Andrew
Whyte
SIGH
In the Ponte dei Sospiri
The bridge of sighs where convicts behold the last sight of
water logged Venice before extermination
There, there is suspiration
Not so much weeping and mourning and gnashing, at least not yet,
but sightings too deep to be uttered in articulate speech.
A sigh, like a belly laugh comes from the depths of the sea of
humanness not to say humaneness
Loaded with meaning and visited with significance like the best
lines of poetry.
Transporting pain and sorrow
Conveying regret and hurt
Showcasing the bitter draining of the dregs.
Russo’s “bridge of sighs" an American story told in the
shadow of the original Ponte
Sighing at intra family discombobulation and disconnection
Kissing the teeth, pursing our lips, sighing in plaint at
the misplacement of potential that is a great Nation
Wondering how we could have winked so, as the falcon's hood was
pulled over our heads.
Sighing at the thoughts that were thought at inception
The future predicted
And the hope expected
Now deferred
Now causing heart sickness
Now resulting in sighs!
But this is not a good end.
Here the deep breath's become strong resolutions
The sighings take on the bursts of relief because we have seen
the future and it is 'us'
Not our negative relatives standing in the need of prayer, but
'us'!
With all to play for, fight for and live for-
'Us', sighing in relief!
Andrew
White
King Leopold never visited
Though it was called his realm
The founding fathers of Canada
America without the revolutionary way
Favoured dominion
Many were territories - protected or not
But all in the final analysis realms
Where governance falling a lot less short
Of glory reigned
All this inspite of the pomp, pageantry
And circumstance attending these realms
National mentons
Personal spheres of influence, concern
And focus
Not reflecting the music of the spheres
And magic circles and flutes
But the mundaneness of our lives
Even in those we have realms
A space between stimulus and response
Where cognition happens
And we say like Sojourner, like Jesse
Like the dear woman from Mississippi
I too am a person!
Though it was called his realm
The founding fathers of Canada
America without the revolutionary way
Favoured dominion
Many were territories - protected or not
But all in the final analysis realms
Where governance falling a lot less short
Of glory reigned
All this inspite of the pomp, pageantry
And circumstance attending these realms
National mentons
Personal spheres of influence, concern
And focus
Not reflecting the music of the spheres
And magic circles and flutes
But the mundaneness of our lives
Even in those we have realms
A space between stimulus and response
Where cognition happens
And we say like Sojourner, like Jesse
Like the dear woman from Mississippi
I too am a person!
Andrew Whyte
A sphere of authority
where the diktat of the protagonist
rules
He rules the roost like a cock of the walk
Enthralling and entrancing the extant chicks by the redness
and fleshiness of his comb.
And then what?
Ends up as Christmas or New Year or other celebratory
dinner.
Always the fate of all those cocky ones in recent political
history
Habre, Gaddafi, Saddam and the man from the Elephant
coast
Alhaji High Chief Professor President escaped that, at
least
for the moment
Unless of course some Habre-like hubris chase him out of
Nguema's equator and then a one way ticket to the Hague.
Young Kabila has not read the runes
Tshikekedi is dead!
Long may he live!
Kagame, Uncle Bob and the Seven Soldier man remain his role
models
But tell him not to hold his breath
The Spirit of Lumumba is breathing down his neck and the Sword
of Damocles is set to fall.
Ultimately, these men, these cocker spaniels and rulers of the
roost in these realms do not bear rule
For thine is the kingdom and power
Thine the glory!
Let them know this!
Andrew Whyte
That is what all the Counsellors tell you
Nouthetic or non-directive
Talk it through!
Stand your ground!
Don't fight!
Don't flight!
Don't enter your cave!
Don't descend into your well!
Just talk it through
Perfectly simple counsel, you might say
Except that in the thought of Oscar, nothing is perfect or
simple
Certainly not the truth
But we do have to get to and through the wall
Like the lonely distance runner in every story.
Through the wall of Trumpet Sound
Through the wall at the point where Banksy
Built the Walled Off Hotel
Through every wall that separates
Keeping them out
Keeping us in
Forgetting that guarding your heart
Is not a prison sentence!
