Well, as you say, we live for small horizons:
We move in crowds, we flow and talk together,
Seeing so many eyes and hands and faces,
So many mouths, and all with secret meanings,--
Yet know so little of them; only seeing
The small bright circle of our consciousness,
Beyond which lies the dark.  Some few we know--
Or think we know. . .  Once, on a sun-bright morning,
I walked in a certain hallway, trying to find
A certain door: I found one, tried it, opened,
And there in a spacious chamber, brightly lighted,
A hundred men played music, loudly, swiftly,
While one tall woman sent her voice above them
In powerful sweetness. . . Closing then the door
I heard it die behind me, fade to whisper,--
And walked in a quiet hallway as before.
Just such a glimpse, as through that opened door,
Is all we know of those we call our friends. . . .
We hear a sudden music, see a playing
Of ordered thoughts--and all again is silence.
The music, we suppose, (as in ourselves)
Goes on forever there, behind shut doors,--
As it continues after our departure,
So, we divine, it played before we came . . .
What do you know of me, or I of you? . . .
Little enough. . . We set these doors ajar
Only for chosen movements of the music:
This passage, (so I think--yet this is guesswork)
Will please him,--it is in a strain he fancies,--
More brilliant, though, than his; and while he likes it
He will be piqued . . . He looks at me bewildered
And thinks (to judge from self--this too is guesswork)

The music strangely subtle, deep in meaning,
Perplexed with implications; he suspects me
Of hidden riches, unexpected wisdom. . . .
Or else I let him hear a lyric passage,--
Simple and clear; and all the while he listens
I make pretence to think my doors are closed.
This too bewilders him.  He eyes me sidelong
Wondering 'Is he such a fool as this?
Or only mocking?'--There I let it end. . . .
Sometimes, of course, and when we least suspect it--
When we pursue our thoughts with too much passion,
Talking with too great zeal--our doors fly open
Without intention; and the hungry watcher
Stares at the feast, carries away our secrets,
And laughs. . . but this, for many counts, is seldom.
And for the most part we vouchsafe our friends,
Our lovers too, only such few clear notes
As we shall deem them likely to admire:
'Praise me for this' we say, or 'laugh at this,'
Or 'marvel at my candor'. . . all the while
Withholding what's most precious to ourselves,--
Some sinister depth of lust or fear or hatred,
The sombre note that gives the chord its power;
Or a white loveliness--if such we know--
Too much like fire to speak of without shame.

Well, this being so, and we who know it being
So curious about those well-locked houses,
The minds of those we know,--to enter softly,
And steal from floor to floor up shadowy stairways,
From room to quiet room, from wall to wall,
Breathing deliberately the very air,
Pressing our hands and nerves against warm darkness
To learn what ghosts are there,--
Suppose for once I set my doors wide open
And bid you in. . . Suppose I try to tell you
The secrets of this house, and how I live here;
Suppose I tell you who I am, in fact. . . .
Deceiving you--as far as I may know it--
Only so much as I deceive myself.

