The Bridge of Fire Project for Burning Man 2009

Poetry has always been my inner voice. It has been my private conversation with the world and god and myself. It hasn’t really been my intent to keep it all secret. I guess I never really had a forum to express this part of me. So, I figure now is a good a time as any to free all these words from the prison of the notebooks and scraps of paper where they have been trapped. But there is a caveat. I write for myself, and in my last bouts of poetic rage, I have realized that if I censor myself, it is not art. I am just beginning to read it again and have not found anything that offends me. I don’t know about you. I guess I’ll put up warning signs. Also, there’s another thing. I never dated any of my poems. So, I’ll just be starting with the loose scraps of paper and then working my way to the notebooks. I will probably be able to put them in some kind of order as I progress. This will take a while and I’ve already realized it’s going to be like a passed life regression.

So, here’s the first one. I would just let it stand on it’s own, but there’s a story. I have been looking through my poems recently and since I decided to do this blog, have been looking for something appropriate to post first. My work space at home is a constantly shuffling deck of projects and papers, so I have had my poetry folders on and off my desk several times recently. Also, having skimmed through them often, I had a memory of one poem that talked about writing and words, but have not been able to find it again. Tonight as I was straightening the desk, I found some small notebook pages stapled together on the floor. So, by some choice of the cosmos,  these words that have come to me tonight, and I never ever argue with the cosmos.

Untitled

 I mourn the loss of unwritten lines
and art undone,
wasted and cracked at the edges of time.
Days are tossed
away with wednesday’s garbage.
Life is a casual affaire.
There is no meaning
or dark message to share.
Step on each second.
Precious future erased,
and just in case…,
a whole lot of reasons
and rational justifications
for every season
of heaven or hell.
The drunken master is a slave
to the war
A slow moving hand
uses angels wings
to sweep up the floor,
As a million todays and tomorrows
stream through open windows,
and blast through closed doors.
Open your eyes to every mirrors memory.
Find the reflection
In what you see.
Do not turn away.
You will still see yourself,
and you will still see me.
Only the truth is told,
bright and sunny,
evil and cold.
Nothing to dicuss
No it’s just us,
and the world
Seeing who we are
from the darkened windows
of every downtown bar.
Walk away from the window.
The bullets are flying,
and your friends are dying,
and the shattered silver shards
with a thousand reflections
tell adifferent story,
but the sirens continue singing
as the scene across the river
dissolves in to the past
Broken hearts and broken dreams
should not be the last gasp
of any artist
who has made a bet
on the high stakes game
of liquor roulette.