Three Poems by Richard Weaver

Truman Streckfus Persons  a.k.a. Truman Garcia Capote (died 8-25-1984)

More scissors than pencil, I cut myself off
and bleed silently in the corner, pretending
to be a blind lampshade, all 5’ 3” of me. Is there
irony if your liver kills you? Or just an indifferent
indulgence of alcohol? I barely care at this point.
Mama died so long ago I barely remember why
though many reasons bored me as well. All
sacrificed with or without an altar, or lead anchor.
Prayers, of course, are always accepted
like obsessions. Like typing. I love the sound of keys
cutting into paper. I love the ribbon surrendering
reluctantly its fading ink. But I wish, I truly desire
to talk directly to a blank page, allowing its purity
to be saintly smudged with whiffs of wisdom
and the saintly bountiful Beautiful Babe. I know
my body, what’s left as life pretending to pleasure
without purpose, or music that no longer hears itself.
Outer music as it were. A single moan, Mama,
in the dark. The dark answers: Beautiful Babe,
that wonderful witch whose husband’s head
I embroidered with words, then severed and tossed
aside. I’m a writer. Not an architect. Unanswered
prayers are a waste of air. I should know. I’m dying
in the care of Joanne C who ministers me.
Who understands my pains, the cellular damage
and the emptiness that haunts and fills me.

“Mama.”
“Mama.”
“Mama.”

“Beautiful Babe.”

“Answered Prayers.”

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (died 4/15/1980)

She always had the last word. One of the many things
I loved about Simone. One of many irresistible moments
that lured us,trapping time as it fled, your words as precise
and pointed as a dart. Your memory, unlike mine now, safe,
unfettered, fierce in its truths, so strong I wonder how we are
together, how long must we have talked during the years
you so easily reconstruct, the villages, the cities, the countries
you say without doubt we knew intimately. I am uncomfortable
wearing my new straw hat, but need to protect my head
from excessive heat, I must be careful not to overtax myself.
To elevate my already skyward BP. Dragging my game leg around
in search of a healer. A Castor. Someone who might heal my eyes ,
and this brain that denies me a God. This life diminishing
without requisite freedoms. In bad faith. In torturous, tottering
baby-like steps. What are Rhône and Avignon? Why do they recoil
when I approach them? What is left for someone like me who can’t
see to read, whose mind is a nothingness I never considered? Who has
ceased being but is unable to say adieu? Who will never know you
will be buried atop me, your Playboy, pet Leprechaun, in the Cimetière
du Montparnasse. “I love you very much, my dear Beaver.”

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson   (called back 5/15/1886) 

Light rises into darkness,
and darkness becomes More.
Fog lives between us in a world

of neither and Nor, ether or eider.
I am drawn towards Or, but
Little Cousins, tis not my wish

to meet it eitherwise.
“I must go inside. The fog is rising.”