If you are clever you already see me
As one who moves forever in a cloud
Of warm bright vanity: a luminous cloud
Which falls on all things with a quivering magic,
Changing such outlines as a light may change,
Brightening what lies dark to me, concealing
Those things that will not change . . . I walk sustained
In a world of things that flatter me: a sky
Just as I would have had it; trees and grass
Just as I would have shaped and colored them;
Pigeons and clouds and sun and whirling shadows,
And stars that brightening climb through mist at nightfall,--
In some deep way I am aware these praise me:
Where they are beautiful, or hint of beauty,
They point, somehow, to me. . . This water says,--
Shimmering at the sky, or undulating
In broken gleaming parodies of clouds,
Rippled in blue, or sending from cool depths
To meet the falling leaf the leaf's clear image,--
This water says, there is some secret in you
Akin to my clear beauty, silently responsive
To all that circles you.  This bare tree says,--
Austere and stark and leafless, split with frost,
Resonant in the wind, with rigid branches
Flung out against the sky,--this tall tree says,
There is some cold austerity in you,
A frozen strength, with long roots gnarled on rocks,
Fertile and deep; you bide your time, are patient,
Serene in silence, bare to outward seeming,
Concealing what reserves of power and beauty!
What teeming Aprils!--chorus of leaves on leaves!
These houses say, such walls in walls as ours,
Such streets of walls, solid and smooth of surface,
Such hills and cities of walls, walls upon walls;
Motionless in the sun, or dark with rain;
Walls pierced with windows, where the light may enter;
Walls windowless where darkness is desired;
Towers and labyrinths and domes and chambers,--
Amazing deep recesses, dark on dark,--
All these are like the walls which shape your spirit:
You move, are warm, within them, laugh within them,
Proud of their depth and strength; or sally from them,
When you are bold, to blow great horns at the world
This deep cool room, with shadowed walls and ceiling,
Tranquil and cloistral, fragrant of my mind,
This cool room says,--just such a room have you,
It waits you always at the tops of stairways,
Withdrawn, remote, familiar to your uses,
Where you may cease pretence and be yourself. . . .
And this embroidery, hanging on this wall,
Hung there forever,--these so soundless glidings
Of dragons golden-scaled, sheer birds of azure,
Coilings of leaves in pale vermilion, griffins
Drawing their rainbow wings through involutions
Of mauve chrysanthemums and lotus flowers,--
This goblin wood where someone cries enchantment,--
This says, just such an involuted beauty
Of thought and coiling thought, dream linked with dream,
Image to image gliding, wreathing fires,
Soundlessly cries enchantment in your mind:
You need but sit and close your eyes a moment
To see these deep designs unfold themselves.

And so, all things discern me, name me, praise me--
I walk in a world of silent voices, praising;
And in this world you see me like a wraith
Blown softly here and there, on silent winds.
'Praise me'--I say; and look, not in a glass,
But in your eyes, to see my image there--
Or in your mind; you smile, I am contented;
You look at me, with interest unfeigned,
And listen--I am pleased; or else, alone,
I watch thin bubbles veering brightly upward
From unknown depths,--my silver thoughts ascending;
Saying now this, now that, hinting of all things,--
Dreams, and desires, velleities, regrets,
Faint ghosts of memory, strange recognitions,--
But all with one deep meaning: this is I,
This is the glistening secret holy I,
This silver-winged wonder, insubstantial,
This singing ghost. . . And hearing, I am warmed.

     *     *     *     *     *

You see me moving, then, as one who moves
Forever at the centre of his circle:
A circle filled with light.  And into it
Come bulging shapes from darkness, loom gigantic,
Or huddle in dark again. . . A clock ticks clearly,
A gas-jet steadily whirs, light streams across me;
Two church bells, with alternate beat, strike nine;
And through these things my pencil pushes softly
To weave grey webs of lines on this clear page.
Snow falls and melts; the eaves make liquid music;
Black wheel-tracks line the snow-touched street; I turn
And look one instant at the half-dark gardens,
Where skeleton elm-trees reach with frozen gesture
Above unsteady lamps,--with black boughs flung
Against a luminous snow-filled grey-gold sky.
'Beauty!' I cry. . . My feet move on, and take me
Between dark walls, with orange squares for windows.
Beauty; beheld like someone half-forgotten,
Remembered, with slow pang, as one neglected . . .
Well, I am frustrate; life has beaten me,
The thing I strongly seized has turned to darkness,
And darkness rides my heart. . . These skeleton elm-trees--
Leaning against that grey-gold snow filled sky--
Beauty! they say, and at the edge of darkness
Extend vain arms in a frozen gesture of protest . . .
A clock ticks softly; a gas-jet steadily whirs:
The pencil meets its shadow upon clear paper,
Voices are raised, a door is slammed.  The lovers,
Murmuring in an adjacent room, grow silent,
The eaves make liquid music. . . Hours have passed,
And nothing changes, and everything is changed.
Exultation is dead, Beauty is harlot,--
And walks the streets.  The thing I strongly seized
Has turned to darkness, and darkness rides my heart.

