Within the four walls of this library
sit three walls packed into the corner;
shelves, stuffed full of books with dog-eared pages
and slip-disc’d spines and fraying edges,
and a big white sign, which dangles from the ceiling
like a megabat hung on a cave mouth, sleeping and dreaming,
the word “NONFICTION” is inscribed on its countenance,
adjacent to signs shouting “MYSTERY” and “SCIENCE
FICTION” and “FANTASY” and “ROMANCE”
and a thousand other sorts of words
for myth and fabrication. But in this corner
live the rest, the et ceteras, the miscellaneous,
the kingdom of protists; for instance, care for some ethics?
Marx’s manifesto is stacked lazily beside a heap of essays by Rand;
you can practically see the two of them, shaking hands
uneasily, the will to never understand already forming
in their brains, and others yet remain;
Capote and the Clutters share shelf space
with the Mansons, hiding helter skelter behind
gnostic gospels and silent springs and a thousand
dreams for Freud to interpret (translated
from German for your convenience); nearby,
Orwell sings war songs in Catalan, accompanied
by the universe’s most elegant superstrings,
and the caged birds, singing of freedom,
harmonizing a melodious cacophony with the song
of the executioner. Butler criticizes his performance,
and she probably would have anyway, but Friedan thinks
he has a certain sort of mystique and Dawkins offers his own critique,
going on about genes and memes, extinction and delusion, but
not hallucinations—Sacks makes the distinction; let us continue
to praise famous men, and their children after them,
these naked apes, with minds so ***** that
they’re riddled with the emperors of all maladies; oh, Morris
Kinsey and Mukherjee could tell you all about these things,
maybe over lunch with Schlosser or dinner with Pollan,
minglings with Machiavelli over affairs of the state,
or affairs of space and a brief history of time; but,
if you're feeling too full to eat, or to pray, or to love,
ask Frankl what to do, let him change your life
with words from decades yore as he keeps on
his search for meaning just like every man before, at least
that's the case when these boys’ lives weren’t preoccupied
by artful war or bright and shining lies. And here,
by the holy bookend, lies some old and antiquated glossary
which lost most of its “glossy” many years ago,
for one flip through the pages will catalogue the changes
between what we thought we knew about the stars
and our bodies and doomsday as recently
as your last birthday, and all the things that everyone says
we now know that we know; speak,
memory, remember all you can
about this endless, sundry cosmos, and
the microcosms that it boasts; bury my heart,
if not at Wounded Knee, then maybe at this
library, where comprehension and speculation
find themselves in coexistence, packed into a single
point resembling the genesis, and fear and hope
take dueling forms, those of fact and mystery;
and now all that’s left to do is read,
until the end of history.

…These men are worth your tears:
You are not worth their merriment.

-Wilfred Owen, “Apologia Pro Poemate Meo”

When that loudmouth on the wireless machine
Alludes to Western Civilization
What does he mean? Paradise Lost? Probably not
Nor Saint Paul speaking on the Field of Mars

The Kalevala, Hagia Sophia
With its pendentives lifting up our prayers
Horatius fighting to defend his bridge
And Wilfred Owen dying bravely on his

Lord Tennyson and Idylls of the King
Chapultepec, Henry V, Becket
The paratroops at Arnhem, Saint Thomas More,
His King’s loyal servant, but God’s first

The Stray Dog poets of Saint Petersburg
The brave last stand of Roland at Roncesvalles
Lewis and Tolkien and glasses of beer
Montcalm and Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham

Hildegard von Bingen, Siegfried and the Rhine
Magna Carta, HMS Hood, the Thames
The Grove of Daphne, “The Old Rugged Cross”
Beatrix Potter and her little pet rabbit

El Cid, Anne Frank, John Keats, Saint Benedict
“I Have a Dream,” Dostoyevsky, and Greene
Viktor Frankl, Dag Hammarkskjold, and Proust
Good Chaucer’s naughty pilgrims telling tales

The Gettysburg Address, Willie and Joe
Stern Saint Augustine of North Africa
Wodehouse writing a jolly bit of fun
Saint Corbinian and Bavaria

The ancient glories of Byzantium
Pius XII contra the bombs and lies
The 602nd TD Battalion
Saint Joan, the Prado, and Robert Frost

And far, far more.

When that loudmouth on the wireless machine
Alludes to Western Civilization
What does he mean?

An unethical practice to fully comprehend my existence in
space and time,
I took the world hostage and prodded its inhabitants with
probes and electrodes
only to find myself
conducting self-lobotomies in front of the bathroom mirror;

Gazing through the eyes of McCrae,
I ****** my hands into
pristine soil,
tore up roots and
soldier bones, creating a
garden of chaos
only to find myself
amongst red petals and marrow
strewn across green vision fields,
but the larks still bravely singing fly!

I splattered ******* across
impressions of Monet and Renoir
only to find myself
dripping like
Dali,
screaming like
Munch,
is this what beauty looks like?!

