Poems for ENAM170

Learning’s Irony

He dons his plate-mail, sword and mounts his steed;
Towards battle rides with grim-set eyes ablaze.
‘Tis time for learning to commence, yet not
Without the pain of blood lost for the grail.

How much suffering will learning’s name impose,
Until at last these learnéd things fall short
And fail to pacify the hell,
Of life in educated misery.


I

A brain floats behind these eyes,
a storm of sparks thrown
from woven currents—
A writhing mass of computational fury.
An enigma; yet just as bound
by laws of flesh and bone;
We only fool ourselves with fantasies
Of evading the world’s corporeality.

There is no transcendent
I
afloat somewhere in static space.

I
am merely a fragile pattern,
set amidst the chronologic
noise of existence.


Beneath Horned Roses

I ask only that this,
The ache of losing the ground beneath,
Soften its incessant throb.
Take pity on a punctured heart.
Allow for peace, however brief,
To set itself upon me.

I close my eyes and see her,
Perched atop a throne of horned roses.
She looks upon me with eyes of drowning pity
When all I long for is to see her pain.