Seeds of Suffered Love
By Alan Altany
No. 50
A degenerative disease
promising pure pains
for the remnant years
with no drugged escape,
a desert-bound solitude
of silent screaming inertia
in all the lonely nights,
peaks of life collapsing
in the savage beauty
of stumbling into old age,
becoming more invisible
by each day’s vanishing
into forgotten memories
& armed legions of regret,
the coming awfully soon
without niceties or delay
of naked dying & death,
such common eccentricities
fully to be faithfully faced
only “because He lives.”
No. 53
There were those fierce times
I swear my head would explode
leaving bits of brain & soul
running thickly down the walls,
and times of deep silent screams
followed by passionate imaginings
no one would ever understand,
part fire & panic, part grotesque
mystic & open-wounds sacrifice,
“I am flesh and blood, but my mind
is the focus of much lightning.”
A universe in a firing neuron
a world each eternal moment
new thoughts every nanosecond,
my old skull a weird crucible
for dreads & remembrance
of all too many things past,
times when hopes disappeared,
& beliefs drowned in ambiguities,
when only a seed of love lingered.
No. 54
Beauty is a pain
subtle, sublimely
quick and sharp,
like fog lifting over
a medieval meadow
mayflowers in bloom
sweet scent rising.
Beauty is brutal
in its insurrection
against statistics
and mediocrities,
a glimpse of God’s
shadow passing by,
a spontaneous
revolutionary
vision spinning
off ancient dreams,
the beauty of God
too consuming
& absurd to bear,
full of ecstatic agony,
excruciating bliss.
No. 58
I drowned God
way before noon
in the 20th beer
or maybe it was
the 2nd bottle of
rot-gut wine.
Sunlight slanting
across the bar
& row of whiskey
bottles full of
headaches &
amber demons,
the restroom
still a raining
cloud of urine,
a Temptations
song hopping
over empty stools,
a recurring loop
of a day somehow
thirsting for God
to drown me
away for good.