reflections on life of stephen richard eng

8/6/2019 Reflections on Life of Stephen Richard Eng

1/29

Reflections on Life

October Odds

When I was splashing in the lane,

The colors of the rainWere ribboning my April sky

Bright hues of years gone by.

Too soon, the boy became

A gambler in a game

Of crushing odds and devil-loaded dice,

The weather weeping ice.

Maturity. I damn the dice that roll

And dare not probe my soul

Where equilibrium is reaved in half,Where perching gargoyles laugh.

07-04-67*

Byronic

My senses are a symphony

Of violent disharmony,

Enjoying any melodyThats sad.

Self-pitys always sweeter thanRemembering that Im a man,

And sentimental verses can

Be bad.09-27-67

*

Brief

Lifting glasses of

Burgundy aboveTables wet with wine,

Wasting youth and love,

Toasting friends of mine.

Friends are only now,

No one worries how

Time will cut us free;


2/29

Moments still allow

Drunk dear company.

1967*

Easy Lover

No one ever stops the seasons,

No one made of flesh and bone,No one tells you half the reasons:

Better learn them on your own.

Life is like an easy lover,Loyal till its time to leave;

Later, when youre thinking of her,

Take a little time to grieve.

Treat her like a lady through

Clear and cloudy years:Even if shes cheated you,

Thank her for her time and tears.

Life is like an easy lover,No one tells you what shes for:

Just as soon as you discover,

Love her, when she cries for more.07-28-68

*

Full Circle

Fly the flag of fury highOn the red-washed sky,

Trumpet all your anger loud

At the cringing crowd,

Empty all your cannon atThem, and they fall flat.

Later, realize that youHave to suffer too:

Cowardice and death can fall

On you after all;Drop your battered, bloody blade,

Wishing that youd prayed.

1968

*


3/29

Harbingers

Echoes of Spring from the streets,

Laughter and shouting greets

My ear, in a jubilant noise:Raucous, wild neighbor boys.

02-27-70

*

Dumb-Show

Puppets pouting, cursing,Snarling on the stage,

Manic marionettes rehearsing

Comedies of rage.

Puppet-master beaming

Let the show go on,Ignore the boos and screaming

Dance till Time is gone.

Puppet-master workingStrings until they fray,

Painted manikins stop jerking:

Curtain on the play.04-30-70

*

Fragments

Everyone wants to believeCrystal-ideals cant be broken,

Later, the same people grieve,

Deaf to the warnings youve spoken.

04-28-72*

Construction Site

Once your dreams were chiseled stones

Fitted in with care,Now they crumble since youve grown,

Falling from the air.

Castles topple from the sky,


4/29

Better they are gone,

Earth is firm enough to try

Building new ones on.1972

*

Lorraine

Chloroformand thenThey skewered her

Like all the rest,

Upon a mounting-pin,

Her dried wings spread,Inside the case of glass

Specimen Lorraine.

03-03-73

*

Forget

Forgive whoever sent you here,

Forgive the judge:

He only did his duty clear,So hold no grudge.

Forgive whoever testifiedAgainst their friend,

Forget if anybody lied,

And face the end.09-03-73

*

A Simple Song

A simple song is easy to remember,

It flickers like a flame inside your brain,The melody is like a burning ember,

It even smolders through he rain.

A simple song is yesterday returning,

A ribbon wrapping up your dreams and fears,

A fantasy of ecstasy and yearning,A symphony of smiles and tears.

Simple songs are always seeming

Nothing more than idle dreaming


5/29

Lost in the air.

So listen to the simple song Im singing,And listen to your childhood when it calls,

And hear the faint and distant ringing

Of bells along the castle walls.

A simple song is good most any season,

In summertime or winter or the spring,You sing it sad or happy for no reason,

It doesnt have to mean a thing.

1973

*

Etchings

Years arrive and leave,Winters roll and weave

Lines around your eyesMaking you look wise.

Wise enough to know

Every wind to blowLeaves its time and trace

Furrowed in your face.

Lines of love and grief,

Hate and disbelief,

Rage, and loyalty,On your face to see.

02-18-74

*

Home-Town Reunion

Have you ever come home after years on the run?

Have you gone through the ruins of yesterdays fun?Have the friends youve forsaken remained true to you?

Have you paid for their drinks while you asked them whats new?