2
When the clouds are full the rains will fall
When a big tree falls it lies by itself
A living Hyena is better than a dead Lion
Qohelet the Didact said that
When is enough enough?
When have we pushed through enough?
That will have to be,....when it is enough!
That is the checkout time
Andrew checked out, then checked in
And finally representationally gave out
When the first blow lands
When the boiled over, vitriolic words are first spoken
When you hear and see the truth
Barack told dreams from his Father with the Audacity and
Chutzpah of Hope
The Trumpet gave no uncertain sound
He told no lies about the lies
He took no hostages to fortune
It was all hidden in plain sight
That was enough but we did not believe.
And now we have to push through!
3
We are pushing through
We have lived through an Alice in Wonderland Fantasy
Seen through the Looking Glass
Into a mostly dark scenario
The secret door to Narnia has opened to us though we did not
receive Aslan Salvation
Humpty dumpty has fallen through the cracks and the Praetorian
Guards have no answers.
But things are looking up and maybe we can still go through
The Cybernetics of Physiology have brought us a New Helmsman
who acting seemingly beneath the radar is pull-pushing us through
a land that is not Changri la or Hollywood's La-la Land
We hold out for hope!
Andrew Whyte
To live- Christ
To die- gain
Not as religious expression
But as lived out reality
Not the virtual/parallel reality
where the loser is the biggest gainer!
Gains- the Angelos network
Gaining weight
Gaining influence
Gaining traction
Generating acclaim
Gaining territory
From Santana- Texas.
Alaska, the Louisiana compact
Losing Bakassi
The whole Of the South Cameroon's
Losing for gain-
South Sudan, Djibouti
Somaliland
Unshackling Stalin's union
Loosening Tito's grip
Gaining Singapore- a coastland
Without a hinterland
Losing Singapore.
The geography of the world
a study in gainful losing
Losing gains made by historical annexation
Gaining poetic/prosaic wisdom
From historical association and allusion
Moving on from gains- modern, postmodern, amodern
Every expression, a value addition
Using the language of Business to express the poetry of hearts
Celebrating our gains from the graininess, grime and graft
of
our joy-filled existence!
Andrew Whyte
Words put together in right order
Making them new
Constructed, arranged, made
The maker- a Poet!
A tabula rasa
Creation ex nihilo
Appropos of nothing
And out of the clear blue
The command to let, carried forward
The maker- the Maker!
North and south
Demarcated by a thinning vaginal line
Representing different universes
And versions of history
The Koran in the Atlantic
The Bible in the Desert
The maker- a lord of the realm
and his journaling concubine!
Rotund, resounding oratory
Calculating, conniving logic
Ponderous, pondering inevitability
And finally, received on a platter of wood
Independence or in dependence
The makers- Founding Fathers found wanting in the scripting of
history.
Boys in jackboots
Who ought to be playing with guns
in the field, not negotiating rules of governance
Black gold, devil's excrement
Resource curse
Less than civil servants
Public servants with private interests
Collapse of structures, strictures and systems
Endemic, epidemic, pandemic, cultural corruption, stealing or
other pilfering of our common patrimony.
Chief the honourable minister
Kinsmen and Foremen
No longer at ease and all the rest
The makers- all the above; hapless politicians and helpless
civilians!
Aluko, Achebe, Ekwensi
They were all right!
Andrew Whyte
RISEN
Matzo, Roti. Tortilla and the wafer( not to be confused with
the "waver/waiver" sold on Nigerian roads
These are species of "breads" which have not risen
Because missing the essentials.
Christ is risen because the essential words were spoken
The essential muscles utilized.
Risen- a case study in essentialism not the essential
commodity scenario prevalent in Venezuela and which we
experienced in conflation
with our present Mussolini.
A fate averted because of platforms previously erected.
Risen like the yellow sun, the red crescent and even the other
half of the sun
Like Japan, like ISIL, like Biafra.
