Poetic Expressions

 

Of all the years, not giving a fiddle, the sixteenth groans
At least just a little, moans, peering over its pithy old shoulder
Down the valley of memories that threads for its child 
So many red 'hoods' in "I told her!"
It's a magical, flirtatious, delicious domain with tinkers and bells,
Surprises and spells, with squeezes and pinches
And sugar sweet shells.

Of all the years, the sixteenth whispers and shushes
A moment, at least, awash, farfetched into a future
Full of kaleidoscope prisms, perspectives,
Opinions, but sad, no dragons, no wishes.
No more spells and elves, nor even some witches.

Of all the years, the sixteenth ahumphs
Away nightmare fears and babyified tears,
And welcomes the brand newest of questions
The best of all answers that bring, ah, what, but
More of the same old brand newest of selections of questions.

So, be awake in your stride in the halls of the latest of niches,
When the cook throws all of the finest of all of the dishes,
while those, and the maddest of mad Hatters madly comes calling,
Calling for toasting a month of March Hare with not a sign of mad malice,
At the party in the future for my fine and sweet Alice.

These are my hopes for all the new floats
In the parade of new senses
With life changing tenses, dreams we have traded
After all, from what was, to what will, 
Before none,in the mirror, all now and upgraded
Sweet Alice all aglow and unbridled in Wonder.
Henceforth and just so, my good and kind daughter,
As this was just so and so forth, for even with me, ever so, such a bother.
Then life, for you, so old as it was, and young as it is, so both shall it seem.
 
With love from your ancient, outdated and silly old father. 

 

With, its center, hidden, divine 

Well, I've not posted in so long I forgot my password.  Does that about cover it?  I won't go into the nature of the voluminous funk I've been in for this period of time, but I feel somewhat elated today, as if i'm coming out of Plato's cave seeing the sun for the first time.  I'm blinded by the light, and I'm a little afraid, perhaps even more than a little.  The reason is a natural one in that when one has been facing one failure after another so that it becomes a pattern, one is afraid that the truth one sees may be merely another illusion.  Of course, it's all illusions anyway, but we like the feel of control and order over the illusions we create for ourselves and our wellbeing.  

If all goes well, I'm back, and even if it doesn't perhaps I'm back anyway.  This is such a good place to come back to, really it is.  Even when it is only me talking to me. 

A man is blessed to call someone his friend,
For those are such rare finds in life,
A man is graced to call someone his daughter,
For she is, in truth, one of a kind.

You, daughter, who are truly one of a kind,
I like to call my friend, too.
In the still moment of a glance, I see God's grace
alight there, showering me, celebrating love.
No father could ask for more.

Like a river you may never see,
So may my love run in your light.
Yet it remains true for all
I am worth
In my small life, for all
To see.


About this same time In your life, 
in my life, I discovered 
The lesson of Christ's birthday.
The gifts we give one another 
On this day,
Is the gift of the grace
He gives us,
By His presence in one another, 
As we see in others,
Ourselves.

And, when i catch sight of me
In the space of a blink 
Of an eye, as you watch
The world I know,
You make me more than I am.

For this, I will be eternally grateful 
To His Majesty, the Lord of Love.
So, Happy Birthday, Jesus, 
My friend, what a gift you give.

 Bent fenders, outspoken by the gas to get there,

 

 

 

