My friend is sick and cannot hear me now And I despair that she may never hear But she is strong and should come back somehow To be as far as ever she was near
Yet there is something longer wrong with me And I know what we chase must run away But I tried to catch immortality!
Now I sort things toward the end of my stay
I feel the inevitability Of the end of temporariness when This man we know will simply cease to be Which is why I love now instead of then
When I become burnt offering my dust Becomes part of your backyard as it must
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Apr 12, 2009, 3:33 pm
Economy of Emotion
The salient feature of the family I grew up in was something like resentment
There was much to be resented heaven knows
And I have always feared the presentiment Of getting to be like them ultimately Since even in a vacuum resentment grows Along with everything else as we expand
In spite of this blood curse I resent nothing
My supply is only equal to demand I cannot afford to resent anything
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Apr 11, 2009, 2:28 am
Spring Swing
Meeting and mating as Melville might say Making it all up along the hard way Gambling the evening to win back the day Living and giving then taking it back By getting each other into the sack Getting depressed on the merry go round Dancing with death into the underground
I know a place of peace Where I have sanctuary But my own defamer Whose head is extra small arms extra long Is waiting and baiting By way of disclaimer There
Yet he will never stop me in my song Not while your affirmation defends me And like a mayfly cease To be tomorrow as the very Manifestation of what is wrong But today his defamation offends me Or rather bores me actually
I heard he met with an accident though
I get depressed where one and one stay two I want to swing and go crazy with you
A dried strip of human jerky Shrewdly seeing me as lost Tried to carve me like a turkey Never mind what it might cost Me since she could neither care nor see But I would not let her Daresay I know better
I further daresay she will miss me
And in the end does anything mean something Or does nothing mean anything after all?
The world is too big or else I am too small Yet in fitting nothing I get everything The world does not flatter And size does not matter I fit and I get what I can out of it
So there is where I would leave it today But for the prestidigitation Of what they call reality The manual manipulation Of how as what it means to be Yet what it means I cannot say nor know
Therefore I need not leave it anyway Accepting one and one will still stay two In spring the thing I want to do is play I want to swing and go crazy with you Meeting and mating as Melville might say
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Apr 8, 2009, 2:03 pm
A Night Like This
for Leah and Jessie
The planes paint pink stripes on the sky At sunset with their contrail tails The moon remains when they pass by The moon remains when all else fails
As all else fails I realize The failure might be my Myopia my dying eyes My tears too fresh to dry
Only a failure to see The mortality of me
The moon remains and makes Me laugh at myself when I cry The moon has what it takes
To lift my eyes for each a kiss Both nurturing and cold
To bathe me in a silver bliss The sun once gave when it was gold To get me through a night like this
Not to laugh last nor yet laugh best but just Take my place in peace at last in the dust Whence I came so thence I am bound to go
I do not blame nor do I know Anybody nor anything I was just looking for meaning
And I have never found it
There seems no way around it The moon remains when I pass by The moon remains when all else fails
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Apr 6, 2009, 12:45 am
No Limit
A star sounds like a silver bell to me Clean socks can be a form of ecstasy As anything is if you notice it And if you notice there is no limit There is no limit at all anywhere Unless you make one up and put it there
Pursuing wisdom while following fools We put up too long with their made up rules
Now was fooled by then but not anymore Now is what is and is what was was for Then was against but now is all for it As it is now when then would ignore it Now knows but asks we find ourselves anew First we must be to be able to do
There is no limit at all anywhere Unless we make one up and put it there
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Apr 4, 2009, 6:48 am
Welcome
tayata om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha
The starting point is the vanishing point The place where you disappear Whether out on the street or in the joint You are now and you are here: Thoughts are free! Be! And thank you for coming to be with me
Here in this place where I do what I please Where I think you might as well do it too The cure for what ails you is the disease I share where here is everywhere with you
Madness is neither sadness nor gladness But both of these and in between as well Like purgatory with a hint of hell And a little leavening of heaven
Or if places like that do not exist Then madness is the rainbow in the sky A message too meaningful to resist As if anybody should ever try
Here I exist So why resist?