I passed up a
hitch on a
Heart of Gold
only to find myself
in the mire of a
Brave New World,
kicking at the dirt that sent
electroconvulsive shocks
up my spine,
is that a headlight reflection in my Bell Jar?!

I looked down the barrel of my fingertip guns, still smoking and
listened to the hollow wind of my self-inflicted universal entropy...

run.

Through a wormhole,
into the forest of wisdom where I reviewed observational data of my
chaotic string theories,
there I found myself,
rejecting the null and
assembling a fire of new Hope using the
burrs and thistles burrowed under my skin,

scratching and clawing at unethical practice.

There are situations in which one is cut off from the opportunity to do one's work or enjoy one's life; but what can never be ruled out is the unavoidability of suffering. In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end. — Viktor Frankl

[T]here is no coming to consciousness without pain. — Carl Jung

Should the conflagration climb
Run till all the sages know — William Butler Yeats

Heart-injured in North London, he became
The Latin scholar of his generation. — W. H. Auden

It's urgent,
Imminent,
Fiercely non-communicable.
(Carry a firestorm in your veins.)

Secrets, secrets are no fun
Secrets, secrets hurt someone

The secret, untranslatable, hurts the secret-holder:
Frustration disguises isolation.
Distilled isolation is pain.
Purified pain is meaning.
(Carry a firestorm in your veins.)

Secrets, secrets are no fun?
Secrets, secrets hurt someone?

O, only momently!
Heart-injury transfigured is salvation.
(Carry a firestorm in your veins.)

Today, sitting in the library waiting for it to be time to go to work, I've decided that its a good time to write about some things that I've been keeping to myself for a while. Victor Frankl has convinced me to live as if I've done it already and now can make good on my promises and make different choices than the last go round (which was one helluva doosie). I should be looking for a house instead, or maybe hunting for that second job I need to take. But what's the difference between one house or another, or even a cardboard box out by the mall if there's no eventual destination one has in mind. So I'm going to write down my dream for the future, a wholesome dream I keep very close because its so real to me. There are other dreams of course, other lives I'm tempted to seek and have tried in the past to actualize, mostly out of a desire to escape, to be somebody else. But this dream is the real one, the true one that is all the more precious because it can belong only to me, whereas sailing the high seas or tramping through unexplored jungles could belong to anybody with a mind to do it. My dream has more to do with minor things, things that don't take herculean courage or a doctorate in linguistics. Things like taking the kids out for ice cream on a hot day. Or piling everybody into the car for the drive from our house in Floyd up to Woodstock for the Shenandoah County Fair. Singing all the old songs and some of the new as we wind our way through the Blueridge. Maybe somebody has a summer cold so Charlotte and I have to hunt for tissues in all the places where they might be, and then find them in the back with the kids where we put them in the first place. And then finally getting there, late probably, so that everybody else is already at the grounds and we can hear the announcer at the cart races as we unpack the car. And then there they all are, my Mother and Stepfather, Uncle and Aunt and Cousins and the Grand Parents deciding to come again this year, though its getting hard for them to make the drive from Virginia Beach. So we all head up to the track to catch the last of that days races, covered in sweat and bumping into random people, a four-year old perched on my shoulders, not just because it's fun for him but also so Charlotte and I can keep track of the other children easier. I can see the magic in their faces as we waddle around the pavilions full of animals for the livestock auctions. Our six year-old daughter gravely points out to her mother that there's something wrong with that turkey in the pen, it's the wrong color. She has only ever seen the wild turkey's around our place, never a domestic white. Charlotte shoots a quick smile at me, trying hard not to laugh as she explains to our daughter why not all turkey's are as pretty as the ones that live near our house. And then before ya know it the sun's going down and it's almost time for the live music to start. So we all wind up in the bleachers again, listening to old country singers whose songs I haven't heard in thirty years, sharing funnel cakes and singing along while I'm wiping powdered sugar off of little noses with my shirt. I could go further, talk about how we decided to keep heading North after the fair, up on to Skyline Drive and Front Royal, and visited the old Firestation where my Great-Grandfather volunteered in the days before there was a McDonald's. But I won't flatten things with too many details. They're not that important sometimes anyway.  What is important, is that when I see these things in my mind's eye, they're clear as if they've already happened. As if I'm remembering the night at the fair with my Family last summer, and writing about it now after I'm done grading papers and the children are getting ready for bed. There's splashing and laughing from a bathroom where it sounds like there's less bathing and more tickling going on, Charlotte laughing hardest of all. I write of this, and I know deep down inside, that I've found something I lost a long, long time ago. As if a lost civilization's Golden Age is sailing out of the mists, building's putting themselves back together and beautiful trees growing right before my eyes. I've got to go now though, I need to help Charlotte dry off the kids and then show the youngest how to make the best PB&J; sandwich ever, the same way my Dad taught me.

