Many come out when the sun shines
Few when it is gray
This is why I especially enjoy
My walks on a cold windy day
Gray
9
Tag Archives: Poetry
Piece 5
This is the final background piece before I begin posting journal-like entries. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe is another poet, artist, or may I say universal man, that had a great influence on me. This poem, written a few years before his death, may be directed towards the young about ready to enter life and I find this piece to be quite poignant and wise. This piece is a potential remedy or a solution to overcome my utopian day dreams, excuses, and aggravation with the general human momentum. It is my intention and desire that my journal-like writings lead to more consciousness and action in the spirit of this eternal piece of wisdom.
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A Legacy
No living atom comes at last to naught!
Active in each is still the eternal Thought:
Hold fast to Being if thou wouldst be blest.
Being is without end; for changeless laws
Bind that from which the All its glory draws
Of living treasures endlessly possessed.
Unto the wise of old this truth was known,
Such wisdom knit their noble souls in one;
Then hold thou still the lore of ancient days!
To that high power thou ow’st it, son of man,
By whose decree the earth its circuit ran
And all the planets went their various ways.
Then inward turn at once thy searching eyes;
Thence shalt thou see the central truth arise
From which no lofty soul goes e’er astray;
There shalt thou miss no needful guiding sign-
For conscience lives, and still its light divine
Shall be the sun of all thy moral day.
Next shalt thou trust thy senses’ evidence,
And fear from them no treacherous offence
While the mind’s watchful eye thy road commands:
With lively pleasure contemplate the scene
And roam securely, teachable, serene,
At will throughout a world of fruitful lands.
Enjoy in moderation all life gives:
Where it rejoices in each thing that lives
Let reason be thy guide and make thee see.
Then shall the distant past be present still,
The future, ere it comes, thy vision fill-
Each single moment touch eternity.
Then at the last shalt thou achieve thy quest,
And in one final, firm conviction rest:
What bears for thee true fruit alone is true.
Prove all things, watch the movement of the world
As down the various ways its tribes are whirled;
Take thou thy stand among the chosen few.
Thus hath it been of old; in solitude
The artist shaped what thing to him seemed good,
The wise man hearkened to his own soul’s voice.
Thus also shalt thou find thy greatest bliss;
To lead where the elect shall follow-this
And this alone is worth a hero’s choice.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Piece Four
I have included two more poems composed by Robinson Jeffers below as I couldn’t decide which one I liked better. Besides, the two pieces fit well together. He has had a big influence on me…in that he confirmed my intuition and expressed himself, of course, with more eloquence, wisdom and force. I have begun writing my journal-like entries, that by their very nature reveal the positive aspect of critical thinking. I will begin to post after Piece 5 and as various sections are completed. I don’t know where these journal-like entries will take me or this blog…perhaps somewhere else…or perhaps in a circular loop. My hope is that it takes the form of the former…rather than the later.
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The Purse-Seine
Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark
of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net,
unable to see the phosphorescence of the
shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting
Santa Cruz; off New Year’s Point or off
Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color
light on the sea’s night-purple; he points,
and the helmsman
Turns the dark prow, the motorboat circles the
gleaming shoal and drifts out her seine-net.
They close the circle
And purse the bottom of the net, then with great
labor haul it in.
I cannot tell you
How beautiful the scene is, and a little terrible,
then, when the crowded fish
Know they are caught, and wildly beat from one wall
to the other of their closing destiny the
phosphorescent
Water to a pool of flame, each beautiful slender body
sheeted with flame, like a live rocket
A comet’s tail wake of clear yellow flame; while outside
the narrowing
Floats and cordage of the net great sea-lions come up
to watch, sighing in the dark; the vast walls
of night
Stand erect to the stars.
Lately I was looking from a night mountain-top
On a wide city, the colored splendor, galaxies of light:
how could I help but recall the seine-net
Gathering the luminous fish? I cannot tell you how
beautiful the city appeared, and a little terrible.
I thought, We have geared the machines and locked all together
into inter-dependence; we have built the great cities; now
There is no escape. We have gathered vast populations incapable
of free survival, insulated
From the strong earth, each person in himself helpless, on all
dependent. The circle is closed, and the net
Is being hauled in. They hardly feel the cords drawing, yet
they shine already. The inevitable mass-disasters
Will not come in our time nor in our children’s, but we
and our children
Must watch the net draw narrower, government take all
powers–or revolution, and the new government
Take more than all, add to kept bodies kept souls–or anarchy,
the mass-disasters.
