limelight and fireworks.

are you content with flashes of limelight and fire works,
content with shop windows filled with arcane delights
where strangely dressed people of no time or place
exude an odour of spices and strange fruits
wearing the raiments of yesterdays pantomime.

hideously ugly, as nearer most to hell,
and yet as luridly beautiful as sin itself,
can you see the beauty in this slum
despite the muck and squalor
there is life………………

are you content with the soft lights of shaded lamps
content to laugh and dribble at the mouth,
congregate in the vile uninhabitable tenements
where the memories of old sins
are destroyed with the madness of new.


are you content to whip yourself,
for suffering brings knowledge,
and knowledge brings understanding,
and with thoughtful understanding
at last will come contentment.


are you content with flashes of limelight and fireworks…..

greg

I have been thinking along these lines myself these days.

"despite the muck and squalor
there is life................"

and

"are you content to whip youself,
for suffering brings knowledge,
and knowledge brings understanding,
and with thoughtful understanding
at last will come contentment."

The world, especially America where I live, is completely insane, all "limelight and fireworks," and yet it is still beautiful and worth saving; it is all we have.

People just want to live; to eat and drink, make a little love if they get lucky, have a little fun if and while they can, just have a little life and not have trouble. I hope we can survive the limelight and fireworks, the shock and awe, and at last find that contentment which comes with thoughtful understanding. Our lives are worth saving; it is worth trying.

I have been reading your poem and thinking about it since you first posted it. I want you to know I think I understand and can appreciate the poem, and I know I understand and appreciate the skill and wisdom of the poet.

I never quite know what to say about poems. I say what I have to say in poetry, and beyond that, if it needed explaining I would consider the poem a failure, in that I would have failed to say what I meant to say. So I say everything in poetry and hate and resist any sort of explanation; ultimately all poetry is inexplicable by nature and definition; it is an arrangement of words which is an artistic whole, organic, complete in itself, objective in its being.

So I say when I like a poem, but I hate to pin the butterfly, classify experience, deconstruct that which is constructed and is as a thing-in-itself.

What I mean to say is that I "get" this poem, it speaks to me, it communicates, it is successful; additionally I find the elasticity and synchronicity of reality, of parallel experience, is lifted up to me here in your words, in that I am thinking these things myself at the same time you are.

I love how the question in this poem is a statement! You know the way old teachers in England ask questions of students? They make a statement, really, and then demand confirmation of that statement at the end, with an "isn't it?" there to which we must agree. Indeed we need neither agree nor disagree: the statement stands, and refutation is situationally impossible. Es ist was es ist.

My dear Cousin Greg, thank you for being here with me, and for these wise and artful words of yours.

Love,

+Stevie

g`day dear cousin steven, thank you for your generous reply.
it seems to me you have the ability to see the very soul of my words,
‘’this arrangement of words which is an artistic whole’’,
i am not surprised by your synchronized sense for dear cousin, you were foremost in my mind when i penned this piece. to me your own verses of late have been filled with a suffering, a thirst for understanding and contentment. yes dear steven it is good to be alive, despite the muck and squalor; and it is an endless pleasure to be back after such a lengthy absence. keep well keep well old friend and have another drink on me, respect and love always, take care greg

Very deep ... most impressive. great
misty