A leap

What is it that happens in a writer's life that causes him to stop writing? Aside from the posting of some of my older poems--and perhaps one or two new ones--I have done little in the exercise of putting my words to the page. I know to myself the universal truth that perhaps I should force myself to write, evoking in my mind the image of someone forcing themselves to jump off the parapet of a burning skyscraper knowing that there is the possibility of safety below--not a guarantee, mind you--just the possibility--but being therefore compelled to jump. The room is on fire behind me, but I hesitate. I am afraid to make that leap, but why?

I am hesitant now to give the gift of myself through my writing because it has been used against me. I think back through my many, many years of life and recall the procession of letters and notes and communiques from my pen whose intentions were pure, borne of an earnestness to let someone know how I was feeling or thinking, or perhaps pleas for help or assistance, and in some cases explanations of me: Andrew revealed, with the layers and masques stripped away, because it was asked of me to do so, and I obliged. "Let me know you better", said one to me, and I did, and he used it against me and tried to poison the minds of others with what he thought it revealed, or what he thought he understood and that wounded me, and for a time rendered me mute. Going back to an analogy I have used before, one that seems pervasive in my own life: writing is a light that we shine on ourselves or on others, and if we shine it on ourselves, it should be because we want to give a gift back to those who are reading our words; after all, time is a gift, and people are giving that back to me when they take the moments and put forth the effort necessary to comprehend me through my writing. When I write, I try to tell a story that will entertain or enlighten, and in some aspects, perhaps teach some lesson based on my life experiences or the experiences that others have shared with me...

...and with the abruptness that often causes the beginnings of great things, let it begin. One step, two steps, and I am off the ledge.

Note to Self: Pride remains a Sin.

Pride, they say, goes before the fall
And I am a rumpled corpse
Lying at the foot of a grand staircase.
What right have I to assume this stance
Of arrogance, when I know
I have no call to preen and puff myself up
With a haughty sneer
And ill-formed indignation---
And at what?
Because someone did not like me
Or did not approve of me?
Because I am like an angry child
Indignant that I have not gotten my way?
Because thirty-seven years of living
Have taught me fewer lessons
Than I have troubled myself to learn?

My character is not unblemished,
My cotton strands stained dark and crimson,
Nothing on me white as wool.

No, 'tis better to remember one's place
In this world where the ignorant logic
Of the equally ridiculous vox populi veritas
Denies the sin of Pride,
A lesson I should not care to know,
A Flaw I must unlearn---
After all, what am I, who am I
But dust?
I should not care to emulate the Pharisee
Who vaunts himself and points out his own virtues
But rather the simpler man who says
"I am but a sinner"---
And I am. Heaven knows that truth remains a constant,
And knows too how grateful I am,
Despite my flowery and archaic speech
For this humbling exercise of Grace.

Little Ghosts

With love could you encircle me, if I asked you to try;

Or would you be unable, unwilling as I am, to give this thing,

To enact the unnamable, swirling thoughts of repulsion

Somewhere in the depths of a torpid mind?

My memory is all I have now to console me; that once,

Once I felt it, and strode out upon the field with surety,

Breathing in the air of Autumn and the last cutting of the grass,

And hoped for one whom I could never keep, like three or four others

Whose faces still dance in my mind, my private ghosts.

How I love that they haunt me, and that this is what I am left with.

Too late now to go back,

Too late now to undo any of it;

And still, I can feel tangibly the emptiness which enveloped me when each had gone,

When each crossed the veil, the transparency of our lives.

And so I stand alone in the empty field, the stadium lights

Bright as day, shining upon me as I look up, the circlet

Probably rusting away somewhere forgotten, and I will not ask you anything anymore

Nor wait, nor wonder, but stride the track with my own strength,

With this emotion which has become my Substitute.

And so you see, there will be no more marches,

No views of cornfields from the passenger seat of my car,

No porches on Branson Street, no snatches of breathless conversations.

How long have I wished for this silence,

Wished the words and voices away from me, so that a quietness would reign?

Not in grandeur, but in something much less, stepping forth in ermine robes and coronet,

Enthroned at last is this Excellence, embodiment of words

Which will not be spoken, of indiscretions never executed,

And vain desires learned to bow down

And be subdued. This is the subjugation of want. This is what I've grown into,

Here at last is a man, for better or worse, with no greater claim to title than this.

Honi sont que mal y pense.

If I tell you...

If I tell You
I have been lonely,
That I have been living
Like a human cloud,
Amorphous without center,
Something through which
The fellow who cuts the lawn or the drycleaner
Passes without sensing;
If I tell You
That I haven’t felt
Solid earth, but only breezes
Gliding between my legs;
That other human torches
Have pulled my arm from its socket
As wind will grab
A knob of cloud and send it scudding;
That the pigeon’s coo between the lady
Who cleans my house and myself—
Our warbling over
Dust in the hallway or how often
To mop the floors—
That the homeless people I see near my office
Or stray kittens in down-town parks;
That the elephant train of traffic
And the bullet-spray of Haymount children on bicycles;
Have, at once, so distended me
That nothing remains of my cloud
But a few vaporous wisps that dissipate
With the baby’s wail
And yet so condenses me into solid,
That I tighten into a black hole, from which
Even love cannot escape…

If I say to You all of this,
Even now feeling the cloudy margins of my mind
Feathering and breaking for flight;
What would you tell me?

Words in the Rain, circa 1990.

Lying here, there is only silence
Breached by the timpani-roll of thunder and chiming rain,
And it drives me somehow
Into the sodden state of wanting, though of what
I’ve no idea. Perhaps

It is the longing stemmed from so much emotion
And too few words, or that recumbent figures
Steal into my mind with faces only half familiar
That seem to erupt out of dreams:
And it is the drowning crash of the heavens that makes it ignite,
That makes this state so absurd, and when dialogue ensues as well—
“A dance?” the Pyrian figure inquires.
No. No dance, no dream,
But let me cast you away from this idyll
In which you’ve no right to live.

And now come the tears, each laying upon the other
Courses that surge and flow
And build to the maddening crescendo that is my grief:
Public, so that you know when you see me
That there is simply nothing left at all;
And the anguish is my characterization as well as the void
That nothing could possibly fill.
And you’ll see it when you look into my eyes
That shine only with the echo of what once was there,
Or you’ll hear it when my empty laughter flows,
But only with the understanding that it is the grandest spectacle
Contrived to fool,
For vanity is my highest art and deception my fondest game—
Only there are no winners
And the loser loses all.
Though I’ve played many times, I’ve not the strength
To try again.

So tell me then how to know when the game is done.
I wish I knew. I wish
You’d tell me how to stop the rain,
For the tears echo the words,
Testament to pain, flowing down endlessly
Until each is lost.

And this life must be lost,
This page crumpled away
By the pathless dance of time;
And words, my words, will be spoken but once
And left to echo down the halls of antiquity,
Passing to such, to what is dust,
Even as the pen forms them, even though
They are not yet complete;


And my works will go that way as well,
And all the intricacies of my life with them:
The struggles I thought were noble,
The desires I thought were love,
And all those little things
That I thought were important,
Yet they were not.
So the tears for them were meaningless,
Yet it doesn’t seem to matter,
Nor this time spent writing
So that something of me might live

Other than the emptiness, but separate from the grief as well,
Far detached from those who’ve wanted to take, take
And gave nothing but empty pledges for the prize.

And to you I must always be unattainable,
And the whispers not enrich
But take from you the part of me
That only gave, gave
And shared with you what was real,
All the while what was not
Was whispered through pretty teeth by the jealous
And those who simply couldn’t understand
That though some things are always bought,
What I gave was priceless but free—
The vital spark that charged and glimmered,
The core of me. Only not enough. It’s never enough.

Andrew, Graf von Rothberg

Luminescence (a reprised work, from February, 2006)

If the world is such a dark place, as many people write, then how is it that we are ever able to see anything clearly? To see others? To see ourselves? Do we "wander through the shades" as the Greeks might say, blind to everything except the endless search, or do we adapt ourselves, become used to the darkness?

I am reminded of the property of bioluminescence, that which illuminates those strange organisms that thrive in the darkest depths of the sea, that through a chemical reaction or process, festoon themselves with lights so that in that darkness, in those murky depths, they might be seen. It is the same principle of the lightning bug, ambushed by children with murder in their hearts and mason jars in their hands, as it flickers on and off in the course of a summer’s night. Are we as humans much different? Of course, aside from the obvious things like being vertebrates and possessing consciousness, do we not do the same thing in essence?—illuminate ourselves in some manner so that where before invisible, we might not then be seen? And in the midst of that dark night, figuratively speaking, why is it that we shine lights on ourselves wishing to be seen to begin with at all? There is safety in obscurity. There is safety in reserve.