If you could solve this darkness you would have me.
This causeless melancholy that comes with rain,
Or on such days as this when large wet snowflakes
Drop heavily, with rain . . . whence rises this?
Well, so-and-so, this morning when I saw him,
Seemed much preoccupied, and would not smile;
And you, I saw too much; and you, too little;
And the word I chose for you, the golden word,
The word that should have struck so deep in purpose,
And set so many doors of wish wide open,
You let it fall, and would not stoop for it,
And smiled at me, and would not let me guess
Whether you saw it fall. . . These things, together,
With other things, still slighter, wove to music,
And this in time drew up dark memories;
And there I stand.  This music breaks and bleeds me,
Turning all frustrate dreams to chords and discords,
Faces and griefs, and words, and sunlit evenings,
And chains self-forged that will not break nor lengthen,
And cries that none can answer, few will hear.
Have these things meaning?  Or would you see more clearly
If I should say 'My second wife grows tedious,
Or, like gay tulip, keeps no perfumed secret'?

Or 'one day dies eventless as another,
Leaving the seeker still unsatisfied,
And more convinced life yields no satisfaction'?
Or 'seek too hard, the sight at length grows callous,
And beauty shines in vain'?--

                                These things you ask for,
These you shall have. . . So, talking with my first wife,
At the dark end of evening, when she leaned
And smiled at me, with blue eyes weaving webs
Of finest fire, revolving me in scarlet,--
Calling to mind remote and small successions
Of countless other evenings ending so,--
I smiled, and met her kiss, and wished her dead;
Dead of a sudden sickness, or by my hands
Savagely killed; I saw her in her coffin,
I saw her coffin borne downstairs with trouble,
I saw myself alone there, palely watching,
Wearing a masque of grief so deeply acted
That grief itself possessed me.  Time would pass,
And I should meet this girl,--my second wife--
And drop the masque of grief for one of passion.
Forward we move to meet, half hesitating,
We drown in each others' eyes, we laugh, we talk,
Looking now here, now there, faintly pretending
We do not hear the powerful pulsing prelude
Roaring beneath our words . . . The time approaches.
We lean unbalanced.  The mute last glance between us,
Profoundly searching, opening, asking, yielding,
Is steadily met: our two lives draw together . . .
. . . .'What are you thinking of?'. . . My first wife's voice
Scattered these ghosts.  'Oh nothing--nothing much--
Just wondering where we'd be two years from now,
And what we might be doing . . . ' And then remorse
Turned sharply in my mind to sudden pity,
And pity to echoed love.  And one more evening
Drew to the usual end of sleep and silence.

And, as it is with this, so too with all things.
The pages of our lives are blurred palimpsest:
New lines are wreathed on old lines half-erased,
And those on older still; and so forever.
The old shines through the new, and colors it.
What's new?  What's old?  All things have double meanings,--
All things return.  I write a line with passion
(Or touch a woman's hand, or plumb a doctrine)
Only to find the same thing, done before,--
Only to know the same thing comes to-morrow. . . .
This curious riddled dream I dreamed last night,--
Six years ago I dreamed it just as now;
The same man stooped to me; we rose from darkness,
And broke the accustomed order of our days,
And struck for the morning world, and warmth, and freedom. . . .
What does it mean?  Why is this hint repeated?
What darkness does it spring from, seek to end?

You see me, then, pass up and down these stairways,
Now through a beam of light, and now through shadow,--
Pursuing silent ends.  No rest there is,--
No more for me than you.  I move here always,
From quiet room to room, from wall to wall,
Searching and plotting, weaving a web of days.
This is my house, and now, perhaps, you know me. . .
Yet I confess, for all my best intentions,
Once more I have deceived you. . . I withhold
The one thing precious, the one dark thing that guides me;
And I have spread two snares for you, of lies.

It was not a heart, beating.
That muted boom, that clangor
Far off, not blood in the ears
Drumming up and fever

To impose on the evening.
The noise came from outside:
A metal detonating
Native, evidently, to

These stilled suburbs nobody
Startled at it, though the sound
Shook the ground with its pounding.
It took a root at my coming

Till the thudding shource, exposed,
Counfounded in wept guesswork:
Framed in windows of Main Street's
Silver factory, immense

Hammers hoisted, wheels turning,
Stalled, let fall their vertical
Tonnage of metal and wood;
Stunned in marrow. Men in white

Undershirts circled, tending
Without stop those greased machines,
Tending, without stop, the blunt
Indefatigable fact.

