South of the bridge on Seventeenth
I found back of the willows one summer
day a motorcycle with engine running
as it lay on its side, ticking over
slowly in the high grass. I was fifteen.
I admired all that pulsing gleam, the
shiny flanks, the demure headlights
fringed where it lay; I led it gently
to the road and stood with that
companion, ready and friendly. I was fifteen.
We could find the end of a road, meet
the sky on out Seventeenth. I thought about hills,
and patting the handle got back a
confident opinion. On the bridge we indulged
a forward feeling, a tremble. I was fifteen.
Thinking, back farther in the grass I found
the owner, just coming to, where he had flipped
over the rail. He had blood on his hand, was pale—
I helped him walk to his machine. He ran his hand
over it, called me good man, roared away.
I stood there, fifteen.
(to a beautiful stranger)
Seeing you,
I marveled.
A slip of your hair fell down
Your candid glance that only I saw.
I stand still in the crowd-
The crowd is an angry river
But I freeze everything.
I walk around pedestrians to you,
(you are also standing still)
I look at you another second,
Then with a careful finger, fix your hair.
Upon release,
You continue on
Brush my shoulder,
Passing me there.
Your eyes look straight ahead.
But I still see you.
I will always see you.
It was…
'Friend!' to you
Across the long water,
A word that flowed from the horizon golden in motion.
My word-
A solitary echo that resounded,
Sang like a bird in lion’s-mane cage
Rang in silence, glowed from a tired sun Rested on the world's curve.
My word soared like an arrow shot over an empty plain.
The silence came in molten waves
Waves rolling in a rhythm of breathing light
A restless seething against the night.
This word sent an echo into a place forgotten
An old word with a lost meaning
Remembered only by
Old men
And
The very young.
It was…
'Friend!' to you
Across the long water,
A word that flowed from the horizon golden in motion.
A comprehensive decadence
Gains upon the world.
Interest mounts
Securities of the heart erode
Small things increase in weight
Tolls & taxes, geometric progression.
Leaden clouds are full of iron bullets
Dust rolls across empty fields
Neglect of courtesy prevails,
A preoccupation to oligarchic trivium
Devastates the revenue of our souls.
Sublimity stands naked in the rain
While vapid triviality is hailed.
Who will save us?
Where are the heroes?
Larger than life, fresh from a fight?
Xbox-texting
Air guitar flexing
Metro-skinny-jeans-roundhouse kicking
Scott Pilgrim is our hero.
I looked on Google for Greeks & Spartans,
But Achilles was selling real estate,
And Leonidas drives for Dominoes.
The head of the sun was unshorn,
I did not recognize his face-
Only a lion that spoke to me
Wide window framed,
Sky tamed- shaggy maned
A blazing corona!
Yellow fire burned,
No Ash,
Burned on deep-sea marble
Flicker of a golden flame.
A battered dubloon floated in a bowl of cobalt paint,
Shattered sun flower
Lost on the rip-tide of a tropical lagoon.
The bright flash,
A grain of sugar
Fallen from a spoon;
Immolated on a gas range in a darkened room.
The sub-routines of the heart are impervious to external controls,
They keep a furious time.
These curious sparks,
Engines of the soul
Heartsprings coiled gold-
They deny death its revenue,
Decry nature's protocols of entropy and decline,
Defy loss of rhythm and energy of rhyme.
They surge forward with the sea
Rage against the storm;
Soldiers marching in the night,
They always carry on.
Against a greater darkness,
They bear a brighter light;
The subroutines are without dismay,
They know that they are right.
Yet,
Too often we do not listen,
Eyes wide open but lacking sight.
IIn Qatar, I started to read a book by Albert Marquette about Albert Camus. Picking it back up again in Kansas, I started from the beginning, and I'm seeing him from a completely different perspective. I've read a lot of his work, but not a lot about him.
I didn't realize that he was an atheist. He's a unique type of atheist though. There's a difference between someone who refuses to believe in God and one who factually believes God does not exist. It turns out that Camus refused to believe in a higher power out of rebellion, not because he disbelieved per se'. (If that makes sense...)
I think Camus was really angry with God, at what many of us perceive is a divine tolerance of chaos and widespread suffering in the world. If there was a divine being armed with omnipotent power and ultimate will, how could he or she allow life to unfold without apparent meaning and impotently observe the relentless advance of pain? It indicates either a lack of existence or an ultimate negligence.
This lack of meaning, this sweeping absurdity, was completely intolerable to Camus. Regardless of divine reality, he determined to rebel against this. To hold the line against despair and suicide, he developed his entire philosophy on the premise the very fact he could understand that he existed meant it was worthwhile to live rather than not. This realization gave birth to hope, and thus to recovery of meaning.
The way I understand it, and the fact that he understood there was no apparent purpose to life, was purpose enough to actually keep on living. The irony was his realization was founded upon a profound absurdity. Camus saw that to live was to be absurd, so in a way, absurdity was a fundamental part of being alive. Although, I think what he meant was the struggle between an internal desire to live and the external pointlessness (characterized by suffering and the terrible ennui of the mundane), this battle was in itself was absurd. It was an illusion. The fact that he could see this from a third point of view meant that it was worth living, even if living was absurd.
His ideas seem almost contradictory, a strange mixture of existential anguish, sisyphean despair, and tangential optimism. But, since his quotes and his thinking consistently return to an adamant and rigorous defense of hope and light, I believe the power of his message is more contained in the man.
The more I read, the more I am convinced his writing must be interpreted in the context of his being and by examining the record of his daily life. Life is ultimately absurd, but since we have the capacity to understand this, we have the responsibility to act. It is our choices, our daily steps that unfold a path of hope which leads to the creation of meaning.
If there is a spark, there is always the possibility of an "invincible summer". I say, there is always a spark. We just have to look for it, and then choose and protect it. First in ourselves, then in others. Once we act, what happens next is similar to the creation of the universe... A single atom, a catalyst, then an incredible explosion of energy and beauty, the big bang.
Still, it all starts with a small spark buried within a deep darkness. Upon recognition of external absurdity and apparent insignificance, if the spark retains a sense of intrinsic value simply because it exists, then a existential coup occurs as the absurd is transcended into sublimity. It is like a paradox... What I would call a metaphysical tesseract. Time and space, absurdity and chaos bend and in the crack between, a subtle door opens into a quiet garden where flowers grow in the midst of winter.
It's a beautiful idea, and I think Camus would agree with me.
