one poem

[revolutionR]

I have been around the block
when I wrote my first poem
I began the journey that would last
as long as I kept writing the poem
the world was not too good of a place
my first poem was about venting this
I have been exploring as many pathways
through the garden that I could find
the garden is not paradise anymore
one poem starts at the gate to heaven
or hell, and its words that make the difference
when I began I did all I could to dig the ground
and plant the seeds of my passage, through this life
I dug a little hole and put my mind in it, watered it
with my sweat, blood, tears, my drool, my piss

To say I was pissed off only serves to declare my feelings
and my feelings are like clothes I wear, thin protection
from the elements, so one weathers the storm of emotions
trying to find the right words to describe what it feels like
mere sensitivities to the onslaught of overwhelming impressions
is not enough to make the words matter to the cold indifference
one has to find a fire inside the heart and ignite it with passion
this can be carried by the poem through years of working on it
there came a day, or really it was a night, that my poem
transfigured itself before my humble gaze, it spelled out
something greater then I could decipher on that occasion

I knew that I would never be able to decipher it, in this lifetime
I walked between worlds, I suffered like a lost soul in used book
stores, on the streets I carried my Picasso like imagination
traversing the realms, moving through the bardos, looking, looking
for myself among all the other souls that were passing by me
I lost control and plunged into the underworld of my personal inferno
I saw things that did not make any rational sense, strange things
happenings that I could not explain, people seemed to take on otherness
days, weeks, months went by, years, visions sprang up all around me

Time seemed to stand still, and eternity made its presence known
but like an apparition, it appears in the shadow of shadows, it comes
announced, it becomes the words you are reading in some great novel
you are transfixed by the writing, like a snake coiled around a tree
the words speak of impossible events, that we are told once were
the making of gold in dark places, and to this end comes the poet
I awoke on the floor of the basement of a house i was living in
and before I could gather my thoughts, a flock of black birds
burst from my chest, I felt the flight of them pass out of me
and this is the only way I can describe the writing of that one poem
and to this end I have lived the one life many times to end this poem

[saw]

dig it !