SING TO ME WOE, JOYOUS WOE
Initial Poetic-Dictation Triptych (1/3)
[Note: For my first three Missives, I am offering what I consider a kind of triptych from the past few months]
Received 12/19/2022 | ~10:45-11:30am
SING TO ME WOE, JOYOUS WOE
Who beckons betide and
bothers beside and between—
What, pray tell, is your
wisdom for me?
I wander through the depths
of your wallows, blindly
Seeing, imagining into being
the treasures that belie
Your pity, your pleasure,
You drown and suffocate, pulling
me under, and deeper, and
Further, down, down, down
I plunge, my lungs burning,
Bursting, crying out for air
we cannot possibly go further
There cannot possibly be further
to go.
Bounding out of bounds, the
rabbit leads, fins and
gills flush and flutter
Have we not gills to breathe
here? It is not water that
Surrounds us. Yearning,
I forget to breathe. I no longer
need to breathe.
I am breathing itself.
The darkness is not dark
and the invisible is within
reach.
I blink and stutter three
bold-faced wishes
Stumble gracefully into the
currents and bind my
Feet to hands, distended
and tense, loose, and free.
I let loose a scream, and
laugh, and cry through
Hiccups searing my mind
into loosely mimicry of all
Else and otherwise insightful
and incisionary, insurrectional~
Where am I? Woe and Whoa,
Where have you taken me?
A muse, whose gentle hand
insistent takes me far,
far beyond the beyond, and
further still, impossible, and
the only place one can go,
or could ever dream of
being found therein.
It is home, a stone, glowing
hot golden red, radiating
Twilight hues of blue, peach
immortal tones of cherry
cinnabar and imperial shades,
glistening in sparkles
In storehouses stuffed with
grain, decaying in mold,
Composted to our gainful means
I reach out my hand in
Sight unseeing, and grasp!
Alas, at last, there is in
The holding a sense of peace
and calm, a whole piece
of eternity, that which is
ancient and yet to pass,
newly raised from the soil,
Soul of the Earth and the
very stuff of drear, of death,
of boredom, stillness, fervor
Ardent in its rigor, the
shape resists while settling
in to the cage of my
fingers, the bed of my palm.
I blink and the darkness is
day, the night a funeral pyre
The impossible is here
upon the wellness,
The depth is done and
I stirr, restful, rested,
Restless. At the very base
of this sacred place I
surface, and I
remember. Here I am,
I am here. Who could
here be but where?
What else would there
be but when? For those
who dwell in the awkward
company of truth, the
finite is infinite and the
infinite, bounded. There is every
other way to be. I breathe
Out; I breathe in. There
is no in or out.
Woe, Oh Woe! What it is
to befriend you; to belove
you, to betray you; to
be played with you. Welcome all
We are home.
