I could warm milk on the stovetop, but that
would only leave a mess. Sometimes you don’t do
what you need to do, because it leaves

a mess. The day still stings, long gone now. It’s shadows
of commerce and confusion invariably run up
against ever-present fears. My heart is restless, doubting

all intelligence my head provides. My body rises,
on its own will, against tepid protest, returning
slowly to an empty kitchen. Six minutes

past three. It feels later. The clock denies. Laughter outside,
from wayward teenagers, scurries through the window.
I wonder how, in the past, I could sequester myself

from day-to-day cruelties. I wonder why I no longer
could, or was allowed to. Or why I let myself
express everything I felt or what I didn’t. The soul

recycles its madness, the night still the night, taking
on the tensions of a thunderstorm that will
never come. My body is weary, all of me is

weak. I am tired. Yet my fingers move, like this is
automatic, like this is what they should be doing. My
mind is all over the place, but my fingers are here. Words

appear, recounting, repeating, earnest thoughts of fears
splattered across the page. Sometimes you have to do
what you need to do. Even, if it leaves a mess.

©2014 j.g. lewis

yesterday 
        today
was
tomorrow

I had many things to do

                              things I had put off
consciously or 
unconsciously       it mattered not
       I was determined to get them
done
one         (or all of them)
by
one
done      today

when it was tomorrow

it seemed easier
it seemed manageable
it seemed as if there would

be time
when today
was tomorrow

yet as tomorrow came,
       as it always does
       as yesterday lost hold of
the hours and
                            its way
and tomorrow just happened
anyway

it seemed                                                 as if

time had passed me by
as if a day;
today or any day
slipped off the calendar
falling like a rose petal or
disgraced politician
into the basket of days misspent
or wasted

days which promised more
but delivered less

tomorrows do that
they never quite live up to
today

and all too often
become a yesterday

©2014 j.g. lewis

Errors and misfortunes freely
broadcast across unregulated
airspace
for all to see. And devour.

No space, no time for indignation.
No place for pride, nor gentlemen
worthy
of such ambition.

Nothing remains safe or sacred
in the mesh of sound bites and
sensationalism.
Nothing is permanent.

Except for the scars. Nothing is
everything and then
not at all.
It is all about the power.

All concepts requiring brave
thought overshadowed by a
corrupt few
recklessly tending to so many.

Politics, like commerce, once an
honorable vocation. Now a lowly
blood sport.
We continue watching, transfixed.

Withered victims writhe upon society’s
sidewalks of faith and hope.
Promises
promised. Promises passed over.

Collateral damage in everyone’s
war. A domestic crisis where
nothing
is everything it once was.

©2014 j.g. lewis

more constant
than science
more precise
than algebra
more valuable
than cash . . .
why can’t our lives be guided by poetry?

POETRY
a more consistent thought lately.
I’m reading more, I’m writing more,
I’m believing more. Lately.
It is poetry month.
April.

Why now, I don’t know, and why just one month?
Why not every month?
It matters not; but it does.
Here, as well, people are sharing their work, their words,
and people are talking about their favorite
poetry.

I am not sure if most people talk
poetry
enough.

Doesn’t it have to rhyme?
Not all of the time . . .
 not for everyone.

If not a poem, then
a poet
is mainly misunderstood.
But how? The language is so direct,
it cuts out the crap, rarely are there ums and awes,
and
any hesitation is purposeful.
Poets do not stumble on words. Poets respect words, poets
breathe words.
Words are currency, for a poet. Why not for everybody?

POETRY
celebrates language, any language . . .
I must admit envy as, recently,
very recently,
two people, here on this screen, shared a poem
(in fact, a poem about poetry) across the ocean,
in the language in which it was intended.
la poesía
Okay, it wasn’t envy. It was jealousy: pure and simple.
For I have always enjoyed Neruda,
(I keep a small volume on my office desk to remind myself, in the middle of
the day, when I’m infected by the banal corporate culture [an oxymoron?]
I open the pages to remind myself how words are to be used, correctly).
I enjoy Neruda, in the only language I know.
I read translations.
I wonder,
what is lost in translation?

How much more wonderful are his words
in his native tongue?
Perhaps I should learn Español?
Or maybe I can be satisfied in knowing
two people
I don’t really know,
(and they really know not each other)
took a few sentences,
to share, both a language
and a poem.

LA POESÍA
Separated by an ocean, and time zones,
and communicating not with lips, but through a screen,
two people shared something in common.
A poem.
That is how powerful poetry
is
can be
and should be.
It should bring people together.
Lovers, warriors, politicians and their prey
might better understand themselves and each other
if they thought more in poetry, than in whatever else
they might be thinking.