Here there is no prose This is one of those Places
And I never chose it to be this way Because it is just this way anyway: The outer extremes of inner spaces
Welcome to my poetry
The starting point is the vanishing point The place where we disappear Whether out on the street or in the joint We are now and we are here: Thoughts are free! Be! And thank you for coming to be with me
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Apr 2, 2009, 7:02 pm
Blessed are the Mad
Blessed are the mad is what I maintain Those to whom one does not need to explain Because they are mad they already know If you are not mad I think you should go
We cannot help but look but look away Forgetting to remember what to say But that would be as if anyone knew And anyway what could anyone do? They said what it was was kill or be killed Looking away as if looks could kill me As the will of God nor did they bill me For what when I look back was to thrill me And the lucky little bastard remains To feel empathy for their labor pains By which the blood is shaken if not spilled
If looks could kill me looking to thrill me No one was billed since both of us needed This primal therapy which succeeded In lifting us up from the commonday Which we found out was nothing but today Left down on the ground it refused to stay But rose anyway if only to see What it might be like if it were to be Noncommonday noncommonality Comfortable in nonconformity Fashionably formed in deformity
Diminutive within enormity
Formed in my fashion they tell me by God Walking the catwalk but meowed at as odd Which seems odd if I were designed by God Since God would be a lot odder than me
Blessed are the mad is what I maintain Those to whom one does not need to explain Because they are mad they already know If you are not mad I think you should go
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Mar 28, 2009, 6:26 pm
Mantra of the Moment
for Bernard Betts
Behold I will do a new thing Now Be bold in the song I will sing How The lotus unfolds my specificity
Everyone has their story And this unexpected pleasure to exist Now is here and now is there none to resist
Everyone has their glory If only they should care to see If only they would dare to be
So here I am now here is one volunteer To be right now right here The only time and place There is in time and space And when and where is not means none to fear
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Mar 26, 2009, 11:55 pm
Franziskanerlied
I have never yet always yet never yet Always and ever and only met
You
O lotus blooming deep inside of me Though the clouds hide you I know you love me
Do you know I love you? Believe it as true As the only truth I dare to know Though I know nothing and even so
The evolution of the real The revolution of the wheel
As inescapable as a rolling stone Some fall from the wheel and as many are thrown But I want to ride it dizzily with you
The revolution of the wheel
You
The evolution of the real
You
Though the clouds hide you I know you love me Do you know I love you? Believe it as true
You
O lotus blooming deep inside of me
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Mar 20, 2009, 1:53 am
Night and Day
I
Night: Lonely Town
I sought now I see my society As conventional as a thing can be Some simulacrum of reality Imagined by those who are not too smart To be bullies and to get what they can While they can within the foreshortened span Of this tragic comedy known as man
Custodians of conventional taste They see no tripe need ever go to waste Feeding us stomachs at least if not brains Then throw the odd bone for our labor pains And yet they never remember the heart We felt once beat the most important thing The cause we sang and the crusade we sing Even now (who knows how?): the heart sings on Until all the going becomes the gone
When we have learned desire is suffering The hard way whether giving or getting When the regretting turns to forgetting Then there is nothing at all anymore Except when to wonder what it was for Just as I wondered all the hard way down Lonely Street as I wandered Lonely Town
Soon it will be over and no one cares As it is ending for wheres nor for theres But are mostly relieved by the ending Embracing death and even befriending Nothingness if but relief from the pain Of the world devolving on us again Resolving the riddle of revolving As whatever sends seems to be sending A belated greeting to Lonely Town
What goes up (so it was true!) must come down
II
Day: Reminder to the Future
When I walk downtown small children smile at me
Escaping their minders for a moment they Wave at me furtively as if they know I Am able to make white rose petals appear As if out of nowhere I can make them fly By wonders so small their minders may not see But their minders have been charmed now anyway By a spell which only small children may hear And not with their ears but with their hearts is how
I take what they call reality and make It stretch with my special elasticity By which it may change its form and yet not break Reality is obedient to me Since I know it is not real but is a fake A false front agreed to by society
Or you could think of it like a pie crust which Worries that its filling might be too thrilling As well as providing a protective form To keep the secrets of childhood from spilling Where the present is hidden under the norm The form of which originates in the past We will eat this pie but save the crust for last As reminder to the future of the now
III
Chorus Mysticus
Like death going mad is like being born It means I am outside of all of this If God would be (at least to me) then I Would then have the rose along with the thorn As I know the curse I would know the kiss At least not be as lonely as I die And now I am mad I may say: he is
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Mar 16, 2009, 8:27 pm
Take It
That terrifying plausibility Of imminent human propinquity Seems an overwhelming idea when I Lost in a mirror I cannot deny Wonder if this moment happens to be That moment in which this happens to me
I think I want it but then I fear it But then I never really came near it Except maybe now which scares me somehow More than I thought I would ever allow Myself to admit to myself alone Let alone letting anyone hear it
Is this some sort of existential test If I exist and if there are such things Meant to muddle my mind or to clear it Troubling my waters through troublesome springs Which are after all more lonely than fall? Would that it could appeal more than appall
If the opportunity arises That moment in which this happens to me To take life along with its surprises To whatever outcome happens to be Scripted for me or else is randomly As I am in a random universe
I will take it then: for better or worse
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Mar 14, 2009, 11:29 pm
Still
He was a father who could not Care for those sociological Cares of fatherhood so forgot Things like marriage and family Or recalled them illogical
Tasting then tiring of such stuff Satiety required no more But found divorce was not enough Both spouse and son would have to go Out his G. I. Bill tract house door
So out both went and as we went He sought then bought abandonment Of such responsibility As his law could make go away Rejecting and ruining me Through the best lawyer he could pay
But there was biological Anomaly and this was me Cut adrift then to sink today Responsible to nobody I suppose
Yet the only reason you know He was at all is I say so (This strikes me funny some odd way)!