The essence removed and now mostly matzo, roti, tortilla and
the wafer
All significant but somewhat deflated- not rising; not risen
Just there- a constant reminder of the consequences of life
without yeast.
To rise we must have yeast in ourselves, in our bread, in our
lives.
The yeast of Hirohito's words
Of Hitlers dynamism
Of Mussolini's carriage
Of God's resurrection power
Of ISIL's dogma
Buhari's sternly deceptive vitae
There must be some yeast that makes us
know that we too have risen like the phoenix from whatever
hole or dunghill that was dug
for or built for us.
I must stop here as these words keep having yeast in
themselves
When we have risen beyond limits we get back to
death,
not living tissue but tumours needing not only deflation but
traumatic excision-
the story of all the flags that have risen against the common
weal!
ANDREW WHYTE
Many are called
Few answer
Some are sent
Others just went
Without seal, imprimatur
Without superscription
He was a man under authority
Not a scion of the living dead
Not operating as a Tonton Macoute
He was sent
He went
He sends and others go
A virtuous/vicious/virtual circle/cycle!
Depending on who sends, who goes, what is done in execution
Execution of building designs sent out to commissioning agents
without guarantees
Expending, spending energy
Posts returned by the general
not backed up by the gatekeepers
of the super highway in this neo-tech age where subliminal
messages generating mass hysteria can be sent out to the hoi polloi
Making more impact than IL Duce, the Fuhrer and Pol Pot
Not forgetting Bokassa, the Amin and Leopold of Belgium
Sent as a two edged sword
Cutting both ways
depending always on the sent and spent forces centripetal and
centrifugal
Forces for good
for evil
for the never morally neutral.
Many answer
Some went
Everyday
messages are sent!
Andrew Whyte
Our tanks are full to overflowing
With propane, butane and other named gases that make for
movement, propulsion and transportation
And for that we are thankful
Or to coin a word in a broken language given validity by our
Supreme Court, we are "tankful"
For our bellies distended by foods, not kwashiorkor- inducing,
we must of necessity be thankful
As what manner of hypocrisy is it that says Grace without
meaning
Blessing food that tastes like chaff in our mouths
Saying Grace over meals and dealing without Grace with our
fellows
Raised by my uncle
My psyche razed
Burnt out hollow till I had no face and was nearly phased out
in " Perelandra"
A spaced out, space bunny without ballast or anchor for my
soul
Layered and textured with crater like wounds
Laser like, radial pains
For all these we are "thankful".
At least there is family
Dysfunctional, nonfunctional but family
We are thankful because we are
Because we must
Because thankfulness like mindfulness changes things
Things change thankfulness
and we are none the wiser
But we must
Always!
Submitting ourselves to the Blavatskian 'secret' or Gnostic
knowing
But to something anyway
In the end zone, playing the endgame
Chanting out our thankfulness
And that is all there is!
Andrew Whyte
The ecclesiast is best known for two lines
One about vanity which is a riff on the futility of existence
The other, about the circularity of time as
Eon, Chronos and Chairos
About vanity, he was there before Camus and Rimbaud with all
their existentialist posturing
Before Nieztche and Schopenhauer and the will to power
Vain as futile
The futility of endeavour, like publishing a book, not peer
reviewed and read only by you.
Schooling as a Solicitor and winding up as a long distance
truck driver.
A Biochemistry professor as a mobile mechanic
An MD as an auto medic
Or maybe Vain as ephemeral, insubstantial
Inconsequential
Meaning nothing, adding no value, less than nothing.
A ravished, ravaged face made up
A distended belly tucked into a dress
Vain because the face will be revealed
And the belly will continue its journey
South.
Vain- prides in things you cannot and do not control
Place of birth. Good genes. Good hair.
Inherited wealth.
A mainframe in an estate, for the outlier.
Eight hours of daily music in a basement in
Hamburg.
That, ended badly in a stairwell with a gunshot
for the outlier who compared himself with
the Divinity.
Vain and its cousins- vanity and vainglory.
