeals of pleasure!

So she crows, does she?

Jump high, jump joyful high!

Sing! Sing! Sing!

Loud hosannas, high joyful hosannas!

Hallelujah, hallelujah!

Dance, dance all life is a perpetual pirouette!

Come choristers. Chant the paean, the pantheistic paean!

All life is sacred, so slay the sacred cows.

One by one, line them up in their neat little

Ideological rows and then kiss them goodbye.

Is the dance of opposites sacred?

Shoot it down!

The church, the synagogue, the temple, the mosque;

Raze them! Raze them!

I’m only an echo of the universe.

What can I say that is new, unrealized?

Nothing, yet I intend to keep saying whatever I learn.

Say it, and say it again. No need to let it simmer

Within until it ferments and makes a pressure

That escapes like a blood-curdling shriek.

And what is important, after all?

There is within each of us a tiny rootlet;

a cutting that wants a fertile base.

It wants to burrow, to send its thirsty fingers

In search of cooling liquid relief.

As far flung as a micron from

Whatever point of existence.

Its will is to be...

Which is the way?

Which way is that?

Where do you want to go?

I seek paradise.

Seek not without, seek not within,

But carry with you always

The knowledge

That you are paradise.

Knowledge is too frail.

Only if you doubt the validity of your senses.

Senses are only individual perceptions.

Born of a collective entity.

What entity is that?

The universe. Uni-verse. One song.

A song comprised of many individual notes.

i am i am i am

there is no other in me

other than the innate

collective love of the universe

no denial can endure                                     

we are one

thou art god

© 1977 Melissa Songer