"withholdings" poems
I thought when I'd turn to moss,
- when i had left myself to root.
When I had laid me down at last,
Than I'd not miss you endlessly.
I did not know I'd find my soul
dancing lithely in a flame.
A spanish dancer I've become
flickering my reds and blues.
I jump from wick to match to ash
and dance my saraband, contritely.
Yet I thought that when I sighed so lastly
undone would neatly fold away
like origami boutonniere
I'd be pressed between your book
something that you'd heave to shelf
and only gather dust and time.
Regrets, it seems, don't like
to die. So
I'm left haunted by my haunting.
And had I known before I wept
that remonstration without intention
was leaving all the notes unsung
by leaving catching in my voice.
I am singing in the mountains, madly
about what does not skip in the fields
and what does not drip from the sapling...
For love does neither frolic gayly
as much endures beyond repentance.
and I am left, on pebble shores
forever with my sharp withholdings
Stubbornly I held onto them,
Now they cut my like small diamonds.
I am glass and they are listless
wasted, mindless, pointless prattle.
Remind me fresh our penalties for
All the love we do not spend.
Sahn
7/01/2014
Jul 1, 2014
Jul 1, 2014 at 11:14 PM UTC
Perhaps this is
of my own doing
But I own it
Reflecting on the moments
I promised lifetimes
Knowing our future
Would always fall short
Of what I dreamed it to be
Settling for almost there
But not quite
You held a lot of the characteristics
For someone I could love
And I made up the rest
Passing the time
With you by my side
Playing house
Pretending that you were the one
Claiming miracles
Secretly disenchanted
By the idea of your presence
Consistent and steadfast
Your words in regards to me
Came from the heart
Even though
Everything else was a lie
Falsehoods weaved
Through the strands of our existence
Crumbling swiftly
With every move we made
Moving forward in vain
Until I could no longer bare
The awkward silence
Poisonous resentments
The lingering deceit
All the words I never said
Come out all at once
In a explosion of bile
Liquid thoughts
I can not contain
Streaming in your direction
Until the acid of my withholdings
Melts you alive
And shows you the door
Jan 27, 2019
Jan 27, 2019 at 11:56 PM UTC
It may sound cheesy
but I swear the whole world fell away
in the moment
that I was a princess
and he was a boy
as a prince
reaching out
without withholdings
Jun 16, 2017
Jun 16, 2017 at 1:23 PM UTC
the morning
chores,
a chorus,
a litany,
a recital,
of old, worn
words
familiar
well worn
ungloved
fists of firsts
a deep drink
of 11.5 ounces
of a cold spring
water shocking
in~vigor~ates
rebalancing a
sleep induced
deficit
a gloried yawn,
an exhalation
of the overnight
staleness, an
expulsion of
stale residue
residuals,
leftovers
of a prior
life, dismissed,
yet clinging
to your body
in vain
desirous
to be
remained
part of
the landscape
of your
plain
as part of
your
grandfatherly
accumulations
but there’s
only so much
room
in your
container,
and all
your liquidities
must be replaced
that takes space
for the
fresh withholdings
so.
drink deep,
replace the
fluids unique
that operate
your systems
and all the
rest
will flow,
stream easy
Mar 19, 2025
Mar 19, 2025 at 8:19 AM UTC
A call to action is not action
Other things that are not action include:
Expostulation rhetoric poetry
Fulmination logic contumely
Proposition dialectic philosophy
Tergiversation polemic and ideology
Actual action, he expostulated, is behavior -
Behavior that acts, he fulminated,
Actually impels or constrains the acts
Of other behavers
This is only done, he propounded,
By applying pressure to weak points
In these others’ safety or security
But acts of violence, he tergiversated,
Only spread or institutionalize violence.
Apart from physical violence, he droned on,
All people have two things they can use
To act with –
Time, and Money.
What you can do with time is specific
To your skills and situation
But what you can do with money
Has exactly two categories:
You can give it,
Or you can withhold it.
You may think withholding is automatic,
And it is, it is; but you are not the one doing it,
It is being withheld from you, in every pay period.
By far your largest charitable contribution
Is to institutionalized violence.
To attempt to withhold your money from these withholdings
Would be enormously risky, painful and destabilizing
In ways that calls to action and other forms of talk never are.
But for one body to impart momentum to another body,
It has to transfer energy, i.e. there must be a cost.
* * * * * * *
On the other hand:
It is currently fashionable to say
That we are not the same person over time
Everything is replaced every few years, personality is a myth
And according to the most advanced thinking
Consciousness is an accident that affects nothing.
In the real world, of course,
I’m the same person I was at age seven
When I first thought of myself as a person;
This knowledge is immediate and irrefutable.
We aren’t the sum total of replaceable parts,
And consciousness for most people is a long-lived thing
Not the space between tick-tocks of a metronome.
This conscious thing concerns itself almost entirely
With exteriors, which are almost the only thing to
Latch onto. But the ultimate ho-hum of the exteriors
Compared to the permanent (mortal) consciousness,
Which has no good bad up down or plus-minus incentives
Gets so obvious as to become ridiculous. This is Anti-Action.
Other terms include depression, cynicism, selfishness,
Detachment, solipsism, reality.
But you must care about the others,
Or you are contemptible. Even the Buddha
Said this…right? (It was a long time ago
And there may have been many edits.)
The real and only basis for action is Love,
That is to say you must care about the exteriors
Which is to say the undeniable mechanics of the world
And what happens to those who are acted upon. You Must.
Is this knowledge immediate and irrefutable?
Apr 2, 2020
Apr 2, 2020 at 3:58 PM UTC