First up is a longish poem I've been working on for a while, now, off and on. I've changed it many times, and though it fits, it still somehow....doesn't. It's very rambling, I think, and most likely still needs to be pruned, but whatever.

To preface, a "bodhisattva" is from Buddhism--a figure who could be freed into Nirvana but chooses not to, chooses instead to stay on earth and help others reach enlightenment as well. This poem is written to/for a beloved ex-teacher of mine.

A Fledgling's Homage to Bodhisattva
(By WIMR)

I started to examine that soul-tapestry of mine just the other day,
Finding in it lost, sometimes forgotten phantoms of others who are
Now reincarnated as essential threads, somehow, in this oft-tangled
Web of humanity and vitality that I dare to refer to as what my life is.

There are a million different, phantasmagoric colors that I can find
Twining, vine-like, around one another in this clumsily woven map that
Is supposed to help show to the lost me who it is, exactly, that I am, but
Few colors in the tangle seem to be so eternally prevalent as yours.

Seeing that irrepressible trace of you, woven here with such tenderness,
Makes me remember, vividly, how powerful and gripping a hold you
Once unconsciously had on my blazing, yearning, foolish youth--
The first compass arrow I chose to follow, the first anchor I didn’t fight.

Laughing days of golden naïveté, somber nights of uncertain thought--
All that was me as one of your larking, wayward, wanton fledglings--
Show here in these revealing threads of yours that I still sometimes
Only want to hold on to, as a pathetic-hearted waif, never letting go of.

Memories of innocent, lighthearted humor, which would later be kissed
With more autumnal, bitter, sour-appled sarcasm of Fagen and Becker,
Abound here in these twisting threads, alongside the gentle ghosts of my
Inexplicable rushes of instinctive camaraderie for the figure of you.

Bodhisattva, an oriental idol, I think of you now as, for in sacrificing
Much of your sanity to strengthen our young, unfledged wings for flight,
In taking our lives in as part of your own tapestry, you have earned
More keys to nirvana, and the precious duality of Buddha’s atman…

And as I begin first trembling flights, clinging on in capricious thermals, I
Think of you, both kept on the earth forever by his sextet of Perfections
And yet already so far beyond where most others will ever learn to fly—-
No one I have ever met is an honest human quite as you are, Bodhisattva.

Your hearty roses of memory bloom in this garden that you have begun,
While dizzying trumpet-notes spiral for miles into the cloak of night—-
Everything smells of spring’s promise, and summer’s richness, and
Is autumn’s fullest harvest I could ever have dreamt—-and yet it was real.

To this place better than Eden I keep returning, because as long as your
Soul nurtures these narcotic roses, and revives this robust jazz, I know
That I have some place to which I may come and collect myself when
Society sends its tranquilizing barbs to drug my drifting bohemian soul.

And from time to time wanderer I will fly away, on quixotic odysseys
That I never try to justify to others, and I will always carry a twinge of
Regret with me that borrows your semblance--but I will eventually drift
Back, led by your threads in my tapestry, with a thousand yarns to tell my

Bodhisattva.

**************************************************************************

The other selection is also a poem, also longish, written just today, frigged around with some but still obviously in need of work. It's basically supposed to be, oh, I don't know, about a teacher-student tryst? Something like that. I was bored, and I had this image of two drunken people sprawled in bed, dripping in sweat and stale wine...

Wine, Sweat, and Sophistication
(Also by WIMR )

It was rather like the time,
when I was smaller and of similarly
crippling naïveté, that I thought to
take out dusty bottles of my
parents, and drink like an adult:

the wine would burn down
my throat, and slop uselessly
down my front, and I would really
have no choice but to laugh at
how people called this

sophistication.

Well, now the rotten grapes still
tasted as deliciously awful as they ever
had, but their headiness, their
potency was magnified by the twisted,
sweet stench of your sweat,

the carnal sweat that rolled, like
acid, down my lips,
bruised from yours, and came
to rest, burning, between
my breasts—-we thought it all such

sophistication.

And perhaps it could have
been as cool as the jazz seeping all
around, except for the soured
wine on your breath, that made me turn
aside and glimpse her picture there,

on the dresser—-so that I remembered
the ring you tossed aside, as if
it were nothing, for our truly
illegal tryst, and I knew I
wanted no part more in your lovely

sophistication.

But still I lay there, on her
sheets, in our sweat, trying not to
think of her sweat mingling
with the expensive thread count, trying
to just lose myself—-and I knew how:

all I had to do was try a
bit of your beloved wine, sitting right
there next to you, so I asked,
and you poured me a glass, with
the reminder that it was the height of

sophistication.

And in the Bacchanalia that
followed, the wine helped me to forget
such immaterial things as age of
consent laws, so that you could
teach me one more thing;

you used your great nakedness to
help me relive ancient
sex rites, like those you mentioned
in history class the day before,
and how people called them

sophistication.

It was supposed to be something
of ecstasy, and you made
me gasp and groan with shock at
your prodigious skill, at how
your fingers worked so well,

so I was glad to lay there and
let you betray her, let you
grind me into the bed
with all the others you must have
taken, under the delusion of

sophistication.

When later you began your drunken
snores, I was still wide awake, drinking
wine and sweat, mine and
yours, and thinking some,
about my sweet sixteen the day before,

about what a fitting present
you had just given to me—-the
ability to see how all the sweaty gray
temples in the world couldn’t
really make any guy know about

sophistication.

****************************************************

Have fun tearing them to pieces and pointing out all my silliness!



WIMR

On Edit: Revised a line in "Sophistication" after a suggestion by CMW.... See post #1