Everything That Can't Be Seen

 What if, on some star lit lonesome night, you went walking
    with only the memory of love in your heart and nothing but
    years of confusion in your brain and you began to admit that
    you were actually here without anything to figure out, nothing
    that you could see or feel or touch anyway, would you worry
    about dying suddenly without finishing so much of what you
    started or would you leave it all to chance, trusting that you
    lived and loved as fiercely as you believed anyone ever could?

    Would you lay down under the tall trees and stare at the stars
    And tell them who you are so they can remember and hold
    your light until the day they all burn out and collapse and the
    universe starts all over again?

    Would you, could you, remember to breathe?
    And if we could see Shane again,
    the big red setter with emerald eyes,
    then perhaps you could reason why I edit
    so much out without the need to understand
    the most of everything held within.

Visions Of Truth

 There was a time when he thought

 that he began dying at age five,

 long before he fully understood

 that none of it mattered; because living and dying

 are simultaneous pursuits that only

 seem unconnected or looped to those that deny

 the visions of truth to ever enter

 their event filled, but strangely empty lives.

 

There was a time when he thought

 that he could never find a lover

 that would understand what was trapped and

 frame-less within him. He was still harboring

 such thoughts long after he met the one who held the key.

 

 There was a time when he lived with no fear,

 loved without fear, wrote with no fear,

 but now he could not say which was the biggest fear:

 those days long gone or their return.

 

There was a time when he thought

 he held some secret power,

 a force to change the world,

 a way to make them listen,

 but the more he listened to what they said,

 the more he read what they wrote,

 the more he watched what they did,

 the more he understood that what he held

 was neither secret or power, simply something

 they would never understand.  

 

   MJC

On the Occasion of Turning 17 Plus 45

   You,
    you looked so fine in that uniform
    you could have been a sailor,
    but we didn’t change the world
    quite fast enough for that.
    We failed only at staying together,
    star-crossed, not stardust,
    not golden,
    more like hardened steel
    slowly rusting, yet
    still shining 45 years later.
    We already knew at 17 that life
    was a series of survivals.
    I wrote of you often that year,
    you were on every other page.
    I know this,
    I was happy when I turned 17,
    my happiness was you.

    This is the world we live in,
    separated,
    lived,
    loved with others
    all the while the age of 17
    never forgot.

    You,
    you look so fine.
   

The Soul of Love

 
Sun swept visions of love romanced without
The reservations of limits set by
Those who think they know how loud love should shout
Live eternal beyond the deepest sigh


Yellow the rose that grows ‘neath the twilight
Of silvery silken dreamers entwined
By the enchanted blackened moonlit night
Held within the arms of love undefined


The soul of love remains long after star
Kissed nights fade into one crystal vision
A sea of sparkling diamonds drifting far
Beyond the power of death’s dominion


Within the heart there lays a truth unbound
Lives a love that even death can’t uncrown

Sitting (in Catherine’s chair)

Loneliness is not even something I could have
conceived of, not so many years ago, I seriously thought
I was done with all that, but
I sit
in Catherine’s chair
and gaze across the landscape
at the bed we bought
with the money the lawyer from Nashville sent
and realize with sudden clarity that I sleep in
the same position I found her in on that
dark day that
brought the loneliness crashing in again
from all corners of the room,
crushing the little spirit I have left inside.

Sitting
in Catherine’s chair, I can
see Gail’s tanka that I hung on the wall
just a week or two before she died. On every wall,
a painting by Catherine’s dad.
Hand me down art and hand me down words,
hand me down chairs and hand me down sons,
hand me down cats,  they left it all behind and
left me here
sitting.

Sitting and
grieving lost friends that time has accumulated,
one more out the blue and
into the black in the time it took
to write this poem and all I can think about is
lost time and how I read his last poem and
just clicked ‘like’, like that means something and while
sitting here listening to Stravener and Young and Dylan
helps to bring Scott into focus, I can’t escape the feeling that
I’m sitting and
grieving me.

