Writing
Five Poems by Ted Guhl
Sermon
On The Mushroom
(Chaos Theory)
Who will be
as fragile as an April moon,
irrational moon, mushroom moon?
Wetly in the
glades of her prolific world
he stands unreasoning, unreasonable;
spotted cardinal, saffron, coral;
spongy as a sorcerer’s hat;
ecstatic god penis: sacred food, cataclysmic,
minute, unique and final. A singular
essence, delicate and unusual.
"More importantly",
declares the physicist
"it was born in the singularity
of a collapsed universe, violently,
we measured it."
Who will plant
the tree of poetry in the chaotic soil of a black hole?
Who will introduce nature’s exotics to the hunter wasp of modern physics?
Let the physicists
realize the indisputable mushroom.
Let him smell its aromatic decomposition.
Let him classify its whisper and let
the anarchy of its strangeness influence him.
Will he dare to swallow its singularity?
Will he feed the black hole of his own soul
and collapse into another universe,
another uni-verse, another one-verse?
How many verses in creation’s soul?
How many angels in the head of a mushroom?
Let us pray:
Matter and anti-matter all go round,
worlds begin and worlds run down,
her son is a reminder beneath the trees,
her son is the only sun she sees,
eat of his body, make her merry,
and come spirit us to her sanctuary.
A
Glass of Goodbye
Before the
last parting there is a final imbibing,
and a silent "goodbye" in which a prayer exists.
Parting brings darkness. "Goodbye" is a sacrament.
If that which
was refused, (can it be refused?)
were to slip beyond the edge of the world
a sun, a sun gone beyond sight only to once more
return; even if no quicker than a candle’s flicker,
against the side of a wine glass,
it would be miraculous, would be sufficient.
Parting, we
drink from separate glasses, the residue
of harmony’s spoiled wine. And only that "goodbye"
can keep us from getting deathly sick from it.
It is what
one drank when there was light, that makes darkness
a prayer also. To deny refusal is too deny the dry night,
the inevitable. To say "goodbye" is to drink dregs so bitter
that if one went to the depths of the sky, no taste would
match it.
And yet, should
the pouring sun come again, to bestow it’s
sweet wine
who would be caught without an empty glass
to hold the light.
Villanelle
on Poverty
When you
have finally opened the door,
And you be sated with sex each day,
You will not say, "That I was poor".
Instead you'll
know that there was more
To a life spent loving day by day,
When you have finally opened the door.
Once you discover
what the young ignore -
That romance is not the intimate way,
You will not say, "That I was poor".
You'll see
the familiar on the alien shore,
And remember those so far away,
When you have finally opened the door.
And hearing
the insistent and passionate roar
Of the fierce Orangutan in the forest at play,
You will not say, "That I was poor".
When you finally
delve to heart's deep core,
And find the wealth it gives each day,
When you have finally opened the door.
You will not say, "That I was poor".
Damn
you
I don't
care if you love me
Or if I love you.
Sex holds no more mystery for me either.
Kissing has
no power to delight
or distract,
unless it is playful.
The Damnation:
I don't want to play with you now.
Let judgment
fall on ears grown used
to hearing without guilt.
No pain but your own pain.
Rejection
- gifts of suffering - without thanks.
Or better - no more gifts to you, now or ever.
Voices should be a single song that never stops.
Your hair,
face, eyes like everyone's, until none
can say you are not their sister.
Emptiness
should surround you, invade you, become
you.
Finally,
God should let you hear her laughter.
Colors
This morning
the world was white
White sky, white land, white road.
Often I disappeared
into white.
A little past noon the snow stopped;
Clear sky, black road, normal world,
And driving was upward toward blue,
Then over the peak and the grey fog,
Deep, and the grey road was all.
As night came,
Black mist froze on my windshield
And the black grief began.
Tonight, in the latest version of the
Familiar room -
I paint without colors.
