Poetry: rebuilding the world through the un-wasted beauty of redemptive syntax

On October 25, 2013October 25, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic, Words...always wordsLeave a comment

Dylan Thomas, a favorite poet and writer, says this about words in poetry:

And these words were, to me, as the notes of bells, the sounds of musical instruments, the noises of wind, sea, and rain, the rattle of milkcarts, the clopping of hooves on cobbles, the fingering of branches on a window pane, might be to someone, deaf from birth, who has miraculously found his hearing…There they were, seemingly lifeless, made only of black and white, but out of them, out of their own being, came love and terror and pity and pain and wonder and all the other vague abstractions that make our ephemeral lives dangerous, great, and bearable. -as quoted by James Hillman in “The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart” (a must read, by the way).

I bemoan earlier days when poets were the prophets of the people. Words, stories and cultural anecdotes were the food-stuff of our existence, not the quaint, winter-hazed mist on the edges of our choked, windowed lives. They took center stage where the very words themselves were the Homeric epic of small existences writ large through bardic retelling to others thirsty to feel their enjoining on the stalk of shared time.

I begin here a short series of poetry about poetry, words about words; the metalanguage of the language, lost but longing to be refound, non-linear and non-pragmatic, seeking instead to rebuild the world through the unwasted beauty of redemptive syntax. To that end, I give you…

There you lay, face down in a puddle of

old dreams. Your brow, damp from

sweating out doubt-filled promises-

the mantric words of small men, of sullen women

bathing on stolen rooftops of run down tenements.

* * * * *

Goliath has defeated David with small,

pebbled words, slung out quietly across

the distance between them, too far

for slings filled with ancient anger.

Gruff prayers traded for slick threats.

* * * * *

Setesh broods his flustering fare. He sits

at the table of the unmemoried death,

serving up sighs and groans – the language

of lusty crows, too boisterous to still

their cantankerosity; too new and

untested to feed even their open-mouthed young.

* * * * *

Brush off the fog that settles on

your hunger for colored story, embattled songs,

for words floating and submerged under the borders,

planted in places too deep to be found

by spade, knife, wallet or hammer.

Longing letters taste like a lover’s kiss.

Driving school, autumn nights and thoughts on poverty

On October 19, 2013October 21, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Prayers & Liturgy, Waxing Poetic5 Comments

Poverty never ceases to surprise and disarm. What is truly alarming however is whenever I grow indifferent or worse, apathetic, to its crying dishonor. May I never be unaware or distant and always prepared to enter into the suffering of others. Lord, have mercy.

Don’t let me be found waiting when,

like water on a mirror, I slide

from corner to corner,

unwieldy and unpredictable,

the scab before the fall,

the tears before the pain,

the gain before the loss.

Running toward is always better than

running away when haggard eyes

silently proclaim my complicity in

the hollow halls of ownership.

I need to simmer long in cauldrons

of grieving for ones lost on the loom,

dismembered patterns refusing collision

into any kind of shape. Can you smell

the paint on my brush, richly bristled,

bent away from their needy canvas,

dry and parched, stretched too thin

to hold more than grey or black?

Colors here only reveal what stolen

chances never offered have done to ones

who just might wear them best.

III

Plumbing these altitudes, I grow weary

from my swan dives upward,

expelling all reason for some ritual,

denying them time for tome,

confusing their ache for my art.

Fixed, stuck am I on stolen intrusions

of short memory too bent to sort,

too cold to move, too sharp to soothe.

But forward brings me closer

than any other path, not placating,

or even prosaic but parallel with promises

unveiled only through the repetition

of laughter, laughter and

the solemn, sweet, irrepressible smiles

of the poor.

Dismissals – on considering responses to things

On October 15, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Parables, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

That same girl passes him in the hallway, more aloof than ever;

like the neighborhood cat that pisses on my door.

There is no response to the constant

calling of her name. Just an unambitious purr,

the casual dismissal of a creature to

unreasonable expectations.

I passed him on the street yesterday,

that guy I met at the poetry reading.

It was hard keeping his eyes long enough

to finish a sentence, let alone fragments

of a conversation fraught with the dismissal of a

“yes, it’s really me here” mystique.

She stood with a cardboard sign that read

hungry and unemployed with kids pls help god bless

I could see her through the Starbucks window

where my second Americano was already cold.

That second guy wasn’t as good as the first.

He never leaves me room for cream.

Is that too much to ask?

She wasn’t typically a make-up gal

preferring the girl next door simplicity

of less-is -more. But tonight

she dressed up, even eyeliner and dark,

red lipstick and skin-tight black dress.

He glanced at her twice at dinner

through the glare of his cell phone screen,

that never dimmed.

