Leaning to Live with Solitude as an Old Friend

Leaning to Live with Solitude as an Old Friend

L. Edgar Otto     June 30, 2013

At first for forty days I could not read let alone write
nothing could fill the frozen time, pointless forgotten the left on television shows fallen even from its night light background

The quietness, the empty echoes of many little feet deafening
unlike me I thought I might steal a neighbors puppy for company

A can of salmon in the cupboard, fourth time it came back to me from the food drive, I recognized the serial number. I opened it - what matter if it spoiled or not

This was the end come the millennium, I left after the rapture. My computers crashed, this the start before hand my 911 and in my homeless wander until then, how much more did it matter?

Slowly I recalled my equation in the sand one chilly morning at Yarmouth close where Dickens summered and would write
It did not wash away, something left eternal in our dreams that although no one would see, I did, proud even one human could against time and tides

So I found again my solitude, not defined by others, and tried to unearth the forgotten dreams- so important for creativity I
presented it at a poetry slam mike to a silenced crowd - Oh the thousand poems like therapy were lost, ten year my Katrina- mixed up what I am and what I was in this one heart

Love, damn love, to love again I must still love her then so not to kill love itself...the cold North Sea in winter had no teeming life like the tidewaters of my youth- just time to think and count the pebbles and broken shells, one two many holes the more the rarer so it goes the seas and mountains churning

We each raised on an island in the Cannibal sea of our youth
trying to sort out art our own or about others, perhaps master the source, King James, or Jamaican rum, Shakespeare that we share some pattern of us all as art communicates our own

While all along the island had all it needed to survive the hurricanes and trade winds, triangles of cloth and fish to bind us forgotten we could live off our land

You see, what you are and do matters, the universe cares so one dream that finds ourselves opens dreams for all of us

We learn past the distance where light cannot yet reach us or its message returned that ultimately we were never alone save we did not try to take up our pens first alone in solitude
then together as the tides rise faster than our lifetimes

I could, if more myself and thus more creative, one voice again, one clear vision of our future without illusions sort thru
the old poems, resurrect them line by line in memory longing for the essential past yet not let it take from our wider world anew.

Lost love in its day, the hardest of all things to write about
so successful it so overdone, worth the risk to bring new lovers into this world, blindly and bravely our efforts know reassuring we can find our past again if we risk the undertow
Our Love may remain forgotten, but it was never wasted no matter what we shudder at in the violent silence of its afterglow

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http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/   for the Derek Walcott Love after Love poem prompt,   as all poems on this blog to the imaginary garden with real toads

Adam Half Face

Adam Half Face

http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/   for the About Face  as all poems on this blog to the imaginary garden with real toads

L. Edgar Otto   June 26/27, 2013



We act differently while viewed in
Love's ultimate songs of uncertainty

We are each others mirrors
foggy or fun house or crystal clear

Full of time as much as emptiness
we half shadows to the touch

When I lean against the brick wall or
to rest my head on my arms to sleep

I imagine the wall is real too and you
weighing me down noticed with the gravity

Adam's profile half his face beholds
some imagined bearded lady

Lightning down or nurtured up from hidden
roots forever young the tree of life to sky

Eve the other half and view inside my mind
no image worthy of your soul's shadow

Although we dance and tease, our touching
doubled, temptation cuddle, eternal garden

* * * *

Bamboo Alone

Bamboo Alone

L. Edgar Otto  June 24, 2013   (written Jan. 9, 2010)

Feast, famine
Ten bamboo roots shoot
Thumb grasping

Ying Ying's nod
Her cherry blossoms
His bling bling

* * * *

In My Shirts Heart Pocket

In My Shirts Heart Pocket

L. Edgar Otto    Friday, 21 June, 2013


I cannot recall her face, not that I threw something away
but she took something of me with her, now her own

She came up to me on Franklin Street
said she had graduated so was leaving

Thanked me for talks from time to time
over coffee or walks along the quad

Catch me sleeping in the grass, reading, or
writing, sitting together on the wall watching passers-by

"I just want to tell you I wish I could fold you up
put you in my shirt pocket and carry you with me."