Have you listened to names echo out of the years?

Have you tried to feel any laughter or tears?

Have you tried to remember that long-ago love?Have you heard that shes got a new name shes proud of?

Its a home-town reunion but you feel far away,

Its a home-town reunion and you dont want to stay.


6/29

Have you come to remember why your friend stayed behind?

And what about all the things you must find?Is your destiny here or in some other town?

Its a home-town reunion and you drink the wine down.

For the highways a home that youve learned to love well.

And the stories youve seen no one wants you to tell,

Its a home-town reunion and you talk of the past,You must be polite and you mustnt leave fast.

03-12-74

*

Fancy

Imagination lights,

A path through all your nights,For you to follow blind

Across your moon-struck mind.

But deeper in your brain

Are beasts you have to chain

The ancient fears and dreadsThat populate our heads.

06-74

*

Lucky Bill

(for Fr. Charles Strobel (Nashville, TN)and his work with the homeless))

Sleeping in a doorway with his body in the rain,Keeping warm, and keeping wet with whiskey in his brain,

Lying in an alleyway that every loser knows,

Drying out a soggy brain thats wetter than his clothes.

Knowing every tavern where they let you take your time,

Growing old inside a world where aging is a crime,

Heading for the side of town where drunken drifters stay,Treading sidewalks like a man who knows hes lost the way.

Dreaming isnt easy, when youve lost your wife and will,Livings one bad lesson, when your name is Lucky Bill.

Drinking up tomorrow like it isnt really there,

Winking at the women with a worn-out, weary stare,


7/29

Saying life is worth it, when he knows it isnt true.

Call him Lucky Bill when you discover him downtown,

Haul him in for vagrancy and write his name right down,

Free him when you finally get weary of his face,See him sometime later in his favorite drinking place.

Dreaming isnt easy, when youve lost your wife and will,Living one bad lesson, when your name is Lucky Bill.

06-18-74

*

As Always

Cards are dealt,Losses felt

In your guts:Sword-like cuts.

Dice are thrown

And you groanAt the toss:

One more loss.

Beg one more

Chance to score;

Dealer grins;Satan wins.

07-06-74

*

Liberation

The prison of Pride is an iron cage,And it fetters your heart like chain,

As you look out on life with smug disdain

And everyone. Never openingYour soul so it can sing.

The prison of Hate is a cell of rageWhere you bang on the bars within,

With imagined rebuffs that pierce thin skin:

You never forgive, never call a truce

Your angers like a noose.


8/29

The prison of Time enslaves with age,

Where you pine for what cant be:But the only sure way youll struggle free

Is step out and leave behind

All bars that wall your mind.07-30-74

*

Barbed Wire Ballad

Rusted wire against a tree

Year by year recedesInside of the circling bark, invisibly

Consumed. Relentlessly, the oak tree feeds.

The countless rings of outer barkEnwrap the wire within.

Thus Time is absorbing me. I markThe circles choking me. Im taut, stretched thin.

10-07-74

*

Barbed Wire Ballad (3)

Rusted wire against a tree, year by year recedes.The countless rings of outer bark enwrap the wire within.

I mark the circles choking me. Im taut, stretched thin.

Thus Time is so absorbing me. Consumed. The oak tree feeds.10-08-74

*

Cosmic Thunder

Perhaps the last few leaves of Time

Are dropping off the Lotus Tree,Our little earth will gasp its last

And soon be swallowed up in sea.

Then sea and earth divide and part,

Each half dissolve without a trace,

Twin flames that rush with lightning speed,Disintegrating into space.

We may be sitting on a keg

Of atoms that will soon explode


9/29

And little else of us be left

Save ash along the flaming road.

And when we think ourselves secure,

We may be standing on the brink

Of chasms gorged with blood and fire,Abysms blacker yet than ink.

It may be while we sleep or wakeThe world will end, a crash will come,

With cleavage of the earth and sea,

And thunder of the Cosmic Drum.

1974*

Light a Beacon

Once I saw an old man, walking all alone,

Searching for a signal light hed never known,Searching in the valleys, looking on the plain,

Searching for the beacon burning through the rain.

Once I saw a woman walking in the night,Wandering and weeping, couldnt find the light,

Tried to light my candle, so shed look at me,

But she said that it was me who couldnt see.

