A Solitary Word

"Alone" is a solitary word.

It takes no noun to give it gender.

It has no one to share, no laughter, jokes or jibs.

I am, your are, he/she/it is and so it is declined.

It holds our deepest thoughts in an agony of repose.

We read it hopeless, deepest melancholy—is it noun or adjective?

 

"Alone" opposes social yet so contributes more.

It's quiet, peace, and creativity.

 

As adjective it negative,

as noun it marks the house of Self.

 

"Alone" inhabits each of us but is visited by few,

is visited by those who seek and knock upon its door

of insight, clear and sure.

 

It holds the Inner Teacher

sought out by those who listen, sought out by those who care.

"Alone" is a solitary

word Stephan A. George Copyright © 1983.

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Edith

This is a poem to my mentor Edith,

A formless woman--goddess to my anima

Who has lived a life of contradiction,

Wise, wonderful and wily, laughter deep and

Eyes asparkle in conspiracy with me--with God.

Your religion hesitates but I cannot

To say we've lived before--a soul mate, sad,

Pure and simple, fiery fierce and humbly arrogant.

Who loves you maiden, fair of tongue and face?

You are my contradiction, my love resides with you

In your wide set dragon eyes behind wire spectacles.

No one can share so much, no one can

Laugh to tears as often and then say

God put us here but once to live.

What we've had this time 'round

Runs too deep for that, Edith,

My mentor and my child.

Stephan A. George Copyright © October 1983

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Heroes

There dwell a race of people, call them Seoreh.

They live around us, are makers of our fate.

We call them helpers, champions, sponsors.

We call them gods and goddesses who wait

upon our weaknesses, to surfeit and refresh.

 

They come, they go, we cheer, we grieve.

They leave us with a puzzle:

What manner men, the Seoreh?

 

The Seoreh complete our complex cycle--

Here take this, this part of me, take it away from me.

It is responsibility.

If I can't own it, then better they, now half a soul have we.

What's good in each of us we each will deprecate.

That part of me comes back at me affirming what I've lost.

 

Then, one day, the Seoreh,

are gone.

The liturgy is ended, the grief assuaged, the memory still fresh.

 

Good.

That's done, say we.

 

Their leaving left us broken.

We gathered up the parts.

Their leaving left us anxious.

Can we build again?

Their leaving left us whole.

 

The Seoreh aren't human, more divine.

They're gods and goddesses in each of us,

but we look for them without.

You and I are Seoreh to I and you apart.

 

This tribe of folk, the Seoreh, cause pain and injury.

Not with sword, not with word, but only in defense.

I recognize in you, you recognize in me

their shadow, their overwhelming goodness.

But our aha's ring disparate--we are not in harmony.

 

The shifting shadows move first through you then me.

Then I see failure, humanity in you. I grieve.

Then you to me and so the pain, the tears,

the bitter agony of disappointed rage.

 

The Seoreh seek owners, you and me.

They seek for confirmation, yours and mine.

 

We are the Seoreh.

Stephan A. George Copyright © 1983

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Similarities

Weariness, wine, and welcome drowsiness

dull my search for self, my hunt for love and comfort.

Forgetfulness, relief, and no more diplomacy

await me in the spring of life, the arms of Morpheus.

Friends, fiends, and people all around

are put aside with yearning gone unsated.

Dreams, dragons, and dizzy heights

come 'live in the amber glow of sleep.

Or is it Death? They seem alike. Both absorb all care.

Both refresh the spirit. But end we call the one.

They are the same: they are the spring of life

which brings us back to weariness.

Stephan A. George Copyright © 1995
Published, 1995, in Reflections of Light
(ISBN 1-56167-264-5)
The National Library of Poetry

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A Riddle

It paraphrases all that's said,

It summarize hope.

 

It moves us eye to eye,

It becomes our envelope.

 

Its depth is yet unplumbed,

Its height beyond our measure.

 

Yet we hold it in our hand

and consider it our treasure.

 

It twinkles in our eye

and flutters on our heart.

 

Its total sum cannot be guessed,

yet it is but a part

 

Of all we are, thought, word, and deed,

it stands above the whole.

