edgar

This is the final bank poem, and perhaps the end of an era.

Poem 1/30/04

Edgar lives in choice and chance,
Confused by what he must believe;
The anti-laws of happenstance
Unwritten by some Sovereignty,
Enlivening his apathy.

If he thinks that he should move,
He moves, and afterward reflects
That all the circumstances prove
(Unless, of course, he just expects)
The choice was not his to elect.

Edgar’s conscience used to be
The mark distinguishing his name;
Now law and grace have (separately)
Engaged him in a purist’s game
And told him that he needn’t play.

When he feels unclean without,
He purges with intent to cure;
Then as he looks within, about,
He finds himself just as impure -
Thus, with each cleansing, more unsure.

Edgar has an artist’s hands
Containing what he must create;
But as he longs to understand,
To properly appreciate,
His measures never calculate.

For art need not be justified,
He thinks; it only needs to be -
But then he reads himself denied,
And if he follows logically,
Most art becomes some blasphemy.

Edgar lives a paradox:
He cannot serve as he would choose,
He cannot live the way he talks,
He can’t accept, he can’t refuse,
He cannot fight, or win, or lose.

a toast

I couldn’t stand not posting for so long, so I decided to engage in a covert operation in cyberspace this afternoon to unveil my latest work.

Poem 1/15/04

This is for songs that I wish I had written,
This is for words I could not get to rhyme;
This is for thoughts stuck in hopeless arhythm,
This is for hours that can’t make up for time.

This is for poems I must leave unstudied,
This is for literature I’ll never read;
This is for all of my hard-earned unmoney,
For all of the hungry that I cannot feed.

This is for days when not one will remember
My words or my deeds, my face or my name;
When gone with an age are the reasons to render
My work as important, for praise or for blame.

This is for lands to which I’ll never travel,
This is for battles that I’ll never fight;
For puzzles not given to me to unravel -
For tales not entrusted to my hands to write.

This is for all that I can’t live to treasure,
For all of the history already missed;
This is for all that is useless in pleasure,
And yet, for its uselessness, hard to resist.

Life is a toast to the poor insignificant;
It’s over before even one glass is raised.
How can I rise to the call to be diligent,
Knowing the end can be counted in days?

No sooner had I the question delivered
Than one glass was lifted and Life bade me turn;
I saw a cold cross and a man’s dying shiver,
And Life spoke, addressing the cause I had spurned:

“This is for souls that would otherwise perish!
This is for purchasing brief lives of pain!
This is the cost for a living to cherish -
For death must give this one to Me once again.”

This was for me a new peace and bewilderment;
Purpose and grace for the short, weary way -
Life is a toast to the poor insignificant
Who counts not his worth by the length of his day.

that was a cold night

In contrast to my previous post:

When I walked INTO my trailer after this weekend’s Augusta trip, at about midnight (Sunday), it was not much warmer than twelve degrees Fahrenheit INSIDE my trailer, due to what I assume to have been a furnace malfunction over the weekend. Hopefully my landlord will have taken care of the little issue before I come home from work this evening. Sleeping in a full set of winter clothes under blankets is only fun when one has expected to be camping in adverse conditions long in advance. And it is not fun more than once. Ever.

twelve

The posting drought on the website must be interrupted with one sprinkling:

When I walked outside my room temperature trailer this morning to go to work, it was twelve degrees Fahrenheit outside.

malicious puns inc.

Due to the regrettable but increasingly unavoidable fact that my computer practically suffered an aneurism this weekend, posting is likely to be postponed (pun maliciously intended) until about a week from now. If I don’t postpone it, I’ll probably be fired for being discovered in the act of cyber-subversiveness at work. Good day to you all and thanks for reading.