R.M. Engelhardt's Blog: Burn Brightly, page 30
May 31, 2013
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RIP UNCLE WALT
R.M. ENGELHARDT, THE RESURRECTION WALTZ. ·
WALT WHITMAN IS DEAD
Where are you now?
Uncle?
Poet?
Walt?
Old man, child of the Long Island
Free verse son of America,
Teacher & government work-man?
“Human – Being”
Citizen
Man… Mind of the spirit
Spirit, in the flesh
Where have you gone?
Disappeared
Now a ghost
Among the leaves,
The rest.
Uncle,
I see your name written in
School books and upon the wind
And within the rain,
And I still hear your songs fill the air
In the forests & the city streets
Body … Electric.
But father?
Uncle?
Where are you now?
Where have you been?
Gone, gone away from
What you loved most, the land
Yet buried beneath the green
Green meadows, valleys & time
Of ages.
Meditating within the oldest of trees
Silent thru out new ages.
For a book is merely paper
But a voice must ask or say
Invoke yea and awaken others from
The vast darkness & the gray
For uncle, poetic father,
Your America has sadly changed.
No longer the free land
Of promise, no longer do we
Dream like you once dreamt
We still fight wars and without hope
Falter & lose ourselves,
Souls within the damned dark & dense.
So uncle, father.
Return and sit here for a while
And bring some comfort the dying of poets, poetry &
The young boys, and now women…soldiers,
Decimated in faraway lands
You never mentioned in your poems
Or ever heard of.
For it rumored
That you are dead.
And yet?
The 21st century & centuries to come
May yet remember thee still,
And write your verse upon some wall in yet
Another revolution coming.
For it is the same world that
Faces us today Walt Whitman,
One of a new slavery & lack of, death of spirit
That you would not begin to comprehend
Where the poor are now
The slaves of corporation & debt
And prejudice
Still runs rampant…yet hidden
Behind best intentions.
So would you,
Father, Uncle Walt
Still stand insolent? Defiant?
Would you, Walt Whitman
Still stand up & among the
Working class?
But alas,
It is no longer your time here
But your heart & soul remain,
For we, the poets who still struggle
Must create our own new voices & names,
Speak, of what is now & not of the past
To audiences not of one land, but many.
So, Uncle? I owe you an apology.
For you, Walt Whitman are dead.
A timeless friend
And a memory
That we must let rest
To create a new vision.
That one day brings your spirit,
Your uncorrupted vision
“Back”
For if we miss you in one place?
We shall search for you
In another.
__________________
~ R.M. ENGELHARDT
May 30, 2013
Death Is a Beautiful Car Parked Only By Richard Brautigan
Death is a beautiful car parked only
to be stolen on a street lined with trees
whose branches are like the intestines
of an emerald.
You hotwire death, get in, and drive away
like a flag made from a thousand burning
funeral parlors.
You have stolen death because you’re bored.
There’s nothing good playing at the movies
in San Francisco.
You joyride around for a while listening
to the radio, and then abandon death, walk
away, and leave death for the police
to find.
~
“Death Is a Beautiful Car Parked Only” By Richard Brautigan
May 29, 2013
May 28, 2013
“Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million u...
“Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.”
~ Walt Whitman
May 27, 2013
May 26, 2013
To be great is to be misunderstood.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with packthread, do. Else, if you would be a man, speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. Ah, then, exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunderstood. Misunderstood! Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
~ Emerson
May 25, 2013
No Man’s Land
The area of land riddled with barbed wire ...
No Man’s Land
The area of land riddled with barbed wire and corpses and heavily defended between two enemy trenches.
No soldier would want to find themselves there.
May 24, 2013
PERSUASION
“There is ‘true’ Knowledge. Learn thou it is this:
To see one Changeless Life in all that lives,
And in the Separate, One Inseparable.
There is imperfect Knowledge: that which sees
The separate existences apart,
And, being separated, holds them real.
There is false Knowledge: that which blindly clings
To one as if ‘twere all, seeking no cause,
Deprived of light, narrow, and dull, and ‘dark.’ “
~ SONG CELESTIAL, Bk. 18
(fr. The Bhagavad-Gita)
________________
After math –
After Image,
Death…
Of Awe
Where there is
no heart
no soul
feel … or truth.
Words – left.
As centuries have passed
A dead dialect forgotten
All true songs & bards
“Deceased”
“Dead”
And now reduced to
bad romance,
value & shock
As gods & verses
have disappeared
Withered
And have remained
Hidden…
And in wait
For you.
New earth
New voice
New life
Conjure
This into being
Poet
Persuade
Inspire…Create
Summon forth
And awake
The poem.
Once more,
And again.
_______________
R.M. Engelhardt
_______________
ANOTHER DOOR BREAKS THROUGH: RAY MANZAREK
It might be safe to say that the most popular debate in American literature over the last 50 years has been this one:
Were the lyrics of Jim Morrison and The Doors good poetry? Or crap?
Is inspired crap, crap, or inspired?
Inspired.
Good news for Doors fans.
The Doors produced real poetry.
It is common for twenty-somethings to reject feelings they had as adolescents, but when it comes to the Doors, the 16 year old is correct and the 26 year old is wrong.
May 23, 2013
On Writing … And Life
Sometimes it’s great, and sometimes it’s shit.
These are the things all the great philosophers
just won’t tell you flat out about life.
You keep moving, keep living, keep breathing
And you keep writing-creating because that’s what you do
And that’s who you are. There are no magical voices to guide
You except your own.
Make it count.
~ R.M.
Source: rmengelhardt.com
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