Testifying of the vanity of celebrity
Famous for being famous.
Exposing wide hips
Making sex tapes
Being the Scion many times removed of a hotelier
Being Mike Tyson's wife
Vain. Vanity. Vainglory!
Andrew Whyte
Kindle the book app that lights the fires of learning and
distinction.
Intellect with rigor
Not the pathologists rigor mortis
But the rigor of investigation both criminal and civil.
Not the civility of uncivil servants and private citizens
masquerading as public servants.
But civil nonetheless!
Kindle- a combination of kin and candle.
Who is to say?
But kindling the flames of familial interaction across freely
contrived borders - protectorates
Colony’s, divisions and provinces
falsely and freely witnessed by a Leopard who never left
Bruge
And the rest is story!
Kindling fires that we hope will at the least lead to National
cohesion or not!
Andrew White
Raising the lid
Blasting the glass ceiling
Given a hand up
Not a handout
Giving a leg up
without legovers
Not used as a leftover
Or raised as an afterthought
No quota system in place
Or reverse discrimination practiced with a veneer of civility and fairness.
Neither algebra nor calculus, raising people and integers to the power of infinity.
Not given to mental flight but engaged in mental fight to raise the bar of human attainment.
Referencing frankl who in the cesspit raised himself to an elevation of meditation and imagination by the power and quality of his thinking.
Logo therapy came out of that.
A branch of knowledge raised literally from the pits.
Raising the limit of human attainment.
The one minute mile
Climbing mount Everest
and raising political questions like was Hilary first or was it the Sherpa Tensing Norgay?
Bolting below 9.5 but for showboating and the exuberance of youth.
A picture that still haunts me.
Raising hell
Raising salaries from minimum to medium
Raising the water level of the spirit's activity
Raising the dead and the ultimate resurrection!
Blasting the glass ceiling
Given a hand up
Not a handout
Giving a leg up
without legovers
Not used as a leftover
Or raised as an afterthought
No quota system in place
Or reverse discrimination practiced with a veneer of civility and fairness.
Neither algebra nor calculus, raising people and integers to the power of infinity.
Not given to mental flight but engaged in mental fight to raise the bar of human attainment.
Referencing frankl who in the cesspit raised himself to an elevation of meditation and imagination by the power and quality of his thinking.
Logo therapy came out of that.
A branch of knowledge raised literally from the pits.
Raising the limit of human attainment.
The one minute mile
Climbing mount Everest
and raising political questions like was Hilary first or was it the Sherpa Tensing Norgay?
Bolting below 9.5 but for showboating and the exuberance of youth.
A picture that still haunts me.
Raising hell
Raising salaries from minimum to medium
Raising the water level of the spirit's activity
Raising the dead and the ultimate resurrection!
Raising the dead by imbibing the blue for engagement in sacred
delight.
Raising Cain after the murder of Abel
Raising the dead by speaking of life
Turning on the light
Jacking up the sound
Absorbing corruption by right focus
Fixating on probity and integrity
Like leaders attending their swearing-in in white cotton,
attesting rightness
Raised to stand for something and not fall for anything.
Injecting life into the moribund not now by way of blue pills
but by blue flashes of power in all its manifestations.
Solar, nuclear, wind, water, clean, dirty!
Raised out of the doldrums of darkness
Into an endless tunnel where by hope we look for a light to
end it!
Andrew White
BASE -
Andrew White
A young lady once called me base
An assertion apropos of nothing
All because for a brief moment in our lives there was an
intersecting of ambiguities.
A compounding of incompatibilities resulting, I imagine in the
production of this base metal to which she compared me.
I took it on my tapered chin, heart breaking and lips
quivering but I am nothing if not resilient
Something you cannot accuse base metal of being
That is what happens when you lose your focus and go rummaging
in the somewhat clichéd scrapheap or dung heap of history.
Base
Speaking of metals, of foundations and establishments, of
military installations, of logic and rhetoric establishing a basis or baseline
for conversation.
