With you, my integration fails to hold

[joel]

With you, my integration fails to hold
together; voided soul— I separate
to uselessness from whom I’d selfish be.
With you I’m naught and therefore wait your great
creative love. But speak and I’ll conform
and shine as brightest star and rest in peace.
I only am (when you are Love) and I
convicted stand. So small within the sky,
the sun and moon seem nonetheless to cease
whatever emptiness the heavens form-
erly had been—on hope as this I wait.
Before your love, there was no me; and free
I soared in nothingness. You generate
alone life’s warmth and I alone, its cold.

[lenny]

I'm not sure how you meant this but because of my personal predisposition I took it as being addressed to the Divine. A nicely written piece in my humble opinion. I like the enjambments too. Clever use of 'form-erly'. Good work!

lenny

[Doreen Peri]

Joel..

Not many poets can execute this formally structured- type style so fluidly! Normally, I'd say the sun and moon and uselessness and nothingness and brightest star and emptiness are all words which are so darn cliche, but something about how you put them together makes them sound fresh! I donno. I think it's the absolute rhythm you employ. Your meter is impeccable. It's music, my friend! I just read this aloud and nowhere did I stumble over a syllable. Did you study Yeats? Or ??? Who are your favorite poets who write in a similar style?

[joel]

Thanks!

Lenny,

I don't know if this is addressed to the Divine, to the mundane, to the person I had in mind or to someone else. Is it bad when the writer falls prey to his own reader-response? I don't mind that though.

Doreen,

I have loved poetry ever since Ms Marcel did an extended unit on it in the second grade. Montgomery County Public Schools proceeded to provide English teachers (and the occassional powerful science teacher) who introduced me to lots of Yeats, Keating, Eliot, D Thomas, Shakespeare, Dickinson, Longfellow, Frost....

But when I got out of high school, I stopped studying English formally. Made it through college in science land and never looked back. Any training I've had has been from the Scroll and here over the past year. The best teachers have been folks like you and the others who post here...and scrollers like Red Letter and Brian Long.

So this makes a good place for a shameless Thank You.

Well, and if any of you folks are in Hampton Roads in the next couple days, feel free to check out William and Mary's Geology Dep't Arts-meet-Sciences Earth Day Poetry celebration (now in it's fourth or fifth year)...third floor, McG-Street Hall.

[Doreen Peri]

Montgomery County, Maryland? If so, we may have gone to school together (though, most likely different years). I grew up there and went to school there through HS.

Did I ever tell you Red Letter came to visit me once? She stayed several days. Haven't heard from her in years! Hope she's doing well! Screen name came from her lovely red hair!

[joel]

Olney Elementary

Eastern Middle

Blair High (class of '99 -- go Blazers.)


And red hair, huh? I don't know I ever pictured Red that way....

[Doreen Peri]

Harmony Hills Elementary (probably defunct by the time you were in school)
Belt Jr. High - same?
Wheaton HS - Class of '72 ... lol

I grew up right down the street from Olney... off Norbeck Rd.

Looks like I'm 27 years older than you

Yeah, she's gorgeous! She came to visit in 1999 with a friend who was also a friend of mine from another site. She was about 25 at the time (guessing, coulda been a couple years younger)... porcelain skin, dark red hair (a deep lovely natural red) and when she smiled, she glowed!

Other Scrollers...I also met Desperado (James, currently in the military, has gone to Iraq.. I drove him to the airport when he first joined the service before the war) and Masked Intruder ... those 2 guys are a joy and a half!

Rambling... off topic from your poem. Sorry! Keep writing Joel! You're a very talented writer!