I've not been posting lately.  I'm more or less crawling along, fingers and toes, clutching at at the sand at the bottom of the Pacific, it seems.  Crab-like and all Prufrock feeling (T.S. Eliot figure, and not a pretty sight, either).  One minute I think I may finally have my spiritual feet on the ground, and the next, it's like floating down into a labyrinthine abyss where it's so deep in the earth and so close that it doesn't take long before the sun has disappeared and it becomes darker and darker, pitch and coal black.  I'm at an age that I can never go back and begin again, so mistakes are hard on one.  So,  every decision I make, I put myself through the ringer, trying to be perfect, again.  I thought I was over that, but maybe I never will grow up.  I've been having alot of dreams lately, but some of it is coming from all the friggin' pills I have to take for back pain.  I wish it was only that.  If I could be sure of it, I would feel alot better about myself, but when you wake up moaning from fear and emotional pain, it has to be more than just medication.  I woke up last night with the sudden realization that my life is so dysfunctional it makes the Hannibal Lector seem normal.  I looked around at my lifestyle, the way I live at home versus the way I pretend to live at work, and realized that the difference  between the way I was brought up and the way I have been living for the last ten years is so contradictory that there was no justification that could explain it.  What makes it so sad to me is that I don't think I can do anything to change it.  I mean, really change things in a substantive way, a way that would make me feel different than I have for a long time.  In my youth I had no doubt that I was going to have a good life, a fruitful one, laden with accomplishments, things to remember me by, and that seems utterly ridiculous now.  I catch myself wondering how many people would actually think it would be worth going to my funeral.  Ha.  Now, that's morbid.  But, that is where it's at for me right this minute.  Don't know what I'm gonna be able to do about it, but maybe something will change to make me feel more real.

God Weeping The Omnipetence of Tears

What is he afraid of?

He's afraid of so many things, but he supposes he's most afraid his best friend will not understand the most horrible fear he has:  that he would betray the trust that has been given him about their relationship.  Believe him, he wants to do that for selfish reasons, but what kind of friend would he be if he allowed his own frailty and loneliness to put their deep abiding affection at risk.  For this is all he can have though he wants more.  There are questions that he must not answer. Note, I say, he must not answer, for he could.  Answer them, answer him, I mean.  I'm not sure I know what he means. But he must not.  The power that compels him to betray this trust given him, is almost overwhelming, as it confronts the most powerful of beings, love and all the passions that come with it.  I am much too drained from all the years he's lived, to be asked to be put in this his place between, between me and him.  

He tenaciously holds on to what he has.  I gratefully accept the limits that have been placed on him.  . . . because the lose of it would mean neither of them would have anything left to hold, no meaning, no love at all.  I and he, we are too old and haggard to be left with this kind of emptiness.  He's only just now been able to grab for the ring again, on the merry-go-round life has been.  My best friend, my best friend wants to know if I love someone he doesn't know.

A virulent mass of reproduction

Metered imitation, in asymmetrics

It hangs on the head from its root

Tucked or tied away from the eyes,

As if forbidden fruit.

But, though---sometimes,

If the currents are just so,

It beats the eye in a rush

To feel . . .

Like silk --- in summer corn.

In the sand of its waves

Uncut, untucked and untied

The eyes flinch

And wink at the wildness.

Fingers that bath the face.

Fingers that braid the lace,
comb it back into place.

CC Ryder
1992/2007

Poll #xxxx The Mystery of a Poem
Open to: all, results viewable to: all

What is being described in this poem?

What kind of poetry is this type called?

“Loose change, man?  Can ya spare a dime?”

Ya got any loose change, man?”

I heard his noise shuffle off in the nighttime.

 

He couldn’t get it right, ya know?

He used to say, “Are you a fan?

Ya gotta dime?

Ya gotta nickel?

I needa bag, man.

I needa go down the hall,

Needa make a call.”

 

Now, all he wanted was a Snickers Bar,

Or he’d take the subway for Mars.

Shufflin’ off to Buffalo.

 

“Me,” I ask the boy.

“No, man, long time passed, echoing, past,

And I got my change,

But it won’t last.

It ain’t for you,

My change, you can’t use,

Y’already blew your fuse.

 

Ya don’t need a dime, nomore, ma friend.

Ya can’t change the call,

And the call can’t change you.”

“Hey, ya got’ny change lef’, Buddy?”

 

He wadden list’nin’ anymore.

He danced the tune of the shuffle,

The Thorazine Shuffle.

An’ he shuffled offta Buffalo.

 

He’d walk on down, walk on down.

He couldn’ remember to make change,

But he did afine piano, man.

