•Decagon
The famous old songs that are woven through speech
Are felt most of all by the tooth that they reach.
The tongue is the tongue, and the thought is the thought;
My word from the nape of my neck has been brought.
Time suddenly stops, standing still in its place,
Then stretches and joins in the game face-to-face.
It folds itself mentally, neatly in two,
And the day turns existentially new.
Long life pirouettes in a whirl and a spin,
Turns backward through time, mixing recipes in.
The mind’s an antenna, receiving alone
Its own incantation, whose depths it intones.
The solitary person grows vexed and irate,
For thought still exists, and it still mediates.
Made subject at noon to the ritual’s weight,
Only silence remains, and it watches and waits.
Now we see how despair keeps on shrinking away
And changes itself to a calling each day.
As it constantly scans through the nervous terrain,
We adapt just enough to know health will remain.
The rebel in me and the straight, narrow way
Do not always meet at the end of the day.
Together they keep me suspended in trance,
The unconscious and I locked in struggle and dance.
Stress takes to the stage and breaks into song;
Fear subtly weakens the knees all along.
Rage and hatred validate each other’s claim,
And all of them bow, under force, to the game.
Day passes away when the nighttime appears,
But rest, never rest, no longer draws near.
Now inspiration itself has appeared:
It is mind looking inward, its vision made clear.
Was intention laid here by the person called me?
By the one who desires, by the one yet to be?
By the one who keeps thinking until he must sigh,
Begging his system to hold him awhile?
Or else the boy, would wither and die,
For life surely wants him reduced to a lie.
He lives at full pitch, having fun every day,
So let no one give him a headache, I pray.