Poems are moments of clarity the soul offers up for guidance. They are the faces of a thousand submerged beings unable to offer up their voice in daily conversation. They speak in the reverent moments when we allow them voice.
I am child of the modern. My soul races after meaning even in the midst of ecstasy and worship. I am disconnected, dismantled, strewn all over the formulas and theories of my father and his father. This journey has made me the ultimate personality, the cloud of knowing of everything but the most needed.
Who would have known that I was truly loved? Could anyone speaking the language of proof and boundaries recognize the holy imagination quietly walking in the front gate of my heart and taking up residence? Who would have known God would take up His residence in my heart and love me. Ravish me in those places dark and hidden?
Now years later I am a child again. I look forward to death, to life, to this day to this moment. Life is a journey seeking the restless, pondering and wandering of an orphan’s heart. The very frame work of my soul has been formed in the hollow idealism and the hedonism of the age. I hate what I want but still desire. I see myself with clarity and wish for blindness. I long for more but am too cynical to walk into its possibility. Thus. I am deconstructing. I am collapsing in on myself.
Poems, rants, and essays represent that implosion. Their darkness is my voice; their hopefulness is submerged but ever present. But, in truth, the overall emotionality of these poems speaks of the end of a person. For me, this person is Raymond Webb. This was my original name before I was adopted. Although fairly unaware of my heritage and genealogy, I do mythically realize the nature-nurture hold on my soul. Much of my journey has been the releasing of a sacred self who speaks with a deeper sense of knowing. It is my prayer that these poems will name the countless ruminations of a soul colliding with its many selves. These collisions are gifts of sorts. May the naming bring forth life from death.
Influenza
Under the influence
I raise my hand to my mouth
In hopes to lessen the radiant power of words
Words held back for ions
Words held hostage through possession
Words now in collusion with some psychic filter
In this moment
After years of mute exile
These words
That occupy entire terrains of my soul
Throwing moods left and right
Peaking into the dark
Swooning like a drunken lover
Feigning love as illness
Reveal to me
That which shines ever so brightly in the lunatic dark
More often than not owns my very soul
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