The Answers

FORWARD

“I never read anyone half so right as I.”
-- William Saroyan



Now you listen to me, Saroyan, and him.

PREFACE

they all said
a Muse is always a she
however obliviously
a HE a-Muse's me

and if my tongue is ever in my cheek please,
love, it's not affront to you.
it's just
adjust of mine
to God' design

does the ever mean sometimes or always
   or do i just hope it means always?
and should it be affront or a front?
and is just as in justice or just merely,
   or just abandon itself to gist,
   or more merrilly still
      to JEST

o k o k o k ok ....... you write that one .......

RELIGION

if i can face
this place
i can't very well
worry about Hell.

if i can't rhyme
with Time
what use to me
Eternity?

if i can't fitly deal
with present woe and weal
what use to me
Infinity?

their God is Good
their Devil is Bad
my God is a laughing clown
who doesn't know up from down

their God is Good
the Devil is Bad
my God is an imp
that I call versus

J. C.

Jesus passionately paid the price
for the power he had.
playing God comes high.
such a man, men crucify.

Jesus was not God.
He played God and
he passionately paid God
a fair price for
that paradise
of power.

if it isn't funny
it's phoney and no fun. He,
that Old Guy in the sky,
laughs, so why shouldn't I?

A decision which has saved me a
great deal of time

no poet no prophet no seer
no wise man no philosopher
no minister no cracker-barrel
grass roots wit
will i listen to

unless he laughs and knows he's just
another HAM

like God with his outrageous sunsets,
etc. etc.

whatever blooms bright in the mind
of the mystic
is neatly named   GOD
giving the mystic per MISSION to
tell everyone what to do.


AM i a mystic?
but, of course.

we all know
that to grow
we need rain and pain
as well as sun and fun

therefore later
know that hater
did for you as much
as lover: both
are equally deserving
of your everlasting love.

your thoughts sublime
what good are they
if you've no time
to live that way?

brag of your ache
for India's poor
and daily break
the heart next door?

LOVE

i wondered along
collecting fragments.
i met you;

i looked at my hand
and wondered to behold the
perfect round.

it would surely be greed
to ask for, or say that we need
more than this blessed knowing;

only death can consummate.

the moon can't pity the sea,
but you me?

the moon can't stop it,
but you can?

the moon attracts the sea
in the same way you me,
but does the sea ache too
as i, being human, do?

and if the sea does ache
does the moon pity the sea?
human you know that i ache
but do you pity me?

you are heartless as the moon
i am helpless as the sea.
P•L•E•A•S•E dim your dazzling eyes
and me demagnetize.

the sea may be content
in bondage to the moon
precisely God's intent
she yet may do

but i am not content
in bondage thus to you
for me such tides not meant
i've other work to do.

Renunciation is not water
to put out a fire
but rather oxygen that
makes it roar the higher

did Jesus command “Love thy
neighbor as thyself.” ?
or say, (“Thou wilt) love thy
neighbor (to the same
degree) as (thou lovest) thyself.” ?

love IS when two persons cannot
distinguish between
give and take

when you and i are shaking
hands who is giving
who taking?

if your love be love
all fragments you descry
you will treat with tenderness
howsoe'er awry

April in New England

the Earth said to the Sun
“please, Sir, put down upon me
your warm hand; please, Sir,
let my green fires leap free.”

P•L•E•A•S•E

let no other see
your me
i still have to be
their me

please let me be
your me
only when none but you
can see.

Winter Thought

this year i fear the thrust of spring
and summer’s certain blossoming.

some days Earth cries out with loveliness
that burns with all the fires of Hell
and all the light of Heaven,
“Please, Sir, forbear.”

God answers with a day
of quiet grey.


Earth wants all God’s weather
i all yours.

AND MARRIAGE

Spring 1955

stop being wife? perhaps
when the earth,
under caress of April
sun, can withhold.

Little Boy to Little Girl
or, mayhap,
Some Woman to Her Husband

let's (gently) put away our toys;
you, your dolls,
and i my soldier boys
and play US, man and wife.

jeanne and charlie mend a broken chair

through the break, from opposite sides
they drove two screws.

strong as new, with two
pulling against each other
pulling against together.

afraid to live
or die?
not i.
Heaven is here
Hell, too,
with you

acknowledge that marriage
is the ultimate of
slavery .... it becomes
ultimate of freedom

SOME HUMAN BEINGS

God bless this spinning earth you walk upon
God bless the sun that warms you
God bless all clean green growing things
but most of all God bless the creatures who,
not knowing why, forbear and let
them grow

For William Blake

your words upon the printed page
i could not understand
and yet you touched and warmed me
with your living hand.

