Refriending

Lately I've enjoyed getting reacquainted with old friends in different ways and places, and each time I've stretched a little to do this it's proven very satisfying. I end up wishing I'd been better about staying in touch -- especially with early friends. That's what's on my mind here.

Refriending
by Gideon Burton

The things that circle back to us, as though,
imperfect, time repents in spiraled shame,
embarrassed that forgetting isn't tame
enough: some things will stay although they go.
As time accelerates a ballast slows
ephemera, the scale of loss reframes
and we are offered more than just the names
of losses; something pushes back the flow
as though a smothering blanket over sleep
is kicked away: old friends are friends again
but separated from the claws of place,
unfixed and fluid, living at a pace
more rhythmed to a better rhythm's end,
the tidal shallows dredged to layers deep.

Photo: flickr - Ed Yourdon

Skyjinx

Skyjinx

by Gideon Burton 

In ripping ribbons melted into mist,

to clotted cloths that stanch the evening's wound--

these quiet clouds delay the sense of soon,

then vanish into blackness, slippery-brisk.

There's virtue in the waiting, and there's risk:

I could forget the shaping of the dunes

whose crackled craters pock the gliding moon,

indifferent to the smoothing eons' tricks.

It circles round to us in quiet waves

that press our porous blushing memory

in furrow folds upon the bending back

of aching atmosphere. Just what behaves?

The sky is metaphor for memory:

so vast, so fluid, bruising blue with black. 

Photo: flickr - shutupyourface

In Mighty Prayer

In Mighty Prayer
by Gideon Burton

In mighty prayer, soft-pleading past what voice
what kneeling hours in soft petitions task,
my mouth gone dry rewetting all I ask,
my mind in wonder at each mindless choice.
Yet I recall that surging silence, moist
with gracious rain, dissolving every mark
and pretense: peace so full it could not last.
But I remember still thy stilling voice
in mighty prayer not desperate, a beam
of laser-lancing focus, tight, intense,
returning, sober, seeking, thanking, mouthed
and slurred and shouted, spun across my dreams
and waking, waiting for my Healer Friend,
my God, so sudden visible, so loud.

Photo: flickr - Kara Allyson

Man of Sorrows

Man of Sorrows
by Gideon Burton
after Isaiah 53:3-5

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

A man of grief, my God, a man of sorrows.
Despised, rejected, stricken, unesteemed.
My God, my every pain He borrows;
My fault, my wounds with lashing stripes redeemed.
I hide my face; He finds the peace I've broken.
Iniquities in thickening array
Chastise my peace like damning words I've spoken
With lips rough-red from scraping what to pray.
Yet He, afflicted, opened not his mouth;
Yet He, gush-wounded, speaks to pray for me,
Black-bloody shocked, forsaken, bleeding out,
I see Him, I can see Him seeing me.
     My peace chastised, my sorrows growing tame;
     My Jesus whispers quietly my name.

Photo: flickr - teejaybee

Prufrockery

Well, I'm teaching my Civ course about Modernism this week, so in the spirit of T.S. Eliot, I offer this little bit of broken glass.

Prufrockery
by Gideon Burton

My new compulsions, splines along the wet
enamels chinked with squares of rust. The bells
like scabbards rattled by the tongues we set,
a bolt of ringing muscle, firming, swells
the consequence. And yet the skin of drums
grows supple, bending to the water’s thrum,
the wake of resonance both red and dumb
and anywhere more wordless, silence spun
of coffee pot tableaux, a pear or two,
a cloth crocheted to link a web of holes
against the varnish, buffed and glowing through
the murky crags that clog the cooling shoals
along the banks that edge the yellow sky,
so well machined the tides both sing and sigh.

Photo: flickr - morgantj

Shakespeare's Sonnet #133 - Multimedia Remix

One of my students, Ariel Szuch, introduced me to a version of one of Shakespeare's sonnets that was so compelling that I wanted to share this on my blog. It's sonnet #133, whose central image of a prison is taken as the master metaphor of this animated simulation. Here's the poem, followed by the video.

Sonnet 133
by William Shakespeare

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!
Is't not enough to torture me alone,
But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?
Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,
And my next self thou harder hast engross'd:
Of him, myself, and thee, I am forsaken;
A torment thrice threefold thus to be cross'd.
Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward,
But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail;
Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard;
Thou canst not then use rigor in my gaol:
And yet thou wilt; for I, being pent in thee,
Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.



Sonnet 133 | The new Media with Shakespeare from iNEEDaDAMNgoodJOB.com on Vimeo.

Reading Rekindled

Reading Rekindled
by Gideon Burton

Though books have been my constant friends these years,
and sit as sentinels upon my shelf,
their payments rich yet fall into arrears
as I've discovered other realms of wealth.
Though sober with their thought and steady weight,
though filled with sentiments and speeches sound,
my books are monologues whose steady gait
runs even over life's uneven ground.
And yet if I will share the things I read
before the world of readers found online,
I find that their responses plant new seeds
and make my reading socially refined.
     Alone, we come to much but often trouble;
     I'm grateful there's escape from reading's bubble.

The Thresholds

The Thresholds
by Gideon Burton

Events conspired to carry me toward
that seam of sky hemmed tight along the crest
where heaving greens touch cloudscapes. Can I soar
above the summer, let my breathing press
fresh indigos and stain my waiting eyes?
And as the sunward-reaching foliage stakes
its weight along the red-black earth, unsize
the curved horizon as the eager ether cakes
with sedimentary mists until the break,
the edge, the terminus of airy space?
Could I return, unable not to shake
from all that's charged my skin and stinging face?
     I watch. I'm still. It rushes to my reach:
     the thresholds, gusting time to close the breach.

Photo: Martin Gommel

Beacon

Beacon
by Gideon Burton

Attending to the wounds again. The sky
undressed unclotting, losing moons. The sea
congealing, thatching thick its womb, its sluice
of sudden signs disgorging magma sighs,
the gorged and gouging constellations speed
to dissolution, marked and marking loose
parentheses, apologies unfit
for numbered sparrows, preening pawns, for us.
This bandaging the hemispheres, this small
absorption, mist along the cheek, this spit
and clay and mealy middle blindness, truss
and timber, crucifix and shepherd's stall
and all the sodden sympathies again.
Be this, be here, be whole, the veil is rent.

Photo: flickr - murphyeppoon

Sovereign Sea

Sovereign Sea
by Gideon Burton

It rules us all: the ocean. Thick with hair,
with oily condensations of the moon,
with tides that rise and ebb and rise as soon
again as soon as molten mortars can repair,
oblivions of viscous tissue, red
in tooth and time and claw. And yet the breath
of certain mornings (cool against the crest
of sharper whispers) bind the brackish dread,
undrown the buried skies, unfold in piece
by sudden piece the wrinkle-pattern rain,
enough to stitch a garment over pain,
to summon sailing ships to thread the breeze.
     As heavy as the settled mountains’ sleep,
     it governs, widens, cold and dark and deep.

Photo: flickr - Mohan S