Base
An active engagement with your base of support, where you
speak to your base, preaching to the converted, teaching the choir
Bringing comfort like that of old slippers and warm chocolate
to your soul.
Knowing all the applause points might as well be a mechanical
clapper giving directions.
Base
Fools’ gold converted by Alchemists
Dropouts from the study of Chemistry
Much like Astrologers and Astronomers
Prophets and Psychic fortune tellers
Base like that!
Fools’ gold
White noise
Black space and other imitators of reality leading us on a
fool's errand declaring the Emperor clothed when his exposed skin is luminous
in the sun
Baseness uncovered by the trenchant voice of a child crying,
not in the wilderness, but in the marketplace,
" the Emperor is naked."
Andrew White
RELY - - Andrew Whyte
A poem is a made thing
A found thing, maybe even a foundling
It does not always act like the cold in the head that makes it
Impossible for any fire to warm us
As the Belle of Amherst experienced it.
It does not always feel as if the tops of our heads
were taken off.
It is not even always a Jeremiah like fire in the bones
as if God was speaking to and through the Poet.
Tried to make up a poem using book titles containing the word
rely.
That did not wash, even after an appeal to Google
Or even to its incarnation as Alpha Bet.
This had to be a form of creation Ex Nihilo.
And so we are back to Faith which is relying on God
And to the exhortation not to rely on our own understanding.
Thus, begging the question and even the pardon of the great
Exhorter.
On whom must we rely?
Reliance- a little boy learning to tie his laces
Saying in the process i will succeed and try
Inverting the order of his father’s mantra
Stumbling on a truth of gargantuan proportions.
Reliance- a small town in Ohio where all such small towns with
Such evocative names always seem to be found.
Or is that just in Toni Morrison's fiction?
And so back to rely.
For if we do not stand together as men; as people (we must be
politically correct)
We shall surely hang together as fools (that has no gender
distinctions)
No intellectual distinctions either, as a person
can be a PhD from Cambridge and a fool!
C. S. Lewis said that.
And we have seen that.
The Tower of Babel as a metaphor
not of cacophony but of possibility.
The various ages of man- not in a Shakespearean sense
but in an evoking of the history of the world
leading to this age of Technology, Industry and Moore's law.
Nobody or no thing self-made.
All coming up by way of reliance
Rely and collaborate- the defining buzzwords of our age.
Giving us Rolls Royce, Microsoft, Apple, and Hewlett Packard.
Explaining the self-styled Don and the boy from Bariga.
Public spat; public and private reconciliation!
Andrew
Whyte
WANTING DESIRE - -Andrew Whyte
All my life, I wanted
desire
Longed for it; lunged for
it
Like Marys bleeding heart
Pascal’s God shaped vacuum
The tree comprising the
Kingdom
Creating a haven for the
birds of the air
The Kingdom of God as a
seed
Knowing that in the coming
is life
The coming of desire which
itself is a synonym
For the longing that
brings transgression
Let no one blame God for
their temptations
God has no shadow
No turning; no Parallage
He is constant as the star
that He made
His longing is of a
different colour
It does not draw off to
sin, lust or love
It loves the joy of our
espousal
Noting that time was when
we followed
Him to the desert
Becoming an anthromorph
Expressing His love,
longing, desire
In words less than divine.
Coming full circle to us
Learning, earning,
yearning
Longing, desiring, hoping
Wanting, needing,
expecting
Following Maslow or Freud
Adler or Jung
Themselves metaphors
seeking explanation
In worlds of their own
construct
Giving vent rather to a
world without God
Minus the primal urge that
is longing
Longing after divinity
Divine explanation
Divine expiation
An experimental,
experimenting world
Where the final marking in
red is spelt
In Qoheleths words,
vanity; all vanity.
Far off from the innocent
longing for a woman
The completing, bone
connecting woman
For a man, the bone into
body man
The longing for
fulfilments and achievements
Sanctioned and sanctified;
satisfying!
Ending with wanting desire
Which is a tree of life
Providing cover for the
nations
Much like poetry of a
certain kind.