Saw a sinner praying, looking at the sky,

Saw the light around him, made me want to cry,Got on down beside him, searching for my soul,

Both my eyes were blinded, tears began to roll.

If youre busy wasting every new-born day,

If youre busy turning blue skies into grey,

Let me light a beacon, so we both can learn,

Let me light a beacon, let that beacon burn.

Let me light a beacon on your way,

Let me turn the light on you today,Later, when I feel as lost as you,

You can light a beacon for me too.

1974*

Doomed Drifters


10/29

Orphan children on the run,

Terror-taunted,

Drinking rain and wearing sun:Highway-haunted.

Roads of wanderlust are homeFor the naked

Nameless rebels, born to roam

In self-hatred.02-28-75

*

Court Room

You stand before

Judgment of the Pit,

On marbled floor,No place to sit,

And no time more:You have squandered it.

The scribe has scrawled

Curses on the scroll,The priest has called

Doom upon your soul,

The demons crawledOut of his worm hole.

04-27-75

*

Circle

Dawn: another name for dying

Feel the moonlight crying

Palest, silver tears.

Noon: another word for longing

Dying hopes are thronging

Feeble from fresh tears.

Night: another kind of burying

Shadow-mourners carryingLight that disappears.

09-19-76

*


11/29

Driftwood

Lost is a land I only knowIn my dreams:

Farmland and furrows, row on row,

Silver streams.

Barns and the fences, stretching out,

Like long arms,Clutching the roads and rural route

To the farms.

Yet I must follow, where my bootsStride and shift,

Tossed like a tree with ripped-out roots,

Blown, adrift.

10-31-76*

Glow!

Grandchildrenmirrors of you

Decades ago,Long before fickle Time blew

Your hair with snow.

Grandchildren chatter and play

Time disappears

And their golden hair complements greyLighting your years.

11-10-76

*

Loyal

The land was all we had,Crops both good and bad,

But good enough to hold

Us till we were old.

And evermore, the land

Has us in its hand,However frozen hard,

Under the church yard.

11-20-76

*


12/29

Dont Let Your Dreams Get Away From You

So many people you see on the street

Are walking heads down with their eyes at their feet,

You tell from how they move theyve let it die.You see an old friend and you ask him Whats new?

He changes the topic to talk about you,

He hates to let you see his dream went by.

Everyone says, Son, youre wasting your life,

The years come down like a rusty knife

And cut the heart from out of your fantasy.Its damned good advice but the kind you ignore,

You smile and youre keeping right on like before,

That golden dream is your reality.

Dont let your dreams get away from you,

Theres nothing thats quite as trueAs a dream of your ownits stronger than stone,

Dont let your dreams get away from you

Theres nothing thats quite as true.

1976*

Freedom

Green roads, westering bright

Down the May morning lightBeckon your feet.

Blue dreams, painful last night,

Die in defeat.

Orange hills, tinting the skies,

Daubing paint in your eyes:

Fruit-colored day.Black winds, yesterdays lies,

All blown away.

02-08-77*

Love Snare

Time is a ribbon of silver thread

Spun by the spider, Space,

Cob-webbing Mans bewildered face,


13/29

Snarling his dense, doomed head.

Love is the only sure weapon ManWields against the net

Time has woven and tautly set,

Sword it as best you can.03-77

Dinner

Time is the vampire that sucks the years dry,

Love is the maiden to die;

Time is the ghoul and your life is the mealRich with a gourmet appeal.

Curtains of purple are shredded with rot,

After the banquet, youve gotNothing but age and the end of your love;

Time-vultures circle above.04-02-77

*

East Nashville Fire on 15th Street

House burned up one night,

Family was not inside,I didnt know how much they cried,

Looking at the charcoaled sight,

In that cruelest morning light.

Not the only one,

One more stands a block away,Silently, as if to say

Once the battle was begun

Fire, and not your water won.

04-09-78*

Know Your Lines

Your love is scored with lines:

The thin one of a bitter smile,Loosening after while,

The legal ones you sign in ink,

Those round the tub and in the sink,

The battle-lines you draw in bed;


14/29


15/29


16/29

You can wound those little ones you love.

Go gentle on the little children,One day theyll be strong as you,

Carry them along with your compassion,

One day theyll have children too.09-30-78

*

Atmosphere of Houses

Houses softly speak:Whispering, they creak

When the winds drive in

Murmured tales begin

Of tragediesold joysand secret sin.

