Words Within the Confines of Time
A Sequence Poem in Seven Parts
© John Mingay 2000

 

1.

Ambushed by need, invidious hours return,
removing all I maintain to be meaningful.

The once cherished indulgence in sadness
comes to lack the empathy to allow loss.

Ready to stop, you inevitably bridge one
thrashing strand with a moment purged

of motion. I am the dark clouds pushing in
over the passion I prove myself to possess.

2.

For thirst, the habits of age fool a while,
but the time comes for knowing futility.

The melancholy of torment eventually has
the only thread to finish all you awaken.

If I disguise the echo I corrupt, together,
white with black are each with harmony,
 
complete in eyes that distinguish pleasure,
though believe acquiescence to be devotion.

3.

I wait while this ocean of abundance is given
to woe, only to want without understanding.

Nothing redeems emotion immersed in the
sharpness of words. The immediate pain

has to have a taste if revelation is sanity that
tongues seduce in endless darkness and light.

Yet, with each hand, the past is where life
gathers and I move on to where you dream.

4.

Lacking nothing, the hours are like deceits:
lifeless from laxity; already inert in time.

Offered the choice, the godless only come
to covet barren bearing to escape from sin.

I’m them, seeking to conceal the silence
that is precarious enough, whether or not

the heart shelters each complete notion of what
experience and faith inspire in knowing now.

5.

For the optimism they evoke, traditions ignore
prior vision and stretch the possible to plenty.

Beyond being the raw response your wisdom
distorts, age becomes another struggle to stifle:

though not in prattle with vacuous pathos; just
left to curdle, as when ritual is colourless chore.

If all but reason convinces the past I move on,
the sunlight preserves each future remembered.

6.

Hoary promises preface this outline of limbo,
this inventory of intervals amid the chaos of

constant doubt, cursed to crave comprehension
of the logic of decline, to make the present clear.

You, in due time, wrap reticence in allusion.
I, like you, avoid greeting the morning grey,

as if any excuse for going, however slight, will
prevent intent from being the sacrifice I make.

7.

Yet, the rest of this delusion recurs and is there
in the way your choosing will become affliction.

To ask meaning, however vapid, achieves little
in shadowing, in shattering the whole you deny.

You betray decay in starting upon life utterly
blank, tainting any motive, as though burying

the tincture of conviction. Still, bloodless from
circumstances, I find I’ve come to where you hope.

The Doppelgänger’s Defence 
 by John Mingay

 In your straining to give up,
you come to want to be 
the Laughing Buddha;  
your own laughter you hid 
rather than have it shown to be 
less than a drop of life in time.  
You shake the sun 
only to find it rattles 
with something loose
within - a lack of intactness
that runs a charge of dread 
down your spine towards the 
hell so long avoided.  
But, underneath, it is only a game 
we are shown in all we have seen
of this world of ours, of this path 
between always and never where
the living go on living all over again. 
It is a square peg buried behind
the answer to questions blurred
by the flow of our being, all asking
in the same angst-ridden voice,
"Which words are masks to come?" 
 Everything will flow,
scrawled on a city wall: 
somewhere, a prophet roams the streets
ahead of us, leaving clues for us to follow. 
 But, these words are our masks,
our smiling faces painted over
the wrinkles of a thousand worries,
our eyes speaking of having let go
while our brows, beneath the greasepaint,
remain furrowed by compassion. 
These words say everything
necessary to say to see gone
the clouds on a sunny day,
the confusion of energy wasted
on raging against immovable rock,
on the fiery fury reluctant to fade.  
Though what
of the moon
to the west -half-fullas hopeful?
Fading. 
And the seagulls
at one-thirty a.m.? 
Screeching.  Then
the smallest of pieces of you
goes missing
and every second takes on
the life of a dog; 
times seven,
times a million,
no-one’s really counting,
no-one’s really there; 
just
ghosts.  
Though, really, neither of us
ever could say we were living
if not with the mother of all creation
close at hand, ready to take us back. 
And where we are now, as we walk
these dead-man’s streets, is not
to be excepted, not to be forgotten,
yet, so often, so difficult to clearly see.  
It is our opposite, negative frame of mind
that burns with waiting for the past
to be no longer, as if somebody would
choose to stop the world to give us time
to be, rather than hang on to these lives
feeling for new directions over and over again.  While, even now,
out beyond the bricks,
deep along endless valleys,
I have seen the skies
scowl with intimidation 
and heard the wind calm
to be an empty sound; 
haunting: 
I have felt the depth
of the sod beneath my feet,
squelching with the summer’s rain,
and have held the children
of this womb-like space
so as to share in their purity,
assimilate their simplicity;
 if only temporarily.
 And the gulls get later
as the nights go by,
screeching the obvious,
but overlooked,
I am worth nothing again…
 I am torturedby the unforseen challenge,
whether to brains or bones,
not knowing,
doubting my own ability
to stand my ground,to defend my corner. I am lost,
I am scared,I am in hiding; trembling.  
Though, ultimately,
I know I will,
 as you already can,
come to find the faith to crosseach bridge as, 
and only when,
it appears along this wandering path
: free from the compulsion to foresee
its span and strength from afar; 


at ease with each moment,
whatever the next may bring.  
But, for now, 
on the outskirts
of where being is set to begin - with the years spiralling
in an imposed timelessness
repression alone can comfort - with the wisdom of knowing
each day, 
each hour, 
each minute,
as part of a lusciously delicate revelation -
with the clarity contradiction assumes
and the needlessness of ever wondering
beyond the present that surrounds you -
now, as this moment passes, 
laughing,departing, 
you are armed with all this,
with all you could need for the journey,
while I,
 finally, recognise you as just another me.