These things are Progress;
Do you marvel our verse is troubled or frowning, while it keeps
its reason? Or it lets go, lets the mood flow
In the manner of the recent young men into mere hysteria,
splintered gleams, crackled laughter. But they are
quite wrong.
There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew
that cultures decay, and life’s end is death.
Hooded Night
At night, toward dawn, all the lights of the shore have died,
And a wind moves. Moves in the dark
The sleeping power of the ocean, no more beastlike than manlike,
Not to be compared; itself and itself.
Its breath blown shoreward huddles the world with a fog; no stars
Dance in heaven; no ship’s light glances.
I see the heavy granite bodies of the rocks of the headland,
That were ancient here before Egypt had pyramids,
Bulk on the gray of the sky, and beyond them the jets of young trees
I planted the year of the Versailles peace.
But here is the final unridiculous peace. Before the first man
Here were the stones, the ocean, the cypresses,
And the pallid region in the stone-rough dome of fog where the moon
Falls on the west. Here is reality.
The other is a spectral episode; after the inquisitive animal’s
Amusements are quiet: the dark glory.
Untimely Encounter
You already promised your hand to another
certain in your heart he is the one
that there could be no other
Fly across the world to embrace
and promise everlasting love
~
But there will be those days and nights
when you feel alone even in his presence
Now we breathe the same the air
feel the same wind
see the same moon
hear the same drops of rain
wander along the same ocean
admire the same mountain peaks
~
Where ever you go I have been
Where ever I go you have been
A distant undeveloped haunting
so close yet so far
wondering what might have been
had fate and chance
intervened at another time
Fools Gold
Forged from the dust of death-star fire into this ephemeral form
treading on the surface of an eternal bottomless ocean above and below
death perpetually circulating from all directions
You succumb to the myth that Gold is land, security, power, wealth
bow to the pirates and board their ship
to become a slave or yourself a pirate
You expend your death-star fire to swab the deck and man the oar
or lash the whip to bleed others into submission
You drink bottles and bottles of rum to numb the pain
of being whipped or doing the whipping
that you burn your precious death-star fire to make your masters rich
or man a ship with no direction other than to steal Gold from others
Mutiny will not alter the course as you are still on the same ship
different masters and slaves
seeking the same Gold for fools
Summon the courage from the depths
as the storm approaches and the sea boils with offended anger
return to where you began before you boarded the run away ship
Burn your precious death-star fire and pay homage to eternity
Swim man swim
or drown with a smile
Higher Love
I have become rather discouraged as of late in the realm of Love in today’s modern era. I listen to the lyrics of the top hits, or rap, or hip hop, or watch the latest music videos, and it becomes clear that man and woman don’t seem to know about the higher forms of love or at least the naive beautiful idea of those higher forms. Some lyrics I have heard talk about slamming a bitch up against the wall and doing her doggie style embedded in a catchy beat.
There seems to be a premium placed on the guy that can bag as many women as possible, or at the other end of the extreme, the pussy whipped wimp that can’t see past his nose. There are a few sculptures that my brother led me to admire while we were in Europe together that symbolize my ideas of a higher love better than words could ever describe. I have shared a couple of these images here.
I have experienced forms of higher love although I will admit they are fleeting. And I have also explored the depths of the dark barren side of pure lust and whoring which is what the pop culture breeds today. But I was very encouraged to see a young woman post a song that she recently composed that I believe shows the idea of a higher form of love still exists even if it is rare to find. I have posted her lyrics below and the link to her original post (by Evil Nymph).
Verse 1:
A brush of the hand
A push on the shoulder
A quick stolen smile
What’s best to end this day?
Chorus:
No one shall know
If you wish it.
A secret kiss
Before we let go.
Verse 2:
Interlocking fingers
Head on the chest
Your face close to mine
What’s more to dream about?
Chorus:
No one shall know
If you wish it.
A secret kiss
Before we let go.
I’ll catch your arm
You turn around
A secret kiss
Before we go home.