 

It's a reaching, risking, giving thing

enveloping the soul.

Stephan A. George Copyright © 1990

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The Msounds

Methinks my mind may mystify

My mellow melodious meanderings,

Mostly mythical and marvelous,

As I muddle through this poem.

I'm mystified yet mummified,

To write in mostly msounds.

My multitudinous melodies may

Much more be the cause of muddle.

Many more mighty millstones

May create some misty puddle.

Methinks my mind may be monstrous

To meander through this museum,

Made up of more mildewed mots

These words that make the msound.

Stephan A. George Copyright © 1995
Published, 1995, in Reflections of Light
(ISBN 1-56167-264-5)
The National Library of Poetry

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A Lesson In Dreaming

It's not hard: just go to sleep

and hope it's not a nightmare.

Let go of life-in this 's the risking-

For just a moment-that's all it seems.

Who's to say where we can go

in letting go of life.

It's not hard: just go to sleep

and see it's always sweet.

Let go of life-that's not so strange-

For just a moment, so the body seems.

Who's to say what visions lie

in letting go of life.

It's not hard: just go to sleep

and know you visit friends.

Let go of life-it's only shadow-

For just a moment, though Psyche says it's longer.

Who's to know whom we will meet

in letting go of life.

It's not hard: just go to sleep

and taste the blissful carelessness.

Let go of life-make your retreat-

For just a moment that's also infinite.

Who's to care what dreams we dream

in letting go of life.

Stephan A. George Copyright © 1990

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Loving Brings Infinity

And this is the way we learn to love ourselves...

We do and we don't and we will and we won't

and these become sounds that say we can and we can't

and still we seek our limits and unknowingly come to know but

first to know and then to test and mostly to discard as we find

when we do we do and we fail but when we don't we never know and

that's akin to failure, that's akin to failure should we seek,

should we hide, should we dream and yearn beyond what we call our limits

and we say we can't and we say we won't because it is beyond our limits,

is well beyond our limits, it's miles beyond our limits

and that brings us each and everytime to hate another part of us and

so destroy, a little more, the dream of what's beyond those limits

yet should we stop and slowly step upon the line we drew

we find that it's no line no more and cants and donts and shouldnthaves

are left behind and we see that we can do whatever comes to mind

because first we checked to know and test the limits of that mind

and found that such a word exists in concept only

and knowing that we come to love ourselves

and loving brings infinity.

Stephan A. George Copyright © 1986
Published in American Poetry Anthology
Volume VI, Number 1, Spring 1986
(ISBN 0-88147-016-3)

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The Taste and Smell of Mystery

Water, water, water--a liquid everywhere

Except where Nature whispers "Diffuse!"

Into a gas that's everywhere

Except where Nature strikes it hard as stone,

Into a solid here and there.

Water calls forth images of blue,

Deep, unplumbed depths of mystery.

What lurks there none can say.

Water calls forth mystery.

Water tastes as it were colorless

But refreshes nonetheless.

Water smells of water, nothing more.

But more it is than mystery

Than simple quenching liquid.

More it is than vapor, than softly falling rain.

More it is than icy cold--a palliative to heat.

It's been upon this earth before life itself began.

It surrounded all this land

It covered much of what we see today.

Salts and ash comingle, water is the bond.

Electric flash the catalyst and

Water holds the new beginnings.

Water nutures and protects what Nature's wont decides.

Life! Though small, though fragile, is cradled in the brew.

Complexity occurs. Life leaves the teeming oceans

And wanders on the land--not far!

Its steps are tentative.

It carries water with it, it returns for more and more.

Ages pass and water spawns both fish and bird

And finally man.

Stand upon a shore--breathe deeply--and notice

Life and Death.

The shore is littered with the dead and, watching closely,

The sands alive with life.

It's water's role to nuture new beginnings

To bring life to its close.

It smells of salt, decay, and life in a single gulping breath.

Listen upon that shore--be quiet and listen to the

Violence that water softly reeks.