Andrew
Whyte
A BOILING VESUVIUS - - Andrew Whyte
The Poet who wrote that the Poet lied
Wrote a Boiling Caracas
Not at that time a carcass which it has now become
Or a boiling over Economic Vesuvius which it now
is.
Now that Chavez is dead
And Maduro can hardly hold it together
Like Somalia’s Barre
Or Romania’s Ceausescu
Or the Civil Lawyer from Belgrade
Who degenerated to butchery.
Like Tito, the Granddaddy of them all
Like all the African grand old men
Who learnt too late that you can never take it
with you.
Ask Desire, who become the Leopard who does
Or never does something or other
Ask our own Uncle whose attempt was foiled
Ask Uncle Robert who appears to have succeeded
The liquid black Gold is common as sand
And priced as cheaply
We have reached boiling point
Attained critical mass
And ready for a quantum leap
That takes us over the boiling, roiling Ocean!
Andrew Whyte
THIS DAY - - Andrew Whyte
This day we believe God for our daily bread
Though cake and cream will be nice.
That after all is what Marie Antoinette is reported to have
told
The less than genteel poor!
She had to die
No question, though we question the use of the guillotine
As excessively cruel and unusual punishment
This is the day God has made
The day when we must pay attention even if we are too broke to
do so
This day when and in which we resolve to be glad
Inspite of all the indications to the contrary
Glad not with the gladness of pontificating fools
But in the hope that the ship of state will come home
And our leaders will quit faffing around
And take their fingers out and find a way through the morass
Moses did it. Eventually.
Though he like Martin did not get there
Never mind not fearing death and the importance of longevity
As the cliché goes- not duration but donation
China did it!
Changed spots; became chameleonic
Leopard changed its spots
Snake sloughed off its skin
Millions lifted out of generational poverty
Choose you this day whom you will serve
Always this day, to day and in the moment
The moment where all the New Age Guru’s encourage us to live
Seizing the time; Carpe Diem and redeeming our days
Praying with Moses that we will be enabled to ascribe axial
value
To our time and times
That we might ultimately apply wisdom to our hearts and other
parts
This day which is Christmas and Easter and every celebration
Rolled in to one
A creation of your view of this day or any other
Supply and demand; seeking and finding
Seed time and harvest; sowing and reaping
Giving and getting; to have and to hold
Planting and harvesting; laughing and mourning
This Day, the Newspaper has all that and more
And reports them as the news of this day
This Day- new and news!
Andrew
Whyte
THE FISHERMEN - - Dr.
Andrew Ode Eyeoyibo
(example
of aFound poem as written by Dr. Andrew Ode Eyeoyibo -. A found poem is a poem
made up entirely or 95% from another written source)
We were fishermen
Omi- Ala was a dreadful river.
Father was an eagle
Ikenna was a python
Ikenna was undergoing a metamorphosis
Abulu was a madman
Those the gods have chosen to destroy, they inflict with
madness
Mother was a falconer
Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot
hear the falconer
Locusts were forerunners
Ikenna was a sparrow
Boja was a fungus
Spiders were beasts of grief
When a mother is hungry, she says:
Roast something for my children that they may eat
Obembe was a search dog
The one who discovered things
Who knew things and examined them
Hatred is a leech
The thing that sticks to a person’s skin
That feeds off them and drains the sap out of one’s spirit
It changes a person
It does not leave until it has sucked the last drop of peace
from them
But Abulu was a leviathan
A thing not easily killed
Hope was a tadpole
The thing you caught and brought home with you in a can
The thing which despite being kept in the right water, soon
died
My brother and I were roosters
The creatures that crow to wake people
Announcing the end of nights like natural alarm clocks
And the awakening of the dawn
Who in return for their services must be slain for man’s
consumption
Benjamin was a moth
The fragile thing with wings, who basks in light
But who soon loses its wings and falls to the ground
David and Nkem were egrets
Wool white birds that appear after a storm
Wings unspotted, lives unscathed
And this is a sort of poem, made up almost entirely
From the opening lines of the fifteen chapters of Chigozie
Obioma’s book
And serves as some kind of homage to the luminosity of the
writing
The book carries the same title as this made up poem
They were meant to be fishermen of good dreams
Unrelenting, menacing juggernauts in pursuit of fish
He meant them to be fishers of men.