‘Man’s Search for Meaning’
rests upon the garden table
Neon yellow highlights drawn almost to the last word
but leaving it, dangling

Two cups of coffee accompanied
She talks and talks unceasing
Not a breath to inspire
Not a pause
Not a subject
Not a point
Nor conclusion

KAW keh KAW KAW!!!!
KAW KAW!!!!!
The chin never stops.

He looks away
Returning her a brief glance
One Banana, Two Banana
Barely looking her in the eye
His earbuds resting down below his shoulders
But close enough and ready
To block out the sound
And yet
He won’t stick them in
and shut out
mania
A maniac

Nodding
on the rare occasion
However briefly
He looks away
Turning his head politely to
Drag one more time on that joint
A morning joint that won’t survive her onslaught of words

There’s just not enough time what with him pulling away on me like that?!

He drags on his ****
Making sure he’s alive
Are you still there buddy?
Luckily you don’t have ears, eh!

He drags again
More attentive to the filter and the
Slim
White
Stretch between his fingers
Just like the other one
The one in his pants
Close enough to the side pocket

He picks at the lint on his Adidas
And examines his fingernails
Pulls at his ****** hair
Stealing a suspicious
Narrow eyes glance back at her
She leans in and stare at the earthen floor
The leaves have been swept away

She wears little
Blessed with an ample ***** but no brain
She keep her robes open
She can cook and sweep the floors
And talk and talk and talk

But will this keep him?
He’s smiling now
Laughing, ******.
He’ll make it through to lunchtime
She’s off to the kitchen ‘for a sec’
And look, he’s on his phone
To another one so far undetetected
He’s grinning
Maybe there a pictures!

I know someone in Mexico
who keeps hers
in very fine high quality cigars
He knows about such things
And there used to be one up the street
who sported very short shorts
In hopes of keep him distracted
or preoccupied
The space filled alongside her
In her bed at night

In the distance,
The Spanish Evangelicals Sing!
And Sing!
Endless!
Rejoicing!

It’s been hours!

Sometimes there really is
no excuse to wear yoga pants
But the vaccine is here
And things could get shaky
Unstable
The eyes having begun their wandering
in advance of the Summer Solstice
And it’s very nearly time to advertise.

Leaving their outdoor table
He makes a quick exit
To another assignation
And alone
He’s run away!
She opens the book again
Just a few pages left
She’s almost done
Yellow pen in hand
mouth closed

To the now estranged friend,
I am writing this with a heavy heart. That was a lie. I am merely writing this. I do not feel any emotion towards it. I do not feel any emotion at all.
Maybe saying I'm tired would count, but no, that is a feeling, a physical state. I still feel, but not emotions. This is what happens when the faculties of the heart are ripped from it and its role is reduced to monotonous beating. I should talk to it more. You should talk to yours more.

I bet you feel lonely,  I bet you can't stand being alone with yourself. Don't worry, you're not alone in this. I bet you feel depressed. I did too. That was a lie; I do not feel depressed, I cannot feel depressed, I am merely tired. You should examine yourself from time to time, it look at yourself from all angles - gives you a good idea of where you are and what you need to do, it may even allow you to come to some terms with your depression. I bet you are afraid. I was afraid.
I was afraid because I could so clearly foresee my own life rotting away of itself, like a leaf that rots without falling, while I pursued my round of existence from day to day.

I've come across two types of depressed people in my life, the ones who are depressed because the things that they valued in life are falling apart, family, marriage, school, a good job, the death of their favourite flower, whatever you value, whatever.
The other type are often depressed because they lack a meaning in their lives, they wait for day to turn into night so that they can sleep away or distract themselves from the dreadful question of what they lived for that day or what they'll live for tomorrow. It is often this kind of depression which is cured by anti-depressants. No, "cure" is not the right word. Anti-depressants do not bring meaning to your life, they simply sooth the suffering and make you forget it for a while, until you, once more, realise the lack of meaning in your life. What's even worse is that you don't know what you're suffering for, I mean you have everything you want, so why are you sad? And what's the point of making up new desires for yourself and wasting money on them just to find out that they don't help?
The shame makes it worse, you can't hold your head high because you feel yourself ungrateful, you feel guilty, you begin to loath yourself because you think that you're being ungrateful and there is no reason to be sad - but you just can't escape it and as each day passes it paralyses you even more, either emotionally, psychologically, or physically.
This may even make you want to jump into the river, meaningless suffering is worse after all. Suffering ceases to be suffering when you give meaning to it, it becomes bearable, hell it may even cause you to make something out of your life and cure you.

I do not claim that what I will tell you will get rid of your suffering, it is only you who can do that, but I shall say it either way, so that it may help another.

I have learnt there to be three avenues in one's life from which one can derive a sense of meaning.
1) In a creation - we see ourselves reflected in what we create, be they paintings, music, pottery, poetry, letters written to people who'll never bother reading them, and in experiences which we create, for ourselves and others.

