in particle or whole

Some seem in particle or whole, to incarnate, something/someone, vaster then themselves.

By good fortune, fate, or wives, lovers and others who did protest my desire to do with photography as I did with paint, clay or stone; capture the beauty of nude women. Eventually, as in the end days of my actuarial life set free by M and the love of another impossibly young and two thousand miles distant. I find myself chagrined recognizing that though I longed to, had I done so, I would have known a greater remorse. Always chary of women, by birth from mother, lending them all greater powers then deserved. Nude, naked, near or far or clothed in a circus tent these two have made of me at long long last a man by intimacy of soul, personality or self revealed. So, gladly, have I found what I sought all along; filled to overflowing.

I am not nearly by fractions imaginative, save for what visits me in dreams. Lending me what little winged tongue of the poets I admire leading me to speak. Always a mentee, the mentors most memorable of late have been women. Actually. Always. Since long back. Alone and bereft of any desire; thinking myself unworthy of love. Something lost at birth yet found in old age. It seems what is lost is desired too highly until perception is contemporary with truth glorious. Healed.

She who visited me in my last dream. A whippet with well proportioned protuberances. Red hair coiffured, elegant, poised, impatient. Indifferent to me. Who had been commissioned to photograph her in any way possible, just another celebrity. My heart stopped. I awoke certain that she was the younger sister of a childhood friend who had visited me carnally only days before her wedding.

I didn’t know. She had been then a stick figure in childhood an annoyance. Then an airline stewardess and flown in for a few days romp, then flew away. And I drunk with guilt called to ask her to marry me. Her mother answered telling me of the marriage days ago. Did I mention: Glorious!? All women of any age are so for within they are The Mary.

Decades later, we free for the moment, I asked her again oblivious of my sot with women declined. Abused mercilessly by her, by then former husband; she was, returning to her children impossibly.

The University of Hard Knocks, from which I seem to have graduated a Doctor of Suffering, is a strict teacher. Add that I never was a prize nor will be; so far as I can see backwards, forwards or now.

“There is no worse evil than a bad woman; and nothing has ever been produced better than a good one.” - Euripides

Possibly—I think not—being born and lived in the time given. Bewildered: the young women who splay themselves. In derision, laughing at men who in reality are mere little boys, or begging for love, attention and acceptance? The Earth groaning beneath the weight of us, so many, how do we meet and mate becoming not lovers but friends; two equal halves of a greater one?

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, One foot in sea and one on shore; To one thing constant never.” - William Shakespeare

There was another red head, face fallen, eyes pools of sorrow. It is not that I have a THING for red hair but women in whom I see something vital. As our friendship evolved she said she was drawn to “bad boys – very bad boys.” Later explaining her step father had used her from age six until twelve when she sought it, being the only attention she knew; as a sex toy. Even later she sent me an image of her at seventeen, voluptuous, whippet, scintillating, vibrant superficially—eyes mirthful. Later, again, she died of brain cancer.

No one is superficial save those superficial to themselves.

We, who are so indifferent, unable to create, destroy. As it was in the beginning so it extends beyond now unto extinction. The exception being when we as men or man understand the term generic for we the family of humans. All combined and equal.

An afterthought: with time and devolution it seems afflicted I sought affection now wondering was it I who infected them or my greed and addiction to beauty my undoing?

Destroyed and reborn thanks to M

credit capture: Mary Ellen Mark

130411 06:22 in particle or whole

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved

he sea oh the sea

In my dreams imagining sailing the cosmology, a heart alone in love with it all the sea of stars. A sailor born to be, planted four thousand feet above sea level, an oar become a tree for the simple glory of being alone in ecstasy.

He whose vessel I helmed lays now deep in the North Atlantic in a jar, his ashes there placed in honor by the U.S. Navy. And from sleep I arise having visited him again and again for he is the only other who witnessed we sailing through a pod of whales far off the coast of Boston spuming us for having not a collision but been awakened by our passage across the midnight sea sharing.

Zig, Zag and Zig again guided by intuition. A primeval forest of ferns fetid aroma rose; soaked in celebration of life, magnificent, the gift of it.

They, the sea of stars and we upon it.

And the devil-may-care boy with a girl sailing the angry Ohio before the wind with an Indian blanket for a sail uncaring whether, or when, return. Disremembering the girl remembering the feeling of glorious indifference to harm or hazard or how or why we ever returned from the sandbar destination. An island in an always remembered summer.

Dream catapulted from slumber by once again sailing fantastically fast. Surrounded by rich white boys who laughed in glee while I meditative said merely; ‘must be at least fourteen knots by wind alone driven.’ To no one in particular. Save myself.

All those I sailed with are gone beyond, only I remain to tell them why and what for is life glorious. But then surely the must by now know or else my deepest intuition is a fraud. And whether cometh the dreams sailing me away?

In the hours after my son, the only one, left me a ruin, rubble, no past no future I wrote; “Thank you God for allowing me to sail a teardrop across the palm of your hand.” To which the priest said ‘heresy.’ Then the mother became one – a priest I mean – and I fled.

To be a tree bathed in star light alone upon the high mountain desert dancing.

“A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.” - Leo Rosten (born 11 April 1908)

130411 01:55 the sea oh the sea

© 2013 by Jack Spratt – All Rights Reserved