Breaking

There is one quiet place--

Only one--where lying wide-eyed

And staring at the ceiling,

Anything might have its day.

The mind has a furtive way

Of creating out of wistfulness

A shadow more appealing

Than any real being or form.

The breaking breath that warms

Such a dream is a thing of its own.

It has its own peculiar flow

And ebb. Once scrawled upon
That quiet place, such verse 

Has a voice, and it casts

Its secrets hard into the hollows

Of life, like or not. If a dream

Breaks the dreamer, who bears

Blame? If a vision precipitates

Only to embrace the seer,

Who is to deny such a ghost its due?

Harder ships have run aground

On softer sands, it's true.

For listeners in life are delicate and few,

And breaking gently does not make

A sound.

EJR

Secrets

I would like to claim fearlessness.
I want to reassure the world
That I have turned over the rock
That is locked away in my deep heart,
Turned the dirt and revealed it all.
I wish to be brave. I want to wade
Through the days of trembling hurt
And arrive at the other side,
To stand astride the cold stream
And chant the rosary of being undone.

We have but one chance to shed
The husk that binds us to our sins--
But the secret is that our shell will slide
Slick from our skins, in our sleep,
While we whimper, unaware.

There is no unlocking prayer,
No epiphany. The truth leaks
Through the chancel drop-by-drop,
And we speak it as if by rote.
My power of candor has one note:
I claim the courage that is my right--
It settles in my ears at night--
You hear only what rises to the top.

EJR

Lips and the Woman

I sit listening and am enchanted

As the girlish voices sing,

Wavering then down and now up, 

Romantic in innocence,

Bird-blush in their lashes

And autumnal in spring.

But vivid voices fade grayly

When the generation of song

Is done without identity--

A voice behind a curtain.

The great and powerful things

Belong to a body and bring a

Mysterious magnetism lacking

When the figure is implied.

Lips and the woman I sing,

Where a body stands upright,

With unclouded clarity.

To see the heart of joy or pain

Is to enfold it in one's own heart.

To hear alone is to enjoy the sense

Without the human frame,

Blissfully reading the tale

Without knowing the author's name. 

EJR

Emptor

Nobody in their right mind
Would want a body stuck together
With blood, tied with rags, patched
With thatch and tar and mud,
A horizon revealing nothing
But antalgic gait, limping forever
But generally safe from a fall.

I suppose all life is accustomed
To pain, and thence the brawl
Between the parts that hum
And those that groan and catch--
So I've become inured to some
More dramatic hitches in the
Cadence of my body's crawl,

But I warn anyone who would so
Much as approach or, worse, attempt
To polish this worn-out shape, this tarnished
Form: the insult of the daily bruise
(The hidden whip-sting on the skin)
Is too much for the man within.

Does a prisoner prefer a scripted blow
To the crushing end he doesn't know?
I wait for my daily dose of pain
And long to know the unknown again.

EJR