2)  In events, I am sure you may agree that there will occur events in one's life which will completely transform them, be it for better or for worse, these events also may help bring meaning to that life for they add colour to it so that the painting in the end is not too monochrome or too colourful - just right. These events can be falling in love, marriage, death - yes, it is true, one may realise what they lived for all those years only in the final days, hours, minutes, or even seconds of their life - that is when you can see your life's image whole.

3) In the attitude we take towards unavoidable suffering. I have often thought this to be most important of all, how you choose to react to your suffering may in itself contain the meaning of your life, the meaning you give to your suffering . Do not be ashamed of your suffering - it is not a competition so do not compare it to that of others, everything seems insignificant compared to the grand scale of things.  As Victor E Frankl said: "Everything can be taken from a  man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude to suffering in any set of given circumstances."

However, allow me to note that you should not seek suffering, believing that it will give your life some meaning - that will just make you a *******. Moreover, I think it must be said, meaning is not a static value, it does not remain the same for the rest of your life. It is something that must change - like every single other thing - if it is to remain.
One day you may wake up and see that a beautiful flower has bloomed in your garden, that may become your new meaning in life - to care for it, to be with it and admire its beauty, to love it.

follow the tracks to auschwitz.
do not bother to pretend
you see lights at the end of tunnels,
but the tunnel has an end

if your outer world is barren
grow your garden deep within
there are cruel wolves around us and
we must not let them win

hold on tight to peacetime, carry
every memory like a light
through the marching and the burning
find a reason for the fight

when the stones stand to be gathered
when the cigarette is lit
this suffering is the noble task
to which you must submit

there is work that only you can do,
love only you can give
what does life expect of you?
life expects you to live

In my religion we're taught that every living thing, every leaf, every bird, is only alive because it contains the secret word for life. That's the only difference between us and a lump of clay. A word. Words are life, Liesel.

- Max to Liesel in Markus Zusak’s *The Book Thief

We cannot walk with Dostoyevsky as
Guards drag him chained before a firing squad
Comfort Saint Joan against the English flames
Or pray with good Saint Thomas in his cell

We cannot slosh through sodden trenches in France
With Lieutenant Lewis on his birthday
Argue with Akhmatova at The Stray Dog
Or with Frankl at Auschwitz bury dead friends

Unless we read, and then through words we see
The morning sun upon Byzantium

A laureate once wrote of how earth's pale history runs,
Equated it to "the trouble of ants in the gleam
Of a million million suns."

Frankl lived the **** curse, abused and almost killed;
Yet spoke of his countrymen's sins
As a father scolds food spilled.

I'll neither justify or condemn actions, many or the few;
My righteous judgement is saved for me,
What holiness have you?

Have you walked the steps of the Austrian man who took
Power to avoid abuse? Lived to love the torture
For which your fragile childhood shook?

What god or demon lifted you from the despair you only knew,
That you'd blindly follow - just for thanks -
Upon the corpses your hand slew?

Ideally, pundits and anchors both are true in what is spoken,
Yet only the blind, the deaf, and fools
Blame the builder for what is broken.

Instead of pallid horror...instead of prophesying to the doomed,
Maybe we can pause a second, take stock of all that's blessed,
And expend a little effort to leave callousness entombed.

So far. . .
Seeking a future turn
A new flow to hold
A slow trip to Plum Village
To slow my candle burn
Slowly sip upon your gaze
Gently slip into your fold.

So far . . .
I missed your knock on my door.
I lost your visit but heard your curse.
Your shine and balance seems lost and spent.
Stopping by to share and vent.
You knocked to verse.
To seek a new dance.
Take another chance.
To hold your arch
above the maple floor.

So far . . .
N still dreams.
Still dreams in LaLa Land.
She holds sway her shine.
A shine that melts everyman.

I'm still glad you're here.
In this life, in this space.
Frankl and Rumi lie so still.
They still smile at your subtle grace.
N
It's time re-enter from afar.
Time to visit Cap d'Antibes and taste the star.
Sip it slowly to bring it near.
It lives within to fulfill.

So far . .
My hamartia still churns my curse.
It flickers with ease to burn deep scars.
As it drips these words to script my verse.
Yet I hold my core tight.
For its moment to be.
Still seeks it might.

So far...
It seems true that a mindful universe
Seeks its purpose
It shifts and sways
To light my gaze.
Gifting sweet grace
To live my verse.

..where untold personal pain
  is translated into compassion
  the world is in such glorious gain-
  this--  the loftiest human expression

Viktor Frankl's faith was trust that one's life holds meaning
trust in ultimate meaning...
t'me,
My word trust holds true and rest crammed together for support
to stand under knowing the entire set of upgrades
and lock changes,
to mankind-basic knowledge of good and evil, since my last
a filtration algo-i'll-go rythmn and hyme adjusterho rholler
that powers ourkind past wayless places
when language joins the gamers playing for glory, at any cost,

Old Glory

per pose haps need happening,
sans happy-ness,
what ness could ever be?

