Unbridled Joy

7/31/2019 Unbridled Joy

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Effects of daily life on happiness

Enthalpy Press

Don Schaeffer


3/63

Borrower Be

When your benefactor frowns

and suddenly

becomes yourcreditor, art

stops poetry

freezes. You look

into the unforgivingface. Earth shrinks.

All of the

rainbowsburn.


4/63

Feeling Better

As I get closer to dottering,I put on Bach

and the music reaches out

through the centuries saying,

we are here for you,we are your neighbors,

in spite of the early death,and the cold impoverished

winters, wars,rights of kings, conquest.

My neighbors with their

smiles suppress their hates.


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6/63

Halloween in Spring

Sometimes I think

I enjoy fearremembering what I felt

when I was fearless.

I awake bravely

in the morning knowingrisks and hearing continuous

portents, sad words

follow me everywhere.

Is silence the scariest thing,or is the gabble of human

voices scarier still?


7/63

Head First

As I tumble

I will stay the same;

I promise like the rainbownot changing the rules

clean in the morning

breakfasted according to the laws of nature.

I won't lookthat which is expected will come,

don't need to study it

will travel with myhead down letting

my body absorb the impact.


8/63

Encounter with Superman

Big John Gunn,

one syllable man

whose eyesrefuse to elaborate

on the sky,

tells me how much

real honesty costs.

It's not the cheap

self serving stuff,not the insider stuff,

he says, big feet

crushing the clay.

Honesty only

counts when it costs me,

says big John Gunn, theone syllable man.


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10/63

Absolute Limen

We sit in the back

against the forest in April

at the border of Spring. She isstill sad as the dusk gathers

and will probably remain so.

I watch the filaments

in the trees get finer,uncountable threads of shadow,

nets of shadow, lace, and the

catching webs of vine,thinner and finer until we

fall into darkness.


11/63

To Someone Allied with Death

Life, the time sovereign

is also powerful.

She didn't think so,didn't feel the

weight of days,

how they grind edges,

polish jagged everydayto jewels.


12/63

Temporal Extension

Truth

that never lets up

is cruel.Objectively, Daniel was real

for two afternoons a month

plus a long story of checkered youth

and shaded manhood.But when he has died

Daniel's reality looms over her

like the god of storms.


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15/63

Dream from Delayed Check

I dream anotherdark towered city

that masks the sky, glistens

like diamonds in moistureand loves the rain at night.

With my muddy eyes,I grope, chilled,

wish for familiar warm

small spaces alone.

I dream the pension-granter

decides it's time for me to die.

My muddy mind races through thatlooking for ways to combat the terror.

Bound to happen sometime I dream,

considering painful options.


16/63

Longish Epitaph

OK I'm not a good poet

and what I do for art

sucks too andI'm not really

a poet or an artist at all.

We can get that out of the way.

And what I am is just a guywho lives here doing some

biological duty, un-

memorable, living with error,memory of failure, denying

death.


17/63

Labyrinthine Day

The trees

extrude themselves

along the low-resistancepathways in the air.

Nature abhors such vacuums and

fills them with wood.

.The birds who

inhabit the trees

ride sunlight trails,slip through transparent

tunnels in the surface of wind.


18/63

Tango

He knows

how family is a war zone,

strut meetscounter-strut.

Leaving and not

leaving soon enough,the soft and warm

up for grabs.

He knows how life is war,

how sweet is victory

and how permanent anddevastating is defeat.

Love is the prize

and always has been.Those outcast can only

squeeze tight to

hold themselves in.


19/63

Memories of Winnipeg

We often

intensely disagree,

but I know your faceand over the long term

you have always been here

and tightening my strings.

.Now I see you broken.

You have

temporarily lost andevery one of your days is scary

as you hang on a string above the

safety web, with king safety poised toeat you.

.

I could gloat and will and do in private

while smiling down at you and offeringa hand which I know is not enough.

We have tightened each others

knots and tugged for 20 years. I'mglad to see you victim of your errors.

.

I tell you your career has beencheckered. You have been stubborn and

righteous as if you were

meant to struggle. My

poor friend. And you have becomesomething else. It must be

better now.


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21/63

Time Factory

The human brain

has an organelle

.that stacks heartbeats

end to end

and synthesizes time.

.We are conscious

because we

make moments.


22/63

My Van Gogh Poem

Oh look at that Europe.

I love the way it moves

the fields dance andthe stars circle each other

in the sky. I want a place of my own.

Thank God for my eyes

and for the color. WhenI cry and my eyes

emit paint. I make

my own Europe.Please take it.


23/63

The Odd Thing About Memory

I remember Mr. Quinn.

"You can't just keep running

roughshod over people's feelings."He told me when I was twenty.

.

It's odd

that I remember thebumpy spots in the path

and honor those names.

