Turn Honesty Into Art, It Really Is Magic

Here are two poems, quickly written in the evening of this year's first day. There were things going on, and one of them was settling ever more into this thing I am doing. I am still under vows. I have said it many times now, like I mean it, and even deeper, I have acted. I have posted 328 poems. Actually 329, because one of them was published in a quarterly and I have not posted it here. My list of poems to publish numbers 436 right now and I have two more to load in from today. 438 poems yet to publish... It won't be a year until August.

Part of this was a deep and unfocussed sense of mortality, as I thought it might be. That's where this heart attack comes in. It is obvious I would think, now that it is revealed, that the heart trouble was building over time, and I was living with it, not interpreting the symptoms right. I expect, if the stent works that several vague and not so vague issues will dissipate. I am fragile yet. But I feel in certain ways better than I have in a couple years.

I don't think this is all of it. Why am I under vows to write two or more poems a day?

I know who...I am under vows to the Master of Poets. God in this facet. I am under vows as was Hafiz, the Sufi mystic First Poet of Persia. From time to time one feature or another of my situation arises in a poem. Usually I say, Yup. That's true. Then, I say, that's not it though. Turn honesty into art. Yup. That's not it though, or else poems of fantasy and science fiction wouldn't count, and they do. Oh yes, they do. In this particular game it has to resolve into one thing, the poetical Theory of Everything.

Turn Honesty Into Art

The way this thing goes,
This poetry thing happened
And now I'm in vows
Like my man Hafiz
To turn honesty to art
Before the Lord, you,
All of you, spirit
Moving across my heart bones,
I turn in my grave.

Digging myself out
Or maybe digging me in,
Deeper into God.

1/01/2009 7:11 PM

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Right after I wrote this, I found myself on a certain blog site that inspired me to write this next poem. I had no idea what would happen and it was a deeply personal poem. I chose to take a risk. It worked and now I have a very good friend. Diplomacy is not always about staying safe.

It Really Is Magic

Gosh! It's like magic
The way the words flutter down
Into dancing dots,
Into this small box,
Into your heart through sad eyes
That are turned away.

I wonder how I'll
Turn you 'round or if it's me
That does this thing.

January 1, 2009 7:26 PM