What's the haps? Don't lie.
What's goin' on? Don't lie. Say,

Regular stuff. My side's winnin'. A *** in Pershing Square,
under the Jesus Saves sign, brought that to mind,

Fifty years ago, for him, looked like "no direction home"

Sansara sera, whatever sera selah

Nihili, to the max, right. But,
we know
other than this now,
this
breath

thinking process of cognitive rythm building
thunderwordmagicalthoughtsenchanghgken

coughing final, expulsion of some invading barb,
a fiery dart, setting cooling

actions sponding to ligands loosed when the
third aveili in a micron failed to expell

smooth
slowww whoooshhhhh
in-a-ginning be da vita, see...

say I think I know this feeling

qwhy-esse quiessence,
a settling,
after all that could be shaken, was.

acid to water, or water to acid?
who would gno?

So far. . .
I am

Seeking a future turn
A new flow to hold
A slow trip to Plum Village
To slow my candle burn
Slowly sip upon your gaze
Gently slip into your fold.

So far . . .

I missed your knock on my door.
Your visit lost but I heard your steps.
Your shine and balance
seems lost and spent.
Stopping by to visit
To share and vent.
You knocked to say
You seek a new dance.
A solid arch above the maple floor.

So far . . .

N still dreams
Still dreams in LaLa Land.
She holds sway her shine.
A shine that melts everyman.
I'm still glad you're here
In this life and for awhile, in this space.
Frankl and Rumi still smile
At your lightness, at your grace
It's time re-enter from afar.
A visit to Cap d'Antibes is near
To taste the stars.

So far
I am
still pursuing my best self
humbling stuff.

I crave a cigarette with my whole existence
Like I’ve never craved something before
My body aches, my joints feel heavy
My blood has stopped flowing
My nerves are dormant
My system will cease to exist without nicotine
Why is it that these getaways are all I have?
At the end of the day, I have no internal support system
Other than these fleeting moments of happiness
Why is that I feel as if I might combust?
I might tear apart anyone or anything
Because I don’t feel good about myself
And that statement is old and overused
But it is eternal and never-ending
Is there any other way to be?
I don’t want the things I used to
I have stopped trying to bargain with love
I have edged into the dent in the wall
Of sad guitar solos and sugary coffee
Of books that tell me how to breathe
And transport myself into another reality
Is it okay to be so far away from yourself?
To settle into stories like they’re all I have
Are these illusions all I have to proclaim?
When I’m 50 and they ask me what matters
I’ll tell them about youthful indulgence
And fictional stories, second-hand feelings
I’m trying to live like there’s no other day
But sometimes I feel like I should stop
And look myself in the eye and ask
“Who are you? What are your ideals?
What makes you who you are?
What do you desire?”
Playlists that make me teary
Late night battles with myself
Transcendence into places
I avoid during the day
Viktor E. Frankl said,
“The salvation of man is through love and in love”
How deeply you lived is how deeply you loved
Not just people, but life itself
The opportunities, the frivolities
And yourself
Imagine being stuck in a room
There’s constant knocking at the door
You can unlock the door if you want
But you’re unable to, you just can’t get up
And you hate yourself for it
Year after year, you’re in a war
That you don’t want to be a part of
That is how insecurities feel
Angst and rage swallow your loathing
You consider music
Baking, painting, writing
Make up, old dresses
Long showers, strangers
Mellow afternoons
Scrapbooks full of prose to make you feel alive
Create infinities
Within yourself, around yourself
By yourself
It’s like you’re trying so hard to run
From what? To where?
You don’t know
Just somewhere
Where the bells chime in solace
You drown your anxiety
Into Bailey’s Irish Cream and chug
Sloppy and smiling
Where nothing but the present matters
And you can stop running
The shadows you can’t face
The situations you don’t know how to handle
Are long gone, almost unreal
You look back and say,
“Thank god, I’m not that person anymore.”
Tell me that place exists
Tell me the city lights will feel like stars
Tell me that when I jump off a cliff into water
It will ignite my existence
I will be greater than myself
I will understand what it means
To go all in and not hold back
That even if it’s a bell jar at one point
It’s la vie en rose at another
Is there a philosophy to follow?
Am I doing the right things?
Are knowing and unknowing
Two sides of the same coin?
Can I hold your hand?
I promise I won’t fall in love
I promise I won’t give you my burdens
The phone rings but you don’t pick up
And I survive one more day
Without expecting anything in return
I know you’ll leave one day
And no matter how much I avoid feeling anything
I am not cut out for stoicism
But I sure do aim for it
Rainy evenings and windy days
Yellow flowers that scatter the street in front of my house
I reach out
For what? I don’t know
But sometimes, I feel something reaching back
Escapism and frustration
Bitterness and disconnectedness
Amidst all that
I believe in my absolute freedom
No matter how delusional
There are no circles that enclose me
There are fine lines I tiptoe on
On planes at wildly different angles
Searching for meaning
Distracting myself from the misery
Until it hits me unawares
Dostoevsky said,
“There is only one thing that I dread:
Not to be worthy of my sufferings”
And I feel myself to be of no significance
In the greater scheme of things
But as Lana Del Ray put it,
Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have
But I have it

Certain persons among us make claims to knowledge
kept from any who cannot imagine that truth,
we, the every day curious kinds of people,
skeptic
become habitually drawn to knowers claiming right
to tell us one may see what one believes, nought else.

