I Write Because, I Write Until
I write because I’m naughty
I write because I’m haughty
I write cause I’m past forty
For the late great Richard Rorty
I write cause in my mind, there’s so much more I ought to do
Because it seems this game’s already two quarters through
I write because my soul’s raw,
I write until I’ve told all, to slash this cabbage like the savage gratings of coleslaw and even if the rawness of words is hard to face – poems marinate them tender in an artichoke base…
I write from the heart chakra, the soul, the solar plexus
I write when the fact that I’m alone tends to vex us
I write to feel compassion for the suffering of my exes
I write to stop the spinning of these mental Rolodexes
I write to hush the thoughts incessant become empty and a mere vessel, my cranium’s the mortar and my writing hand’s the pestle; pounding up patties of alphabet millet; in this calabash of musement with some sentences to fill it
I write cause of karma,
To be of one with the dhamma
I write from class trauma, out of half-caste drama,
From the abuse I copped after lights out in the dorm room
I write until this cartridge needs replacing
I write until my response to praise is less self-effacing
I write till fingers’ chafing, till I think this is amazing
And I realize a moment ago I think I said the same thing
I write until this tinder’s sparking
I write until I'm getting into this malarkey
I write until I’m Eastbound on the District Line to Barking
I write until my writing self becomes kin of me and I’m starting to see that there is some sad affinity between Philip Larkin and me…
I write because I'm frivolous
I write cause it's insidious
I write until my pen nib gets flinty like obsidian
With enough ink to scale latitudes and trace meridians, till I’m languishing in the moonlight of the Orchid Pavilion
I write until I’m stripped down and fairly stark
I write cause of Kate Tempest, Luke Wright and Charlie Dark
I write to go hither in the byways of conscience,
To put phonetic blizzards through the gizzards of my nonsense
To play the zither with the GZA
To tell the RZA I don't want to dither with these ponces
I write to feel better when I’m aghast at this mess,
I write to catch the gist of Jay Elec, or Nas at his best
I write because I know props you can’t fake ‘em you’ve got to earn ‘em and I feel the yen of hip-hop from my sacrum to my sternum
I write until I’m teeming
I write until I’m steaming with broth
My mind’s teeming with stuff,
I write until I’m warm and calming like a tasty bowl of ramen; where syllable morsels noodle around;
a place where ruminating hoodlum pseudonyms abound…
I write until I’m beaming, I write because I’m scheming, I write as a fugitive on the outskirts of the precinct, being frog marched back to the Prison House of language; I guess this plan need a rethink and now I’m feeling anguish…
I write because of library fines and dog-eared books,
I write to erase these ingrained lines and haggered looks
I write because of osmosed words and swallowed sorrows,
Because the world wants them back, you can’t covet words, they're always borrowed
I write because I’m haughty
I write because I’m naughty
I write cause I’ve gone past forty
I write cause in my mind, there’s so much more I ought to do
But now it seems that this game’s already two quarters through…
I write because I’m haughty
I write cause I’m past forty
For the late great Richard Rorty
I write cause in my mind, there’s so much more I ought to do
Because it seems this game’s already two quarters through
I write because my soul’s raw,
I write until I’ve told all, to slash this cabbage like the savage gratings of coleslaw and even if the rawness of words is hard to face – poems marinate them tender in an artichoke base…
I write from the heart chakra, the soul, the solar plexus
I write when the fact that I’m alone tends to vex us
I write to feel compassion for the suffering of my exes
I write to stop the spinning of these mental Rolodexes
I write to hush the thoughts incessant become empty and a mere vessel, my cranium’s the mortar and my writing hand’s the pestle; pounding up patties of alphabet millet; in this calabash of musement with some sentences to fill it
I write cause of karma,
To be of one with the dhamma
I write from class trauma, out of half-caste drama,
From the abuse I copped after lights out in the dorm room
I write until this cartridge needs replacing
I write until my response to praise is less self-effacing
I write till fingers’ chafing, till I think this is amazing
And I realize a moment ago I think I said the same thing
I write until this tinder’s sparking
I write until I'm getting into this malarkey
I write until I’m Eastbound on the District Line to Barking
I write until my writing self becomes kin of me and I’m starting to see that there is some sad affinity between Philip Larkin and me…
I write because I'm frivolous
I write cause it's insidious
