I'm a Poet, and I Understand It

My audacity knows no bounds. In addition to having the gall to compose music, I also have the nerve to write poetry. I would love to explicate my passion for Words-as-Music, but it's late, and I'm just using this post as an excuse to post a few poems, one of which I just finished writing. Enjoy!

Plea

Bald prangt, den Morgen zu verkünden
der Sonn auf goldner Bahn,
bald soll der Aberglaube schwinden,
bald siegt der weise Mann.

O holde Ruhe, steig hernieder
kehr in der Menschen Herzen wieder,
dann ist die Erd ein Himmelreich,
und Sterbliche sind Göttern gleich.
-The Magic Flute

Vindicate me, O God! Liberate me, O Lord!
Send down your Light and Truth to free me,
From the Reign of Darkness your Light unchain me!

It does not matter if it is Night
For a Darkness covers the land,
Cast over by the Shadow of Death:
It causes a trembling in my hand.

The People have made the Tomb Mount Zion;
The Empire Masses make the Nether Angel King!
At his Election ring the Bells of Shells
And shrieking Missiles his Glory sing.

Death has taken our Sons
And makes them serve in tanks;
The King has taken our Fields
And causes them to grow rank.

The People's Elect has made them slave
To the Sword their Savior and their Grace the Grave.

But I seek Life,
And in Life I seek Liberty,
And in Liberty I seek Peace.
O sweet Peace, beam down upon us
From the Lord my Light.
In gaining Peace I will know Freedom
From the Lord my Light,
And by having Freedom I will have Life,
From the Lord my Light.

Transfigure me into Liberty,
O Lord of Light!
Bathe me in your freest Brilliance
And I will radiate your Praises
All the Days of my Endless Life.

Ideated Light

 

It shall not be that the shine, the shimmer

Of ideated light,

Which in this world of night

Is Liberation, a gleam or glimmer

That, for a soul entrenched now and ever

Against forces of force,

Charges in like a horse

To save oneself from a doomed endeavour;

It shall not be that this sheen, this shining

Shall ever disappear,

Nor shall it ever near

That dusk when solar light's declining.

That light is but light, a sensation of sight;

But this light is sensation encapsulated,

Compacted into essence by the spark divine,

So that this true light from that light

May be felt and extrapolated

By my soul unto your soul, and yours unto mine.

And thus a relay is made; wherever

This light can be perceived,

It soon shall be received

And enchained freedom be severed never

From the bonds of our wills forever and forever.

"No man has fed himself"

 

No man has fed himself: his fruit can not be his fruit;

What he had turned out to only turn in

Diminished him (by the Law of Diminishing Returns),

For it is said that too many cooks spoiled the broth.

How much worse for the digestion, then,

When the cook and broth are of the same pot?

How much can one eat the returns of turnouts

Before one's self-stomach turns, and gut churns?

How can a man can his self and then believe

Cannibalizing it causes this self to thrive?

Modern man out-gorges the man-eater,

For of the latter there are few,

     and for them, food yet fewer;

But of the former, there are many,

     and for them, food just as much;

He sustains himself on the celery of his garden

     But his plot ferments itself

     And grows rank with weeds.

Yet, the man-eater eats the meat of other tables

     And his table, not just in size

     But in strength as well, so grows

That when others come to feast

The allotment has increased.

Follow this strand, then!

You are not a Wheel-within-a-Wheel,

A divine perpetual motion machine;

That your desire to be such

Can not make you such:

Though there is much within,

There is more without.