For W. Blake’s Spiritual Heirs

if you would visit Heaven
and chat with God
and still be here to do
your work on earth,

Prudence dictates
take a friend along
else you'll be lonely here
and called MAD..

why should i have to psychoanalyze?
what you are shines clearly from
your eyes;
what you lack and long for i know
well
from the twisted tale your silent lips
tell.

there is a place where i go for nectar.
she who serves it appears to be
an ordinary mortal like you and me
i get down on my knees
and say to her please
how do you make it or
where do you get it?
have you ever stared straight at the sun?

Rocks
   for: Willy D. and Willy T. (against gardening ladies)

i love rocks ... not the ones the pick strikes
and the bar persuades out of our own earth..
such rocks are pale brown, though they hose off
sometimes right colorful, but pick-and-bar
escarred, bare lichen-less .. such rocks we pound
to lifting size and haul away for fill..

the rocks i want are grey and lichen-green
from long years of living with the weather.
i like the look of lichen.  Like?
God Almighty, come-for-coffee-in-my-kitchen,
could no way please me more than you could,
or any, by bringing me and gently
(Ooh, please don't scratch it!) placing
(No, a little to the left) to look ‘Tumbled’
(No, back, and tip it up an inch or so) in my garden
just one--small--grey--touched-with-moss and lichen
-luscious THREE TON rock. Darling      i love you.

FOR CHILDREN

i wonder if my little girl--
she's not quite two--
when she grows up to woman's work
will speak as true

as now? one says to her “Bad girl”
she counters “Girl”
when someone says to her “Good girl”
again says “Girl”.

for Helen, five, who asked

what is the sky?
how high?

the distant blue
touches you;
only breath or sigh
and you are filled with sky.

no wonder i
am growing high
with every breath
i breathe sky.

To Children:   when someone says,
“Which hand?”   say “B•O•T•H•”

the old man had a happy mouth. wife
-protected and self-deluded, he
beamed on us.  he preached and he talked
about God and The Abundant Life.

the son had a stern mouth.  trapped by life
and self-deluded he frowned on us.
when he talked he said that economic necessity
forced him to stay with his wife.

the grandson has a big mouth
with one corner up, the other down.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

OR

A FEW EASY WAYS TO
RELIEVE PRESSURE

desire will tend,
fulfilled, to end.
contained, it can
build higher than
it first intends,
to endless ends.

Poet

The poet has daily intimate concourse
with his unconcious mind.
He dwells upon that sharp point
where all contradictions fuse.
The poet is sufficient as a tree
and as subject to the weather.
He will visit with you;
loneliness forces him to keep trying.

The poetic imagination is not
worth a damn
unless it happily and humbly mates
with daily duty
unless the conflict of that union
becomes for both
a nurturing clasp which creates ......

a new configuration comes only
to him whom faith allows
to put willy in temporary chains
and let nilly carouse.

my unconscious mind is LIGHT not dark

through the fear wall, unasked, unheralded
upthrusts a sudden shaft of light.
in the dark confusion of the conscious
mind it blooms: configuration bright.

out of one who can hold
Heaven on the open palm
and not a finger fold

out of one who can hold
Hell in his belly
contained and untold

Art explodes to life.

poems

let them burn burn burn
in the crucible
let them pulse and push and pound
in the womb
let them tear your living heart wide open

still contain them

a poem is the ultimate scream of birth and
a living creature.
some will only hear the scream
but some will also know and love
the living creature.

A FEW SIMPLE FACTS

you wont believe

the answers you get
when you sit down calmly and
reasonably, logically, mathematically
add up the columns,
are, acknowledged or not, seldom the
answers you live by.

On Rearing Children

as you seek to domesticate
the animal,
beware lest you desiccate the human.

exorcise the Devil
and God's gone, too.

FRONTIERS FOR TODAY

Frontiers of “Science”

The psychiatrists and their ilk have made
this great discovery about “projection”.

What was the Seek-and-you-shall-find-knock-
and-it-shall ... guy talking about some years back?

IN CONCLUSION

let me say:

a “multitude of others”
made me ... make an I
out of ought and should and must
yet this I is NO THING; just this
here now here this feeling-Being BLISS
in sunlight and dark