And if he is he is in hell Else nowhere Or possibly purgatory Proving there Far as ever away from me
While my revenge is living well When that seems something I could do Trying to forget this story Heaven knows But I tell you since you know too How it goes
I clung to his leg and he kicked me aside Bored with his blue baby and his broken bride Then went out to kill And I love him: still
(Satiety requires no more)
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Mar 14, 2009, 5:35 pm
Where Man and God are One
Why does Man create God in the first place Then make him so meanly grudging in grace? Though Man may create whatever he wants It is this problem of God which most haunts As if of some need of authority Though I find quite enough of that for me In Man's Godriddenly shared history To last two lifetimes of feeling absurd
We try to find some meaning in timespace And say "in the beginning was the word" Liking to read and liking to order Others about for fear of disorder We end up being more disorderly Denying our place in the family We hold ourselves aloof because we think At the waterhole where other apes drink
I would rather not be an ape at all Would like there to be a God when I fall But I just hope he is kinder than we Are and as much misunderstood as me To see by these same eyes by which I see That we two are only one and the same The self which I call by another name But the self which is myself after all
When questions are begun Then the other comes in There the answers begin Where Man and God are one
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Mar 8, 2009, 6:31 pm
Spring (After All)
Some say God is love even as they despise me I say love is God made real to realize me
Whatever God is might be a surprise to you To me and to those who say God is love yet hate
But some might not like to be surprised like you do Or they might realize to their surprise too late That love is all that really mattered after all
I thank the God of love for not despising me I thank the love of God for realizing me
My spring before the winter but after the fall The knife of life the ledge on edge the rate of fate
On this one breath by this one heartbeat how and when What never happens happens every now and then When love is all that really matters after all
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Feb 27, 2009, 5:24 pm
Between the Lines
for my son and brother poet: for Steven Curtis Lance, Jr.
Waxing waning moon ebbing flowing tide The rising and the falling of the breast The variable beating of the heart The stirring of the soul within its cage The flutter of the feathers of its wings
The silence falls as we await the start Of the sound which a soul makes when it sings When poetry pours like blood from the page As sacrificial uttermost and best Of one whose soul has been brought to the test And come transfigured through the other side Battle-scarred more beautiful than before
Embracing with souls as arms open wide The now of this life to live it the more At this point neither ahead nor behind Between when and then in the now again Between the lines where the secrets are lain
The interstitial spaces of the mind Where others find what we cannot explain And even know it better than we could Are the places we are best understood Between the lines where the secrets remain Ready to be revealed to anyone's Mind who can conceive one as many ones:
The meaning of what we cannot explain In all its multiplicity we find Between the lines where the secrets are lain
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Feb 22, 2009, 4:05 pm
For Cindy
I am a very troubled man but You are no trouble at all
We two could break through no matter what Blooming like spring in the fall I value your experience And you could make the difference Between the dark and light to me A woman of destiny As you are right here and yes right now
Whatever you are to me It seems to be important somehow
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Feb 22, 2009, 1:16 pm
At the Feast
I guess Whatever else they get Humans do not get along With each other at least Not well
Chastened by morality To serve And yet Hastened by mortality To swerve
They cannibalize at the feast When those who serve and swerve have nerve Flesh where the soul has been released Fresh from a wound which can never be healed Red from the white where the bone is revealed As just the dessert they deserve
The soul is something cannibals can do Without since it seems too good to be true
And each of the cannibals was A free spirit too Who thought that because It was offered free The soul as a whole With its heart-shaped hole Must be worthless when it happened to be Priceless
And what a thing is really worth Beyond its price Is learned they say through death at birth In paradise Or hell If there is such a thing
If there is anything
I only know the soul on earth Knows quite enough of suffering If only for a little while By which we learn a little style By which we earn a knowing smile With each other at least
Oh well
I know I know nothing Except perhaps regret As a beast at the feast But the feast is not over yet