Living words, in message form, why must I see angels?
Whose mind may we leave be in us, if not this one,
alive in constant readiness to give a word umph,

past last clear preconception of a call to pay attention,
today, while it remains time out to redeem in meditation,

be tween one mind's aura and another's… imagining
we see light reflected from sources undetected,
so dark sayings illuminate our directed steps,
or we so say, for we believe we know, now,

is when today occurs, and when the code is broken,
hidden meaning sought with Frankl and Anne Frank,
and dramatic reenactments of battles that inspire
judgment, know who won by who continues being,
any with a will to prove a worth, as a gift in minded
heart felt will to say
we may pay more attention
than we are willing to take.

Easily, given meaningful words… these are the medium,
this is the way we conjoin minds in hives intending
to fill to overflowing, so long as flowers need ***.

==========
Cultured pearls.

Irritatingly apparently real
as any brought to become
by merest of coincidental

rare afflictions with beauty
the initial aim, with hands
put to guiding use, knowing

the growing of the nacre
in total absence of sunlight,
of course, we can't know why.

--------

Words authored in ages past,
during times of congregation,

calling all sundry formations
from noise to align as defined

with hands commands, come
and see the other side of all and
more besides, piling mountains
as clouds in late summer, promise
latter rains on latterly sown seed.

The interpretation of this situation,
now, and not another time, here,
where your mind asks mine explain,

lay it out, tell the whole of knowing
now is when we become our self,
first formed from stories told us,

as true, to assume in storyland,
we can talk with Nature as an entity
who uses words as you would, should
you awaken in a jungle denser,

made afraid for the moment, mind
time pause, now, we think, how say
the sages past, must we treat
with care for fear of proud wrath,

encultured hero worth, a weight
in the bag we measure worth with,

each kernal of barley corn, one third
the inch, which is never taken
for a mile, given will to stretch
the wonder of learning for ever's sake,

indeed, to take each one in a myriad
of steps while helping an officer
of the law of Rome, obey it,
by keeping the peace and pace.

So, long from now, these same words
may live on loosely linked orders
of natural progression as we learn,

stories told as true as plausible,
often include impossibly fortuitous
interference in this clouded realm
of certain reasons asking rational

division of soul and spirit, despite
the rule of Rome, in year 869
of this present domineering age,
whereby soul is spirit and vice versa.

Rightly divided now, by me, today,
boldly going, where some crazies
came before me, to make me pay
attention to the will called why.

Jesus, really? Must we accept
the testimony of mystics, as more
than guessing based
on earlier guesses, up from exstacy,
beyond the first guesses given theory,
suppose, we all pretend to know,
as we are reared to become
those who teach to those so lost,
that only our knowing known stories,
can redeem their worth to truth itself.

----------
Listen, let this mindform in you, think.

In creation mode of mind,
given words for anything named
in the world wide web of knowledge,

arranged in searchible stacks, related,
tied religiously to certainty beyond Delphi,

we trust, as we trusted kings, when few
could gainsay prophecy interpreted true,
after the epoch last ended began, in truth,

measure for measure, an inch is always
three barley corns wide, no more
nor less a length, may be taken for a mile,

as we rethink the idea, charity, feeding needs,
agape, we say means charity, highest form
of love one may bestow, at no cost, true,

charity for which we pay is not the same idea.

I come to offer thought through thoroughly
sieved shards of crystaline ***** scried into,
see, there, that occlusion? that is what you

can never know, until the guru says you do.

--------------
Yes, I do recall verses written,
before exposure to naked truth
that war's glory is as the emperor's
lastest fashions, lasterly erroneously

crowning a child's sense of silliness,
when I was a child, I thought, and still
think many thoughts, what to write,
what to let slip away,
what must be folded to put away,
later, imagining I ask your eyes to see,
leaving no description light might show
either real or made up on purpose to make

believable the reason children are exposed,
to Grimm collections of secular wisdom,
unholy impossible animations, yet,

by the time, I got to Phoenix, I was knowing
days depend from days past, pendulating,
swinging arcing swipes past all pretensions,

loose the bonds of wickedness, comb
the tangled locks of dreads,
Rastaferian dread, wisdom
claimed aligned with wonder weedlike
in trembling fear of hell to pay,
what if we make believe, we two, and you,
we come to here, along these lines, thinking

why is not a factor after all is said and done,
plain and smooth, polished to high sheen,

wedoms welcome any with means to make sense,
share our dreads, show us what it is you think
you know, about the ways truth, per se, makes
where no ways was,
moments earlier, pasts past, perhaps,
happening in all that happens, once mayhap

to you,
aha,
I see, you say, lying with your eyes, but knowing
I can imagine common sense, comfort, ease,
true rest in care akin to told of care in story,

we gather to remind our hive, here we make honey.


