R.M. Engelhardt's Blog: Burn Brightly, page 24

What the Dead Know …

 Air here is like the water
Of an aquarium that’s been lived in for a while—clear and still
                             Beyond the rigors
Of glass; appearing cold (and clear) as spring streams
                             Fed by snow and ice,
But unexpectedly warm to feel, and inviting; side-lit—
                             A vitality of shadows
Once you come into it, and long bars of light
                             Burning like spots,
Remarkable for the absence of dust in their sharp crossfires;
                             Heavy, as crystal
Is heavy, as if to move here would mean pushing against a force
                             Palpable, and strong;
Yet rich with prospects of life, comfortable
                             With the idea of life,
As if, put on its slide, every drop is stocked with wonders,
                             Swarming, about to burst—
                             Beautiful in a way,
One element sustaining another, our message brought home
                             So that the living
Might come to see. Harder to say that without them
                             We are nothing—
Water without air; or to speak of our isolation,
                             Or our special loneliness;
Or say as they look right through us, at their plants,
                             Pictures, books,
Windows, reflections, and blank white walls,
                             That we need them,
To orient ourselves and to tell us who we are;
                             Or that with each look
They are swimming to within our sights; or that we are always casting
                             Wider and wider
And that even now they are fighting to avoid our nets.

Robert Polito, “What the Dead Know” from Doubles. Copyright © 1995 by Robert Polito.

The Task …

 

 

“The task is … not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.”

~  Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961)

FAUST

Christopher Marlowe …

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven,

That time may cease, and midnight never come;

Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again and make

Perpetual day; or let this hour be but

A year, a month, a week, a natural day,

That Faustus may repent and save his soul!

O lente, lente, curite noctis equi.

The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,

The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damn’d.

I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Happy Birthday, Percy Bysshe Shelley

Born 4 August 1792, died 8 July 1822:

 

 

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered and our infancy remembered but in fragments. We live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being. Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance of ourselves, and this is much.
Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. His auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician.
The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.
Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory.
War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, the lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade.
All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.

Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. He was a member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron; Leigh Hunt; Thomas Love Peacock; and his wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

You Are A Mystery …

“What people dont know about you people create. Imagination is a part of being human. They fill in the unknowns with assumptions and not facts. Every man and woman is a mystery unrevealed.”

 R.M. Engelhardt

The Poems of October by R.M. Engelhardt

Reblogged from Former People: A Journal of Bangs and Whimpers :

THE POEMS OF OCTOBER

by  R.M. ENGELHARDT

Relics

The burning smell of leaves

He dreams of

Her body stretched out

Upon the bed.

Samhain

Cold October.

She wears a mask

Drunken fucking to the rhythm

Of the dance

Like a final sacrifice to

The Gods.

She

She is the God

A Goddess in

Black makeup

The spell running

Thru us 7 times upon…

Read more… 122 more words

NEW POEMS : FORMER PEOPLE: A JOURNAL OF BANGS AND WHIMPERS

Life Is …

 

 

 

Life is a journey, not a destination.

~ Emerson

POEM TO PAST SELF IN FUTURE TENSE

 

 

 

 

 

MEMENTO

 

Better to feel

(Than be)

Blood rushes thru veins

And the heart beats,

Only one-day to complete its duty.

While eventually earth and gods shall all come

Crashing down

And kingdoms & civilizations fade.

And so please, I ask you only this;

That when I leave to let me take these

Few things with me,

The moon, the sun and the stars,

And the small traces of light which

Once reflected in your eyes

That I

Can no longer

See.

 

 

 

_________________

 

POEM TO PAST SELF IN FUTURE TENSE

 

Yours is a beauty of monsterous

proportions with the world

Spinning randomly into

Oblivion where all the leaves are all

Dying all the time off the trees,

Where misery makes its way into

Every small tissue stealing.

Yours is a world where

Beauty has fled and has left town

For greener pastures, has drowned its-

Self into the sea of angst & tears and

Has mixed its-self with alcohol &

Cigarettes, sad poems and

Indiscriminate men & women who

Already know that beauty has left

The scene,

(And they no longer care to find her)

And yet it is good that beautyhas

Finally found you and that beauty is not dead,

But was merely sleeping

On the sofa of your

Dreams.

 

 

 

______________

Poems By R.M. Engelhardt

From The Book “Nod. (moon, stars, sun … time)

 

Copyright © 2013. 

www.rmengelhardt.com

POETS ARE WELCOME …

 

 

“That’s the god damn problem with Albany, NY” She said.

“There are too many fucking poets “

In the city

Where I was born

They tore it all down

So many times

That we all forgot.

Because you see

I was born

In a place

Where the lives get

Lines and the stories

Become lives

Of their own.

Full of gangsters

And politicians, low

Dealers and the cops

Gotham city at it’s finest

Without a single hero

To write about it

Except us.

Because we’re just the fucking poets

And because were not the fucking law

And we are only here to tell the stories

Because this is all we own

Because we’re

The poets & the outcasts

And the makers of the songs

And the leftover soul of a city

That’s heading for a fall

And if Jesus came tomorrow

And if God closed the pearly gates

We’d still all just be the poets

Writing poems till the end of days

And we don’t write for glory

And we don’t write for time

We just write because we have to

Without a rhythm or a rhyme

So even if you leave here

Or you meet a sad demise

Remember that you’re a poet

And that’s just enough to survive

Because

 Without the words?

It all means nothing

At all

And the poets

Will always be welcome

“Here”

_____________

R.M. ENGELHARDT

“Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else.”~...

 

 

“Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else.”

~ Tennessee Williams