To finish anything in entirety requires a full circle- and goodbye is a picky eater. Good is the pieces of pie fully enjoyed already- don't forget the fingertips good. The ones licked crisp and clean from the plasticware every time. While bye remains the uneaten slices spoiling silence in the kitchen. Crumbs too stubborn to move along, to move anywhere at all. Notice these slices never once greeted each other on a dinner plate- and there is no place for distance during dessert.

2. Goodbye is invisible ink scribbled too quickly for certainty. Proper sendoffs deserve the type of visibility that billboards form. So if you have the audacity to send seven letters my way disguised as our final embrace- I will unwrap your formality, like 5am Christmas morning, and pretend I'm on the naughty list. Hidden messages lack a sense of transparency that leaves only second guessing and farewells should need no crystal *****.
Goodbyes are as good as guesswork- and we are not fortune tellers.

3. Goodbye implies loss or rejection, but well wishes are meant for times
when loss is undeniably absent. Wishing wells bathe separation with good intentions- each copper coin anointed an underwater masterpiece.
While goodbye addresses detachment with partial reflections, splitting waves too strict for clarity. So all I see are the ripples of me spread too thin, the pieces of me scattered in every direction. Goodbye wishes no one well.

4. Goodbye is simply one word. Goodbye is not naturally destructive. Goodbye is no vocal cord villain.
Words are neither inherently good nor bad because we ascribe their significance, but evidence suggests a one word farewell serves innocent ears unjust death sentences.

5. The moment you allow I love you to skydive from your tongue, the word goodbye steals the parachutes mid-launch causing fatal free fall to artificial grass your hands never actually planted. This land is lunar rock rare- desolate when day breaks.
Goodbye is not fertilizer for greener pastures- rather an open invitation for wildfire to reduce the cosmos to ashes.

6. Endings are inevitable and sometimes quite necessary. And I'm not suggesting we prolong foregone conclusions. But our parting words need not necessarily be regrettable. Goodbyes are often stressed in tragic spectacles only designed for Broadway stages and sometimes all that's needed
is a genuine platform to stand on to say something like-- I'll miss you or I'm not ready for this or I can't do this anymore.


7. Goodbye is not a last resort.
Last resorts lead to final destinations you never come home from and you were never home, you were never home for me, you were always goodbye. Goodbye was your one way ticket to paradise, the kingdom your words worshiped and call me a traitor if you must, but the paradox you fundamentally found comfort in is tyranny trapped in one breath.
And that's never been comforting enough for me to believe in, never been real enough for me to hold.
Goodbye is sweet sorrow- one hollow word that makes your smile hurt.
It's solid rain on sunny days, stolen hearts on lay away. It's two syllables that were forced to hold hands that were never ever friends to begin with.
Goodbye is an oxymoron- and it will never justify your warm hello.

Misplaced feelings of lust and aggression.
A fresh new take on an old depression.
Watch as we make mistakes on purpose.
Hear us proclaim our own lives as worthless.

Misjudged values and dusty pedestals stacked chest-high with the best nonfacts - cracked down the middle.

None of this was ever about you;
just a made-up answer to an unknown riddle.

The storm on the eastern  coast will descend
into a grey day bringing showers
and thunderstorms
filling your picnic basket as you go about
finding shelter under trees and shrubs
gone on holiday to the south of france.

bring your brollies
raincoats and gumboots just in case
you day darkens into a cyclone
and your lover leaves you
abandoned with the sunrise
emerging in your life

take care as you meander through
the floods as the gates open
and your emotions spill out
in poetic metaphors
all over the page
******* readers into the whirlpool
of hidden symbols and mechanisms
that can choke you out

as you watch the weather swish by
without you noticing.

never be deceived by the weathermans wares
at times he may play god
with your days diary entries
but all he can do really
is work like a fortune-teller
using guesswork as a device.

