But what, in the end, was the meaning of it all?

[PrinceMyshkin]

Your mind will be busy
whether you want it to be or not.

You might be baking bread
but your mind will be thinking of irony

or making love
but you’ll be remembering the last conversation
you had with your late mother.

And even when they lower you
into your final home,
your mind will be wondering:
“But what, in the end, was the meaning of it all?”




Jerry Newman © 24Oct07

[firefangled]

I really liked the first three stanzas for their natural quality and the choice of irony while baking bread.

I wonder about the last. It doesn't seem to have the same truth as the others.


When the veil is lifted at last,
with my final breath,
if I could speak, I would not,
nor would thoughts invade
the symmetry of my death,
future, now, or past.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I really liked the first three stanzas for their natural quality and the choice of irony while baking bread.

I wonder about the last. It doesn't seem to have the same truth as the others.


When the veil is lifted at last,
with my final breath,
if I could speak, I would not,
nor would thoughts invade
the symmetry of my death,
future, now, or past.

My intention throughout was to make fun of the mind's imperiousness and allegiance to its own agenda. The last verse, I had hoped, would bring out the dark comedy of it all.

Intriguing that you speak of your death having this tri-part reality. Was it Samuel Johnson who said something about the gallows sharpening our thoughts? Maybe a thread would be in order about death as the means of defining what we mean by "life"?

[firefangled]

My intention throughout was to make fun of the mind's imperiousness and allegiance to its own agenda. The last verse, I had hoped, would bring out the dark comedy of it all.

Intriguing that you speak of your death having this tri-part reality. Was it Samuel Johnson who said something about the gallows sharpening our thoughts? Maybe a thread would be in order about death as the means of defining what we mean by "life"?

Looking at it as a comedic futility I can see that.

I was raised that death is the end of life, but that the hour of our death was of utmost importance, mainly to atone for our sins. What a waste of that hour.

Considering death as a part of life should always elicit a response because we are not raised in a culture where that is the belief.


Good idea, Jerry.

[blazeofglory]

Your mind will be busy
whether you want it to be or not.

You might be baking bread
but your mind will be thinking of irony

or making love
but you’ll be remembering the last conversation
you had with your late mother.

And even when they lower you
into your final home,
your mind will be wondering:
“But what, in the end, was the meaning of it all?”




Jerry Newman © 24Oct07


This is one of the ironies of life that we live in several worlds or in several mental-scapes at the same time.

I am really happy to read a poem or a piece of art trying to touch things that remained untouched.

Your ideas are striking and indeed startling. You took a reverse course breaking with the traditional way giving something different from the ordinaire.

[Niamh]

Very good PM. I'm sure we all will be saying that when the time comes. Infact i wonder about that all the time.:)

[PrinceMyshkin]

The world will never have had
its fill of poetry.
When the last priest
is preaching the last
perfectly symmetrical sermon
to the last bored or frightened parishioner
poets will still be rhyming
lust and anarchy and
joy--the holiness of life
without God or politics.






Jerry Newman © July 1, 2007

[Sweets America]

The world will never have had
its fill of poetry.
When the last priest
is preaching the last
perfectly symmetrical sermon
to the last bored or frightened parishioner
poets will still be rhyming
lust and anarchy and
joy--the holiness of life
without God or politics.






Jerry Newman © July 1, 2007

Great! I love it!

[PrinceMyshkin]

The heart knocks repeatedly
at its own gate, calling
from side to side,
"Come in," and "Come in."









J. Newman Sudden Proclamations copyright 1992