en peacefulloflove@gmail.com Copyright 2012 2012-01-24T15:42:31+00:00 http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/life/ http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/life/#When:14:42:31Z Dizziness, exhaustion, balance. Snow on fire, liquid leaves. Blue gauze, blue blood. A day poured from a samovar. Mahogany dreams, forest nightmare. Culinary whirlwind, fetid famine. Distant sound, pressing silence. Quest, rest, revision. Take one, take two, the end. poetry 2012-01-24T14:42:31+00:00 http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/i_am/ http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/i_am/#When:12:46:51Z I am the moon that refused to rise, The placid reflection of lunar eyes Whose lurid stare, like rising tides, Tickles the Earth and then subsides.  I am the leafless winter tree: My leaves I shed reluctantly; An autumnal gale just set me free To shiver and long for eternity. I am the damp crepuscular cloud That hovers, dark, heavy and proud, That dares to defy the solar shroud In whose fabric all life is endowed. I am the lone and lonely light That, shining, gives sight, Yet remains, for all its might, Blind to the eyelid’s plight. I trace the border of sea and shore To keep at bay that endless war; Yet the battle’s ceaseless roar Says I am all this, and nothing more. Tuesday, November 29, 2011 8:20 AM Written on a train to New York City poetry 2011-11-29T12:46:51+00:00 http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/if_you_stay/ http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/if_you_stay/#When:19:06:20Z To you, the sudden hope outlined in lips, I ask the question that fear had ne’er touched: What myth does explain life’s dance upon a crypt, The unreal made real, the lost firmly clutched?  Give me a vulgar sunset of pious Red and blue.  Free me of meter and rhyme, The constraint of great laws, Himalayan In their looming grace; great, if not sublime. Yet if you must go, leave your charred embrace To singe the sinews of my tortured soul And paint the twilight on my sullen face; I alone wear a ring of tears grown old. O, but if you stay, warn the heaven’s Might: A lover’s heart cares not for heaven’s plight! Monday, August 15, 2011 poetry 2011-08-15T19:06:20+00:00 http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/vicissitudes_a_sonnet/ http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/vicissitudes_a_sonnet/#When:13:16:31Z Why this Romance woven in silent sighs, This dark electric dream that tears in two A love, once whole, now lost in shuttered eyes? Science, mistress of mystery, undo The sorrow tangled in my own delight! For oft when the perfume of starlight hovers Above my inner world, I drown in a night That strains the hopes of my hopeful lovers-- Strange souls that approach like death in defeat, Souls that carry crystal promise, fragile As a vase that contains but one conceit: To live as God in a manmade castle. O God, am I to destroy this despair That destroys as if only to repair? Wednesday, July 27, 2011 11:30 PM poetry 2011-07-28T13:16:31+00:00 http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/an_antediluvian_sadness/ http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/an_antediluvian_sadness/#When:02:15:48Z It is raining out, a beautiful, insistent, driving sort of rain, the kind filmmakers recreate with machines, the kind that cuts through the minutia and inertia of the day so as to call our attention to our surroundings.  Each heavy drop of water lands like a thimble upon the rooftops and the treetops of the city, stitching together the distracted minds of its inhabitants into a single web of humanity, stretched tautly over the chasm of injustice.  That most are never aware of this web says more about humanity than it does about the rain, whose job is done as precisely and passionately as any employee of any company. Today on the radio I hear talk of President Obama’s coming speech regarding Afghanistan, of protests in Syria, elections in the Bhutan and unemployment in the US.  Sound waves laden with wrongs not yet righted, carrying the words of those that have been slighted, berate my ears with their incessant cry of “wake up!” I reply, meekly at first, then with all the strength I can muster, that everything from my blood vessels to my synapses have arisen, have thrown off the sheets and showered, and still I pause at the door, uncertain, peering out at a landscape transmogrified by precipitation. I feel feeble in the presence of so much hunger, poverty, corruption and pollution.  The injustice hems me in, a kind of negative New York skyline laced with vertigo.  In every direction I turn there is work to be done--more work, to be sure, than can fit in my two hands, but even worse, more than my mind, that wonder of physics, can lift with the pulley of ingenuity or the fulcrum of planning.  Everything tells me that the rational thing to do is to focus on one thing, conquer that, and move on, but each injustice cajoles me as fervently as the rain forces life to bloom.  On my hands and knees in the midst of a deluge of atmosphere and emotion, I cannot choose between reason and passion.  