everything begins with a dot …. Kandinsky
* * *
until i surrender
living a life of hopeful anticipation
the foundation of the house was rotten
bursts of scattering activity
plunges into mindless blackness
edifice crumbles at last
clutching to possessions
thieves come in the night
room laid bare
grasp at career
guard dogs bare their teeth
no entry here
family and home
debts slowly accrue
the weight of saturn
cast into lead
now my son visits during the week
weeds grow high on the land
office built with my own hands
stands empty
family career community
husband father professional teacher writer
discredited unwanted inadequate
all failures
wind accepts the offering of my wallet
left carelessly on the roof of my car
there goes my identity
turning to my body and psyche
instruments of pleasure for others
never mine at all
nothing left
yet more to hang onto
dreams feelings memories
concepts of reality
god as a concept
merciless insistence!
these are taken too
sitting in the front seat
bowed over the wheel
despair
nowhere to go
crazy mexican breaks into my truck
looking into his eyes
I see what i do not want to see
nobody home
he returns later to finish the job
let him go
he must be god’s angel
lying on my back
beyond despair
now well into sheer terror
abyss opens up below
crying out to mother for support
there is … something
…point
… dot
… hypothesis
brief excursion into the beyond
yields a non dimensional
but real other
my very existence is now based
on this tiniest of tinies
the merest terror-filled glimpse
into the abyss
can yield so much
quite an achievement!
i get the point
only to miss it entirely
clinging to heroic knowledge
and so you come
what despair and terror began
love completes
you love me
until i surrender
abyss … is life!
i know not
but i love
now i sit here with an ache in my belly
i miss you as i look out on the world
yet where were you at all?
do i find you smiling erotic
the face of an old man
the curve of a young girl’s cheek?
are you there in the music
of a grandfather’s amused growl
as his grandson’s adventure
flies off solo into the trees?
my loneliness is as vast as an abyss
yet here is where i find you
love inexhaustible
fear comes and warns me of madness
the insanity of isolation
fear becomes terror
gate opens
not to madness but to you and life
if i only see you i am lost
if i only see world i am lost
way of renunciation—no!
way good deeds—no!
way of beauty
way of the heart
conjoining two realms—yes!
way of the phallic heart!
* * *
This poem (1995) is drawn from my book Poems of Making Poems of Death
