Stanley Pacion A BIG BOOK OF MY OWN

Friday, June 14, 2013

FIRE IN THE BRAIN

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FIRE IN THE BRAIN

Children watch me run through the streets,

And wonder, what is it all about, my hurrying.

My eyes push forward,

Cause me to squint.

Then all at once I break into a smile.

And night after night in steady flow

Ideas collect, press fierce,

Hard against my brow.

The pressure makes for heat;

There is fire in the brain.

I hear words march with noise

Akin to soldiers' boots slapping on pavement.

I see your gaze upon me.

The beauty of your large brown eyes

Engulfs my neural circuitry.

Oh I smell wheat grass!

It's being blended with fresh strawberries and oranges.

I love the juices' heady odor,

When ever I breathe it in --

I am reminded of you.

We looked out the window.

We sat upon stools at a Formica bar,

A long, plate-glass window provided unobstructed view,

And we people watched the intersection,

Corners at avenue and street, the sidewalk before us,

They became our theater, and we agreed;

It was pleasant evening’s entertainment.

Pressed, cardboard cartons contained our suppers.

We ate our meals with plastic forks and knives;

The napkins were brown, recycled paper.

Believe me, no irony intended. Honest!

Every memory, every instant

My being with you, every occasion was lovely!

I shall die a happy man.

Die a happy man?

Here's my defense.

However I may wonder,

Whether ultimately I write fact or fiction.

Do I possess truth or fall to illusion?

I know that those two forces bind me,

As is the case with Siamese Twins,

Who are born to share common cerebrum.

In a language plain, common to us all,

Here I stand and bear witness,

Though that I am flesh and born to perish,

Spirit informs me and grants me friends,

Friends who are awaiting worship,

And friends of friends who celebrate the light,

A priesthood of all believers who patiently gathers

Filling the rows of benches in the meeting hall.

And one by one this church affirms a new covenant --

God is love and death has no power,

The kingdom lives within us, our souls immortal.

Monday, May 20, 2013

BY LOVE BEGUILED

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BY LOVE BEGUILED, Edited Version 2013

Don't get me wrong.

If I appear distracted,

Look knocked out by the light,

You make a very strong appearance,

A singularity into whose inexplicable center my mind spins.

I remember once, years ago,

When I landed in New York,

After living a year and half in Europe,

How the neon of America,

It appeared so awesomely garish, and bright.

Yet, when I close my eyes and picture it,

All seems pale before the radiance of your face.

That we, two people, would meet for morning breakfast,

Look out the café's windows at the steady rain,

Then, under the cover of our umbrellas,

Walk here and there, along avenues of inviting store fronts,

Have an early coffee and tea,

Or do I have the hour wrong,

Might the time better be described as brunch,

Or was it at an hour still later, and in another place,

In the afternoon, say somewhere on the Turnpike,

Or when we stopped at a crossroad to check our map,

At first I thought it might be vapors, something in the air,

Then I mulled the question over once again, and figured,

It must have been an electromagnetic charge,

And I wondered,

Had a fluke momentary electricity overwhelmed us?

Or perhaps, was it, cupid himself who truly stole

Behind the fixtures of the thoroughfare?

I thought I had spied him crouched near a mailbox,

At start of our walk on Main Street in Point Pleasant!

The winged child pulled from his quiver, arrows,

Their heads were dipped in love potion,

– My thinking ran to the lines of the ancient story --

That once he aimed and shot them,

Grievously their tear into our mortal flesh.

I knew his wound would make for a ruckus extraordinaire.

I felt that expectations were suddenly turning great.

This romance presses hard upon me.

I find myself bound up, an affection drives me

It barks a claim beyond everyday physical experience.

I am being compelled to express it.

To gain your confidence,

To prove my mind sound, not at loss to reason,

I couch my verse

In a mood commonly called the subjunctive.

Though the posing of this frame of mind

Has little usage in today's English,

I try its grammar, or, is it, pretend to use it, so to temper

My over-wrought emotion and to quiet,

Soften my immodest and elevated parlance.

Were I not to employ this principle of language,

One might believe my love for you be shameless.

The mood, also, provides proper relief

For the all, too-far-out attitude, the conceit,

Which has me begging

The suspension of common sense and natural order

In order to pose an audacious proposition

As having a semblance of truth,

That I have come to possess a gift, as it were,

That Higher Power had granted me prophetic mantle.

Understand. I solely express my own wish and desire,

That all I say remains contingent,

The frame of mind here still hypothetical and dependent.

I do not use the imperative, I make no demand.

I have no special outcome in mind.

I dwell in fortress called Zion,

And come from it in the Pilgrims' coat and hat.

I look in the mirror and see their collar and tie.

And, like those passengers on board the Mayflower,

I know the Lord to be my helper. I fear not.

Who among your former friends has ever said it better?

And were you to live a long and hearty life

As all actuaries predict, what future friend

Might ever phrase it near as well as I have put it?