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Feb 21, 2009, 8:07 pm
People Who Are Loved
I prefer Evolutionary success To Revolutionary excess
I observe the balanced to be True As it were
When The elements in harmony Are What is
Then That is Now in equipoise: Music without noise
People who are loved seem to me To be true By virtue Of their centeredness in feeling worthwhile
Appreciative and appreciated Feeling like loving and worth loving too As validating as validated As they do
Whenever I see this I sigh and smile And search up the sky for a certain blue Star My talisman and touchstone of order
Which though I cannot reach it yet remains A focal point ( . ) above the disorder Surrounding me as payment for the pains Which I have painfully taken
As so ordered And disordered By sheer and mere necessity
Certain blue star of uncertainty Till greater light awaken Successful evolutionary Shine on the godforsaken
Across the lonely universe tonight May people who are loved look up and see Certain blue stars if of uncertain light And not despair of their uncertainty
If this is all we are then let us be If we are all we are enough for me
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Feb 18, 2009, 3:37 pm
Waiting for the Rain
An empty bus shrugs sighing through the cold As a siren screams its tale must be told Of somebody in trouble or in pain A tale of woe and here we go
It is night again I only see a few stars but they are Each one quite star enough to be a star Featured in my film of reality That which though it is not seems real to me
Only stars remain Everybody goes inside except for The smokers who hang out outside the door But it feels too cold for me around here Inside there outside here too far too near
Waiting for the rain It feels too cold for me everywhere now So for what is left as time will allow I will go to my room sit on my bed Turn up the heat and roll my own instead
Encyclopedia and dictionary At the ready There I will be safe in my sanctuary Holding steady
I will explore the universe all night long Like an effect in search of its cause And in the morning I will sing you a song Of what could have been if not what was Does anybody really know?
But should you care to be tonight with me I always enjoy some good company Some pot and a pot of a lot of hot tea And it seems real enough to be Dancing in our socks on the hardwood floor Where the smokers hang in inside the door Where flower meets flame and less blooms into more In my room in the womb of my family
It is night again Only stars remain Waiting for the rain
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Feb 15, 2009, 6:39 am
Mutuality
I hate that feeling
All tingly and waiting around Up near the ceiling And when I fall I fall so hard that I No longer want to live awhile (just die) As though I have been ground into the ground
I hate that feeling Is so revealing
As I am shown to be as needy as Anyone else is or will be or was Of others which bothers me terribly To share this shared self-insufficiency When I had always hoped to be A self-sufficient me
But there seems nothing I can do But share myself with you
And should you share yourself with me That might work out to be Rather appealing Actually
The equipoise of mutuality
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Feb 13, 2009, 1:56 pm
For the Philosophical Society
at Santiago Canyon College
The consolation of philosophy As once it comforted Boethius When he was in trouble something like me Is reason for the both and each of us I hope to me as him it comes a she
And if as Wittgenstein would seem to say And the meaning of a word is its use Then I mean to use the word "love" someday Mortality insufficient excuse To not at least make an attempt to play Though that word might fail me and she be it I will be better for thinking of it
And my condition is temporary
Philosophy can help odd pieces fit I put them together as best I can Consoled by philosophy knowing that Though I am just a temporary man I still have my reason no matter what No matter it is unreasonable Nor do I know what "what" means anyway
Always surprising but always rising Philosophy seems unseasonable Always rising but always surprising Asking of what is what came before it In this my consolation is like me
My consolation my philosophy
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Feb 9, 2009, 4:31 am
Sunset in Three Scenes
I
An angry young man out looking for trouble Has shaved his whole round white head down to stubble Above and below as before and behind A braincase encasing a brain with no mind
II
A raven is watching me as if it knows I am a cousin of Edgar Allan Poe's A closer relationship than one might think Which makes me think I think I see it wink Which makes me blink to think this raven knows Who is a cousin of Edgar Allan Poe's
III
All I have in my wallet is some nows of then A fortune from a fortune cookie I saved when I read it said life could be good and it would be A picture of Gustav Mahler (looking like me) A "miraculous" medal which so far has not Suffered me to be captured or shot by a cop
Snaps of Mom and Grandma and what else have I got?