.The broken spots

have anchors in my dreams.

They shame me all my life.I will be embarrassed beyond death.


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How Poorly Do I Love You?

We have

the agreed engagement of

fingers and the casualbrace of arm on waist and

laughter to break the silence.

We sleep with limb touching limb

and feel the brief vacuum of absence..

I tell her that she

spent most of her lifeorbiting around people

who never learned how

to show love..

I ask,

among the

love skills deficient,why am I different?


26/63

Heroism Dream

They have forgotten the athletes.

Heroically, I run to grab

as much of the vaccine as I can find.I dash through the tunnel

to where they are about to board the bus.

But I must return to make an appearance

at the dinner partyand I forget the needles.

You watch my sneaking back.

I can't do it all myself. I cry out,

in spite of my heroic intentions.I lose the way as my opportunities vanish

Something is wrong with my legs.

When all comes

down to it, poemsflow through my

brain like dreams,ephemeral wispsof egocentricity processed

through my eyes,

frozen self-centered ripples.


27/63

Biography of a Man

We are creatures

atop and below

whose ancestors joined long ago.

Slimed together

in gelatinous

biological glueswallowed into

the maw of an elastic fish.

I don't know why

I think myself alive,

I,suffused among

masses of

soft automata,

each with its own god,can hear the pumps

and wonder.


28/63

Letter to the Ethics Editor

How do you feel about anger?

Does it feel good

like other passions?Is it a friendly device

like a sharpened ax

to shape the hardwood?

Can one be

forgiven for it?

When I hold

anger in my mind's hand,

I cut through ropes,jam smooth uneven walls.

It vibrates hard

like a rifle butt.


29/63

Biography of a Tree

I know she is one

huge vegetable harmony,

impossible to dissect.

The vines reach inside her skin

and their fingernail fleshes

merge with hers.


30/63

Known but Not Familiar Words

I always

put it around my nostrils,

I answer when she asks mewhere I put my Vicks.

Then in my half-sleep

I notice how strange the word sounds,"nostrils." Words not often said

wander in the woods without trails.

Something like nose,

I know that word even though it's

not every day. Nostrils, the appendagefeature, like the nomenclature of insect parts.

In my half-sleep about to slip

into dream my facetious mindknows the link

here on earth to parts of strange beasts.


31/63

The Hole

The truth

has to buried

down here somewhere.

I enter cannily

prepared for

a long slow journey.

The light of my candle

flickers as ifit can fail.

It is throughthe basement of my old house

that it opens.

Sub-floors andcatacombs never explored

behind a door of wooden slats I could nearly remember,

as if the truth

were hidden in the realm

of devils.

I walk in alone

peering at the cells of my brain

amazed at how huge I am.


32/63

Why I like Cop Shows ("Where Id was there shall ego be.")

Police come in

bright like the sun,

cleaning away from the outsidewhat should be hidden safely within.

So the ordinary hours

dawn from underneath.They are full-sized,

with heavy feet.


33/63

Chauvet Cave

From a world of

closed loops

where kinks andcorners weren't

imagined yet,

where animals

mixed and soulsslipped in and out

of bodies. We hold

the line now, coldand fast. We

lock and crimp sharp.

The circle is onlyan ideal we cannot match.


34/63

Freud vs Jung

I used to thinksomething came from

down the great tube of body and brain.I thought I saw a light.

But I'm grown less certain.

I now think it all comes

from this tiny Earth,

emergent detail. Memory

is all that's left

of mystery.


35/63

You Have Many Moles

When I slipped into the world

it wasn't certain about me.

The lines around my bodyare therefore fudged.

It takes more energy

to finish the work of rounding.Rough extrusions remain,

statistical shivers

of half way.


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37/63

Mom Returns for a Night

It took

a lot out of her,

returning that kind of smileand pushing her body into

that angle she learned

in high school. But shebecame my mother again,

briefly, on that anniversary day,

those years ago, a womanof long learned habit in front

of the camera.Unknowns followed her, just

weeks ahead. The effort

showed. I don't know how

she remembered.


38/63

My Comment When The Poet Denied the Rant

He wrote a wonderful rant about

somebody's criticism of his poems.

I never noticed the trouble

somebody said he had.

I told him the one thing

you have to watch when you

write a rant is the glorious high you get.

It makes you selfish.He blushed saying it was

just a spoof. But this was no spoof.I told him how much he enjoyed the bitter juice.

I told him I can tell.


39/63

Daily Visit of the Unforgiving Sun

First sun slipping through the

East window excites the air dust

and highlights the flawsin the rug.

The sun is

refreshing likean inspector

who visits from

beyond the walls

and tells me I'm OK.

That's why I lovethe morning.


