Echo Morning

I haven't posted anything in nearly 4 months.  I found out in early December that my services would no longer be required at my former employer.  Ironically, due to the REALITY of GLOBALIZATION I wrote about in my last two posts but one.  Yeah, who could have seen that coming?  So, figuring I would be in violation of my severance agreement for comments I had planned to incorporate into my final posting on my middle class bloga (i.e. blog saga), I decided to play it safe and redirect my creative juices, such as they are, into the fictionalized version (a book, with actual characters, a story, etc.) of all the research I'd done over the past four years on the various subtopics.  All of the postings, the non-fiction version can still be found along the left side of this site.  The book is progressing at a steady pace, and with any luck, given that I have a third child on the way, I'll complete it at some point in 2016.  By that time, I expect its release to be more anticipated than the next winter olympics, or not.

I've been too busy with looking for a new job, taking care of the kids, writing my book, going on a vacation, and attending to all of the things life has to throw at you, and have had no time to continue with the bloga,  I also haven't had time to consider, or write intelligently or amusingly, about any other topic.  With that said, I decided I would post something different.  Below is a poem I wrote in October of 2006 in the basement in the early morning.  HTML treats the appearance of words arranged in a poem horribly, but I don't know that the average reader would take that into consideration, supposing they consider the words themselves.  This poem is one of my less cryptic offerings.  The two main versions of the mythological story of Echo are included below and I simply allude to them both as different in terms of origin, repurcussions and connotations with one version something that the mythical Echo would be reverred for and the other a version she might be ashamed of.  I used Echo as one part of my term for political pundits who are in love with the sound of their own voice and their opinions, and created the term- Echo Narcissists (and Jack- you will love this one- please see part 16.  Actually if you Google- "Echo Narcissism" [remember to include the quotes], you are taken immediately to that post).


Echo Morning

We bow our heads once in reverence
and once more in shame;
no metaphor can honor-placate the mind
for the declines appear the same.

The same sound in the ear, the ear that has a stomach
And must die jest-
just as the eyes must digest
just as the hands must digest, as the mouth must digest,
the ears must digest.

The ears consume the sound of a hollow foot fall
on frosty grasses on a mid October morning, amid the cold-covered dawn-
the blades encased in a veil of frost,
for where is nature
there is god!
and for that
the ears of the world applaud.
We seek a sound that is lost and that is found.

Elsewhere (not meanwhile), a poet, who at least once
has written what he has said-
that memories echo, they echo, they resound in his head
until he can no longer stand-
his imagination- “the mind can grasp more than the hand.”

Soft thing, you whisper and I hear you years later . . . in the morning-
When words are there, and not there,
And are naught but air,
When, if there were angels, they would meet- in the cold stillness,
Where it is too frigid for our hours to leave us.
Anything that moves here is moved by the wind and regret.

You might say this, this is elusive, abstract stuff,
but should know
of the excess of anonymity that is love-
the cigarette satisfaction of one memory after another,
gone in a puff of smoke,
that came without a fire to stoke,
that upon all good ears confer,
some words that yesterday’s prefer.
We know not which hours to keep
And are, someone else before we wake and sleep.

This is evening-morning.
pink clouds in the autumn to east and west, (the evening like the morning)
from a sun that shines too late and sets too soon,
so lost are days . . .
and like begging fury- ears chase the previous tune.

So, mythologically we bow our heads once in reverence for Echo-
grimly torn to pieces, revenged by Pan (via shepherds, whom he drove mad) for being unreceptive to advances; and her voice remains

And we bow our heads in shame for Echo-
because false Zeus was repeatedly warned of Hera’s approach by Echo who was then made to repeat the words of others.

In shame and reverence is the echo, the story.
A faint voice survived,
or the recall of other voices so derived.

Little boys and girls asleep before the dawn
so some can contemplate an echo marathon.
A repeat of a yesterday so gradually gone,
of mimicked scenes, pregnant pauses-
of days as soldiers gaunt and wan.

We imitate the theoretical-inimical,
For it is work to think of criminal royalty, to think of plebian slight,
To change an echo for a fainter echo because our ears are awake at night.
And my former self can write nothing that makes sense
of what has passed heretofore, or what will pass hence.
we know nothing of the color of the rain,
but know the sound of the sane-
which is the pretense for the storm,
a weather entity without a form,
much like an echo- no symbolic, meaty words to give it shape,
just grasping, empty, semi-soundless words
in a mind ill-equipped to make them live-
just lost, disheveled, elusive, somewhat re-cognized rarities,
milk after the cereal is eaten kind of words,
light bulbs after the filament breaks kind of words,
the sky after the sun descends,
the trees after the leaves are gone,
the pockets after the bet is played,
the sleep after the bed is made,
the sound after the chord is struck,
the wine bottle after the guests have left,
the idea of the old song after the new one begins,
a mountain lost in the waves,
the mirror after the ghost passes,
the ear after the laugh fades- kind of words.

We were, we are
comprised of an entourage of hours,
and as we never are who we are going to be
we are not still who we were- and some of us hate ourselves for that.

The echo is the promise of a bubble’s life,
Whose end comes by cold departure,
not by the blade of a knife.
It is a sound that fades in the morning,
Our ears straining to hear,
its’ presence is no symptom, its’ absence is no cure.

Just as the prince is guilty of the cobbler’s crimes,
We enliven mornings- we are echo paradigms.