Poetics

The Steve Swell Home Page

POETS OF THE NOW

Hoarding shards of perceptionless vibrations,

Smiling down tirelessly suffocating fears,

Crossing rivers on the backs of formless jealousies,

Climbing over the last dead, rotting insecurity.

There and then, the Now appears

Opening arms so as not to take them up,

Lifting the front end of strollers up subway stairs,

Listening to the silence of the void, before the first note touches the air,

Gazing on the endless power and possibilities of the present.

Witness this harvest of the Now from which such sweet fruit is bared

Glint of night retreating from newly sown seeds of breath,

From behind glass walls, fragile self-esteem steps aside

As soul reaches out, knocking it all away --

Free to connect to the world again,

Sending isolation to its lonely grave

Yet staying vigilant, listening for the next crowding in of thoughts, Unwittingly ready to erect new enclosures.

What's it like to live in the past or future of your mind, I've mostly forgot, Confusing the Now with the fantasy of some other place and time,

Some other experience, never resembling mine.

Maybe seeing where I am right now is not where I'd hoped to be,

But being able to BE that NOW in THIS time and space and KNOW

The transitoriness of a situation and NOT let it determine who I am,

But to know the wholeness of it all

And not be swept away, lost, somehow, in the cluttered musings of some illusion.

This is the lucidity of the immediate,

The arrival of living.

No more prisons of the mind, body or spirit,

No more how-it-is-your-supposed-to-be police,

Rambling, ramble

Center, centering

The five skandas, both simultaneously present and destroyed, This is the challenge.

The rich, the poor,

The shuckster, the hustler,

The businessman, the homeless,

Those most proud of being gas guzzlers.

All in need of this Now,

Not simply a bunch of words,

But something once found,

The beauty of which paves a lush path to the infinite,

Transforming the victims of the swamp into the Poets of the Now.

November Black Goat Tour Poems 2003

1.                                                             2.
Get to the essence,                               Reasons and doubts
Resident essence                               Never hurt everybody.
Flowering on the                                  Next rest stop:
      celestial byway                            Never. Write the
      of here, there                               Yesterdays everyday
      whatever, wherever                   Academy of higher
Whenever the Northeast                               sobbing washes out
      Corridor recognizes                      In the clearing of
Its time to reboot                                     The workshop of
The roofing of the other                                  the fire of
                                                                  Tomorrow

3.                                                                4.
Caution, voyager                                  More people are
Bridge the Bristol                                  Buying Fords.
      River                                              Glittering longhorns
Blue                                                                   and ferocious
With Bebop,                                           Bucks traversing
      and Jersey City                            The tired ground
      and too much                                  of your unrecognizable orb,
                  time on your                      Determined to fulfill
                  hands to                                        their destiny,
                  know this is not                   Rest assured.
                  right and that
                  might be worse
                  but never knowing
                  the lesser of
                  two evils equals
The hot, Biblical Hell
of alternating spaces of
someone else's making
Forgetting the business
of here.

5.
Tower,

Sprockets of unreal
Isotopes short-circuited
By the change
In the electro-molecular
Constraints imposed
By the government of
The people magnetically,
By the fed politicians
Who never seem to
Have enough of
What they don't know
Enough
About.

Enough.

Tower,

I live in your shadow
Starving for what others
         feel entitled to,
         gorging themselves
         without knowing,
         innocently assuming
         the "others" have
         the same rights and
         all is just within
         their reach if they
Work hard, pull themselves up by
         their bootstraps
If only. Liberals, new agers too.

Tower,

Your shadow envelops
      me,
Saying you are right there
      with me,
Until the emergency road
      says exit quickly.
And with good reason, too.

Thank you!