And if you ask the source of this lyric

That it arrive, as I propose, transcending the usual,

Everyday manner and common syntax, I must rejoin

That Sentiment Supreme, Him, the real pilot,

That when we drove in the white, Ford van and crossed

Jersey's North shore highways, while the soft brown,

Oh the magic, dream-like, living, pale, ethereal,

And somewhat golden light accented the downpours,

Whose constant unleashed falling, more

Like rain the Lord had promised Noah,

Than any explicable, temporary phenomenon of weather.

Wie es eigentlich gewesen.

“The carriage held but just us -- and immortality.”

That when we traveled our first day together,

Though it is months ago, and now becomes the years,

All the time which has passed, I suggest

That it feels shorter than the day, that day

I first surmised the engine's mounts

Were tied to point, and that we, too, were belted, on board,

Hurled straight ahead in solemn league with Eternity.

Mercy, let it be known, Mercy freely bestowed,

Not for this, the one earthly moment,

But for our children’s children,

Drawn and signed, and at once delivered,

A grant for us and them, settled in this verse,

And from where, you might ask, derives this trust,

Sure as Word once promised Abraham?

I hear the text my grandmother spoke.

I see her at work when she ironed and folded,

Yet while she stooped to lay the laundry

Into the wicker oval basket at her feet,

And I, the child, I watched her nod the affirmative nod,

I saw that as she smiled a light had joined her face,

Today I repeat to you what she said to me,

“And I will bless them that bless you,

And curse him that curses you...”

And then the line which revealed,

She told me how the stanza means,

I hear the words my grandmother said,

That in you, I say through you, my darling, “... in you

“Shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”

Saturday, April 20, 2013

LOVE WISH, After Rumi

LOVE WISH, After Rumi

I see the light coming out from your eyes.

What sacred wonder illuminates your face?

Wish I had the time and nothing else to do,

But to while away the hours adoring you.

Friday, April 19, 2013

WILD IN MY PAIN

Darling, it's just a heart, not a brick or a stone.

How do you fail to understand then

That it hurts and bleeds like any mortal thing?

And what pleasure have you,

What delight when you scourge me?

You must hear me crying,

My begging for mercy a thousand times and again.

Why, oh why do you want to treat me

Deaf and uncaring while I wild in my pain?

Sunday, April 14, 2013

ETTA, 1958

ETTA, 1958

He had twisted his ankle.
His foot was swollen and it ached.
It hurt to the degree that he could no longer concentrate.
He had lost the capacity to figure.
His mind no longer able to grasp even very simple things,
His eyes appeared vacant, as if in a trance.

He was young and he kissed the back of her hand,
He kissed her about the face,
He kissed her eyelids,
And he rested his lips at the base of her neck.

He had kissed the skin all-over both her shoulders.

He and she were minors, and their ardency,
Its possible consequence worried their parents.

There was no question about the boy being strong.

Underneath a sky possessing countless bodies of light,
They stood next to a Sycamore,
The tree grew along a muddy creek,

Which emptied west into a river,
A river the early French settlers had named Des Plaines.

He thought that they might sail away upon the waters.

The Milky Way seemed to stretch out across

The vault of deep space more like some

Will-o-wisp patch of terrestrial weather

Than the starry edge of our own galaxy.

Yet more, much more than the taste of salt

From the tiny sweat along her brow, more than how

Moisture had collected and now had formed

Fetchingly to glisten upon her shoulders,

It was a night whose such awesome, absolute clarity
Enhanced a once-in-a-life-time, white light streak,

At its end a mighty, bright flash erased the sky.

Though now near midnight, all nature cast a quick shadow.

Within the warmth of a very late, August evening,

Beside the trunk of a Sycamore tree,

Upon the bank of a muddy creek, a small water,

A nameless feed to the river,

The early French settlers had named Des Plaines,

In a momentary all-over illumination,

The youths saw their silhouette,

They were merged as one,

They saw themselves fused into a single shade.

A low thunder followed, and, there, in the instant,

All of heavenly influence fell upon their embrace.

And when they turned and gazed upon each other,

Before either of them had spoken a word,

They had come to believe that the memory of this event

And its retelling had made a place for them in immortality.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

SHOUT OUT

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SHOUT OUT

Uneasy, when it came to sex,
You made me feel
I was doing you wrong.
Your body stiffened,
And, I remember, once you said,
“Too incredibly intimate!”

Later I watched in movies,
Men drop to the knees,
It seemed nothing special,
No more than regular business,
Hollywood presents its usual fare.

In a recent film with a Bedouin setting,
North Africa, camels on route,
Over windy hills of sand, oasis to oasis,
Hardly a trend setter,
The lead takes his captive,
Calls her wife number three, and there
Within the walls of his village home,
He keels. While camera spies,
He takes love by mouth.

Since I last had knelt before you,
Months have passed.
I wish I might kneel now,
Just as does the sheik in the movie!

But you, you are gone.
And with you, too, went
Health, and work, and sleep,
They have fled irrevocably!

I wake in the middle of shouts.

I picture you and our last night at dinner.
I see you there sitting before the table,
And in a fleeting glimpse I recall your delight,
How you savor and chew upon your meal.

