Sailing Away (a poem on the life of a poet)

Sailing Away
(a Poem)


A poet who writes perhaps knows too much
A scholar and philosopher, and perhaps a crook!
As if life and its normal journey are not enough
Could never be enough; not even with all its
Travels, towers, troubles, and tenderness,
nor with all its adventures, its vast universe, and its ghosts:
Nor with all its wars, and higher learning universities,
Nor with all its lovers, and friends, and so many
Of life’s confrontations; used and unused furniture
He brought to his home, along with the wives
And children he had, with all their Christmas’ and
And toys, troubles and pains and insane days—
He marches to the tunes, of his country’s song
But he never sings along; he reads and writes
From early evening to the break of dawn,
that’s a poet’s song. He really wants to sail away,
merrily, merrily, far away, because nothing is quite enough!
Thus, in-between, he gets drunk a lot, not enough!
And then, somewhere along the line, he thinks its:
Time to stack it all into one big bag that is rough!
How precious life was, and is to a poet, never yet
is it ever enough, and sometimes it’s all way too much…
way too much, he wants to sail away!...
His emotions are like a rollercoaster; his heart
in the hospital, half the time; his soul wondering
from church to mosque to synagogue, then home
again, wherever that may be. He finds God
everywhere, so does he find the devil, neither
rest, angles are as busy as he, but they never
protest: I fear the poet dies either with God, or alone;
Thus, a poet who writes perhaps feels too much
Never able to love himself as he loves, and wants
To loved; hushed, he looks on, and on and on,
at simple things, like: hats, rats and cats, and plants,
and souls: eyes, feet and confessions, so many things,
and then his children leave home, gone, complaining,
rearranging, and saying: “We never got enough,”
they got a bone of contention, full of terrible hate,
jealousy, envy and not enough guts; they live in disgust,
way, way, way too much…they want, and want and want,
in abundance; but a father Poet already knows this,
he’s a spy, a villain… and somehow, someway, he just sails away…!


6-18-2008 (he is implied a lot in the poem, but he in this poem means s/he, or me)