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 —