I write until my pen nib gets flinty like obsidian
With enough ink to scale latitudes and trace meridians, till I’m languishing in the moonlight of the Orchid Pavilion
I write until I’m stripped down and fairly stark
I write cause of Kate Tempest, Luke Wright and Charlie Dark
I write to go hither in the byways of conscience,
To put phonetic blizzards through the gizzards of my nonsense
To play the zither with the GZA
To tell the RZA I don't want to dither with these ponces
I write to feel better when I’m aghast at this mess,
I write to catch the gist of Jay Elec, or Nas at his best
I write because I know props you can’t fake ‘em you’ve got to earn ‘em and I feel the yen of hip-hop from my sacrum to my sternum
I write until I’m teeming
I write until I’m steaming with broth
My mind’s teeming with stuff,
I write until I’m warm and calming like a tasty bowl of ramen; where syllable morsels noodle around;
a place where ruminating hoodlum pseudonyms abound…
I write until I’m beaming, I write because I’m scheming, I write as a fugitive on the outskirts of the precinct, being frog marched back to the Prison House of language; I guess this plan need a rethink and now I’m feeling anguish…
I write because of library fines and dog-eared books,
I write to erase these ingrained lines and haggered looks
I write because of osmosed words and swallowed sorrows,
Because the world wants them back, you can’t covet words, they're always borrowed
I write because I’m haughty
I write because I’m naughty
I write cause I’ve gone past forty
I write cause in my mind, there’s so much more I ought to do
But now it seems that this game’s already two quarters through…
What the Heart Knows
What the heart knows
The mind can only guess at
Like frenzied quantum computers
Calculating at the meaning of life
What the heart knows
Cannot be inscribed into tomes
But is mulched into fleshy tissue
And striated by tribulations into truth
What this soft tablet knows
Makes old Scriptures whole
Because heart has no syntax
It deals only in instantaneities
And eternities – all is reckoned
And everything settled before
With its flurry of justifications
The mind can ever catch up
She once told you that
She had a learning heart
And now she’s gone you
Want to honour her, how?
So drop down, drop down
From your cerebral canopy
Clouded over by perplexity
Your gladness with language
So, drop down into your truth
Cave of heart consciousness
Furnished with revelations
A realm of cryptic chambers
And of locked ante rooms
Each imbued with your being
Recall how that skittish creature
Trilled so much like a song bird
That you though it must be the
Oxytocin talking, but then you
Ended up nestling, heart to heart
Snug in each other’s individuality
Drunk in a nectar of attunement
That, too, was the heart. Knowing.
And then Afterwards. *sighing*
That bloody mess. Anguished.
Aorta. Bereft. Gristle. Throbbing.
That, too, was the heart. Knowing.
So, drop down, drop down into
Your body, this frame of suffering,
Feel your aching knees, yearning
For relief, your frailty and mortality
Your wish to eke out the marrow
Of life against the biological clocks
Your beautiful, unbowed, humanity
Desperate to leave some heirloom
Something lasting, beautiful, perhaps
As you dwindle into the dregs of your art
Every breath: in breath, out breath
Is a new lesson, infused, renewed
Because sitting alone with her memory
Means two solitudes saluting each other
Through the breaths, you see her faults,
Flaws and foibles and you forgive them.
Since you tried to fall in love with them all
She too saw all your faults, flaws
Foibles, frailties and set them aside.
And she forgives this new failing too.
She too drops down into her body
And feels close to what you feel
Perhaps tinged by her own facticity
And metabolism, but near enough
She too feels the impermanence
She too yearns for transcendence,
Whilst knowing, just like you know,
That she will fail finally to attain it
She knows too that in that turbid organ
That we call the heart lies a converter
Ripening all seasons in their time and
Bringing wisdom into its fair fruition
In every breath: inhale and exhale
A fresh lesson, infused, renewed
Of God’s grace, via strange fugues
Of better selves you found then lost
So drop down then; into your heart,
Secede the mind, and heed the call,
Be silent, don’t fight, and just abide,
That will be your best amends of all
Chris Arning 2020
The mind can only guess at
Like frenzied quantum computers
Calculating at the meaning of life
What the heart knows
Cannot be inscribed into tomes
But is mulched into fleshy tissue
And striated by tribulations into truth
What this soft tablet knows
Makes old Scriptures whole
Because heart has no syntax
It deals only in instantaneities
And eternities – all is reckoned
And everything settled before
With its flurry of justifications
The mind can ever catch up
She once told you that
She had a learning heart
And now she’s gone you
Want to honour her, how?
