New Songs [for Kassandra] *work in progress* (II)

[cenacle]

this morning added 'world,' sitting at a mcdonald's waiting my beloved, watching a palsied man and his dessert, something in vulnerability hooks me, a quiet awesome power in it...

[cenacle]

this morning added 'rough circuit,' writ same place as previous poem, a week later, there was that fascinating rough of a man, eating salad, i could not help portraying him again...oddly, someone like him later got thrown out of that mcdonald's and i never went back thereafter...

[cenacle]

this morning added 'remember,' i wrote this on my birthday, another looking-back-in-ambiguity pome...hope snakes with despair, always...

[judih]

hope snakes with despair
a dance through thigh high waters
waves, cool and rough
sun laughing through the clouds
rain bowing on cue

[cenacle]

this morning added 'traverse,' a short love poem, remembering a promise i made through the trees to the universe that if it would send someone for me to love and who was true, i would devote my live to world's betterment and healing...it did, and i have tried to keep my promise

[cenacle]

this morning added 'beggar,' set in downtown seattle on pine street where the poor people hang around with coffee cups and signs for the asking...years ago, first in a big city, i figured out i'd give all my nickels to whomever asked...so recently employed again, i decided to revive this 'nickel theory of benignity,' and do it in seattle...

i once asked my friend ric about his time on the streets, what he most wanted from people...he said it wasn't foremost money...it was a look in his face, acknowledgement of his existence...i've been trying since, ric...

[cenacle]

this morning added 'tribe,' a plaint i often make that people act the same, dress the same, move herd-like, yet what single truth can contain the differences among individuals and hours?

[cenacle]

this morning added 'grace,' a fairly bluntly erotic poem, wondering how it is that desire can permeate all yet there are many kings and preachers and other lunatics who get their ya-yas by control, prejudice, and harm rather than by what's most true within, what connects us to all, what shares us, ready when we are always...

[cenacle]

this morning added 'trance,' a poem inspired in part by seeing the cattle ranch run by KD's kinfolk, i'd never seen cattle in such vast numbers, and then the trucks come, and they are herded into them for the slaughter hour...it didn't bother me in some more predictable ways, humans do too much these days to harm each other and the world to be surprised at every turn...it seemed efficient, which is better than a lot of human endeavors...anyway, the poem is about other things too, but the last line is my favorite...

[cenacle]

this morning added 'liminal,' a word that means the far edge of things...though a pome about pissing called that? paradox, eh, something...i just think working in what our lives are like daily without making this out to be mundane needs be done and more often...

[cenacle]

this morning added 'mending,' how it seems that the world is both going to hell or arrived, and yet somewhere someone is singing quietly, others are sharing a meal and smiling, someone just recovered from an illness...all of these at once...no sense in it...but it appears to be true...

[cenacle]

this morning added 'vagabond,' another love the world/work it hard/bitch loudly til you drop kind of tune...heh...

[cenacle]

this morning added 'conspire,' another small poem that tries to encompass the vital in everything, i keep trying this over and over, to see if six lines can contain it all...i think this one steps closer than some...feels like an open door to a larger view, in any event...

[cenacle]

added 'a fierce wash of clouds,' thinking about how love and strong feeling young direct the heart through many of its paths later, reminding, sometimes directing, yet nothing is truly decided ahead of time...one still chooses to heed the past, or not....

[cenacle]

this morning added 'comfort,' a poem one of many from a long night out in the city with beloved, this one had been on my mind from an earlier fragment...the night and its countless longings...