The Hollow Minds

Yesterday poshdeluxe asked me to write an epic poem about Twilight.  Of course, she was just joking, but ha ha!!  I was serious!  (It’s why you should never jokingly challenge me to do something.  I’ve had food poisoning at least three times as the result of a joke challenge.)

Unfortunately, in case you haven’t noticed before, um, I can barely string five words together to form a sentence.  But those who can’t do, teach.  And those who can’t teach, rip off talented people!

So, I present to you all, my Don’t-Worry-It’s-Not-As-Long-As-Canterbury-Tales-or-Anything Epic Poem, The Hollow Minds.  (P.S. Sorry, T.S.)

We are the hollow minds

We are the stuffed minds

Listing together

Mouthpiece filled with flaws. Alas!

Our muffled voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or skin-sparkles like broken glass

In our dry cellar

Jorts without form, lips without color,

Aboriginal force, stalking without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

Remember us — if at all — not as flat

Banal souls, but only

As the hollow minds

The stuffed minds.

II

Vulva I dare not meet in dreams

In death’s dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the bits are

Sunlight on a jutting column

There, is a treetop swinging

And voices are

In the wind’s singing

More persistant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer

In death’s dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Letter jackets, mirky skin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the fog behaves

Growing nearer –

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the ancient land

This is native land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man’s hand

Under the sunlight, a fading star.

Is it like this

In death’s other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with violence

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The will is not here

There is no will here

In this valley of weeping stars

In this hollow valley

This unhinged jaw of our worst kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

But avoid bliss

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The apple reappears

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death’s twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty minds.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Publisher

ForThine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Marketing Team

Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Purity Ring

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way literature ends

This is the way your childhood ends

This is the way our patience ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Tagged as: twilight