So drop down, drop down
From your cerebral canopy
Clouded over by perplexity
Your gladness with language
So, drop down into your truth
Cave of heart consciousness
Furnished with revelations
A realm of cryptic chambers
And of locked ante rooms
Each imbued with your being
Recall how that skittish creature
Trilled so much like a song bird
That you though it must be the
Oxytocin talking, but then you
Ended up nestling, heart to heart
Snug in each other’s individuality
Drunk in a nectar of attunement
That, too, was the heart. Knowing.
And then Afterwards. *sighing*
That bloody mess. Anguished.
Aorta. Bereft. Gristle. Throbbing.
That, too, was the heart. Knowing.
So, drop down, drop down into
Your body, this frame of suffering,
Feel your aching knees, yearning
For relief, your frailty and mortality
Your wish to eke out the marrow
Of life against the biological clocks
Your beautiful, unbowed, humanity
Desperate to leave some heirloom
Something lasting, beautiful, perhaps
As you dwindle into the dregs of your art
Every breath: in breath, out breath
Is a new lesson, infused, renewed
Because sitting alone with her memory
Means two solitudes saluting each other
Through the breaths, you see her faults,
Flaws and foibles and you forgive them.
Since you tried to fall in love with them all
She too saw all your faults, flaws
Foibles, frailties and set them aside.
And she forgives this new failing too.
She too drops down into her body
And feels close to what you feel
Perhaps tinged by her own facticity
And metabolism, but near enough
She too feels the impermanence
She too yearns for transcendence,
Whilst knowing, just like you know,
That she will fail finally to attain it
She knows too that in that turbid organ
That we call the heart lies a converter
Ripening all seasons in their time and
Bringing wisdom into its fair fruition
In every breath: inhale and exhale
A fresh lesson, infused, renewed
Of God’s grace, via strange fugues
Of better selves you found then lost
So drop down then; into your heart,
Secede the mind, and heed the call,
Be silent, don’t fight, and just abide,
That will be your best amends of all
Chris Arning 2020
Some Sort of Scansion
So scan yourself
Upon awakening
Scan yourself
Relax into your
Unstressed syllables
And celebrate them
For the space they give
To those around them
To live in their rhythm
Plumb your resonances
For your truest cadence
And those fugues that
Refuse to be cast away
In their gentle nooks, abide
Then fathom - further down
Burrow where a poem kernel
Hides, that they call the heart
Marvel at its artless fertilities
Drink deeply its fondest parts
Scan your body’s fleshy syntax
Gently noting its soft diacritics
Relish its lumpen unevenness
Be gleeful never to measure up
Scan yourself from head
To metrical feet
For the iambs; the trochees
For the dactyls; the spondees
These impurities that made you
Those pullulating and teeming
Metabolisms of fate
What becomes you today?
Some days you'll be elegy
Some days you'll be sestina
Some days you'll be villanelle
Some days you'll be terza rima
And some days just blank verse
So scan yourself
Possess yourself
Recite yourself
Pore over yourself; do a volta
Resolve yourself into sestets…
Then step out of Soliloquy
Be Apostrophe to the World
Arise – your Stanzas complete
And just let – the words – come
Chris Arning @ 2020
Upon awakening
Scan yourself
Relax into your
Unstressed syllables
And celebrate them
For the space they give
To those around them
To live in their rhythm
Plumb your resonances
For your truest cadence
And those fugues that
Refuse to be cast away
In their gentle nooks, abide
Then fathom - further down
Burrow where a poem kernel
Hides, that they call the heart
Marvel at its artless fertilities
Drink deeply its fondest parts
Scan your body’s fleshy syntax
Gently noting its soft diacritics
Relish its lumpen unevenness
Be gleeful never to measure up
Scan yourself from head
To metrical feet
For the iambs; the trochees
For the dactyls; the spondees
These impurities that made you
Those pullulating and teeming
Metabolisms of fate
What becomes you today?
