Life Immense

Like noontide supernovae,
So expire feral visions.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “On Journeys Through the States”)

Freedom?
What’s that?
The fevered lyric?
A hero’s verse?
Stained cotton?
And a firework?

Freedom is
The margin to try.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “To the States”)

Behold! The Beginner.
Sacristan of Wonder.
Progeny of defeat.
The infant suckling of
the nurse log of fact.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Beginners”)

What is this attraction I feel?
This harness that binds me earthbound?
Gravity!
Identified…
Problem solved…
Yet my mastery is an illusion,
A legerdemain conjured by a name.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Beginning My Studies”)

Listen oh great poet,
Your vision was correct.
I found your biography
But I did not find you.
So where is your shrine,
The temple of your eidolon?
I’ve found it in the leaves
Of poetry that you cast.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “When I Read the Book”)

This far down the strata seem empty,
No large fossils, no remnants of culture,
Just layers of sedimentary affirmations,
Masses of single-cell precursors,
Ancestors of enlightened life.

Tell me geologists, you biologists
Does simple mean insignificant?
Do you discard these most basic layers?
Do you shame a mountain for its minerals?
Or abash the primate for the eukaryote?

Many impetuous actions have I taken
Many banal prose have I regurgitated
Many fatuous myths have I held dear
Each an organelle of a higher function
Exposed by the unforeseen tectonic event.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “For Him I Sing”)

Tell me seer, where is my eidolon?
Have I left him in a lonely closet?
Is he sitting on a curb waiting my return?
Perhaps he’s content at the library.

Tell me seer, what does he do?
Does he disturb the slumber of past loves?
Is he haunting friends forgotten and lost?
Perhaps he has hitchhiked to Neverland.

Tell me seer, what does he say?
Does he cry out for my company?
Is he singing ballads of sad memories?
Perhaps he tells jokes all day.

Seer, if you cannot find my eidolon
Or if he has found joy supreme,
Leave him be, but please tell me,
I can always make another.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “Eidolons”)

A blade defiant screams skyward,
Stretched and stretching it emerges.
White knuckled roots wring life from the soil,
Drawing fire up through the elbowed stalk.

Animated by the blade the soil hums,
Parting to announce the emergence.
Fertile soil a soup of visceral decay,
Fuel for the latent germ.

Weeds are but flowers without foresight.
This old cause born anew,
Peerless, passionate, sweet,
Destined kindling for the war.
-T. Weeks
(A response to “To thee old cause!”)

All at once I tell 1000 different jokes
Express 1000 unique concerns
Suppress 1000 distinct fears
Log 1000 unrelated complaints
Reveal 1000 disparate loves

Each word echoes off 1000 shadows of me.
1000 shadows each colored by its home.
For 1000 friends I have made
and in 1000 memories I live.

So tell me historian, who am I?

-T. Weeks
(Inspired by “To a Historian”)

What are you?
I am not a physicist;
I do quantize.
I am not a philosopher;
I do untangle.
I am not a poet;
I do abstract.
You are.

-T. Weeks
(A response to “To Foreign Lands”)