Poetry: Josei Tarr

“Humanic Dog”

Eternal repose,
in shallow breath,
intimately near
and shallower mind;
a pervasive lust
for creation unborn
and hollow forms
of no design.

Creation not of art
but neurosis and a dream,
slender flash,
a fool in rising;
slender flash of caressing hands.
Artifact of a dream. 

Oh transient fool in rising,
starving dog of gushing meat;
your carnal desire
to witness beauty,
as hunger not broken,
but as disease.

No crisis of conscience,
a silence of the heart;
no theatre of agony
or return from heaven,
takes us beyond
to inward life.

Only fools desire
of myth beyond the core,
which beyond only exists
as eternal loss of light;
Shallow do we sigh
in pain,
‘Nothing of our own’;
to only say,
‘How foolish am I,
but deep within
soulful and pure;
humanic beyond the core.

***

“Against Parsifal”

With no alchemic blend of words
can elegance conceal my weeping to ascend,
which weeping charms you in perversity to mock on my behalf
those faces of true felicity, and my own towering shadow of the past.

Enraged by the prophets of time, backs turned,
with no false gift of salvation can grace
conceal my ugly cry for freedom.
I deform with wringing hands the dying will of man
to an entity of hollow forms, ripped and bloodied
by the heartless oppression of my petty repose.

I surrender my life to that sickened comfort of order,
obsessing over the weight of my tears against the fellow man
leaving no trace of heart lest the truth of me be unbecoming,
or even grotesque.

Bodies darken in the golden dusk of heavens approach;
Towering shadows of history lost in the glimmer of bliss,
Blackened mounds and desperate arms of faithless sorrow
surrender life to mourn the decay of light,
haunting over the weight of their tears against humanity.

And in that dying blue light,
dark body and forgotten shadow,
I drain my soul drop by drop as ritual,
forgoing the only hope that was my capacity
to feel and love like children in the field.
***

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Bio: This is Josei Tarr, big and tall version of a 26 young man from the U.S. and a practicing Nichiren Buddhist.  My little hole is in the countryside which the deeper ‘countryside’ folks say is dirty and ugly.  I enjoy Ambient and Classical music and smoking cigarettes.

Setu, December 2019