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| # Selected Poetry ## Lewis A. Sellers |
Several were the words, or musty collections thereof, that screamed me! me! when I gazed upon them... hoping to easily pluck a few up and splatter them across this electronic wall. Fatigued as I was both of body and of mind, the selection was more random than planned, all now being done and I reflecting upon the situation, this screen and how the curious layout came to be. As for the scribblings that too infrequently litter this page, most are mine. And some are by old friends (as to which is whose, I'm a little fuzzy on). The reasoning behind the cards of course, especially that of the smoke-filled coffee-drenched donut-shop, speak for themselves. At least to me.... --min, '96 [A Slight Note: Most of my poetry, and, I grant, most of my literary work in general, is meant to be read in a strong possibly angry but deeply contemplative voice. When a line breaks, you should break the sound in your mind. If only for a brief moment. Where there is space between words, that as well should extend the tone of the line. If I had the file space, I would read a few as example. But in short, all, or almost all, are meant to be read in a coffee house, with passion, with drama, and with deep understanding. -- Or lacking any of those, do a bad imitation of Shawn Connery. That will suffice. :-) ]

| ### On Koans `April 16 2003`
    All poems
           Simple
                  Infinite
                  in number
    Craving to say the same
### Autumn Eyes `12-18-90 2:20AM`
    In the cold September air
    while tree trunks glistened fair
    none did hear the autumn come
    none did fear the winter -- none
    but sweet children in their eyes
    looked and were quite surprised
    as the leaves blew through and round
    laughing in the languid sun
    and color pouring everywhere
    whereso their eyes did gaze
    where then their hands did touch
    and trembled only in the midst of all
    enamored, enraptured in the rending fall.
### THE SILENT SHORES `1/10/91 2:48PM Thursday`
    Run away, run away, to the silent shores
                 of the stillpoint we shall go
    And in the forests and in the fields
              and burn them while the blind hand kills
    men and mountain, God and whore
           the bloody swords we held high
               shall fall forever more
                      into the silence of the deep
            The mountains cry
               the winds will weep
           and we shall to the stillpoint flow
             and men shall laugh
                     and gods shall go . . .
                 into the stillness of the night.
### I have never (stopped) `2:13 2/6/91` `
    I have never stopped
    to caress a rose
    to smell it
    or to crush it (except
    accidentally
    on occasions)
    But (are you listening)
    I want to
    I will to
    Kiss a rose in bloom
    and dance
    a dance of living death
    (such sweet death)
    in the valleys valed
    in the rose bloom.
` ### What Place Compassion? [A POEM OF AN ANCIENT JEWISH JUDGE] `10-23-90`
    In whom I might conceive
    with his very looks deceive
    The pleasant, the proper lord
    of outstretched land--to conceive
    a paradise anew ... without wars?
    waged for all widowed eye to see.
    But to love!  oh, here comes he.
    What, what? the wind is heavy in desert air.
    Say, say? oh, no...nothing do I fear.
    Do I feel compassion?  I feel no pain
    basked in lights and rainment
    proper Jesuit priests did ordain.
                        No.
    Ask not again, question never more.
    It would destroy me
                          or lessen my being
    to stone
                and steel
                             and cold things in between.
    Yes I love you, but leave behind.
    What place compassion in the mighty father's din?
    Far away, for eye to see
    vastest hell prepared for thee,
    who would love but would lie.
    So go,--my love!  Ho, go not after.
    My love, the faint taste of honey'd lips
    the drowning after golden slips
    But then and again I hear myself,
    and leave the laughter far behind.
    And yet at his counsel
    men would pause
    and wait for days and years and yet..
    To come to, to hear...
    Good god!  what do I fear?
    To hear the opulent vision
    is more than man should bare.
    Ho, my love, now go not after--
    He is dead he says but lives in me.
    He is dead they say and I in thee.
### HOLY WAR `October 91`
    Our ways are not the ways of war
       (steel and fire and screaming voices in the night)
    but our fight is victorious still.
        Each mind we match,
         and strong words of our God echo in
           til each drop fills their vessel overflowing
            and war is forgot unto men.
### (untitled) `sept 30 '91`
    In one Law the universe bound
           though to thy seekers
           Derivatives
                 measureless
                           do confound
    Movement is matter
     and dark cessation the same--
    but in other worlds
        (by the one law bound.)
### Hollow Men `1:24AM 3-19-91`
           The eye sees but does not perceive.
