The Love Song of T. Stearns Eliot

In each we saw that touch of suave
Entertain, to proffer oh so smart  
A classless act  
James Dean with a cap and a look supreme  
Not the butt but and idiols artifact
That king size slipped from its magazine  
A content shared  
That smile of intentions undeclared  
 Tap the burned disregards  
 The fingers singed and stained  
 That's lifes ashtray
Mingled in the smoke of dreams and hopes

In lapping waves did light recede,
as light within my mind so grieved.
O, light that took no form or mien,
yet rushed along to softly fade;
to shrink as slowly did the day.
 
A child looked up into the night
and felt as if he was that bright;
within his heart his soul took flight,
high above an innocence
deeply felt, deeply found:
How I was that child once,
unafraid, unbound.
 
How, removed from  
perception, direction,
I was a ray of light in reflection;
a light unfettered, unknowing of domain
gone far afield and free to reign
O'er the small and in the proud,
beaming wide and singing loud:
 
A light to the ones who hide among crowds
shone into corners to illuminate the Night.
 
(We scurry about under this glare
as ones who, hopeful only dare).
 
                    .....

My Uncle Warren was a rabbit hole of a man
Full of seep dark secrets of which were unspoken
Questions about him gleaned no family answers
Eighty two he died alone in a rundown plantation mansion
Out of curiosity I went to the funeral: No one else was there
Well apart from the old priest and a grave digger bent over his spade
I couldn't help but notice the grave diggers dirty craggy grin
And the old priest smelling of bathtub gin
Pulpit pronouncements, life style denouncements
Prayers for the dead's unlikely salvation
The grave digger's grin turned to sniggering
There's something wrong is what I was figuring
At the rickety mansion like an unkept hairstyle
Four servants on the stoop were here to greet me
All of them happy and wanting to meet me
Not allowed to go to visit the dead
But only because all four were black
In the parlor we had home made lemonade and stories,
Remembrances, tributes and stories of "Mr Warren"
"He done never beat us even when plates were broke"
A kind man never mean or cruel, slow to anger
"We was faithful to Mr Warren, until the lord took him"
The will read by a dusty old lawyer wearing spectacles
He had left me the house and one hundred thousand
Nothing to his faithful old servants, they accepted with grace
Against this white southern lawyer's advice
I signed all of it over to the faithful four
It was not what my uncle would have wanted
But it should have been Uncle Warren's last wish


#TSElliot

Poem: Aunt Helen by T. S. Eliot

( after T.S. Eliot )
  
   
A literary man of books,  
I’d taken her as a lover.  
Then yesterday I felt it time  
To break it off for another.  
   
The tables of my plan, on me  
Have turned the way that she is done.  
To moving on, ideal and pure;  
I cannot change, or sully her.  
   
Her bare feet trip lightly across  
The balcony in early morn’,  
Where no sun’s heated flush had yet  
Graced patio of Venus’ breath.  
   
To this reflection, heart and soul,  
In spite of everything I weave,  
She in her diaphanous glow  
When my intent had been to leave.  
   
Aroused in pagan celebrate  
For having known of her like this.  
Not having slept through any part  
To what was my defeated night.  
   
I am a slave of memories  
To a girl with sun in her hair.  
A shadow matching every step  
To forget I was ever there.  
 

( After T.S. Eliot )
  
Another era of repetition    
  puncture a historic dial—    
become a thorn inside seconds    
meaningless at the core; hollow—    
 no one different than the other  
 the other no different than before;    
each brigade of sixty seconds  
or minutes, marching as to war  
  one by one follow the hands  
  hour after hour,    
until their time is no more.    
   
Here is where repetition is born:    
  a needle dancing with its own echo    
in the parlor— scratchy throated—    
  a shallow crevice preventing    
 forward movement    
 into the heart of the song—    
   its music trapped in time    
    repeating itself, mirroring    
over and over:    
   
     conflict, death— conflict, death    
     we follow no other compass.    
   
