Simorgh Press

Coming over the Starnbergersee ... A co ntinuing tribute to The Waste Land, Lines 8-18 And once awake we cannot help but wonder Who we are and what we want to say. We feel the rain before we hear the thunder Whispering a thousand miles away. Our points of origin are torn asunder, Separating us from yesterday. Behind the walls and roofs, within and under Which we live, we don't know what to say. But on the open surfaces are stories, Images for everyone to see The nakedness of all our twisted glories, The disgrace of our identity. We know we ought to stand up and look forward To the tales untold of dreams to be But here we are, ashamed of being mortal, Suffering and wanting to be free.      Now is the discontent of summer,      Trying to read ourselves to sleep, Mourning the loss of where we started from, Starting to hear the distant thunder drum,      Now is the discontent of summer, ...

We are such stuff... Whan that Aprill... Winter kept us warm... A poem in honor of the first seven lines of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land When we should sleep, perchance to dream of rest, We wake up in the middle of the dream, And, face to face with all our restlessness, We realize: the more we dream the less We sleep.  Yet in our deepest sleep we seem To seek the sweetest dream: forgetfulness. To let the mountain memories of yes- terday, the pushing pulling of the stream, The ocean of tomorrow's wantonness Be all forgotten: sleep without the stress Of time and place or meaningfulness, dream Beyond the test of schedule or address, Past all interpretations, dream the dream Of peace and find the stream that lets you rest.      The sweetest dreams we don't remember.      In deepest winter we sleep the best. A winter sleep is warm and long and safe inside.  The doors are shut, the blinds are drawn and we are undercover and ...

(I was) upset with you today, after or because (You were) upset with me, but it was "with" not "at".  (We were) upset about what was upsetting us, And whether it was this or it was that, I was, you were, we were in this together, Just as we are, as we will be forever, And if (when) you are upset with me because Of something I have done or failed to do, Whatever it may be, or is, or was, I'll do it, or undo it, all for you Because I want to be with you forever. I am, you are, we'll get through this together, And such is love: though we fall repeatedly, That which was promised once will always be.

A dozen blogs preceded this one, but this one will be different.  This blog will, hopefully, replace the hundreds of moleskines I have bought over the years, not to mention the backs of envelopes and other scraps of paper I have scribbled on.  It is time to get modern, and paperless! That means this blog will be very different indeed, because now this is my scratchpad, for all to see.  I will edit as I go, deleting the rougher drafts and polishing up the better efforts, but there will be half efforts and false starts that I hold on to, some that I may set aside and forget, even a few I may regret.  But I will also try to structure the blog as I go, so the real keepers can be seen more prominently. Simorgh Press is the name I chose about ten years ago for my first vanity published book, Thirty Birds, which is also a blog out there somewhere.  I may resurrect that book and other past work on these pages, eventually, but first - there is a poem I've got rattlin...