Author Notes
One giant metaphor for what happens in your life if you believe in the weatherman!
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

Maybe if my therapist was a Tyrannosaurus Rex
I would feel more comfortable speaking out loud,
Knowing that he wouldn't understand a word I'm saying, anyway

"I wish someone had given me an instruction manual for myself... When I was 5 my mom was concerned because I had no friends and it didn't bother me at all...
It would have been nice to know about my self-destruct button...
One day, when I was 16, I forgot to put on my bullet-proof vest and a beautiful boy (who had my heart on a keychain) shot me straight through the skull. No mercy... Is there a mirror around so I can see if there's still a hole there?
(I'd point to a picture) ... He hit me once.
... When I was 12, two girls who were supposed to be my friends held my head underwater in the swimming pool. And the adults just sat there and watched from the sidewalk as I struggled for air...
You know, it would have been nice if someone could've explained the functions I was designed to perform...
Because at this point
It's all guesswork-- am I mentally unstable?"

And the T-Rex would look up from his book, glasses shoved against his nose
And he would say,
"You've just spent the last 45 minutes talking to a dinosaur."

and often nights? i -
i’ll have no trouble
it’s the screens that
do me in.

the fallen angel
the lithesome, spent glow
of do-overs
it just
does me in.

i am too possessed
by mercurial vapor
a dead self
at 2 and 3 and 4am
egging on, asking
“keep looking? it’s
somewhere in the archives.
it has to be.”

i promised, i promised
i wouldn’t, i promised
or I’d spend months
years, decades of life
living in the guesswork
the in-betweens
lying in the pathways
between the thought
and the reflex.

i could scroll a whole
lifetime away
in wanting.
it’s the screens that
do me in.

Ever close your eyes and see where you are?
        it’s that vision again-
        the Earth spinning slowly among the stars
        and you’re that pinprick in a pinprick on the surface
        and all around the darkness is expanding out to nothing-
and you can’t help but wonder where exactly you really are?
Ever read something and feel as if you’re about to cry?
        that stab in of breath when you realize that all we have is guesswork
        that we’re sitting at the edge of exponential
        and no one knows where we’re going next?
It’s so hard to breathe when every moment you’re aware, you look to see if anyone else is choking but no one seems to care, It’s terrifying when you walk the world seeing through the smoke and mirrors, knowing how close we come to falling off the rope every time the wind stirs, It’s irreversible, It’s not pretty, It’s all beautiful, It’s euphoria and dysphoria all at once and you just
Hope
That all of these evers will somehow let you leave the world better
When you become an ever too.

“I know that summer ends when my mustards die,”
It’s a secret I was told that belongs to the seasons.
Few alive know of how to even predict weathers:
“Walk you carefully to the edge of a tree’s shadow
Then raise your hand high above the ground
look at the sun until your eyes line up with it—“
He explained to me like an old mathematician
So occupied my father seemed with his calculations
Sometimes just to prove to his neighbors and friends
that tomorrow’s rain comes exactly at three p.m.
Those jagged hands waving up and down
Like a weather vane looking for wind’s direction
I was only a young boy or so I vaguely remembered
When he called me home earlier than he usually did
The seven years old boy cried, refused to listen
To his fathers’ nonsense about a coming ice storm.
“I saved you at the rightful age so you can play on
Or else I would lose you before you grow old
In the shelling hailstones of that one July afternoon.”
He brought this story up to us every single December
His magic in telling the weather hasn’t changed since
It’s me who began to slowly forget all his gesticulating
Under the searing sun while I stared and listened
To him rambling quietly that a rain should come soon.

What Happens After Death?

Bathing daily as I do,
Listening to the radio,
Emergencies, catastrophes,
Boats sinking or aflame or both:
What happens after death’s end breath?

‘The poisoned lung… the old, the young…
The fire set on purpose,
One hundred fifty-nine lives lost’
Through living skin I take it in:
Corrupted ethics, trials.  Why?
August weather’s all but frosty.
I, with plethora of food in fridge,
Them there rigid,
Stench of rot.
I, desk full of paper, notes;
Money to buy more.
Stuff stuffed into each shelf and drawer;
The closet door can hardly close for all those clothes,
And I, asking ‘bout death and after.
Am I daft to wonder, wander into guesswork’s trap?
Or have I found a craft to cope,
Yoga’s science and art of hope?
For something must exist - a consciousness
Not here, but in a sphere somewhere.
It isn’t logical
That something can become a nil –
Something that has had a pulse.
What else makes sense?
This senseless chaos I sense is not chaos
But some inner justice
Somewhere, somehow in the universes
                                                              of creation!
In a sudden quickening of thinking
In the probabilities of speculation
Here I sit in bath’s ablution, asking questions
About what happens after death?