I sometimes shudder to think what remains

in the shadows of what’s left after encounters

dense with the unwieldy results of non-praise,

of missing the open doors, sips not taken from

frosty mugs of welcome, the sleepy

dismissals of what’s right now,

hesitant on the stoop of another’s hopes.

What can they expect from me?

Gratitude? Platitudes? Assuredness? Distraction?

A snotty hanky full of rare humility, raw and pink?

The game starts in half an hour.

nothing is bigger than something

On October 14, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic8 Comments

a momentary pause where

the light

can squeeze like lemons

under pressure

all speech and candor

unaware

that someone is listening

towards something

which of us could boast

such power?

nighttime songs our fears erase

On October 5, 2013October 6, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Prayers & Liturgy, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

a story lived, now story told

we, early young, now later, old

see stranger things than daytime held

but not without our sorrows quelled

____________________________________

we fluff and tuck and yawn and brush

pray God remove all sinning blush

the air now cool in silver glow

what dreams may come we do not know

_____________________________________

divested now of time and chance

we bid adieu and leave the dance

till thricely woven round with grace

the nighttime songs our fears erase

Intimations of the new

On September 28, 2013September 28, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

Given the raw materials from which come my best advances

into grace-filled days and hope-tinted nights,

there remain the questions – the queries in restless sleep,

the mystifications of workday afternoons when

sorting through memories is more haunting than charming.

Exchanging token cautions smeared with crooked remembrances

that laugh their way to a poorer destiny,

the torn and sad reaches for glad that tips a hat to

the best of what’s behind but incomplete.

Shards of broken passage return their wounds,

still ripe and weeping, for any chance at a future,

not sequined, brash or over-confident but light, fresh and pale

with songs not new but revitalized, like Lazarus,

his face paler still but beautiful, because all that was barren or ugly

is forgotten in the grave.

In the right hands, days in a dank cell of nothing turn even the

deepest pain into something beautiful.

Painting: “The Raising of Lazarus” by Vincent Van Gogh

Examen on an autumn Friday evening

On September 27, 2013September 27, 2016 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic12 Comments

The light was thinner today, unplagued by summer arrogance.

The aging, iron-grey sky cooperates fully with the falling day,

pouring out one particle at a time onto the browning green.

I watched it pool in elegance, gathering

in the playful dance of moths and paupers.

Lower down, close to the roots of things,

my feet can touch the back of this place, falling simply

as eyes preparing for a blanched horizon are caressed

by the autumnal bounty of God’s spare time.

Learning his name

On September 16, 2013September 16, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Prayers & Liturgy, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

When the reprisals of our souls,

too young to love, too small for pain,

repeat their mistaken ventures into

the uncolored light of mistaken journeys,

then it is that the walls whisper

their ghostlike songs of ever after –

sighs of the imperfect.

* * *

Here there are no endings,

only endings of old beginnings

that transform by a refusal

to submit to the indentured servitude

of the hollow and broken,

preferring instead the ancient newness

of Cistine handshakes.

* * *

In the cowls of earth, her ears of stone,

hear fathomless time, tonsured and teased

from her birthplace deep in

embowelled truth whose Name Is.

Encompass within yourself this

faceless sojourner only now

learning his name.

Photo courtesy of my friends and fellow monastic-creatives at Abbey of the Arts. Thanks Christine Valters-Paintner.

Surrender – a prayer

On September 15, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Prayers & Liturgy, Waxing Poetic1 Comment

Here, in this place awash in daylight grace,

I live my entire life on the head of a pin

on which is inscribed a single word:

surrender.

When todays are saturated in

a low, crawling, redeeming sadness:

surrender.

When the all-pervasive pall of a greening grey

removes dead soul-skin and tastes

like eating raw sewage:

surrender.

When the bitter pill of leafless desire

gets stuck in my throat and

stops up anything nutritional:

surrender.

When the wafer thin moments

of happy times bought at another’s expense

rob me of me:

surrender.

When my lover who shares

my bed, my skin, my guts, my hopes,

becomes nothing more than a side dish:

surrender.

When, in convenience, I sidestep

responsibility to another

and choose the busy road of non-involvement:

surrender.

When I’ve surrendered all I am and have,

all I’ve been and will become,

all that was, all that is and all that is not:

surrender.

When I’ve surrendered all,

I gain the one thing,

the Pearl of Great Price,

the Lily of the Valley,

the One who is in all,

who is all

and who needs no introduction because…

my soul knows him.

Help me to forgive you, God

On September 9, 2013September 26, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Prayers & Liturgy3 Comments

I recognize this is not the first of its kind. Others have also shared just such things in the wake of the recent, horrific atrocities in Syria. I feel impotent to change much of this. But I can write. And I can pray. Here, I do both. Join me…please.