A Blade with Two Edges #OldPoems

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

The mind, consciousness itself, a blade with two edges,
sharp on both sides, forged in the mind. We all bear scars.
Marks. Places we were harmed, injured, cut deeply by thoughts, words.
Invisible weapons first learned turned inward, toward, threatening the self.
How many missing flesh, comforts, throw the burden off from hands, their swords,
tools trashed, forgotten and lost, because strength comes with cost, a price, hefty, sure.

But full with worth.

Bravery.
Courage.
Carrying heavy weapons.
Sore-handed. Tired. One trapped in the mind.
Invisible to any eye. It can not be seen seeing.
Slicing both directions, out and in, and we feel mostly in, it is all we have.

Ourselves.
And consciousness carves us up like a roast,
a sacrifice, dinner, like a fat gluttonous ego.
This sword makes it thinner. Drops weight.
Extrapolate hate in a lengthy, long, red
dissections of selfishness, greed, bad
and its wavering boundary against good,
not to be attacked.
But understood.

The mind brandished this weapon, pounded in imperfection until it is gone,
buried too deep to be seen, felt, still in notches, chips in steel, iron, handles wrapped
in palms and fingers gripped. Consciousness. Awakeness. Aware. Staring. Keen.

Our own heads lend us this sword.
The world knows the shape.
So the world supplies a sheath.
Help against the pain of lugging sharp brains,
a place to shush it in and let go,
a shape fit for the great idiotic weapon of ego.
So we can carry it. Keep walking. Moving. Growing.

Even if it’s slowly.

Gods became Gods

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

Forgiveness and memory do not have to live at odds.
We do not need to compare ourselves to gods.
Besides, in the end, they all get laid on tables for dinner.
And a god is a meal that makes you thinner.
Costs more than its worth, and made worse,
a god is likely to put you through it too.
Not a fire or a furnace.
But against black cast iron on the stove.
Coiled red metal tracks traverse an oven.

Divinity has an appetite which never slows.

Gods became Gods
by not forgetting
what is owed them.

These Details

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

Waxing hissing descending from high up in autumn breeze pushed trees.
Soft-hearted poplars and white oaks that shed skin like tall gray upright snakes.
Truck bed lower lip slammed echoed through otherwise quiet country distance.
Black scavenging ants that get on and into any available crevice.
Faded bricks segregated by weak taupe concrete lines,
and me, writing in red ink.
A poem about listening.
About eyes open watching.
Knocking down walls of swaying green
and throwing red pine straw mulch
and brown dust
and whipped black earth.

These details are what are, what is, what all, around me, exists.
A tangled consciousness such as this is no more or less
than the thread which has pierced and knit them all together.

So much of writing poems is so much no more than sewing.
Mending what was not the least bit broken.

For the mind is an eye unlike any other.
It can not be closed once it is open.

Of Man and Mirrors

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

At first, self awareness always feels like the world is ending.
But that is not what is happening here.

We are witnessing the birth of our first population-wide form of self-awareness.
We glimpsed ourselves as a species. And it has given all of us an identity crisis.

This is not the end of the world.

It is the cultural equivalent of what most animals do when seeing their reflection for the first time. These are the birthing pains of new consciousness.

A great reckoning of Man and mirrors.