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
