The Word, and Signs: Words From the Poet Laureate

Today we have two poems from David Tucker, the Poet Laureate of the Quantum Revolution.

A Vermont-based poet, David is an insightful commentator on our internal and external cultural, spiritual and political milieu.

Today’s poems are The Word, God and I Thought There’d Be Signs.

As an added bonus at the end, there is an excerpt from Chapter 37 of David’s upcoming novel.

First, the poems:

The Word, God

Why would I speak God?
Why would I use her,
that word,
in such a way?
Look at her history:
Violent,
Cruel,
Immoral
the way she’s acted,
what she’s done.

She let herself become a hammer
for the needs of ambitious men.
I know.
I have bruises on my soul.

She let frightened men
form her into shackles
and bindings
to tie us up.
I know.
I have the rope burns on my wrists.

She let cruel men
make her into curtains,
thick and dense
to steal our breath,
to steal our light.
I know.
I remember when I couldn’t breathe.

But now
she’s with me
and if I keep making pictures
of how she was
with other men
I lose the song
when she comes
to touch me in the night.
When she comes to wake me
and take me to those places
where everything is breath and light,
freedom and the twirl
of dancing in the kisses of the swirling night
and I realize
She is my Ahhhh.
She is my Yes!
She is my Hmmmm!
She binds up the chord
that links me to you,
links me to all of them,
to all the trees
to all the kisses from the planets and the suns.

To other men,
to other women,
she may be the whore with the checkered past,
she may be the oppressor and the thief.
To me,
I only know her
as
holy, holy, holy.

I Thought There’d be Signs

I thought there’d be a sign
or
at least
something to startle me
like
the sharp taste of beauty,
an eclipse of the sun.

There was your kindness
and that little voice
singing of the time
we played together
on the island
so long long ago.

But I expected more.
Maybe a sign that read:
This is the road
where Angel Armies march.

Or even a warning:
Watch out for the flowers ‘round here.
Thieves.
Pick-pockets.
Steal your precious pain
right outa yer purse.

I knew I wanted you
and took you to my bed.
I closed my eyes.
I did not know
what magic
lay
in the turning of my eyelids
from the outer world of lifeless form
to the inner world of Spirit…
dancing.

I reached out,
not flesh
but an angel’s breast
kissed my hand
and the song began.

I came inside you
and your yoni
like a band from the burning edge of dawn
filled the heart of my phallus
with the sound of chorus, flute and drum.
You touched my rounded muscles
and the secret place I tried to hide
in shame.
They filled with music.
You took the soft orbs
where once my children slept
into your artist’s hands
and every cell and vessel
filled with song.

I said Wow baby. That was great.

You said Holy Holy Holy.

I said Wasn’t that amazing?

Holy you said.

I pulled you to me
and said I love you.

You held me in your angel arms
and cried Holy Holy Holy.

The music
from the burning edge of time
filled every cell,
every cavern,
all the empty spots

Now, here’s an excerpt from Chapter 37 of David’s forthcoming novel:

How often do we think an original thought? We think the thoughts we are taught….yes? All the books…all the movies…all the ads teach us how love works. And thus our expectations do make fools of us all. If I sort through the piles of my own experience, I do not find the same conclusions as are thrown at me from billboard and book.

I see that I have been driven to women by the deep sense of my own inadequacy: they have something that will make me feel better about myself. All such co-habitations have ended in bitter failure. And it is a failure to create such a volume of agony. We moan, we scream, we cry, we can be so angry in the face of such failures…angry, always, at ourselves, but, usually we express it to the person toward whom we once felt such love. Such a clatter of anger…such a terrible dissonance broadcast across the plain on which we all live. This day…right now…such sounds pervade the world. Trouble the sleep of children in Peoria, politicians in Nepal…confuse the honey bee trying to find its way into the bright center of the corolla. It is a sound that saddens me…deeply.

Here is what Tatianna had taught me about love. We are like snowflakes…each of us, among the billions and billions of snowflakes…unique: some complex, some simple. Some rounded, some barbed. Some dense, some diaphanous. When we enter the world of love, we are but half a creation. Something deep within is (i can speak only for myself) must find another life with which we can link in order to be whole. The problem? We are different from one another at deep levels that we cannot see or hear. Most of the pieces will not fit together. No matter how hard you try. You can read. You can therapy. You can reach the kind of detente that characterizes most marriages, but there is no music. When the pieces fit, there is music. Candles are lit. There is peace.

And yes, I know: most of the time…in the first unfolding fires of love…we think we’ve found that fit. We are sure this is the one. How do we tell the difference between the compulsions created by our feelings of inadequacy and the true fit? I don’t know. Maybe once there were cultures who knew that secret. It is certainly lost to us. My only recommendation?: Be kind. We try. We fail…Be kind. It is not easy. Only a true fit will protect us from the firestorm of vulnerability that issues forth from an open heart…and especially when we believe that open heart has been betrayed.

But…the one thing we must learn from love: in the face of anger…in the fires of regret and the wish for retribution: Be kind. Please, please do not add to the dissonance of anger that howls across our planet. We try for love. We fail…We are kind. We part…We are kind. I think we would be shocked by how much kinder and more peaceful the world would be if we could learn that one simple lesson: If love fails, do not savage and rip one another. Be kind.