Bridge:
A rainbow over us
We laugh for no reason
Stay silent
And feel our presence
Chorus:
No one shall know
If you wish it.
A secret kiss
Before we let go.
I held your hand
You hold my world.
A secret kiss
Hooded Night
At night, toward dawn, all the lights of the shore have died,
And the wind moves. Moves in the dark
The sleeping power of the ocean, no more beastlike than manlike,
Not to be compared; itself and itself.
Its breath blown shoreward huddles the world with a fog; no stars
Dance in heaven; no ship’s light glances.
I see the heavy granite bodies of the rocks of the headland,
That were ancient here before Egypt had pyramids,
Bulk on the gray of the sky, and beyond them the jets of young trees
I planted the year of the Versailles peace.
But here is the final unridiculous peace. Before the first man
Here were the stones, the ocean, the cypresses,
And the pallid region in the stone-rough dome of fog where the moon
Falls on the west. Here is reality.
The other is a spectral episode: after the inquisitive animal’s
Amusements are quiet: the dark glory.
–By Robinson Jeffers–
Ever run across a person that is no longer alive that wrote poems or literature or philosophy that hits home? I have had such experience several times…wish they occured more frequently…but most of those dead authors are from long long ago. This guy Jeffers…lived and observed his surrounding not too far in the distant past…in fact he saw much of what we see today…except he was alive during the peak of our Empire. His life and poetry really hits home with me. Perhaps because I spent much time on the California coast…in particular Pebble Beach and Carmel…where he built his own house with his own hands…and wrote much of his powerful poetry. Perhaps because he was molded…like me to a lesser and more vague sense…by Ancient Greek and Roman thought. Perhaps…because I believe like he did there is so much we can learn from nature and the inanimate…the immense concept of geological time…the “Inhumane” aspect of the entire vast and infinite universe around us. I do rebel against this very very intelligent man and still hold out hope for mankind…but I fully disclose that I am both ignorant and naive. Most of my senses say we aren’t going to make it. I hope you enjoyed this short poem…he has lots more:)
If Only………….
….I couldn’t think
If only I wouldn’t listen to my heart
I could be so “successful” in this World
But I do think
I do observe what is before me
I do open my eyes and look about
My mind and heart are rarely aligned
If only what was before me was different
I would pour my blood and sweat
my heart and soul
my mind and energy
into the visions and goals before us
I would run full speed ahead in lock step
with you
Beacon Upon a Hill
Beacon upon a hill, city upon a hill, a lighthouse for those lost at sea, light penetrating the perpetual dark void — these analogies derived from our great western peaks — ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the Renaissance. 
America, from sea to shining sea, devoured by night. I scan the ”Human” Earth, but I am unable to find a source of light.
Imagine a piece of land within American boundaries that is unspoiled and fertile like an intelligent Spring virgin. A bountiful fresh river runs down her curves and into the mighty Pacific. Powerful and robust she thrusts upwards high above the surf. She is cloaked in fog that eventually gives way to the penetrating sun. Hawks ride the thermals above looking down on her bounty. Orcas cruise her shores in search of a Salmon feast. Massive Grizzlies wade through her river gorging on the Salmon that escaped the Orca patrols. She provides for noble beasts and has no place for mediocrity. 
Here is a place for man to light a spark and start anew. Here is a place for the re-birth of the “American Dream”, land of the free, home of the brave.
The old, decaying and decadent, worn down by good ideas gone bad, find the strength within to sacrifice and provide for the liberation – resources, money, capital, and no boundaries. Build the city on this noble slice of virgin land and invite the young, the best and brightest in soul, mind, and form, regardless of color, language, or country. Let them design their own architecture, constitution, laws, philosophy, ideals of true “value”. Let them live with and amongst the Hawk, the Grizzly, and the Orca on equal footing.
Provide for them in the short-term, as though they were merely a child, and give them time to develop and mature. Protect this little city, a country within a country, from the darkness that surrounds her border. Free them of all economic and political burdens. Once the time is right, cut the cord that feeds them, and let their independent genius flourish. They will become the beacon upon a hill, a symbol for all to see, or they will fail and leave the world for the Orca, Grizzly, or Hawk to define. Part of me wishes for failure.
Contemplating The Human Direction 