Archive for the ‘Exposure’ Category

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1984-06-01

Friday, June 1st, 1984 
         Mists of time around me, sweeping.
           A lamp in the moving fog
              of some greater darkness, I.
         Impressions of progress and decay, fragmented
           small glimmers of understanding
              against the animal's short run.
         Film spliced, images racing, overlaid
           in bursts of light and shadow.
              But what cares the screen beneath.
         We run unarmed, to battles unwinable
           and our love's the only comfort taken
              and our small awarenesses
                 the only progress made.
         Death and pain and dissolution and decay.
           We are motes in the vortex of life's sink.
              Our children only a momentary reverse.
         Come the mists and darkness, I wait ...
           weathered and drawn in animal skin
              receptive to an unknown God.
         Rose and Danny and Chris
           and these lines on my face
              and those on these papers I've traced
         these are the only measures I can discern
           of what I've wrought
              in this time and mist and darkness.
                              gallagher
                              1 jun 84
                              Irvine, CA

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1984, AAA - Recommended, Catalyst2, Chris, Dan, Irvine, Poetry as Meditation, Rose, Substack | No Comments »

1984-06-24 For the pictures

Sunday, June 24th, 1984 

                    For the pictures


   In the gray half light I saw the picture patterns she'd hung;
   imperishable for this moment, and so fragile for all the rest.
   Someday, I may remember these, that tonight I can see.
   Somewhere, down the imponderable paths our lives wind,
   I could be dropped into another world - far from this
   and Rose's pictures and Danny's manhood and Chris' cheeks
   may all be photographs and memories then ...
   indeed...we all will be, someday.


   So this moment ... I cannot stop it, cannot delay it
   and I cannot waste it, least I regret.


   So easy to lose it against hungers or moods or fatigue.
   The kindness and love we give and receive...
   it seems so mixed with the mundane and the trivial sometimes.


   But all the lessons of our lives wait before us;
   lessons from which no one escapes alive.


   What more could God give us than the people we love
   and the passion of living out our lives with them
   in family/friend chains of living change?


                           gallagher
                           24 jun 84

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1984, AAA - Recommended, Catalyst2, Chris, Dan, Rose, San Juan Capistrano, Spiritual | No Comments »

1984-06-24

Sunday, June 24th, 1984 
      What will I say to them, these chest clawed veterans
        what, to shock them with MY vision
           to awaken those jaded of wine and muse?

      They'll fall asleep if I don't tear my heart out here
        and come to the bare edge of my sanity, quickly.

      Sarcasm, passion, agonizing, intellectualizing
        and plundering their lives for words.

      What can I do against such as these,
        a romantic at an existentialist's ball.

      My dreams, though, are real....
        Forged of pain, yes.
           But the dreams, and not the pain, have endured.

      I see music in children's eyes
        and feel tears well up at old photographs
           of people never met.

      I've seen that each moment can be an act of utter
        courage...if we just live it to the brim.

      Gossamer curtains these, 
     against their screams for blood.
               I'm a child, running, in a city under siege.

                             gallagher
                              24 jun 84

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

Posted in 1984, Irvine, Poetry Collective | No Comments »

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