I flicker on and off. I talk a good game, but I am at heart reserved. I find I have great periods of productivity, such as my writing, that are akin to the attempt of kindling a lamp. The words illuminate me, and thereby I am seen. At other times, such as recently, I shade the lamp, and step further into the shadows by choice, by almost a tacit agreement between myself and the little ghosts that demand attention. Sometimes the past wants me all to itself, preferring to dream of what was and avoid life as it is now. Not that life is bad now, it is not, but there is no great struggle to it either, and out of consequence everything seems almost too easy, too stymied, too set on an inalterable course.

I was standing on my terrace last night, the lights behind me in the house turned off, the lights illuminating the grounds turned off as well, and all was dark. I was smoking a cigarette, only the lighter wouldn’t strike, so I had to keep trying it, little bursts of flame. We spend so much time trying to shed light on other things, we do not realize that in the night, casting the glow upon ourselves, we are seen also. A stray cat I have never seen announced itself with a meow, and crouched at my feet. It must have been in the woods or in my garden, and saw my flame, saw the light and came closer to it, hoping to find shelter. When you’re lost, you look to someone with that spark, that flame, that light. I gave him Fancy Feast and heavy cream. He devoured every bit.

Do not hide yourself away from the world. Others might need your light too.

**Author's note: The cat that I referenced coming out of the dark woods that night has remained my faithful companion--Mr. Grey, whose portraits can be seen in several of my Facebook albums.

The False Idol

You'll listen to them once when they tell you a lie,
And the whisper is the sort you'd love to dream, love to believe
But cannot because it shines as vainly false as a golden calf,
Glittering and pure, yet impure at the same time.
Pearls will shine when they tell you that you're beautiful,
Or their tears will flow when they impart their love
And cry for a life to share,
Yet emptiness is the only creed for you to follow
When you turn away, for in the shadow of your back
(Not the blinding small, the shadow)
Their minds will change and you'll be left to wonder
What the lure was to make them bother at all.

You have no beauty of your own, save the gold dripping from your body,
A pretty garden
And your surgically altered face
Because your soul is empty and borrowed;
Grace within you is not inherent but purchased,
And you've sold yourself for everything that you have.

So small wonder that you sneer when they say "this is what I wanted to avoid"
Or that it wasn't just a one night thing.
Not so incredible that you've given up listening
When they tell you "I'm sorry" or ask to give it another go.
The only thing to make you smile is the calf
That you could hold in your arms and polish,
And it will lie and say "I need you", and that
And only that is what you'll believe,

Because somewhere, buried like an abscess in the hierarchy of your fears,
The need for something different, something other, unnamable, lunges upwards
And bares its empty face for a smile,
Luring you into the falsest of banalities,
But I suppose that's the lesser of two evils:

Better to love yourself with a lie than to know no love at all.

And it's sad, isn't it, that the enamor which held you
Was only golden to the sight;
For all preciousness is cold to the touch
And you have become the model of frigidity.
Sadder still all these nights when you'd grown nauseous from tears,
Screaming for the death of your heart--
Watching the saline wetness drench the falsest of idols,
Your little calf, who could never answer you,
Who would never even give a single word that might betray the truth
(If it could)

That the something you were looking for was always within reach,
Only it wasn't clothed in ropes of diamond-cut eternity
Or in rings and bracelets and watches that will outlast you,
But in flesh and spirit containing arms-
(the only thing to hold you of its own volition)
The only thing that could form words of its own accord and say
"I need you, I've always needed you, but you let the hurt turn you away".

And never having heard those words--that's where the folly of your life lies,
The knife pitched from the hoof of your idol
Which strikes the small of your back
And severs the cord of emotion, blinding you
To the vanity of your ways:

That you have shone falsely with no glimmer in your eyes at all,
Glittering only with golden wrists and hands
That no one will ever dare to touch-
Their beauty far too unique to hold,
The immensity of the preciousness too austere to caress;

With your chest heaving still, and pawing the ground,
You'll never believe it.

Andrew, Graf von Rothberg