THEM - - Andrew
Whyte
Ronsons adventures with
terrorists
Engagements with
conspiracy theorist
Them- the other; the
others that rule the world
The controlling powers
behind the headlines
The men of shadows in
the shadows of Platos cave
Except that by all
accounts there relationships are not platonic
Them or they, with us
and with their cohort
Them- if Icke is to be
believed they are in control
The rise and fall of
Nations and Governments
I thought that was God
Who puts one up and
another down
In whose hands are the
hearts of Kings anfd Princes
Evidently I thought
wrong
Them; they; the other
Fully in control
Determining
Presidencies; overthrowing Governments
Fixing rates of
interest
There I was thinking it
was the People or the Military
The Central Banks of
the various Nations
Not Reptillian Avatars
from old Europe
Them- always the other
My brother, my sister,
even my mother
Standing in the need of
prayer
It was the woman you
gave me
It was the serpent
It was the people, the
gold, the fire
Then this calf polished
for worship showed up
It was the iron that
burned the clothes
It was Jonathan and the
Jonathanians
Never me; always Them
Forgetting in the fix
the first rule of fixing
Fix the problem, not
the blame
If it is to be it is up
to you and not down to Them
Or as Stephen said be
responsible!
Andrew Whyte
MAKE - - Andrew Whyte
To make is to create
An act
A verb
A tendency out of
Elohim
He was the first to
say, let us make
Unless, of course you
are Darwin, Dawkins and Hawking
The greatest atheists
A trio of fools!
All making is synthetic
Apart from the first
one that was ex nihilo
Because then,
everything was a tabula rasa
And there was no res to
ipsa loquitur
All creation is a
synthesis of thesis and antithesis
This and That
Now and Then
Yin and Yang
The Jungian Animus and
Anima
Old and New
Except that there is
nothing new under God’s made heaven
What was is!
You cannot step into
the same river twice
Except that at some
point the river returns for another step
As, in all the laws of
Thermodynamics nothing is ever lost
Everything comes
together
Everything that rises
must converge as Flannery reminds us
We are always making
Making an image
Letting the image be
made
Making a difference
Making a mess
Making out or in as the
case may be
Making up our quarrels
Making up our faces for
the orderly arrangement of all things
Imposing Cosmos on the
Chaos that is our lived in faces.
Andrew Whyte
THEN - - Andrew Whyte
We want only to show you something
We have seen and to tell you something
We have heard
That here and there in the world
And now and then in ourselves
Is a new creation.
Tillich said that and he was not even writing poetry
What then was he doing?
What then is this furry, fuzzy animal?
What if it is all poetry?
If it bites and stings and wakes us up with a blow to the head
If it smashes the frozen sea within us
And makes our whole body so cold that no fire can warm us
If it feels as if the top of our heads were excavated
Then it is poetry even if as in Tillich’s case theology is
being written
Then- speaking of consequences; of cause and effect
Speaking of a time in place, a time and place and a place in
time
Virginia Woolf’s room of her own and 500 pounds
The solitary philosopher sitting in his room
Examining his own thoughts
Listening to his own breath
Then counting costs; assigning value and knowing things
Seated like the solitary reaper awaiting the grim one.
And then, what if it is all poetry?
Putting the best words in the best order
Using words charged with their utmost meaning
Appearing almost as a remembrance
Seeing the truth through the lens of passion
Experiencing now, when and then moments
Focusing not on meaning but on being
Arriving at intellect by way of the heart
Then- pursuing necessary implications to their logical
Conclusions
Bringing them down to their grave yard
Identifying stones and cenotaphs
Helping them to dance on their own graves
On resurrection morning
Then- spoken in stentorian, sarcastic tones
Wanting to know on a self-declared need to know basis
For us the conclusion of the matter is not the ecclesiasts
Nothing new under the sun
Or fear God
Or vanity of vanities all is vanity
But that here and there in the world
And now and then in ourselves
Is a New Creation.