Sitting and
wondering about why Hunter
pulled the trigger, amazed by the number of
people I know who touched his world, who have
touched mine as I have touched the hearts
of many, but in the quiet of the
evening, the heat of the late August day fading away,
it remains the last great secret and yes,
you are all real and
in my head and I wouldn’t have it any
other way and this is such an awesome power and
responsibility, because you know
whose chair I am sitting in.

I grow so tired of eulogies, but no one can seem to stop
the dying, it is the last great secret Chris, but here is the thing:
there should be a law against
sitting and
fading away.
The whispers become obscene shouts after three am and
endurance requires a method of
stifling the screams, give me the blood of life
flowing again and a loud guitar, glass of wine,
endless words that hold worlds within their meaning and
perhaps I can survive, hold them all within,
live all the life that remains,
give all I have within to those that
remain trapped here in bone and flesh.
All I have to do, is simply be,
me.

Sitting in Catherine’s chair, I know the real promise
to Gail is the nurture of what she left me,
that awesome hand me down son and the elfin
daughter we created, the visible ripples of the
life we lived, the love we loved.
I hereby promise to
rage,
rage,
rage,
against the dying
of the light
until my day
turns into night.



MJ Carson
8-28-2011

Displaced Light

Once there was a band of brothers and

sisters, well, several bands

linked together as chain, but there was no

wheel to turn, just mountains to move and

shadows that needed light.

The places of gathering were wondrous glittering temples that, alas,

were in constant flux and seemed to always be

in a state of disrepair. This caused the holders of the light

to move apart even

as they attempted to move together, losing

momentum for a time,

just for a time;

an infinitesimal time

as the universe goes, but enough time

for some of the lights to flicker and

go dark as the holder

of that particular light

moved beyond the grasp

of the brothers and sisters.

Never before had such a gathering

been possible and even if

few were watching,

it was and ever shall be,

of this none shall debate, such a thing never seen

in the history of mankind or even catkind or

any other kind of kind you would chose.

I tell you three times,

maybe more, this has never been done before.

We are the first

We are the first

We are the first

There are no dead poets within the collective;

one poet touched one, who

touches another, and

the flow continues, now with

no end. Once I wrote these lines all

alone and no one shined in my glow and

if I read, I read alone. Once I walked that long and lonesome

road and when the lights go out

I feel the walls close in, but then

I recall that I am never true alone,

my words and soul have

joined the flow.

Upon dawning of the night

hope left joining in the light

words left burning in the sky

the circle will never die

Love is just a four letter word

And poet just another chord

in an endless, restless ponder

for the true universal wonder

I write this for the displaced light

of Elly, but she

has joined the flow,

remains tightly within

the circle and it matters not

that they know of Elly,

it is only important that they know

of the flow and

how it circles.

M.J.Carson

3-8-2011

Beauty Isn't

Once I knew a queen of beauty

who preferred the life of tramp,

when the navy had us practice

walking through fire and drowning,

I could have told them

I learned that long ago.

Beauty isn’t as easily seen as ugly is,

stolen dreams and bones well broken

is ugly at its very best,

never let them steal your soul;

that is where beauty truly lives.

I knew a man from Biloxi, not far from

New Orleans I’m told, the land of fun streets.

I’ve known guys and gals who walked the mean streets,

Harlem, 8 Mile, Southside, but I’ve heard

the rubber burning down the thunder road.

Do those S curves at 100 mph and

three sheets to the wind and then tell me

about the razor’s edge.

We were young once, but never free,

forever we yearned for that glory road.

Once there was a dancer whose beautiful soul

was entwined with that of a poet. As luck would have it,

they each ran as fast as they could

down roads leading out of town;

never knowing that each were bound for each.

The glory road patiently waited

for their arrival.

I have seen the lies that beauty tells and

I have walked through fire down

the glory road and I know

what beauty is and what

beauty wasn’t.

Mike Carson

11-14-2010