I rise up from my bed and return to my desk.
I try to write,
But swoon instead.
My night shirt has the wet of perspiration,
Down my back and well below
The neckline binding at its front.

Were I not lost, driven to distraction,
Were I able to clear the mind
And gain once more a proper bearing,
This poem might read better by far.

'Oh, Oh goodness!'

Though I am up and about,
Ready to write before the computer screen,
I feel a faint. My stomach is turning,

'Fetch a chair!' I say aloud in my empty home office.

'Never mind. I’m fine. I’m okay.'
(As if somebody here bothers to listen.)

'It’s just this summer's terrible heat!'

Sunday, April 7, 2013

ROMANTIC

Love Lockdown,

I miss you, honey.

I miss going to dinner with you.

Where ever I turn,

Whenever I look up and down the streets,

I keep thinking I see you.

It’s the damnedest thing!

By the way, I’ve decided to discard,

Throw out some of the poetry.

Of course, you must know why!

It has me loving you too much.

Oh! Those notes I took,

The notes of all our telephone conversations,

Sister, that’s a painful lot!

I documented all your promises, your assurances,

As if it mattered, or had real weight,

I transcribed them, then asked you to repeat them.

I hoped thereby you might remember

How many times you had given me your word.

I wrote them all down, my questions, your answers.

I can look back, should anyone have interest,

And figure the exact dates of those, your pledges.

But the exercise would require work,
Because in the record of those,

Our long-distance dialogues,
I reckoned time according to lunar calendar.
They read, for instance, first, Monday, December.

Across one sheet I found it significant that

You had telephoned me from Florida this last October,

A day which directly followed the second,

The so-called Harvest Moon, a moon whose rise

The previous night I had sighted over Forest Avenue.

Upon those paper records I sometimes drew,

(The right term here might be doodled.)

Regular zodiac signs. Silly guy, huh?

I pretended knowledge.

I played the role of old-time astrologer,

Someone who predicated life’s lot on planetary whirl,

Who posited ill or good fortune from an abstract,

The ups and downs of a human individual's existence

Based upon the conjunction of remote bodies,

How everyday events fit within a starry belt

And could be known and actually foretold.

I was dream-wishing.

It was make-believe, pathetic.

Might your last satellite communication, I wondered,

Be housed on a plane

Where moon rises into constellation, Leo?

It all gets very primitive when dealing with you.

When I concentrate,

Concentrate on my abandon, on my love,

Take the time and thoroughly examine

The range, the extent of my feelings for you,

My heart wells, fills up like a balloon, ready to burst.

Overwhelmed, stretched to utmost circumference,

Its membrane reaches thinnest extreme,

It helps to explain

Just how sensitive I am to your every desire.

If I remember to relax,

Should I try to stop holding on,

Just simply let you go,

Then I can not help but feel gratitude,

Give thanks for the moment,

The every hour afforded me to share with you.

At other times I fall to absolute delusion,

And believe that I write great poetry,

The words I pen immortal,

Celebrate you and me for the ages,

That future readers might pine and swoon, as I do here,

And then wonder what great grace sanctioned lyric,

Allowed it to express the sentiment that ours was destiny,
And yes, permitted me to publish the story, –

How deep and far our love ranged.

I guess that I believe we are constantly being reborn.

I go through all these thoughts, again – again,

Hoping against hope,

Seeking a glimmer, some glimmer,

Fingers crossed for incredible stroke of luck,

Trust your return to my arms once more.

I have a real problem;

It’s when I look about.

I see other couples, pairs, tight,

Together for the afternoon, daylight upon their faces,

All lovey-dovey, they walk along the avenues.

It bothers me seeing them; they sit in cafes and read

Newspapers and books, and sip from bottles of water.

I envy them. I do not have you.

World seems happier place

When people have each other to depend on,

And romance animates their bodies and faces.

I am sorry to conclude, you’re a mean person.

You went away; my sole companion now my work.

Am I making this up as I go along?

But the fact remains

That you have gone and I am home alone.

You left me all by myself with my freedom.

I fear that I have fallen prey to mine own emptiness.

Were you to belong to me, I swear, I wouldn’t,

I wouldn’t share you with any one, with anything.

Time and place reduced to you and me,

You at center of it all!

Dream comes true!

It would feel more like love, sweet love,

Than me, here, sitting lost,

Trying to figure the situation, or

How I might say it proper,

Finally to convince you, love too precious a thing,

Often once in a life-time event,

And ought never be willfully discarded, thrown away.

Hope I haven’t upset you.

Maybe that’s the real difficulty,

The source of us being driven apart,

I am just too romantic.

You, you seek something else.

Perhaps you are simply more practical, reasonable.

My flights of fancy and over-heated emotion,

Not things you have in mind.

Do not worry!

I have the capability of living with my beliefs.

But, darling, you must take pity,

Open your heart -- for you say you still love me.

Mercy please! Forgive me, I lack resolve.

I am unable to start anew, to make life without you.

I am still not over this thing of ours.

I haven’t gotten over it, the beauty,

All the wondrous times,

I haven’t gotten over my being with you.