Some days you'll be elegy
Some days you'll be sestina
Some days you'll be villanelle
Some days you'll be terza rima
And some days just blank verse
So scan yourself
Possess yourself
Recite yourself
Pore over yourself; do a volta
Resolve yourself into sestets…
Then step out of Soliloquy
Be Apostrophe to the World
Arise – your Stanzas complete
And just let – the words – come
Chris Arning @ 2020
So Push Through
Just push through
And redeclare your allegiance to determination
To those days of grit - of a progress measured out in inches
So push through
Push through those vilifications of your art
That ring out - whenever you are being most true
Push through
Those straits of self-sabotage; against
Resistance and the ballast of your past
Echoing in the contempt of those voices
A desperate Resistance whose cries you
barely hear when it’s in your slipstream
So...Push through
The purgatory of self-doubt
Through limbos of prevarication
Cloying magmas of unworthiness
To run the gauntlets of self-hate
And stave off shame’s embrace
Push through
And reclaim those fondnesses that you’ve
Feared would never be part of your legacy
Push through
To imagination’s homecoming
To today’s Elysiums of gladness
Through to fertile fields of you
Frolic in the Beatitudes of a life
Where God kisses every moment
Chris Arning @ 2020
And redeclare your allegiance to determination
To those days of grit - of a progress measured out in inches
So push through
Push through those vilifications of your art
That ring out - whenever you are being most true
Push through
Those straits of self-sabotage; against
Resistance and the ballast of your past
Echoing in the contempt of those voices
A desperate Resistance whose cries you
barely hear when it’s in your slipstream
So...Push through
The purgatory of self-doubt
Through limbos of prevarication
Cloying magmas of unworthiness
To run the gauntlets of self-hate
And stave off shame’s embrace
Push through
And reclaim those fondnesses that you’ve
Feared would never be part of your legacy
Push through
To imagination’s homecoming
To today’s Elysiums of gladness
Through to fertile fields of you
Frolic in the Beatitudes of a life
Where God kisses every moment
Chris Arning @ 2020
Nothing To Do
Nothing to do
Except sitting here
Quietly suffused by the universe
Nothing to do but revel in the here
Equanimity has cleared your diary
The only comings and goings
Those of the breath, unvexed
Unhurried emissaries to yourself
Each with a petition of kindness
Each one quite exquisite in itself
Lie down like Siddartha did after
His last sermon, saffron against the dirt
When all truth had been said and done
Drained of intoxication with his youth
Mulching into the compost of past and future existences
Nothing to do but breathe
Each breath a gentle urging
Urging you stop clenching
To stop clenching against yourself
To allow yourself to be loved by life
Chris Arning 2020
Except sitting here
Quietly suffused by the universe
Nothing to do but revel in the here
Equanimity has cleared your diary
The only comings and goings
Those of the breath, unvexed
Unhurried emissaries to yourself
Each with a petition of kindness
Each one quite exquisite in itself
Lie down like Siddartha did after
His last sermon, saffron against the dirt
When all truth had been said and done
Drained of intoxication with his youth
Mulching into the compost of past and future existences
Nothing to do but breathe
Each breath a gentle urging
Urging you stop clenching
To stop clenching against yourself
To allow yourself to be loved by life
Chris Arning 2020
The Great Eking Out
this is the great eking out
a long ellipses of days
a making do and mending
our ways from heartrush
and the expectations’ race
to space-time: now warped
into both solace and grace
this is the great eking out
today ‘nothing really’ in
the diary, except spend
time with a tattered novel
we'd once picked up and
adored, but then discarded
and forgotten like a buried
talent we now coax back
into fond companionship
this is the great ekeing out
saying ‘nothing really’ in
the fridge - except a dried
up onion, a fledging garlic
a tattered floret of cabbage
and a scrawny, little carrot
so very meagre, so monastic
but then lurking in the basin
below suddenly: what riches!