Marriages and death,Birth and infants breath,

Funereal tears

Mirth from sunny years

Ghost-echoings of triumphs, lusts, and tears.11-18-78

*

Knowledge

Children know so much, today:Where the fairy folk do play,

Where the elves dance in the sun,

Where their inch-high horses run.12-28-78

*

Lesson

Civil war trenches filled,

The guns and the legends stilled,There, where the mansion looms,

An architectural fact

Amid the suburban tract:Victorian, mildewing rooms.

Perfect-trimmed lawns and trees

Encroaching where once the bees


17/29

Tended their hollow-tree hive.

We robbed it of honey back then

But boys from before are now men,Are stronglike the housewe survive.

1978

*

Dream Death

Silver-limbed lady floats past in a dream,

Body as soft as warm cream,And her voice like a mandolin.

Why does she visit me only in sleep,

Why cant I capture and keepHer soft hair and her satin skin?

Faint as a feather, shes blowing away

Gone are those eyes of soft grey,

Ever gone, like her witch-girl grin.

01-11-79*

A Reflection on Pride

The value of Vanitys this;

It offers blissIn front of the looking-glass

Until years pass.

10-07-79*

Echo

I hear a howling of Infinity

(A million billion worth of years),

My earsReverberating the immensity

Of spatial, blue-black void that spans

A multiverse that dwarfs this earthen speck of Mans.1979 *

Gadfly


18/29


19/29

Today the vandal-salvage crew

Arrives to rip up boards and strewThe sundered bricks, and lift the doors

From hinges, and demolish floors.

A super drugstore will replace

The house and once again erase

Tradition. Thus the glass-and-chromeOf Progress triumphs. One less home.

1980

*

Golden Spurs on a Silver Screen

Golden spurs on a silver screen,

Here comes the cowpoke, a-riding across the plainsTennessee Walking horse taking the reins,

Golden spurs on a silver screen,That brave buckaroo in the colorful cowboy suit.

Here come the outlaws, following in close pursuit.

Those bad guys, they always get what they deserve, yeah,And the hero never kisses the girl, but he gets the horse, of course!

Golden spurs on a silver screen,When I grew up I found it wasnt quite all like that:

Sometimes the rustler, hes wearing a big white hat.

Cause those bad guys they dont always get what they deserve, no,

After they steal your girl, they ride off on your horse, of course!

Golden spurs on a silver screen,

When I die you can bury my body up in old Boot Hill,

And wherever Im riding, you can say Im a cowboy still

(You can donate my boots and saddle to the Goodwill!)1980

*

House of Shame

Theres nothing unusual about the way my day begins,As I walk up and down the streets with my mail pouch in my hands;

Ive run this route for yearseverybody knows my name,

Especially at the old folks home, which I call the House of Shame.


20/29

The old folks home is my last stop, thats where I end my daily route.

And my pouch is usually empty, by thennot always, but just about,

Except for an occasional letter, and they all wait anxiouslyWith sad eyes that ask the question Is there anything for me?

And I hear their trembling voices as they walk back and forth:I guess the children are just too busy to write

Theyve got a lot of things to do, of course.

And I try to cheer them up and say things to make them feel better(And I think to myself, just how little effort it takes to write a letter.)

1980

*

Clock (2)

Forty summers, forty springs

You concentrate on brighter things.Then forty autumns, forty cold

Decembersand youre growing old.03-17-81

*

Aphrodite

A kiss corrodes on the statues lips,

Frozen for centuries,A tear made of marble softly slips

Downward. But no one sees.

The tourists walk past, indifferent.

Bric-a-brac, they ignore.

Erotic emotion in stones all spent,Cold as the art gallerys floor.

07-04-81

*

Exposed

You really feel too deep,You let your sorrows seep

Up the fissures in your soul:

Down your face they roll.1981

*

Fifty-Per Cent


21/29

He put ten years on her eyes in a single morning.

He didnt do much to her except walk away.He never raised a hand and he never raised too damned much money.

But he left her fifty-per cent of his final pay.

Shes holding two jobs and shes holding her little heart together

The children make their own beds and breakfast, too.

The womens magazines provide advice and coupons.And her Mama and her sister drop by, to see her through.