* * *

This damn smart phone is magic, like the real world
plays tricks with space and time

I have arrived at last to dreams of all the books in the
library in my shirt pocket window

Back then we could print the Bible in a millimeter square
but it took large machines to read it

Such light so we arise again from darkness yet that
unseen spurs on our desires and creativity

Or you I holding in my hand standing out that moment in time
like alerts from the weather girl, real silhouette, screen of green

* * *

I look back and see me in the many-worlds, absurd magic
changing traffic lights with but a wave of my finger

Painting sunsets in compliments thinking I'm crazy were
it not for people stopping, remarking how beautiful the sky

* * *

As if I were their guru, those who said they could see
sparks under my feet as I walked

The high ones as well those let out on the street
to fend homeless for themselves from South Wing

I just did not let out I did not understand the magic
any more than they, denying my divinity proved it to them

Still, I had to keep a cheerful smile so the sky would not be fog
or the arcing clouds spawn tornadoes, universes parallel

* * *

Our watchers cannot win you know, break our deeper
bonds or by virtual worlds distracting us by light

So much we do not know about our curly toes
fading in and out, Love the fifth element

They cannot follow you unless you will it, nor I,
but you reappeared now that I better understand

From somewhere vanished into a black hole and
coming out the other side, thru silence between heart beats

Say hello, pedals unfolding, my own scoundrel falling acts
taking you fore granted yet now we all forgiven

As real for us both your smelling like a rose...

* * * *

The Purpose of Life is to Ask if Life has a Purpose

The Purpose of Life is to Ask if Life has a Purpose

L. Edgar Otto    20 June, 2013

Bouffant the hive of hair is numbered in the
poet species Bufo lines in sparrow fall that

We Celebrate our Clutch
Conserve what we Deserve so

Freeze the Happenstance where error looms
in graying Heirloom Imperfection

In Monologue Observe Oodles by Osmosis

Preserve dockyard Punk dry our heart's
Reserve of scars once a Riverbed

Lava Saturate all who Singe or Soar

wherefore we Transfuse with dew the atmosphere
by our often flimsy Transparent  Whimsy

* * * *

Monkeyshine

Monkeyshine

L. Edgar Otto    12 June, 2013

In the city of the slabs and sticks
rewinding time does scabs and tricks

Reverse the mirrors toward the dark
A Rose's thorns spew from a meadow lark

Side-winding splits the silver screen
But a jagged edge unheard a scream

Squeamish colors of love and blood
The sacred cow still chews its cud

Mud bubbles pop thru cracks and floats
Bursts on fire while shoving groats

Descend from silver to copper two pence
Moats of comfort's circle siege defense

The monkey shines a painted doll
Bubonic blemishes steeple tall

No gargoyle looking down to humble
Nor within a sting or honey bee bumble

Consuming flowers back to worlds under
Time river ball lightning jars but once its thunder

Iron to cap the drain of daily tides of sleeping
Strollers in the way beyond laughter and weeping

The virgin lost come childbirth deep the core
Molten lava crystal bond not lollipop lipstick gone before

Earth-shine seen in the hidden part of the eaten moon
Moonshine for the masses, mass-less gravity swoon

The monkey shines his beauty anti-hero anti-beast
Half the viewing as marble deserts fall to yeast

Belfry bats chase falling stones entangled fingers
Entangled hair but cannot bite the echo lingers

To spy on the imagined audience Frankenbolts romancing
Some higher sky as if the past alive in necromancing

All there colorized to nurse us in the black and white
Bask in the swirling rising hues or to flee or fight

* * * * *

Ironclads

Ironclads

L. Edgar Otto     07 June, 2013


We scuttled her in Great Bridge
for liberty, palm and moon
If it hadn't been for Erickson's damn cheese box
we'd rammed the Minnesota on a dune


Now the ladies in their parasols stood
watching from the beach
Ironclads fighting to a draw, wooden ships not made
to run the blockade



Me and Littlepage, Tarheels thru the swamp

served on the Merrimack, renamed the proud Virginia

retreated to our dismal camp




The acrid sulfur smoke did burn our eyes
 the cannon balls on iron made our ears bleed
Second American revolution equal ring of stars
before a burning Southern Cross replaced the stars and bars


The ladies of Norfolk town, hardtack, chicory, burlap gowns
fell prey to scavengers and fires burning down
Thus ever to tyrants preserving Liberty, Eternity ne'er worn,
and Plenty until exhausted all that's battle born



Me and Littlepage, like Phoenix rise again,

Bayonets, battleships, and losers Kingdom come

unmarked that sea of graves and might have been


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