in each squash a cornucopia
in every fennel: extravaganza
in every leaf of chard: a gala
of pastas, soups and salads
this is the great eking out
where every grocery item
comes with a votive offering
from whom risking their own
brought them into my life
scooping up every morsel
scraping out the pans when
we are not clattering them
every surface now caked
with a kind of glad surfeit
dishes licked clean of decorum
this is the great eking out
of overworked strainers
ever weaker brews of tea
as a poet strings out the
stanzas of this poem just
because, well alive - he
is jubilating in his streak
of cough-less days still
breathing unconstrained
this is the great eking out
scraps now become larders
as we fall gluttonous upon
a frugality we had covered
over with vain melodrama
gourmandising on ‘our lot’
now feasting upon ourselves
this is the great eking out
i make a shrine out of an
upturned piece of bark, a
a sliver of slate, a pitted
husk, this concave pebble
humbled by the tides and
topped by a pinkish quartz
ingot - now humble stupa
venerating its gentle days
this is the great eking out
and the great reaching in
plundering the great silo
at our core – replete with
enthusiasms of fresh yeast
growing our art, threshed
milled by strange Godheads
who knead us into sustenance
eking us out into what they need
Chris Arning 2020
a long ellipses of days
a making do and mending
our ways from heartrush
and the expectations’ race
to space-time: now warped
into both solace and grace
this is the great eking out
today ‘nothing really’ in
the diary, except spend
time with a tattered novel
we'd once picked up and
adored, but then discarded
and forgotten like a buried
talent we now coax back
into fond companionship
this is the great ekeing out
saying ‘nothing really’ in
the fridge - except a dried
up onion, a fledging garlic
a tattered floret of cabbage
and a scrawny, little carrot
so very meagre, so monastic
but then lurking in the basin
below suddenly: what riches!
in each squash a cornucopia
in every fennel: extravaganza
in every leaf of chard: a gala
of pastas, soups and salads
this is the great eking out
where every grocery item
comes with a votive offering
from whom risking their own
brought them into my life
scooping up every morsel
scraping out the pans when
we are not clattering them
every surface now caked
with a kind of glad surfeit
dishes licked clean of decorum
this is the great eking out
of overworked strainers
ever weaker brews of tea
as a poet strings out the
stanzas of this poem just
because, well alive - he
is jubilating in his streak
of cough-less days still
breathing unconstrained
this is the great eking out
scraps now become larders
as we fall gluttonous upon
a frugality we had covered
over with vain melodrama
gourmandising on ‘our lot’
now feasting upon ourselves
this is the great eking out
i make a shrine out of an
upturned piece of bark, a
a sliver of slate, a pitted
husk, this concave pebble
humbled by the tides and
topped by a pinkish quartz
ingot - now humble stupa
venerating its gentle days
this is the great eking out
and the great reaching in
plundering the great silo
at our core – replete with
enthusiasms of fresh yeast
growing our art, threshed
milled by strange Godheads
who knead us into sustenance
eking us out into what they need
Chris Arning 2020
Lever Du Jour
At 3.30 this morn came through
Bird song outside my window
In joyful euphonies entwined
Of enthusiasm, relish imbibed
Noble Truths of pure freedom
At 4am this morning
Inciting itself with an
Intoxication of life and rime
I heard an avian wisdom
Amidst this newly carless,
Jetless, but still feckless time
At 4.30 in reverie
Bulletins of solidarity
From tiny beaks I’ll never see
To us cooped up, caged away
Enthroned in our boredom
Another mostly cloistered day
Novitiates of a New Order
Encouraged by their warbles
Called on by our birds to pray
To adjust to this New Normal
At 5am this morning
Trilling, tweeting and twittering
Mockingbirds? Nightingales? call
Bless tidings of life against appall
Yes! Salvos of extraordinariness
Blast a clearing amidst urban sprawl
At 5.30 this morning heard
Starlings, sparrows and jays
Clarion calling in times absurd
Frolicking in meadows of praise
Bidding us stop our plumage preen
And come from menagerie to retreat
Sweet silverlings in soundless world
Like wake up calls, their song unfurls
Now it's 8am
Time was wrong!
Wisps of dreams
Of darling songs
So I Arose in bed
Harked whereupon
Conclave adjourned
The sweet glade had gone
Chris Arning 2020