[Newspoetry] Images You Make Be

[DL Emerick]

Images You Make Be

 

Some people have eyes.

Some people have ears.

I have a nose for words,

And tongues for them, too.

 

What "why" do others have to be?

An unerring sense of unerring self,

Vested in senses, some sense or other,

Of self and no other - all feeling senses,

A feeling but more of its own self,

And never more than its own same.

 

Says she, My image is mine and me,

I may be trapped in my own trap,

Which gap I can but never shut,

Nor ever open either its close -

A trap beneath a bathroom sink.

 

No fuming gases will come or rise,

Nor gators splash up to surprise you,

To bite you on your bucking butt,

Which passes, just passes time.

 

So, I stop, in passing, passing away:

What do her perfect matches mean,

The ones that she leaves in there,

As if their light could lighten air?

 

Some words I saw in matches lit,

Words of fire, writings in the sky,

Signs of times in times of signs,

A fire passing, passing away.

 

Said she, in a thousand tongues,

Ten thousand voices crying,

"Play no mind games with me" -

She printed them everywhere,

Always in match-seeking ads --

even on her book of matches.

 

I thought, what else is playing?

I know what is now showing,

But what's really playing?

What's real is Now, playing;

When stops playing, it's done.

 

She meant, I can only guess,

"No mind; only body games?"

Or, this is a stretch of mind,

A stretch yawning over its gaps,

"No mind; only soulful games?"

 

These are matching words;

My image does not match,

Not one I have of me playing,

Wary of mind, body, and soul,

How they are all one with me.

 

All have bodies, giving way,

A way away; away, from me;

Tricks find some kind of taker,

Who'd not be undertaking you,

But one who is over -- taking you:

Eyes and ears; tongue, nose and tears.

Senselessly, taking you, giving way:

Care takers taking care of being.

 

Short, short and shy of self,

Shorn of ego and its pride,

Bereft of desire in what it gains,

By being, merely being, on fire,

Such are tongues of fire, words,

Flames aflame, inflamed in flames,

What's inflammatory passes love,  

Self-consuming, giving heat-light?

 

Fire comes and fire goes; fire is.

Always always; passing, passing away -

Beauty shines in its being, through,

Fire fears not to be itself alone,

It has no other ever else to be.

Image sensed in a fire-side talk:

Only fire can touch fire safely -

Wooden, the rest, god-fearing logs.

 

The sun burned out my eyes,

When love burned out my heart;

After images, nothing of soul remains,

But hollows spotted in image ashes.

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