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Systemic Misunderstanding Dream

Now I get it I'm

surrounded by the

frowns of righteousness-addicts,I sit swiveling on a pike.

When they spin me,

push into my eyesglower after glare,

asking whys.

I wanted to please them,

loved the project;

but can't do it.Resign.


42/63

Brenda the Real Poet

To all the

unheard poets

who want to weep tooin the spirit of weeping

feel the tropical

drizzle gustson just a special day of

music they make,

to all of us

with small and silent audiences,

I call in sympathy,"May your stories

sting."


43/63

What Happens When You Settle Down

I put away my

pretty orange vest

and toss away mywing-tipped salesman shoes.

Love means

no more parade,poetry over,

the end of the pleas.

The world of aspiration

thins, fantasy assumes

its valid translucent form,all is tame. Days pass.


44/63

Photographs of Textures

Focused eyes

dots of the world,

filaments streaming

wavelets

within the big thingshovering through intermediate space

between the nose pushing insectsand the mountains of the moon.


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46/63

The Party

The first course of

outrage was wonderful.

Now, I await the tears.Lick my lips,

feel the

sea building in my eyes,breath surfs

prayer.

Servers bring dessert.

Yes. It's my birthday.

I so lookedforward to this.


47/63

Love Light

When you say

I love you and

you are faint of heart,uttering a slight or

ignorant lie,

you live luke warm,

senses numbing.The answer is also a lie.


48/63

Seeing the Earth before Exit

1.

I wore the jacket padded

armor to the office.

The hands that

touched my shoulder

were just dead weight.

Tailored decoration

hid my neck

so there was little

visible flesh.

Stacked fluid instants like

a football game wentfrom offense to defense,

victory to loss,covered as possible.


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2.

We paid

for ways to spend our minutes.

We exchanged

past units for dollops

of the future,

licking anticipation

from our lips.

Manipulated sound

or flavors especially formed, or

carefully timed open gates.


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Evolution

I am tired

of worrying whose

mood is badin the evening.

I just want to find

bits of pleasure.

I am tired of

civilization, let the place

fester in themorning. The movement

around me makes me

want to hide.

Blast the others

and their selves.

I am tired ofmaking room.

And I love the outrage,

feeling how muchI earned it.


52/63

The Victory of a Mature Man

Well Madam,

I have purged all those

pretensions. I haveneatly simplified.

No longer do

what I called art,

laughable recordinglike a cave man.

Especially with the vainelements, burnt away,

purely I live, immersed

in what I see and feellearning how short life is

and how few will

briefly remember.


53/63

Dreamless

What do I have

to worry about

in an era of peace?Just death

and arrangements.

As usual I open my eyesat four am for my customary

waking dream compulsion.

In foresight, infrantic planning.

In an era of peace, another mindworries. I am

absent and someone

disposes of me, whole

or pieces.


54/63

Night

Tonight acts and

pauses like a theatrical.

The curtain risesthrice during intermissions

and falls as the drama ensues.

Act 1.Murk and introduction.

I stir.

Act 2.

In medias res

with my girlfriendflying in my balloon designed to make my

enemies jealous. They

reach up to grab me

as I throttle away.My eyes open.

Act 3.Sleep and wakefulness

mix. I count

and worry.


55/63

The Clinic

When I enter the room

with my huge keys dangling

in my recognizable uniform,I see him sitting there.

I say I want to help you.

I take the "help" by thehilt and slash him. He is

agog, repeating only "I" and "I".

The "we" falls from his face.

The "you" is long lost.

He and I exchange stares.Mine wins..


56/63

Renovations

Awake in the breath

of ghosts after

a nightmare suppressednight, unlocatable feet

no discernible floor.

It got cold last night.The room pushes me away

as I move from the bed

out of the blankets

Cats are disobedient. Halls

are haunted with disorder.Estranged breakfast.

I wait for the sun.


57/63

Getting Old without Religion

I remember

what it was like

in the old dayswhen I would go

someplace that made me

obedient. The obedience

made me safe. Therewere no obvious friends there

but everyone knew my face.I always felt there would be

more chances and the years

would be a path to perfection.Now I am far, far away from those melodies I used

to chew on to ease the sweet sap

out of the words. I look around for

other chances and see brevity.


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59/63

Her Sunday Night

Her Sunday night

convulses.Breath whistles,

crashes on pillow.

Her outer shell crimps.But inside she

only sleeps.


60/63

Definition of Art

When we traveled

to an arty town

we found most artistsown their galleries.

What about this?

Art definedas things on display

in an art gallery


61/63

Grumpy Dream

As he balds

the dark stripes

on his pate appear.

His face formed

with a glare,

tiny baby teethshiny and sharp.

Unfriendly like a tiger,but he is a lamb.

I was born with him.

He stages the day.


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Unbridled Joy