I see the Queen of Spades is still in exile where The money might have been but at least she is there Her journey would be over should mine slow to stop But let her burn with me since I have learned from her The things which we keep are the things which never were Yet ARE (like that medal: "miraculous" ...so far)
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Feb 7, 2009, 7:31 pm
Existential Elegy
at spes non fracta
I
Nobody
While waiting for my life to start While tiring of my dying I cannot give away my heart Though not for want of trying On my part
Nobody wants the thing
Lucky for me nobody will take it Anyway Somebody might just drop it and break it So they say
Nobody wants to die too fast Nobody wants to live too slow What have I done to deserve all this (An answer which nobody would know)? Not enough future or too much past? Not much hope yet love to spare and share Even so
Am I the only one lonely here? I am done dying! Let living start!
Day turns night as winter rounds the year I reach out and nobody is there More faithful than anybody is
At fifty-four I thought I had things sorted Or at least one might think I ought to But I never got or forgot to And once-clear reflections wink back distorted Where clearly nobody blows me a kiss And now I seem to me to be Falling in love with nobody
Just like me
II
Somebody
I find myself beginning to connect With others of my kind at this late hour
Those of us left here struggling to perfect A way to say something about now or Then and how or when and why or else what We wonder about and wander to see
And seeing then to seek by words of power To find what is lost and speak what is sought When we touch one another through the page
This is the consolation of my age
As good a reason as any to be Here in the first place remaining as I Have found to keep living and maybe why
As good a reason as any to me
People once thought I was homeless because I looked like it and I probably was In mind and in heart before this best part Of life came in the nick of time and space
But I have something to do and the place To do it in before I go away It feels good to be here and good to know
With no away to go to I must stay Like an old tree to know nothing but to grow
As good a reason as any to be When we touch one another through the page As good a reason as any to me
This is the consolation of my age
III
Everybody
In the end everything resolves perfectly Since everybody is dead During the process life lived imperfectly Is catalytic instead
The oyster grows the pearl The trouble grows the girl Or boy as he or she is meant to be As you become you and I become me
When things resolve perfectly then we are gone But it never matters then Things will resolve perfectly when we move on If only the perfection of nothingness
We have lived and died so long for so much less
IV
All
Life rises and falls again and again: Again and again and again!
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Jan 31, 2009, 5:13 pm
Once Around the Sun
I
Sunset: Maybe You Maybe Not
Maybe I was not alone Feeling like remembering Though forgotten now I knew Once before the fall of spring Sometime summer secrets known In winter spent forgetting Too bright now to remember Too painful to recall in The dying of December Then the birthing once again
Maybe you remember too I thought I felt you feel me (Wounded) heal is what we do If you revealed the real me You would heal me and I you Maybe I am not alone Maybe you remember too Maybe I have always known
You?
Or maybe not And you forgot
II
Sunrise: The Phoenix and the Butterfly
To transcend desire is not the same As to live in denial But would be if there could be a name For this my hour of trial Which by coming late would lay the blame On my own mortality Apparently finding the rest of me As wanting
My rising soul released by the flame Is the one acceptable sacrifice or In a choice paradox of paradise for The haunting
Refined to uttermost by mortal fire I look at myself and love what I see Though it was maybe not and you forgot So having been taught to care I do While having been taught not to care I do not But as I love me I could love you Embracing my transcendence of desire The phoenix though not common not unknown
I know since I am one and rise alone
Fly high and free then butterfly And mind your wings near burning things The phoenix sees and shares your sky
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMIX
Jan 23, 2009, 8:13 pm
Essence of Reality
I had forgotten that I was a man At least for awhile as any man can Shadowed by shadows of mortality I saw my shadow as it shadowed me And like a groundhog returned to my hole But as I got back less than I gave up I came to reevaluate my role
I felt used up as if what was left was Like tea leaves at the bottom of the cup Merely offering rhyme without reason When shadows obscure the riddle within But reason enough for me then because Leaves expect little in burning season Resigned to the stake as the flames begin
I fell and fallen stayed as I lay where I fell there till I was lifted as though Remembered in a half-forgotten prayer To do the best I know yet do not know How nor why but to not know might... be... best...
From the fence dividing my here from there Brought up by fate for the ultimate test Raised on hard lessons and not spared the rod Learning the hard way to care and not care To take my licks from life however odd I can see clearer from here how my dreams Become how it is before how it seems
Ideas are made of sterner stuff than stone Though I once forgot since I was a man At least for awhile as any man can Shadowed by shadows of mortality I want to outshine these shadows and feel What is or could be in search of the real I seek the essence of reality