------------
Watch the dancing bees, rethink
how few persons on earth can think
there is no mind involved in thinking that,

planning means to become superfluous,
dripping sweet memories, in precious
pricey processes of transubstantiation,

sweet, we say, at a fine fix on the flaw,
we all lie, see, we say we know, we lie,

we lieve being true, as good and useful,
the ology of everything pundits preach,
and teach that we may obey, knowing,

no lie forms from truth's first will to tell,
taste and see,
swallow, and wait… at antepartum,
all we think to ask turns bitter in the belly.

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

      “Anglo-Saxon Students Would Not Like to Be Taught by a Jew”

                                                      cited in
                   -Stanley Kunitz Lyrics, Songs, and Albums | Genius

To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University:

As a child of situational poverty
I am so grateful for all my Jewish teachers

Including

Moses
Joshua
Jeremiah
Samuel
David
Solomon
J­esus, Mary, and Joseph
Saint Peter and the others in The Twelve
Saint Paul
Elie Weisel

Chaim Potok
Herman Wouk
Leon Uris
Franz Kafka
Leonard Cohen
Anne Frank
Bernard Malamud
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Philip Roth
Osip Mandelstam

Saul Bellow
Isaac Asimov
Woody Allen
Mel Brooks
Edna Ferber
Yip Harburg
George Cukor
Mel Brooks
Oscar Hammerstein
Alan Lerner

Carl Reiner
Rod Serling
Franz Werfel
Alan Arkin
Claire Bloom
Leonard Nimoy
Chaim Topol
Ed Asner
Mel Brooks
Peter Falk
Werner Klemperer

Jack Klugman
Walter Matthau
Tony Randall
Mel Torme
John Banner
Kirk Douglas
Lorne Greene
Eli Wallach
Sam Wanamaker
Morey Amsterdam

Leo Genn
Otto Preminger
Jack Benny
Leslie Howard
Ernst Lubitsch
Cecil B. DeMille
Mortimer Adler
Allen Bloom
Harold Bloom
Irving Berlin

Boris Pasternak
Emil Ludwig
Eric Wolfgang Korngold
Elmer Bernstein
Max Steiner
George Gershwin
Dimitri Tiomkin
Samuel Fuller
Alexander Korda
Zoltan Korda

Emeric Pressburger
Erich von Stroheim
Billy Wilder
William Wyler
Fred Zinnemann
J. J. Abrams
Peter Bogdanovich
Michael Curtiz
Stanley Donen
Stanley Kramer

Howard Caine
Leon Askin
Robert Clary
Dinah Shore
Stephen Sondheim
Volodymyr Zelinsky
Simon Schama
Louise Gluck
Siegfried Sassoon
Isaac Rosenberg

Joseph Brodsky
Rob Morrow
Vasily Grossman
Stanley Kubrick
Viktor Frankl

And more, so many more, a cloud of witnesses
Whose names are written in gold on a scroll in Heaven

But somehow, in this world of beauty and truth
And humanity’s aspirations to the good
All you have found are bullhorns, trash fires, chants
Clinched fists, obscenities, lies, and shrieking hate

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                   “I Called to the Lord from my Narrow Prison”

                  “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison
                    and he answered me in the freedom of space.”

                       -Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl

Dark prisons of the mind are narrow too
A lack of light to fall upon a page
A page where hopes are written in words of hope
And spoken in hope through layers of shame and guilt

Dark prisons of the heart are narrow too
So reach into your mind, your heart, your soul
And even in the darkness of a narrow cell
Call softly to the Lord through the fetid air

Dark prisons of the soul are narrow too –
Perhaps you are the one who locked the door?

Open it.

Try.

Dear John,  many thanks for sharing this. I like your candour.  Yes, we live in very troubled times and most of us have been affected somehow but bad things don't last forever and even C19 will someday fade away, though gradually.

As a Zen person,  I accept in patience and humility,

I don't want to swim against the tide, life is in perpetual flux, I am never in control, I roll with the punches and, in doing this, I am able to keep myself afloat and also acquire some tranquillity in letting go.

To feel fear is to surrender to a power outside us.

If we can move away from the self and look beyond our defensive attitude, fear seems to have lesser control over us.  And I think the best antidote against fear is to reach out to love to make our lives meaningful and , at the same time, to care for others
who suffer more than we and  are in immediate need for consolation.  Viktor Frankl was right---when there's meaning, suffering ceases.

I do know mental health has loomed as a huge issue these days and a large number of young people have been severely affected and urgent intervention is necessary.

Dear John, you are a very intelligent person and I know you will prevail.  

Kindest wishes from Melb

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                 Hey! Hey! **! **! Mindless Chants Have Got to Go!