How have we evolved into colonialism—    
  escaping the Gun Powder plot    
  beneath the Houses of Parliament    
distracting from the blood disease  
of imperialistic ideology—    
  its hand stretched forth in greed  
  continents between fingers;  
roots exposed, dangling limbs of Being-    
repeating itself— over and over    
  until it becomes a mantra    
  for future generations:    
   
  conflict, death— conflict, death  
  we follow no other compass.    
   
Battlefield earth, her symbiosis designed  
  to accommodate the whole of Life—    
looks no different than the other  
the other no different than before—    
  spears, arrows, weapons of rock:    
Cain, Able, the cost jealousy affords  
   when we covet our brother’s lot.  
Sword, musket, antler knife, gunpowder  
    treason and plot— who does remember  
       they are their brother’s keeper  
       in the midst of tragic loss.  
   
 Between the beginning and end    
    lies the repetition;  
  between the opening and closing    
    lies the repetition;    
 within the solar plexus of the repetition  
    lies an unmeasured lesson  
in time, pain, and experience.    
   
Fertile lands embraced    
  our foreign ways of trade  
between ocean and land;    
beyond islands and continents—    
  its hair invisibly combed    
  into banners of conquerors.    
   
Those hallowed men and women—    
   those colored-skinned nations    
  their ancient customs foreign;    
spun from great dynasties of spirit  
into silken tapestries of origin.    
   
 They were the meek ones—    
  the workers, providers;    
  their offerings suffocated    
into martyrdom from nooses  
whipping poles, diseased blankets    
   and boiling sugar water.    
   
Sparks rising from pyres in the night—    
  dissipated of their heat, disappearing  
behind their cloaks of darkness;    
their burial palls black as graves—    
  legends, burnt offerings    
  of flesh melting from bone—    
their slayers asleep in their beds    
  visions of the new world    
  circling over homesteads—      
warpaint of pride, conquest    
  smeared across their dreams.    
   
What is so different about this  
  from which we escaped—    
we have become the monster we hate;    
and, this world,    
                              this world,    
                                                this world  
  will not end with peace;  
  but, the bloodshed of innocence:    
     land, air, and ocean polluted of breath—    
  all lifeforms on the brink of collapse;      
   
this is how it will come to pass    
  this and nothing else—    
not the top one percent  
  tossing crumbs to the indigent;    
nor corporate giants squeezing    
  every cent from the middle-class;  
but, as it was in the beginning:    
   
            a brilliant flash of light!    
   
  followed by silence  
                                        dust  
                                                   and ash.    
~

(after T. S. Eliot)
  
I  
In temple’s dust forgotten,  
Constrained by eyeless thought,  
With crowns of sand,  
We stand in reddened sun,  
The ancient columns, the iron rust,  
Mantles, where the ancients sought.  
   
Our glass towers now catch the light but not  
The answers found in walls of temple’s eyes.  
   
On dark stained oak,  
In crystal braziers, sacrifices smoke.  
The crimson stains of lips  
That older tributes’ stain implies,  
The choke of olive’s slip,  
With tilting heads too late realized.  
   
No priestesses to bear the soak  
Of stains our sacrifices caught.  
   
II    
In clericals of night forgotten  
The canyons, houndstooth grey  
In flannels, tight with auspices,  
The bend and shape, whose signify  
The profane spaces sanctify.  
   
Straw dogs in funeral rites,  
In yellow taxies rush consuming,  
   
How does the night enrage  
Clung in boundless chatter,  
Like smoke from lips betrayed  
In words that never seem engaged,  
With clouds and gallows hung  
Between the words  
And crimson stains.  
   
III  
Hail Mary, full of grace,  
Full of grace, pray for us.  
Mary, pray for us.  
   
Pray for us, Sinners now,  
   
Now and at the hour,  
Now and at the hour...  
   
At temple’s wall, Pray for Us.