          the mouth emanates but with words hollow
    all the world is beyond the mere touch of desperate flesh
    imprisoned within the essence of finite self.
        Sing awhile longer gentle winds
            though false in your flowing enchantment
           your soft music masks my mingled screams.
    There are no words, but there are sounds.
### Entropy
    But! are we not here now?
    Though we decay into nothingness
    from nothingness must we have been born--
         once
          and if once
           why not again
            and if again, why not forever.
        Entropy is not death eternal
           but change eternal
                               static.
### True Love `'91`
        Love crushes--
            The serpent that
                 writhes
                        This way
    --and that.
### (untitled) `4-91`
    Feet.  Stepping.  Closer coming.
           But not human.
           eyelids seal.
           ears listen again.
          (break those feet.
            disembody that being).
    Dream of feet stepping.  closer coming.
          human sounding.
          ears listen again.
### (untitled) `'91`
    Franny,
           There are no more smiles
                 Where the eyes see clearly
                 or where lips touch against livid flesh.
### (untitled) `11-29-90`
    God whispers in the hallway
    only the broomsticks listen
    And the coat rack pays him no mind.
    God is waiting...waiting!  oh hear,
    down the dreary stairway a figure fainter
    is waiting for you...will you cross
    what have you lost, in an embrace or two?
### In Reply `1/91`
    There he sits in silence yet again
      and ponders with sad wonder
        all the powers to perform
        all the principle players drawn warmly
          onto the waiting stage:
             This one is the shadow evil,
               This one the masque of death
                 There love unboundable...
                    and this?
                            What is this?
                             Who are you?
### (dreams) `1/16/89`
    when the dreams fall and leave you confused
       Do you lay in the field
          Staring as time passes
              And winter comes?
    Do you speak burning words
          that cast away thoughts wrong
           that kill the soul and all your dreams?
### (untitled) `'90` [Note: I believe I was considering a bowl of corn-flakes one morning when I wrote this]
    Judgment in the morning
    Breakfast with the Beast
    Though I feel like crying
    The pain I fear the least.
    Wake me!  Wake--too late.
    Compassion wails                     far away
    And I feel cold
    And much too old
    To be in my undying youth.
### (untitled) `6:46AM '93`
    Death  is not my master
      but a friend
         that depresses me
         and wants to chat all the morning
           and after.
### things of war `2/6/91 2:47-3:12PM` [Note: Read too much Sylvia Plath, and you too can write poems like this.]
    things of war
        and unsigned reprieves
        these
        are the tines of life
              trilling round
              and ever open wound
    you know not
    what i may think
            and keep it that way--
            you bloody freak.
    No.  leave my mind alone
           (all the gods are gone
             on a killing spree)
    Daddy          daddy
             what do you see?
                  the village burns
                  and this heart in me
                 (SWEARS
                   you)
                    will never
                      k(no!)w
                                  pleasure
                    again
    out--
                                  there
           the napalm falls
           in a misted rain
             while
                  tall men call
                  about the burning plain
                       what do you see?
                        was it you?
                         or(oh god)was it me?
### (She smiles in silence) `sept 30/91`
    Every breathe I'm dying
    (and she stares into the flowing fields of dawn)
    Every word fails, with the winter come
    (and tears fill her tender face,
      washed by brilliance,
    and the wind-swept dawn).
    I have heard of a thousand pleasures of body and mind--
     (but she turns her face
       towards the radiant dawn)
    --of a thousand ways to die and be reborn
     (but she . . .
                     WILL
                     NOT
                     DIE!)
    And stillness sits in silence,
    burning in the now.
    The sun rises in the eastern mist
      the moon parts the river vale
        and fast young fingers yearn
                          (CAPTURE)
         for a few sweet moments
                        (TREMBLING)
               mouth--
                    in mouth,
               and eye--
                     within eye . . .
                     (yielding.)
### The Last Poem `sept 1 '91`
        Innocence
    in the way she wakes without moving
        (deep within)
    and whispers in her warmth
                         smiling.
    Cold, hard, the morning winds flow favoured
    swirling through the far forest trees