One seeks in vain for a “Hey! Hey! **! **!”
In the Bible, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita
In Tolkien, Lewis, Frankl, or Yevtushenko
In any declaration of the rights of man

The Greek philosophers never barked “Hey! Hey! **! **!”
Phillis Wheatley would have rebuked that vulgarity
Lincoln yapped no such drivel at Gettysburg
Elizabeth Bishop argued with wit and grace

“Hey! Hey! **! **!” is boorish and ineffectual
And would never be spoken by a true intellectual

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                               Who Shares Your Desk?

Hundreds of friends share my desk with me
Leaving coffee and wine and tobacco stains
All over the place, their thoughts cluttering my mind
Dreams and possibilities for my heart

Yevtushenko and his Silver Age poets
More Russian poets
Shakespeare in a worn college omnibus
Larry McMurtry
(One must understood that in Texas Lonesome Dove is a holy text)
The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse
The Oxford Book of Narrative Verse
The Oxford Book of Christian Verse
The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse
Leonard Cohen and his famous blue raincoat
Cavafy at an oblique angle to the universe
Wordsworth and Dorothy out for a walk
Plath
Keats
Sondheim
Montale
Hopkins
The Oxford Book of English Verse, the 1939 Q Edition
(Not that Q!)
The Oxford Book of English Verse, the 1999 Ricks Edition
Pasternak
Lewis
Frankl
The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse
Kafka
Herrick
Milosz
Virgil
Tennyson
Wavell and his manly flowers
Claude McKay
300 Tang poets (they do seem to drink a lot)
Mary Oliver and all her doggies

So there they are, in untidy rows and piles
(The Tang poets simply will not behave)
They are patient with my slovenliness
Pens, screwdrivers, a Rosary, two light bulbs
(I don’t know why)
A thermometer from my grandparents’ house

A 1962 Missale Romano and a toy fire truck
An Orthodox ikon from Tod of happy memory
A Tupperware coffee cup they don’t make anymore
Spare spectacles for seeing what comes next

Hundred of friends who ask the best of me
And who don’t mind my rows and piles of words
They talk to me, and I ask their advice
I pray I am not a disappointment to them

Or to you

the two seem paired -
the joy of: a whisker of brandy
into a cider: like a comet falls -
tail teasing the lip until
the final kosher glug of
the slit / turned neck of a bottle -

give me a cider and some ***...
i'll put on some music and
gladly iron -
imagining: this is really necessary:
as is drowning on a sinking ship!

brandy for the roses and
mild embarrassment -
no better place than england
to listen to german folk songs...

couple this with...
the already mentioned brandy...
the cider...
but there's a mild sudoku puzzle...
no. 11,298...
and the song to solve it with...
minnesang - neidhart:
meine din liechter schin...

like watching raindrops -
or something from the quantum
cinema - numbers just "magically" appear
in the missing blanks...
a 9 here... a 9 over there -
a 1 a 5 a 6... oh look!
like keeping a locket of spring
in this harrowing this most
demanding season of the year -

what of summer? am i waiting
for a harem to travel to?
no... curses these joys of pedantry -
and mild logic explorer's demands...
because i frankl find anything
new i write to be of:
any concern - even if mine was
to be included -

even poetryfoundation.org
hits a solid gold -
but most of the time:
it's just... a BA or an MA in english
literature that needs to be waved
before the digital "press"
fiddles with the writing...

one can expect to be exhausted from
complimenting focus avenues
of any further conversation -
no new word will this already
bankrupt lexicon unfold a carpet
of burgundy for:
otherwise it's still teaching
the old dog a new trick -

else: pragmatic love - versus transcendent
love -
poor romance - who would ever
want to return to idealism -
mein gott... i was an idealist when
it came to "love"...
lost baggage... a forgotten umbrella -
a footsore - a cotton mouth...
i will never revisit romantic love -
no ideal love: here or there -
from me or from her -
no middle-ground no no man's land...

thank god i am not a desired
catch in the realm of pragmatic love...
thank god that i await leaving this
world as a pauper:
at least the pauper considering
that i would call those rich to be
those who have invested in a lineage!

it's therefore most refreshing to think
that i have a practical love that
is practical because it doesn't have to love,
it doesn't have to idealise -
it has a memory - though...
that's its only downfall...
and when it was coupled with ***...
but how lucky i am to not feed
jealousy to not feed boredom from
a monogamy...
how i can "love" a passerby -
how i can "love" a stranger...
and have the most spectacular informal-formality...

but... as ever... these are the required
words to an otherwise...
apathetic time a-passing hunched...
akin to last night -
a crow flew over my house in the dead
of night and croaked -
which is: a rare event if you stay up
for most of the nights of the year -

then couple that with:
oh the joy of taking a **** not having to think
about the homosexual ecstasy...
and the *******... when standing and a tail
that once was...
perhaps... but it's the simple joy...
a woman should know the effects
of ******* and water...
when she... the shower...
well... i can't imagine any circumcised man
to know, even remotely,
the pleasure derived from... taking a ****...
literally...

once more: it's the lesser known pleasure...
or perhaps the major pleasure -
whatever it is...
it can be most gratifying as solo from
beginning to end.