Memories are often miasmal , putrescent; a squad-drill of old complaints marching by that you soon wish were etherised , euthanised lest, despondently , you are forced to grapple with those; the nocturnal sounds of a forest you wished you didn’t set foot in; a gambit indeed that you played thinking it fashionable at the instant and now regretted... indeed with appetites for regret; meditating on them there is no shunya, nor do they let you be forgetful of them, vicious in the pursuit, and no, they don’t digress either to dwell on joy, no sir, they're silhouettes that follow, to the grave mud. * This poem was part of a special exercise in Whispers, April 2016 . It is written around 12 words chosen from 12 poems of T.S. Eliot, 1 each, in order: “The Hippopotamus” “Hysteria” “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” “Morning at the Window” “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” “Sweeney Among the Nightingales” “Aunt Helen” “The Boston Evening Transcript” “Burbank...
The message is supreme;
Born in the heart,
and lilting itself
from tongue to tongue,
throwing its scent
over wind and wave;
travelling on dots
or fingers
when blindness
or silence bar its way.
It hews itself into stone
or burns itself onto magnetic discs;
it is the message that lives
and I exist
solely to pass it on.