Sunday, April 23, 2017

Poem: 'It Has Been Called Asleep' by Eric Forsberg

It Has Been Called Asleep

Life comes in waves
And crashing cycles of desire
Like meat – it bleeds
Like sawdust - it blows off in the wind

I mask my face in clown white all too often
Pull the strings of puppet fancies
And drink down goblets of my own delay
Long before the ax hits wood

but when my donkey comes into Jerusalem again
I will be there swinging palm fronds
And digging fresh young pearls from every oyster I can find
Sublime young pearls – set in alabaster coins
To pay the boatman for my journey
From purgatory to the shores of life

I have been skinned
I have been rolled in salt
My head has hung for what seems eons
On the gates of town
mummified and tongueless
eyes staring into unseen space

Where is my mother earth – with warm and living milk
feeding me to life again?
And green grass growing on my grave to bring my seed into the sunlight yet once more

Oh for the golden solar orb to bake the clay of my desire into vessels for my dreams
Earthen vessels – brown and good – like earth and stone itself – immortal

Give life to ears and mouth and sights yet to be seen
Give life to touch and taste and senses yet unknown
Give life to muscles, organs, nails, skin, and bone
Give life to mind and soul and heart and make them walk
– give life – give life

Awaken trees – know your sentient selves and dance
Awaken waters – clouds – and planets in the sky
Awaken music, art, and all the words of mankind old and all that’s yet unread
Awaken spirits – come awake and breathe again – the perfumed air of all that is alive

I feel blood like wine in veins that once were dry
In flesh that lay once stiff and cold now bursting with desire
In mind once mortified – a single purpose of the shadow worlds – now burning hot
– on fire in its hope
And fingers gnarled stiff and blue - now grasping brushes to paint itself anew

Alive – alive – and once again alive
The ghosts and wisps dispersed
Forever gone
Alive – alive
A hundred voices ringing out as one
Alive Alive
A thousand hands designing all the earth as fresh
Alive
And once again – alive – alive

We live
Through the darkness of the day and night
We live – we live
Alive
And Music
music
Oh - my – joy

My joy to return to the world - where anything is possible
My joy
My wondrous joy abounds
A Lilac Streak – across the Earth
My joy
My abounding endless Joy

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