New poetry from Mark Sargent

SEVEN PATHS FOR TEARS

for Nikos

by Mark Sargent

1.

Steal those rays of sun.

From a cloud of tears

reach beneath the stage

and finger the biology of

secrets woven in quotidian fabric.

 

2.

“Google translator doesn’t

understand the ko-NEH.” 

But without it you have nothing

but doors without handles

and inside phones are ringing

but nobody answers.

 

3.

“The teeth of Poseidon gobble the rocks”

Crunch it into gravel into sand,

same result on the mind of man

whether sprawled on the beach

or pulling the living out by hand.

We just want a life without socks.

 

4.

Love for the weeping ones is shallow,

the earth is undisturbed, and the ants

push their pure energy over fallow

and fertile, there is no circumstance,

event or alternative to the life ordained,

all being brought to bear maintains.

 

5.

Not defined by what brings them all

streaming or in one glacial drop

a linger on the cheek, hesitant to fall.

There’s no measurement no formula

to calculate, only their magnetism

drawing us in with a flesh tug pop.

 

 

 

6. 

To bawl.  No one has ever been saved

by tears, save in our myths’ melodramas,

the weeping mother before Solomon,

Pharaoh distracted by a whimper; though Stalin,

untethered, was known to be impervious.

O, the path beyond tears is paved

with trembling bubbles of redemption

that no one can travel without destroying.

 

7.

Fear is a preliminary stage,

the first act in a long comedy

strewn with subplots and tough previews,

strikes and tempestuous players,

and a Yeatsian ending things,

falling apart, the center in collapse,

periphery a glow with the improvisations

of those making do with invention.

 

3 May 2013