Ken Morrill

Blue–outside my window, Soft–while the poem waits, Love–in the cool air, Sounds–which later become emotions. Remembered voices and sad regret for the past which never returns but with delicious pain. Faces, like Leslie’s in Lewiston, Madeleine in the distance, the snow falling softly, cool water, the world which cannot end, long afternoons–their reasons for being. Measuring the advance of poetry on the shores of your consciousness. Glad and self-satisfied, rich with emotion, overflowing with abundance and no regret–mournful the wind and this piece of blue sky out my window while I write in bed.

If I could, and I soon will, be in love, I would drink the freedom of the blue sky, admire the most beautiful forms including faces, including yours, Greece, miles and centuries, really forever away, sadness with me, pure pleasure and space for delight.

Hart Crane, The Bridge, The Dance: “star-triggered in the listening vault of dusk.” “The serpent with the eagle in the boughs.”

“You, who contain augmented tears, explosions
Have kissed, caressed the model of the hurricane
Gathered and made musical in feathery fronds
The slit eclipse of moon in palm-lit bonds
Deny me not this sweet Caribbean dawn
You, who have looked back to Leda, who have seen the Swan.”

This which forever includes
Taking a picture in England
The sound of the sea on the shore

Journal

This will pass–this season of reasonable madness
And then we will see–from deep in the sea
A huge storm advance–warning none save
That lone sea-bird which dives in sudden
Wonder asked for proof of his election

I, wretched, (because I chose the word) and feel like the damned
Must seek
An elation in which I may soar
Deathless and filled with love and pleasure
So certain am I of destruction and obliteration
Uncanceled deny wilderness in this world
I see sometimes
But mostly rock bottom
Despair or great effort to achieve liveliness
Certain so much of a deathlike advance
An imponderable future and a heavy darkening past
Just how much I try to remember or can for
The pain. Ugly, angry, and put off by elation.

Desiring elation

Half of what I entertain
what a pain
Lonely only changing daily
sorry and not holy
If you know as I do
the gap that breaks this universe
As well as I do
these wounds that never heal
Or abstraction and a barren lack of image
no metaphor
Sorrow and patience–pleasure and redemption
Why I can jangle words around
and think I’ve caught my mind
I have and haven’t–this isn’t good–
I need a long dream–and to be honest with somebody.

Passing the time
please pass the time

Please pass the salt and the time
Don’t get mad about no pepper
Or you about no Creamy Italian
Or me about the world not my way

Easy going until I disappear
Looking at passing faces until I
disappear–where is the face I
had before the world was made?

Quick let me become someone else
Or me in my past, that me
I was when I was young
And facing a world of unknown human
elements. I’m not imagining now.

Why is Crantey crying said the voice of my doze
essays about the Vict….
on that old boy…. I thought I was awake.

Journal