Archive for 1979

1979-01-25 The divorce

Thursday, January 25th, 1979

The divorce

So tell me how I’m supposed to feel…
this paper says ten years of marriage and love
are void and null.

Gone from life into history…

Texas…Mississippi…Washington…
Douglas…college…drugs…a son…
growing…tears…holding together late at night
struggling…pain…anger…needs…love.

The paper is pink…filed in some huge book
at the hall of justice
and we, just citizens again.

I feel naked and she’s some stranger.
It was so familiar…’My wife.’…she’s my wife, Rose,
no more.

I’m sad, my lady, after all our reasoning and logic
and all the times I said, ‘…just a paper….’
I’m still sad…if you had been home just now when I called
I would’ve told you so
my love … my … my ….

gallagher
25 January 1979

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

1979-02-02 Willie Dynamite

Friday, February 2nd, 1979

Willie Dynamite

My life lies crumbling, just like all the rest
my vision and my agony, the ever present test.
My love lies sleeping, my love she gives her best,
to a man who’s such a wastrel, he thinks that love’s a test.

I turn and weary at the rest her love gives me
and I’d rather empty faces and the words that strangers give.
I must have been born a vagabond, a vagabond and a fool.
I can’t divide my integrity and her living golden rule.

I AM Willie Dynamite born again in Irish clothes
But that self same selfishness lies just here within.
I love life’s every gesture and I embrace it all to win
but our love can grow weary and our passion stretched too thin.

I know the apex of my fortune as my willful test,
its I, myself, against integrity, against my best,
but it doesn’t matter who the actor or how I name the plot
its only I in the endless light who must evermore decide.

gallagher
2 Feb 1979

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

1979-02-06 Lucid Confusion

Tuesday, February 6th, 1979

Lucid Confusion

I understand myself so little of late
I twist amid my life’s coils
bound in the strings of my own ignorance
the mirror my others provide wells up
and echos my own; agony given, agony received
I’ve drifted into Rose’s warmth … craving her love
and hating the certainty, the end of struggle it brings with it
I thought I was forming into one mind
becoming unidirectional after so long
an ‘open’ relationship and love and security
She said she’d try it all … see if she could bear it
but this weekend’s time was a journey back to …
to somewhere where we’re both so at ease
that getting old seems the only thing left to do
I chafed at that familiarity … fantasized about other faces
waited for nothing … and was loved and secure
Not one mind … I hold so much more than I know
I’ve been optimistic about living with her
and this one weekend drove the vagabond wild…
found the spoiled child
brought me to my knees, to say…
“I don’t know, I’m confused.”
I love her, …I’m stifled, …I want her love, …I abuse it
Tonight she’s gone to Alain to have him fix her car
it made my stomach so empty … I could hear the mockery
of my own indecisions … my own need to win, to survive
Helen K. called… her psychic nature heard me, maybe…
she shared her love and pain and then held my hand
and I shared mine … she’s my friend …
and, somehow, its for free;…
Rose and I are so much to each other
but at such a cost.
I listen… what do I hear… these self mirrors
ever speak gibberish… we only find ourselves, our lives,
on the fire edge between our struggles and God’s plan
Can I be listening to my integrity saying “never compromise”
or to my pride?
Can I be feeling the presence of love and friends
or the passing gestures of momentary attention?
Is it that the answers lie in the agonizing
or in the deciding?
And is it that we are never to know, subject forever
to the wine presses of evolution and spiritual development
or can we ‘know’ if we can just have the courage to realize
some hidden potential in ourselves to make order
of our ‘human condition’?
I run in the evenings and mornings…
I work in the labyrinth of information processing…
but I can’t escape my fate nor comprehend it.
Am I faltering before this vision of life I’ve called up?
Tonight the pen and the wine tell me “no”, that I’m OK
but tomorrow, and on other tomorrows,
these razor questions will press me
just as I’ve been calling them to
and on the edge of my life and God’s love
I’ll find my lessons in my folly.

gallagher
02-06-79

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —