Organised Chaos

"Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still."

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) in Four Quartets, Burnt Norton, V (first published 1936).

One needs not wrestle with words. One needs to be patient, and release the tension, shine a different light, clear the dust, the mud, the mortar, perhaps give them a polish, a wash so chaos can be understood as it reforms. One needs not order with words. One needs at keen eye to see where the threads form, bond within, and attach without. Words evolve, mutate, adapt to their environment. One needs to figure out the organisation to see the point.

Titan

He didn't know what on earth to tell her –

he never did – and never would, of course.

He would always have that knot in his throat,

he would always be staring at his shoes.

Her perfume flooding the elevator,

her elbow brushing him made his voice hoarse –

like most women she was the antidote –

this kindled his heart and beat out the blues.

Next step was daydreaming his life with her:

her daily dress a plea for intercourse,

begging to be fucked through her petticoat,

her conniving eyes one of many cues.

The fire stoking his groin made him purr –

entering their office like a trojan horse –

hiding his bloated sex under his coat,

for every case he had devised a ruse.

But he'd never act – he'd be a crass cur –

and his wife would rightly file for divorce,

him the perfect husband who would devote

his mind to a life he'd be dumb to lose.

 

Goliath

He didn't know what on earth to tell her –

how fast it escalated was her fault,

she should take a look again how she dressed –

even top gentlemen would be distraught.

Always he strove for the ladies' favour,

his body and his brains with no default –

so it was etiquette to let the best

of the ladies know they were food for thought.

Yet she didn't think him a flatterer –

now he would have to go file for assault

as she whistled back, crossed the street and messed

with him when she added she could be bought.

Why so hostile, making him a poseur

while he would only peace and love exalt?

His parents had brought him up with precepts,

rules like respect and restraint had been taught –

so her shouting at him slur upon slur,

telling him he was reason for revolt?

that he was all girls would ever detest?

Never was such an unfair lawsuit wrought.

Behemoth

He didn't know what on earth to tell her –

all of this had gone so wrong so quickly –

no, it had taken years to come to this –

yet who could say any of them was guilty?

He knew no word could ever cure cancer –

yet saying nothing made him feel sickly,

he wished he could perk up his lovely miss

who today wore her best dress, so pretty.

He listened to the guy say he'd beat her

pretty bad, so much he became prickly –

but that plainly was his dad's fault, not his –

he'd tell them had his mouth not gone silty.

He hadn't meant it, and not one would hear –

he'd explain but he'd speak out too thickly,

he'd say he knew their marriage wasn't bliss

but the glass box he sat in went misty.

Why on earth would nobody tell him where

his stillborn son'd been buried? He really

wanted to hug him, and her, and to kiss –

tell them so they'd then see and feel pity.

 

Well-meant

For once in your nifty, pitiful life

stand up for yourself and not for others –

stop poking that damn wound with that damn knife –

focus on you, not on your friends' bothers.

You have helped, for sure, and will help again,

shoulder people up one step at a time,

but on the long run there's more loss than gain

because your friends do, yet you do not climb.

Look again in the mirror, darling dunce,

see the good this great, dumb guy could still do

look again in the mirror, and for once

let this guy help out, and let it be you.

 

To Hell with your carpe diem

"Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit myself to - what is best for me."

Paulo Coelho, Brazilian lyricist and novelist (1947 - ), in The Zahir (2005)

 

Sur le fil

En équilibre sans l'être soi-même

toujours sur le fil, à scruter devant,

derrière, dessous, partout, contre le vent

et jamais serein, toujours en dilemme,

sur le fil, des crampes au cœur

à regarder les autres et leur bonheur.

Les deux extrémités du fil si loin –

on a passé tant de temps sans bouger

et sans dormir qu'on a pu voltiger

que la fin est le début est la fin.

On est resté ainsi longtemps, longtemps –

et puis, d'un bond, soudain, on suit le vent.

 

The lull between the squalls

In the aftermath of the cyclone squalls

time was clocked in by the church bells

plated in between sheets of silence.

The uncharted surplus of violence

had shocked most into mutism;

the rest preached apocalypticism

or inculcated words of redemption.

Flotsam was pillaged for consumption

when news of another hurricane

sent the hopes of many down the drain

and to some others straight to the gods.

Tomorrow would see who'd beat the odds.

 

suspended

that which never was
had been for a timeless time
the only present

Free Fall

I was doing research for a poem some time ago, reading a few articles on birds of prey, when I was reminded of the hawk's incredible mating behaviour. First it's interesting to know that male and female hawks tend to be monogamous, staying with the same partner their whole life. Then they'll build their nest before the mating season begins, occasionally improving it later on during the season. Once this is done, they will engage in the mating proper.

They will circle around one another, rise up in the air at the same time, higher and higher up until the male eventually flies much higher up and lunges at the female. Both will then fly back up to that same height, and then resume their courtship with the same pattern. They will repeat this circular dance until the male finally dives and latches onto the female to mate, free-falling down to the ground. It lasts just a handful of seconds.

Hawks like the red-tailed can dive after a prey to speeds of up to 120 miles per hour (193km/h), so even though they won't reach speeds like these when mating, and even though they will be so very high up that it's not a danger, they will nonetheless free-fall, quite fast at that. It's not too hard for us to imagine what it feels like to trust someone enough to let everything go. We will all profess that we have done this at least once in our lives. And oh, of course, hawks do not endanger themselves free-falling, so like us it's a measured danger we take every time we make love with our partner.

If only we were only talking about measured danger. It's very tempting to draw parallels between hawks and us: they tend to be monogamous and to have only one lifelong partner, to build their nest before having offspring, and making improvements to it during the course of raising their chicks. Somehow, somewhat like us in that idealised, old world version of our world.

Both hawks surrender their natural instinct to fly in order to mate. They cannot reproduce if they are not in free fall. What natural capacity do we surrender when we make love? It's not a question of spatiality for us, as we do not abandon our capacity to walk or move. It's more to do with being naked and defenceless. It's about closing our eyes, lying on or near that special someone. About sleeping soundly with them. It's about surrendering our faculty to think straight, to rationalise. That's our free fall.

Our measured danger, once we have chosen a partner with whom we've built a nest, is to put our trust in them by handing a part, or parts, of our judgement so we both appreciate the distance between the apex of the spiralling up and ground zero. We trust our guts in that free fall towards the unknown, latched onto someone who like us is hurtling down – who lets themselves hurtle down with us – with only the safe knowledge that we're in this together.

And perhaps, occasionally, that poetic feeling, when hugging someone this close to our heart of hearts, of a hauntingly real, timeless free fall.