The ancient sorrow trapped in my heart like an insect in amethyst can neither be dismissed nor dislodged, and for all my awareness of the intelligent course of action, sorrow has a way of reaching out to sorrow, and love to love, so that I am forever compelled to be that worst of individuals: concerned for all, unfocused, and doomed to defy logic and obey the dictates of a sadness that predates me, my ideas and the injustice against which I fight. Prose 2011-06-23T02:15:48+00:00 http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/the_eternal_law/ http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/the_eternal_law/#When:03:09:41Z Despair stabbed me on the way to delight: Its jagged blade, forged of hardened tears, Shore off the jasmine fragrance of the night, Postponed the puissant dawn for another year. O watch that won’t run, day that refuses to break! What infernal flaw ground your gears to a halt? How do I weather the sorrow foaming in your wake Or, tired and alone, ward off your relentless assault? Like a wayward meteor, I tumble through a sky That resents me, subject to laws I never chose; Yet that inner law of anarchic love belies The empty sheets made empty by a lover’s woes. O Lady Justice, come see what has transpired! Surely you will listen to my appeal, And restore to life a bliss that had expired, Lest the eternal law of lovers be repealed. Monday, June 13, 2011 8:45 PM poetry 2011-06-14T03:09:41+00:00 http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/the_city/ http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/the_city/#When:17:06:29Z Toward the eastern gate of this walled-in life A rain advances with the urgency of men Marching ever prouder, ever louder, In order to conceal injustice With a crescendo of flags and uniforms. Thus the rain advances, with its silver Uniformity, its blanketing cloud Of war, its ubiquitous watery Domination, its soldier-drops That pounce on the soil With the impact of a blinding mission. And the city of this life, ablaze with city-lights, Grips its collective weaponry with the fury Of impending defeat, the rage of intrusion, And the sorrow of death. poetry 2011-06-04T17:06:29+00:00 http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/who_doesnt_want_peace/ http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/who_doesnt_want_peace/#When:16:26:39Z I wrote this poem in the run-up to the war in Iraq in March of 2003. Who doesn’t want peace? Who doesn’t prefer A white jasmine wind, Or an amber dawn To the black unveiling of bombs? Who doesn’t love to love And be loved by saline lips? We are strong as magnets: In order to hold together We divide until a no-man’s land Fuses our disarray, And to surrender to the center Is to die. Who doesn’t want peace? We disagree, opine, demonstrate, Raise arms, palms, prayers, shouts-- We agree, unite, stare off into discontent, Drop bombs, flags, clothes, lies and truths. And now I ask you, as a poet Caught between your truth And my truth, my lies And your lies, What will become of my poems After we damn the last river, Destroy the last forest, Culture, life? Who will read my work When the last soldier dies In the name of peace? What will happen to Our disagreement If mankind kills itself? When all was said and done, Who did not want peace? monday, march 23rd, 2003 poetry 2011-06-04T16:26:39+00:00 http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/when_the_departed_still_remain/ http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/when_the_departed_still_remain/#When:19:15:16Z My bed, that house within a house, Built of timber from your inner copse, now Splinters in the dawn, and I must douse The kisses destined for your brow, Lest the dreamer destroy the dream And repose fall from its narrow beam. O, but how the poet longs To mingle with your lips, To plunge into the throngs Of mysteries between your hips! For neither sorrow nor deceit outweigh The truth those mysteries convey! Time, that marauding force, Has yet to plunder my home, Though history ran its course And added to its mighty, darkened tome; Alas, the warmth of the future is to the alluring past but a feeble suture! The edifice crumbles, but does not fall; Empty space remains empty for you; Together we sleep, curled into a ball Of hope that bounces out of view. Thus I ask: can I possibly be sane So long as you, the departed, still remain? Tuesday, February 1, 2011 2011-02-01T19:15:16+00:00 http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/the_sanguine_sinews/ http://www.andyposner.org/index.php/posner/blog_personal_comments/the_sanguine_sinews/#When:15:58:18Z The fallen flaming leaf Waits for the snow in vain, Hopes to cool the burning wreath That leaves its heart in pain Before the winds of decay Silence passion’s ecstasy. O leaf, whose drops of fire Point their fingers at the sky, Whose vibrant sinews seek the ire Trapped in eyes that blink, but do not cry, What passing cloud, what swirling star Can return your lover from afar? I am the leaf, I am the flame, And I am the snow That makes anonymous my name; For only the true lover knows That time heals not wounds Else the sanguine sinews cease to swoon. Tuesday, February 1, 2011 poetry 2011-02-01T15:58:18+00:00