Andrew
Whyte
FORGIVEN AGAIN - - Andrew Whyte
The philanderer caught in the very act
The woman accused alone
The man unaccompanied by the sirens of wrong
The men in age order slinking away at the recounting
Not knowing that even then it was written
In delible sand
The second thief on the elevated tree
Those who in ignorance took an oath upon themselves
Swearing to their own eternal hurt,
But for the certainties of Eternal Life.
They should have refused the invitation
To swear on the second mountain.
Forgiven by the resonant act
With multiple reverberations through eons
Seven billion big ones
After the war that came after the war
To end all wars
Reconstruction, rehabilitation, renewal
Not the liberte, fraternite, egalite
Of the extant and untelevised revolution
But not too far off in scope
Debt clubs gathered to forgive debts
To Shavian deserving if not deserved poor
Deserving but not deserved,
As the mountains grew again
Not the famed groundnut pyramids
Or the Butter mountains of the Union
Before the exits- Br or Gr
The mountains grew again and exceeded the marks
Previously set
Hupaballoo- the exceeding of marks
Doing a Usain Bolt on a Johnson
Except that the return is not congratulations
All round but commiseration and questions
But what is it to be forgiven again but
The enjoyment of the grace that has no terminus
And trumps and triumphs over Karma.
The grace that erases all marks
And pulls down all walls
Even the one’s in Frost’s poem
Walls that lock in and also lock out
Forgiven again by grace notes that all can read.
Andrew
Whyte
DREAMS - - Andrew Whyte
A dream deferred leads to the heart sickness
Of a generation of people
They presented the cheque for their 40 acres
And a mule
The cheque was made of rubber
And it bounced sky high
Like a doped up dude
Ralph Ellison saw this and wrote, Invisible Man
Richard Wright was the Native Son, The Outsider and TheBlack
Boy
James Baldwin spoke about the Fire next time and Take ten
Langston Hughes wrote the poem
What happens to a Dream Deferred?
He wrote Dreams, the poem
He asked us to hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die life is a broken winged bird
That cannot fly
Life is a barren field frozen with snow
And so what do we know-
That dreams deferred make the heart sick
Unrelenting disappointment leaves you heart broken
But a sudden good break can turn life around.
Before all these there was Joseph the dreamer
Then Mahalia exhorting Martin to tell about the dream
To tell the dream and the rest is story!
Dreams come true
Without that possibility
Nature would neither incite nor excite us with them
Someone said that.
Like the boy who dreamt Dreams from his Father
And wrote about the Audacity of Hope
Though he was not from Hope, Arkansas
Like the other one
They both got to the mountaintop
And got to the Promised Land
The King did not get there
He saw it, he yearned for it
But an assassin’s bullet to the jaw ended his own
Particular dream right there on the top floor
But the dream- like cadences of his words
Carry through and have seen his people
Some distant way
Though not the Black Tulsans of 1920
They were before his time
He spoke about them only as a nightmare on Beale Street
Taking us back to dreams realized.
Andrew
Whyte
EXTRA EXTRA - - Andrew Whyte
Even extra extra's
Telling the breaking news
Of unaccountable
catastrophes and erupting, effluvient volcanoes. The back page headlines
telling that Arsenal lost again amongst the bigger front page extra's of Syria
and Isis not Isis the goddess of Egypt and wife and mother of Osiris called
Horus and even in some renderings Semiramis mother and wife of Nimrod. No not
that Isis but the one of isil and Boko
Haram. Extra extra's talking of momentous events defining the contours of our
lives. Presenting evidence that demands a verdict and evokes less than
commensurate responses. Extra extra's so prevalent that now we suffer video
overload and audio kwashiokor and walk back on the other side of the road like
engaged priests and leaning Pharisees. And what shall we do now to be saved?
Andrew
Whyte
No comments:
Post a Comment