He remembered to play a mean piano,

And tickle the ivory.

I heard ‘im play a beautiful piano.

 

He knew I was changing,

He even knew I could try.

He wanted ma loose change,

But he couldn’ remember why.

 

“You gotta dime, I’ll take a nickel.

I need the change, I need the ruffle.

I don’t need a bag.”

He got the shuffle, the Thorazine Shuffle.

 

“I can use the change,

I don’t need the bars,

But I’ll go for Mars

Dancin’ this shuffle,

The Thorazine Shuffle,

Shufflin’ offta Buffalo.”

 

“Can ya spare some change, Bro?”

 

“No, man, ya gotta shuffle.

Remember the keys, it takes ya downtown,

To dance, man, dance to yer tune.

For you, ma friend, bein’ lost, is bein’ found.”

 

CC Ryder

6/02/86

Pause, an untilled moment –

The hoary spider, she freezes in the heat on a tree,

Wait, a smaller degree in her feet.

One leg into the future, the rest in the past,

It makes her look hydraulic, robotic,

Sister of Tarantella, a profane recluse

In her queen’s walk, she rides, eight-legged and cloaked,

Naked on a stalk, and an Ash, her strain is a stall, in the white,

The tension, her art, and the dance,

Ah, the dance:  rhyme, offbeat, sublime.

 

An angel hair weaver, Divineress of the Span,

She bridges a moment for glory 'n beast.

Her carbolic tongue, fire to ripen the gory 'n feast.

Counterfeit standing, one's soul commencement

Unfolding her impending shift.

Making her century forestall the moment,

Folding that moment, to stall the century,

A crawl, a stay, her web in the day.

 

The Spread, her milling in space, her legs-all-asplay,

Is the coming, in time with the Wheel,

While it’s going, each step, in the space of her threading.

Is the oblong, circular work of waiting.

As the bark is the skin, on the tree,

And the dance of White Ash in the wind.

 

CC Ryder © 1992/2007

 

From my memories of you

I smell a scent

Of Cherokee and swamp,

Flooding what seamed my life.

A time and essence without the glory

I hunted, the honor I wanted.

Between moments, instances,

From the frost of a near dead heart,

To a clarified honesty,

Came you, with a rarified air

For whom there springs

From the hosts, a near dread.

Between the dawn

You have been the metaphor

For the conflict of betweens and betwixts.

The distance between cars and cares

And the daylight.

 

CC Ryder

2006

To have forgotten the soul’s painful hurt in childhood innocence, keeps us from crying our way through life.  And, so, having to hide that hurt behind cruel curtains of behavior, we grow into the corruptions of reality, finally understanding more about the necessity for forgiveness and mercy, and then those memories are brought back to us in whispers that sometimes feel like thunderous bolts of lightning thrumming through our being.  The pain that comes along with it, lies in the space between the wounded flesh, not from the flesh itself, answering the questions, “Where does pain come from?  Where does it live inside us?” It’s always at the edges of our being, and is not part of us, though it feels so, reminding us that we are not completely ruled by society as well as by a genetics of fear, those chains that bind us to terror in living and loving.  There is also a genetics of memory that goes beyond pain, reminding us of others from whom we come.  Those whose lives are lives of beauty and grace.  We go back a long way, to Paradise.

A mighty wind fissuring, opining ocean floors,

Thinking, steaming, flattens kelp in the sand.

And, a white whale’s whispering cries,

Sonorous ululations, echoes,

Breaching an invisible matrix,

The wound ‘tween blubberous edges of flesh.

 

Embodied pain in the space

Where fragile, terrified eyes cannot see,

Will not see . . . green seas,

Oceans, blue ‘gainst azure blue

Horizons lost, horizons found

Meet to mete out truths

In the wound, pain in the space.

 

What’s been forgotten, recalled

In an aweful, mauling howl,

He ‘members . . . ,

So, he will not see . . . .

Through genetic     ---- chains

CC Ryder
2007