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State of Being
- taking a shower in pitch dark - lights off -
without external light to define time and place marked
by their lit detail - eyes opened or closed - no matter
- compensating for the deprivation - concentrate instead
on the selflessness of the extreme dark that sets in
- if there is any way to be aware of what it is - nothing
at all detached - like the oblivion in the soul of sleep
without relief of any alternative intervening distraction
- awake awakening - into a state
of an increased acuity to a discrete unknown
- approaching annihilation - a simultaneity
that sensitizes the relentless water's delicate clear
impingement striking nakedness with the familiar shock
of a state of being drenched by being being simply being
Comforts
- nothing has its churches - bargains - conveniences -
fast foods - hospitals - boutiques - and universities
- the architectures of civilities - celebrities
- virtues of nine to five - profits that organize
the services of fashionable vice refining
the etiquettes of artifice into the elegance
that liberates all fascinations - glamour - terror -
stimulating the media into unlimited nightlife
- but comfort may lurk as well also somewhere perhaps
in the wilderness of the soul - where the tenacity
of its humility grazing the surfaces of its survival
is lit on the exposure by the naked brilliance
of simple winter darkness - isolating
the selfless beatitude of clarity -
Roger Desy has taught literature and creative writing at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh and St. Peter's College, Jersey City.
He turned to technical writing and editing. Over the last few years he has written and rewritten lyric poems, where he began.
The best lyrics, he likes to say, are still unwritten. He tries to make his work clear, idiomatic, and accessible, as if it were needed.
Poems have been printed in Blue Unicorn, Epicenter, Poet Lore, and others.
Email: Roger Desy
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