Therere no hard feelings, theyre the best of friends, still.

He takes the children on Sunday afternoon.Shes liberated from love, shes her own person.

And no one sees her cry except the moon.

Shes taking two classes down at the local college,A book-keeping course and volleyball 101.

Shes twenty-eight, shes changed her hair, shes jogging!And her friends down at work say her life has just begun!

But you know, fifty-per cent of the American dreams get broken.

One-half of the brides and grooms pay lawyers fees.And fifty-per cent of the couples are coming uncoupled.

But the precise percentage of tears nobody sees.

1981*

Lifes Fleeting Day

I

When the morning expands with a platinum smile,

Horizon-wide, beaming grin,

And the meadow extends, emerald mile upon mile,

The anthems of sunrise begin!

The diamond-dewed day suffices a glow

Roseate on the blue,While sleepy-eyed people, stirring below,

In renascence, waken anew.

II

Afternoon is the chapter of life at its close,

As shadows obtrude on your mind,


22/29

And lavender twilight turns purple the rose,

And blackens until you are blind.

The dusk hour descends till its shrouding your eyes,

And earth is shoveled in place,

Your eyelids now closed, as existence subsides,And clods carpet over your face.

1981

*

Country Farmhouse

No building long survives Times hurricane,It scatters shingles, rends each roof

And bares the rafters to the rain,

The skeleton of walls stands proof

That nothing fashioned by mere Man endures aloof.01-82

*

Devout

God is dead, but women do not know itCharmingly refuse to show it!...

Performing major little acts of love:

Little childrenlittle flowers plucked for wearing,Bigger burdens bearinggraceful caring

And terrifying doubts, unmindful of.

01-16-82*

Cold-War Liberals

Born-again nuclear warfare foes,

Finally raising their voice,

Now that wars fashionable to oppose,Making the comfortable choice.

Now that their suburbs are under risk(Rather than Japanese),

They spin about face! And manage a brisk

Chorus of Nuclear Freeze.08-09-82

*

Gardening


23/29

I pull up weeds and dig them

Out by blade and hand,Then gasoline for poisoning

To root them from my land.

The toughest, most resistant

Weeds are colored black:

The choking dread within my head.I yank, but it grows back.

10-19-82

*

Bargain

I suck life dry.

The juice spurts outTo slake my drought

And some squirts in my eye.

It stings. I blink

But once or twice:

A modest priceTo purchase life, I think.

12-08-82

*

Christmas Symbols

November casts its leaves and days away.

The calendars last, best, page remains

December. And our losses and our gainsAre summed across a sky of frigid grey

(Forgiving sins from some far August day),

Our slate scrubbed clear. The month now wanes;

And yet behind Decembers sleeted panesThere crackles warmth: an ancient mystery play.

Its symbols are the holly and the scented pine.

Humility, not vanity, at end-of-year,And peace to our trespassers and our friends.

The English mistletoethe gift of yours and mine

And carols that poor sinners, like ourselves, most hearThen, manger-ward, a band of seers wends.

1982

*


24/29

Diagnosis

InsanityIs vanity,

The narcissistic cry

Of I, I, I, I, I, I, I.

And happiness

Consists of lessAnalysis, and more of trust

In Him Who fashioned us from dust.

1982

*

Eternal Balladry

I hear the songs of working people playedBy three-piece bands, sung part off-key

In taverns, with electric amplifiers turned up high,Or up the mountains where the tunes have stayed

Changeless, for two hundred years of song.

This Anglo-Celtic minstrelsy can never die

So long as mandolins and fiddles cryTheir plaintive songs of true, true love turned wrong

Of Godand ghostsand deaths and birth,

And square-dance reels where clapping couples throng.Upon the oceanson the plainsthere, the songs are made

For people close to water, dust and earth,

Where love and grief give music all its worth,And where the troubadours ply their timeless trade.

1982

*

How Do I Sign This Christmas Card?

How do I sign this Christmas card?Is it from me and you?

Do we let everybody know

This time were really through?

Your leaving caught me off my guard,

How do I sign this Christmas card?

How do I sign this Christmas card?

I hate to forge your name,

I hate to let our people learn


25/29

This year were not the same.

1982

*

Flush!

The planet is a toilet for the human races waste,

Our toxins poison land and air, and sea,

But luckily weve plans for some rockets to ship MansAtomic turds in space perpetually.