It can hold the jellyfish intact and crash upon a shore

Turning mountains into sand for turtle eggs to grow.

The crashing, rolling, white-capped wave is relative to

The softly, bubbling brook.

The both say things beyond what we can understand.

Water may seem colorless and taste of nothing more

But water speaks of life and death.

When we are gone it still remains.

When life is gone it still remains--perhaps to start anew.

Stephan A. George Copyright © 1990

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Books Upon My Shelf

Books upon my shelf

stand in disarray. They've had a busy night.

Love and illusion, a cadillac and Arthur

Albert Einstein, Keats, and stories of nuns and airplanes and ghosts.

I love them all. I touch them, fondle one here, another there.

I hold ideas in my hands, in awe and wonderment.

They're quiet now as I look on, their titles competing for my eye.

Should I fish? or pray? Should I seek Morgaine among the fairies?

Or do I merely seek to study the empire I command?

Would that they could talk to me!

I'd sit in rapt attention, hanging on their thoughts

hanging on their mysteries, their tales, their anecdotes.

Would that they could talk to me!

Now is not their time--they know and I have watched.

They wait the going of the day and stand alert to

my closing eyes as sleep and dreams surround me.

And when I leave their world they lean upon each other

awakening to their nightly clatch.

They talk then quietly.

They share their wordful pages in a bable of ideas.

Some talk of war and pain to the harmony of joy.

Some laugh at things profound or magic from the past.

Some discourse on Psyche while others talk of management.

On and on and on and on they go--And me asleep!

As darkness is diluted by the coming of the dawn--they stop.

Their chatter ceases as I stir.

They have no more to say.

They settle in their places and await my touch

my wishful thought, my longing

That they would speak to me.

I love these artifacts, the snapshots they contain.

Some night I'll join them and they will share with me.

Stephan A. George Copyright © 1991

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Moments Inbetween

Thoughts mark time to a beat within the heart.

Between those beats lurks mystery, abiding love unbounded

God.

We think the thoughts and care not the quiet in between.

We ponder meaning
and miss the vortex spinning.

In a moment in between a moment,
Divinity reaches out into that beating heart.
I turn inward touching peace, caressing an infinity,
miniscule in my hand.

A gentle spark wings from this darkness, clear, sparkling, knowing
and forever touching backward into God.

I reach upward. It alights upon my palm.

I ponder. I think stacacto thoughts
and it pulses in harmony.

What is this thing? Its origin? Its light? Its vibrant energy?

It weaves itself between the gaps of thought and cares only
for the golden silk upon this loom of thought.

Thoughts mark time enclosed within the precious silk of nothingness.

29 September 1994

Stephan A. George Copyright © 1995
Published, 1995, in Songs on the Wind
(ISBN 1-56167-265-3)
The National Library of Poetry

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Hush!...a footstep! Where walks that sound?

Upon my soul? Upon my cares? Upon a shore?

In sand? On wood? On tile? On spirit touched within?

Hush!...another! Do my ears detect the rhythm of a love

so deep it flies beyond my hearing to a place where spirit sings?

Hush!...another! This thud-thud-thud assails me,

calls to me,

embraces me,

cries joyously for me.

Hush!...another! In my mind I see, upon the sand of life,

the imprint of your love for me.

Hush!...a footstep...and a smile.

Stephan A. George Copyright © 1994

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Time Upon A Wheel

Time upon a wheel, turning ever, slowly plodding,

watching my life move through its web.

 

Time upon a wheel, casting brilliance across the darkened land,

morning, color, hue and tinctures of glory,

awaiting what’s to come in my life upon its web.

 

Time upon a wheel, warming land and soul alike,

burning down, creating action, bestowing knowledge.

My chest held high in victories won and battles yet to come.

A beacon in my life upon its web.

 

Time upon a wheel, casting shadows warm and deep,

arising moon of mystery, hugging silhouettes afar,

a fire in my soul, my life upon its web.

 

The wheel stops. The door through grief allows an exit

mourning comes again in joy, release, and ecstasy

its web upon my life.

Easter Sunday, 15 April 1995

Stephan A. George Copyright © 1995

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