       mere inches
          from his hands
                    (he dispels)
    is touched, and gone--departed
              the invisible essence
              whirls to slaughter
              in the receding now
    (blinding the blade
               that cleaves
                      essence--all)
    While she waits
          and contemplates
          many voices, whispering in her one mind
                                 (which she too dispels)
    with bright eyes turned inward,
    and light to lay the sun ashamed
    and laugh to win the heart of kings
          to her side.
    Sweet the sun of a thousand tears
    after the flowers have dropped away.
### (untitled) `feb '92`
    Cognition
    comes in waves
    receding
    what deeper, baser instinct
      finds without hope
    cold cognition abates
      grim thundering swells dissipate
    in unseen eyebeams
                       reflecting now
    Time was and will yet be.
    Cognition sees, disseminates
      untamable cacophony
    into fine finite particles
       resembling all.
    Wholeness partitioned
       is wholeness still,
    though not whole
    and what seems representative is only that.
    cognition
    knows but can not feel
    the deeper, baser instinct.
### (untitled) `5'93`
    And then I would speak to them of love for the devil
       sympathy for the sinners
            and defiant acceptance of the damned ...
      for what a wasted world
       without evil
    Void then even of the slightest sensation
      that draws the body into blackness
      thoughts barren
      acts unclean
    Why praise a single blossom
          lost amid a world of such-same blossom
          but--
            the one flower
             blooming in the desert
               How sweet each petal
                      to lucid eyes
                      to hardened hands
                       and to our own hearts
                                           ever-
                                              blooming
                                                  hope.
### (untitled) `'90`
    What is happiness? to be as God.
    What is misery? to know that you are not.
### (untitled) `1-9-90`
    They never understood, though they think they do now.
    They never have, and they never will, for quit in fact
    it was never about understanding at all.
    An evil god laughs in the unattainable darkness.
    Humpf.  They are so sure.  But it is merely a ritual,
    performed tirelessly to a god dead to them long ages.
    They change and manipulate to suit their own
                                                 immediate needs.
    Well--so be it:
    Hating eyes carve red lightning from across this self-consuming dream,
    and there he waits--feeding on us all.
### (untitled) `Sept 22 93 5:49AM Monday`
    In those brief few seconds
       when I open up the door
         and allow compassion to come crushing all within
         and lift hands,
                        trembling and streaming
          across an unforgiven sky
        I...
         sink into exhaustion
          armour covered
           inward fade...
       and I...
         breathe
       and I...
         washed with darkness
          close my mind again.
| `Feel free to post any comments you have about this software. Who told you about it. Why you're downloading it. What you thought of it. Any bugs you might have stumbled across, etc. Any comments requiring a response might fare better in the forums however.`
PUBLIC COMMENTS?
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`Why? We're just darn curious that's why.`

    Hell
        is the place of those
        who have denied
        (--nothing!)

[This poem says little at first glance, but a great deal if you present it properly at each line. For instance, line 3 makes the most impact if you raise up a classic-black copy of the Holy Bible and say it in a cold sober fashion, with a resigned disappointed look. As you reach the next line, your eyes should come back up, staring upwards at something no one else in the audience can see (pretend a stage spot-light has just come on you and all else is darkness). The single last word should be a muted defiant scream (as if you're terrified someone will hear, but you put your entire body into the saying, as if to exhaust all the air from your lungs). A wild gambit of facial, physical and especially vocal emotions should run around you as you rage in defiance, in joy, in horror, and collapse in exhaustion and falling darkness to the ground.

Don't overact it, but fill it with as much TRUTH and YOURSELF as is possible. You're essentially trying to give the illusion you're saying volumes with but a few words. Which is not an illusion, actually, if you pull it off.

There are many ways to present this poem beyond the original conception.]

`This page and all it's contents, excluding the blurry business cards, are Copyright © 1988-1993, 1996, 1997 Lewis A. Sellers. All Rights Reserved. Parts of these works have previously appeared in print. Comments? Gone to TTU in Cookeville? Email Lewis A. Sellers.` |

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