Astrophil & Stella

My Revision
(on the collection of sonnets by Sir Philip Sidney)

Astrophil, lover of stars
Stella will never hurt you, never betray you
Foolish, irrational, passionate man
You plunder knowingly down each fallen path
Early light and the same recognition
Of each blended morning
A prism of years
Crystalline revelry casts light
On dusty books, unopened boxes
Things that needed attending to long ago
But now the reason escapes the necessity.

Didn't you know
When you chased her light
Endless sonnets of bitter regret
That she was with you all along?
Nobody remembers his name
Only yours
And hers
You won her in the end
She loves you best of all
Poor, sad, broken poet
Lost, aimless, darkened spirit
Stella always thought you a god.

You had only to look up

That is where the stars are

Yet you spent so much time down there

In the darkened hole

Seeking distraction, following trails with ends in sight
At the very beginning

Perhaps your misery was a choice

So many words, so many miscommunications

So much poetry

And never a simple

"Run away with me, this world is mad."

I would follow in a heartbeat.

But that's not how the story went, is it

No - this is just a revision -

On sonnets that were written long ago

Nobody cares 

It's too late

That's how our story will go, too

Yet daily you stumble into the dark

And I continue to light your path

It's Stella, don't you know

Who felt it worst of all 

You prolific, immortal fool.

-A.L.

Moonlight Orchard on 69th Street

The White Light

Drowning by Billy Collins 

I wonder how it all got started, this business

about seeing your life flash before your eyes

while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,

could startle time into such compression, crushing

decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.

After falling off a steamship or being swept away

in a rush of floodwaters, wouldn't you hope

for a more leisurely review, an invisible hand

turning the pages of an album of photographs-

you up on a pony or blowing out candles in a conic hat.

How about a short animated film, a slide presentation?

Your life expressed in an essay, or in one model photograph?

Wouldn't any form be better than this sudden flash?

Your whole existence going off in your face

in an eyebrow-singeing explosion of biography-

nothing like the three large volumes you envisioned.

Survivors would have us believe in a brilliance

here, some bolt of truth forking across the water,

an ultimate Light before all the lights go out,

dawning on you with all its megalithic tonnage.

But if something does flash before your eyes

as you go under, it will probably be a fish,

a quick blur of curved silver darting away,

having nothing to do with your life or your death.

The tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all

as you sink toward the weedy disarray of the bottom,

leaving behind what you have already forgotten,

the surface, now overrun with the high travel of clouds. 

The High Road

. . . the loneliest road.

Amsterdam Muses Too

For your sake I hope heaven and hell are really there but I wouldn't hold my breath you wasted life why wouldn't you waste death?

Jerz

Frosted

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep

And miles and miles and miles and miles to go. . .

And really it would be so much easier if we hadn't gone

Quite so far

In opposite directions

We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl

Year after year

Running over the same old ground

What have we found?

The same old fears.

Oh how I wish you were here.

Honey & the Moon

Don't know why I'm still afraid
If you weren't real I would make you up
now
I wish that I could follow through
I know that your love is true
and deep
as the sea
but right now
everything you want is wrong,
and right now
all your dreams are waking up,
and right now
I wish I could follow you
to the shores
of freedom,
where no one lives.

Remember when we first met
and everything was still a bet
in love's game
you would call; I'd call you back
and then I'd leave
a message
on your answering
machine

But right now
everything is turning blue,
and right now
the sun is trying to kill the moon,
and right now
I wish I could follow you
to the shores
of freedom,
where no one lives

Easter, 1916 William Butler Yeats

...I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse.
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vain-glorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

I was feeling kinda seasick. . . the crowd called out for more

You said there is no reason, and the truth is plain to see. . . and although my eyes were open, they might just as well be closed.