02-21-83

*

Fools Ore

Your mental rainbow arcs across

Horizons in your headBut pots of gold are only dross

And black expunges green and red.06-19-83

*

Conviction

A man, to survive must never once care

For what the effete folk thinkVicarious cowards who, jealous, stare

And knowingly share a wink.

The cautious exceed the daring, ten

On twenty to one, at least.

They never suspect, for actual menAdventure is lifes vast feast.

They tally success by approvals nod,

Of fashionable acclaimReal heroes feed vultures on fear-soaked sod,

No marble to mark their name.

12-04-83*

Fill Up A Glass Full of Memories

Heres to the heroes whove left us,

In war-time, or on the freeways, or in the bars.

Heres to the ladies whove known us


26/29

For the kisses, for the tears, and for the scars.

Heres to the futures weve squandered,Heres to the songs we play,

Heres to our friends, both living and dead,

May we all get together one day!

Fill up a glass full of memories,

Drink to the dreams gone by.Fill up a glass full of memories

Nostalgia is making me high.

1983

*

Ganier Ridge, Radnor Lake, TN

Nature affronts the arch-modernist:Feather and scale and skin and fur,

Crystal and stone and fern and burrChallenge his gears that wheel and whir.

Nature consoles the romanticist:

Gaseous fumes and stench of town,Billowing plumes that bloom with brown

Hasten him toward the woods green gown.

04-15-84*

Here Come the Cowboys

Now one year its this, and the next year its that,

And this is the year for the ten-gallon hat,They wear them in Dallas, they wear them in Spain,

They wear them in London to keep off the rain.

Some cowboys punch cattle and some punch time-clocks,And some punch the buttons upon the juke-box,

Theres cowboys in offices, cowboys in schools,

And cowboys whose saddle is just a bar-stool.

Here come the cowboys, theyre walkin and talkin real slow.

Here come the cowboys, just like a movie show(And its a western.)

Some cowboys are riding the dreams in their heads,

With posters of rodeos hung by their beds,


27/29

And some think theyre cowboys when they pick guitar,

In Texas or Tokyo. Thats where they are.

1985*

Aspirations

Greatnessthe goal of ermined kings,

Sainthoodnun and priest,Famethe troubadour who sings,

Mankindthe charnel worms who feast.

09-09-86

*

Life is A Western Movie

They say life is like a sit-com,Honeymooners reruns play on down the years;

They say life is like a soap operaYou wash your dishes and then you dry your tears.

They say life is like a cop show,

Big blue light follows you in close pursuit;They say life is like a game show

You win a set of luggage from the man in the shiny suit.

But I say life is a Western movie,

On the Chisholm Trail you ride through the wind and rain;

Life is a Western movie,Cause every now and then youve got to face that high noon train.

Yes, life is a Western movie,In the California gold rush you just might get rich;

Or down in Texas they might run off all your cattle,

So you might form a posse and string up the son-of-a-gun.

I tell you, life is a Western movie,

Cowgirls watch you when you make that rodeo ride;

But all you really need is one good cowgirlTo stand beside till you cross that Great Divide.

But I say life is a Western movie,On the Chisholm Trail you ride through the wind and rain,

Life is Western movie,

Cause every now and then youve got to face that high noon train,

And ride off in the distance just like Shane


28/29

Just like Shane.

1987

*

Gold Songs

Dreams are coins you toss,

Sweet loss,

Gambled young or old,Fools gold.

Dreams are songs unheard,

Sounds blurredLike fragile, tinkling chimes,

By Times.

1988

*

Bandits Bulls Eye

I curse the brigands as they ride

Off with the peasants hog,

And a sack of corn from the peasants crib,With a sword through the peasants dog.

The thieves curse me as I track them down,Archers at my command,

Encircling them with their bow-strings taut,

Aimed at the outlaw bandSuddenly, I bring down my hand!

05-21-90

*

Jungian Serendipity

The telephone rings and the voice you hearRepeats the thought in your brain:

Just synchronicity, loud and clear,

Links you on some esoteric plane.

Its not telepathy, mind-to-mind,

But incalculably doubtful odds,Defying coincidence, like a blind

Toss of the dice by the gambling gods.

1992

*


29/29

reflections on life of stephen richard eng

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