This is not a poem.
This is simply
random scrabble,
disjointed musings,
caffeine-free morning thoughts,
nothing more really,
than a long-winded statement
of why
I like poetry
(in April, or any month)
and maybe why
you do 
too.

@2014 j.g. lewis

Originally published on Rebelle Society, September 2014    www.rebellesociety.com
Above photograph features EPITHALAMIUM by Pablo Neruda

 “Sometimes the moon and sun argue over who will tuck me in at night.”

                                                                                                                                          -Hafiz

Perhaps it was last Friday’s equinox, or the fact we are wandering through an infrequent astronomical stretch, but again the daily pull between the sun and the moon has captured my imagination.

A reccurring cycle, whether bathed in sunlight or consumed by darkness, the gravity of the two celestial bodies exerts a constituent force on the soul. The sun is more evident — a greater amount of time is spent in its presence — since it is always there. Yet the sun only burns, it never changes, the surrounding atmosphere dictates or influences its power.

The moon, however, is different each night; it’s always changing. Never is the moon the same as it was.

I remember, as a child, my friends being fascinated with textbook constellations, always searching for Orion, Aquarius or the Big Dipper. I was content with the moon; not only was it obvious, but never afraid to show itself as it was. Whether full, half-hearted, or crescent, it remained true and dependable. Even with its slightest whispers, or a new moon holding back its light, I always knew it was there.

The moon is a motivator. When there is nothing left to talk about, to write about, or think about, there is always the moon. I’m not alone in this inspiration. Thoreau, Frost, Collins, Poe, Yeats, Laux (I could fill paragraphs alone with poets soothed or intrigued by moonglow) all found paper and pen as the moon spoke.

Over the past year, pages of poetry have spilled out of me in the shade of the moon. It has been an unidentified, almost mystic, dynamic I’ve not experienced before. The force wasn’t previously familiar, but I’ve always known the place where the moon resides.

I think I’ve spent a lot of my life hovering within a darkness. Maybe I found comfort there? A foreboding sadness, I might have even thought it was a normal means of dealing with negative situations and emotions, all the while still trying to convince myself I was searching for happiness. I continued looking for the light instead of realizing the true brightness was already there, inside of me.

I think a lot of people live like this, searching for a destination that will never be reached because we are already there. It takes stepping out of your comfort zone and changing your perspective to see it. Perhaps, for the first time, I actually realize this.

It’s like the moon; you see the sphere in all its phases, but you don’t notice the complete power until it is full.

Always in awe of the full moon (more of romance than of restlessness), I’ve felt all phases over the past 15 months have produced a correlation between the celestial map and my direction. It began with a new moon ushering in 2014, then even more so with last April’s spectacular lunar eclipse, the first of a consecutive four such events (two more in the tetra; April 4 and September 28 of this year). Since then I’ve been caught up in a lunar wake, the push and pull, the black and white, and a discovery of each shade between.

It has been a lunar awakening.

There is more to darkness than the inherent absence of light. There is lightness in darkness, something that allows sight; still, slight, but still present. Lightness is, in fact, more present in darkness, than the reverse. When is it light, you never think of the dark. In darkness, light may be all you yearn for.

The light is right there; a light I have shied away from.

It’s amazing how your perspective can change a situation. Rather than stepping away from the darkness, I am stepping towards this light. I am allowing my eyes to open wide, rather than adjusting to the darkness. This light shines on my faults, and my strengths, and encourages me to keep stepping forward.

The more light I allow in, the brighter I become. The darkness fades. I focus now on all the beauty and wonder I finally have the chance to see.

My lightness and my darkness are my yin and yang. I’ve long known of these contrary forces and had believed I fully understood the principle, the sunny and shady sides of the street, the strong and the weak, the masculine and the feminine. But when the concept becomes more personal, you realize it’s not about opposites, but rather a matter of balance.

There are two sides to everything and everyone. One side is not complete without the other.

Like the equinox – where the realms of the moon and the sun are equal — you need the darkness as much as the light, as surely as the moon needs the sun to provide its power.

Not Now
The moon is not full, not now.
It is new, it is hiding, even it has
little courage now. Concealed.
Behind clouds it knows and
thoughts it has never had before,
it waits. For what? Like you, or
I, it masks its enthusiasm with
tentative steps, a walk that can
keep you awake through the
night. Wondering. Why? When?
What will it take before it again
shows itself completely? Maybe
more time? Or maybe more light?
                              © j.g. lewis 2014