What Happens After Death? 8.9.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin
arlenecorwinpoetry.com/duanespoetree.com/Youtube

My friend said/
I used to be/
A fat, depressed/
*******/
Surprised that I/
Didn’t try to/
Off myself in/
Newtown Park Flats/
Eight years later/
Two divorces/
Four more kids/
A different toilet/
Ain’t **** changed/
Across the water/
Headspin cyclone/
I didn’t walk here/
Enemy still there/
In reflection/
Soaking wet, &/
Talking backwards/
Limited guesswork/
Notes on fridges/
Survivors’ guilt/
I am Hangman/
Superweirdo/
What’s my power?/
Wearing a rope/
Around my neck?/
It’s my leash, dogg/
Hidden dragon/
Tip of the iceberg/
Keep me submerged.../

Frozen in time/
Floating to the surface/
You don’t wanna know/
Surf’s up on a tidalwave./

What a lovely walk I'm on
as long as I manage not to fall
down these pits and
cracks in the path.

And I, too, would give you the round
path of my love, without end,
but instead I can only offer that of time,
shattered and not endless,
though grand and
sweet just the same.

If my hand and my will were one and the same
I would reweave the strands of fate
and bring you to me in your sleep, in your light,
and here on a lazy day our minds would
play and delight and create.

My will however is only in my feet, so far,
with their certainty and their guesswork,
their endurance, their finding
and their leaving behind.

Lit this slash pile one week ago,
a small pile as far as slashing and burning goes
Since then it’s melted,
rained, and snowed
Unusual and erratic behavior for January
and February in this country
Country that the Salish would’ve known
to move out of before winter set in.
Shouldn’t be anything other
than frozen and buried in snow
but nothing acts now in the way
it used to, and no one can predict
what’s coming, yet we keep reporting
our guesswork like we know something,
still playing make-believe with our
ideas about control, specifically about
how we’d like to be in it—
maybe because we like the idea of
stability so much and wish we had it
despite our tireless irony.


And here is this little steam-***,
this natural wonder of vitality and perseverance,
issuing one more quiet reminder
of how little we know of our actions
or the cycles they’ve started.

Above all
I thank the stars
For the gift of wayfinding.

Above it all
I gaze higher still
Or to the sunlit valleys below
To find my way.

The gift of terrifying awe as Orion's belt peers through the trees, bringing South.
The gift of sure confidence as I point the Dippers out to others, bringing North.
The gift of guesswork as we discover behind which peak the sun will rise, bringing East.
The gift of inevitable hush that descends along with her, bringing West.

The gift of heavy elements
Composing all
And my body
And these eyes
That were also made for
Reading maps,
Reading signs,
Reading animal sigils.

Above all
I thank the stars
For teaching me
To be less blind
And to find My Self
In the world.

Where there was once plenty
Lines are now full
The shelves are empty
but who are the fools?
It's all guesswork
At best
How far does the mind stretch

An invisible force is the source
Or are people the flaws
Can't quite quantify the unknown
When pushed
Have we not grown

Panic sets in
Now technically we're four
meals away from anarchy

Suddenly my life isn't all that it was meant to be.
No good doings and no Hell that I've come back from.
And a plane flies, people asking why it has to be like this.
It's just another day.
Take the guesswork out and you will know what you've been dealt.

Her lipstick falls off.

A shimmering substance,
A tear falls, your powdery limbs & and ******* melt,
the perfume spoiling is a sickening way to lure and rock your mind full of distant graves and more distant roots,whispering ,
screaming but after your eyelashes kiss.

Lips I feel lighter notes and sweeter songs are due best to avoid, awards jangle from the greying clips and scraps below your softer feathers.

Oh?
Is this cashmere, a feeling lost to below the old world?

Pray-chance tell me it is,
the knife and my pool of blood underneath my heart,
just above the parking lot.

In the bar,
my eyes
kiss pool cues.
In time I'll walk away.

filling up, coping up
beneath a guesswork of a frightened mind
quiet, yet moving
sad, yet hopeful
deciphering fright, coming up roses
as we read and hear, wise stoic phrases
diverting fear, kindling gloom
one day, what’s used to be normal will resume