SOUND OF THE SIREN

It could be the sound of the Second World War.
But it’s 1984: and it’s only the sound of a siren.

She is from London. I’m from Berlin.
We met at the home of a friend, when –
out of the blue – and at the same time
we blurt out that loaded word:
EVACUATION.

Our friend is surprised.
Enemy children who shared the same fate?

But children on both sides were sent to the country
to far-away strangers, away from the cities’ bombings.

The sound of our voices carries us;
for we travel by sound
as we travel in mind –
she back to London, I, to Berlin.

There, the siren’s faint echoes
still ring in the air as we’re dropped, once again,
into fairy-tale lands
in which walls turn to castles
while in dank, musty cellars
we listen to legends and wondrous tales.

Old men patrol streets under flame spattered skies,
alert to the pitch of the fall,
then impact, of bombs,
for they have to find and disarm them.

The radio announces the end of the raid.
The men should be back.
Suddenly,
hurled back from danger,
smelling of smoke and sparkling in splinters
of shattered glass,
window-pane-sprayed, they appear.

There’s the siren’s all clear.

And awake, or asleep – for we children sleep soundly
among the stories-
we can already hear the comforting sound
of our voices of now
come from a time
come from a place
embedded within,
assuring us of a safe world.

Of infinite versions
of Sound of the Siren
I like this one best.
As for the rest, it can certainly come
as some revelation
when one revels, unravels,
with great trepidation
events of the past,
then finds that some threats
like invisible threads
extend to the NOW.

For when I dismembered remembered events
I saw them vented and re-invented
in my personal current events,
reminiscent of those in my past.
It was then that I gave them a different cast –
a more positive one –
and wrote what you’ve read.

For, as I said,
if we bring into being on what we focus,
time and again,
we may as well focus on the ‘gain’
in a’gain’
and give our lives and story lines
some value fulfillment
and reason and rhyme.
Which takes time.

But,
when all lines are polished,
each word’s in its place,
that word, or world, lives forever
to be buried, or born, as the reader sees fit.

And if the writer is clever
he knows he’s the reader.
Each word feeds a feeling.
But he is the feeder.

Via sound of the siren he travels by choice.
He should know just what he is doing.
For like verbs in the infinitive
all fates are there.
It depends on the tenses,
or tensions, he’s wooing,
extensions of NOW.
ALL HAPPEN NOW.

A marriage is made of the self with the self,
of the writer with his creation.

I start out each sentence not knowing its end –
thought fragments come like the weather –
but parts of my own greater consciousness
know each next word as it comes along,
which I with utmost confidence
innocently utter.

Still the picking is mine.

But how does my tongue know
what movements to make
that I don’t constantly stutter?
And my tongue speaks my tongue,
but it has no idea
what is says when it is speaking
though my tongue is my own.

Some state of affairs!

The answers I am seeking lead me to think
that I think I am,
not knowing what I really am,
which might always be more
than I think I am.

Seems, there are past and future selves
though the latter most often elude me.

Though my future selves
may not heed it, or need it, for centuries,
if they need it, it’s there;
all written down for them
in my thoughts, in my mind, or on paper.

Some past selves of mine
tell me they know NOW
what I only NOW know.

It’s not always easy
to find the right words for my tongue.
And try, as I might, it’s as hard to catch them
as it is
when I try to catch my own selves,
as a cat its own tail,
my selves,
who like articles, particles,
spat out by thought energy
attract and repel,
propel themselves forward,
move sideways, withdraw –
space-time reads zero –
move into and through each other,
intact,
essence though essence
in my mind’s mind
while my brain cannot hold them;
they move at speeds faster than light.

I’ll be the spark for my future selves
in a past and a future
that happen NOW.
We’re all of us in it together,
still, uniquely ourselves.

As my tongue is a part of me,
still apart from me,
part, or apart, is the question.

To be both, none, and all of them
at the same time, is a new art of being.

Art as such.
And who, may I ask, is the artist?

All That Is, everything,
of which I’m a part.

I’m all of them,
my unknown selves,
past, future, waking, dreaming selves;
and in my dreams I teach myself
to use my tongue. Still, all the while, I do pretend
that I am either old, or young,
or male, or female, which is true –
considering that I’m I, not you.
And if by chance, it’s your conviction
that this is one big contradiction,
I do agree.

I choose to be and not to be.

When I’m asleep in bed I lie.
Though that’s a lie.
For when I dream I walk, I fly,
have quite forgotten that I lie.
Still, here I lie for all to see.
Do others, automatically,
create ME, then, with MY permission,
their version of me,
naturally, which is uniquely theirs to see,
just as I do with them for ME,
one-focus-clear and brilliantly?
Whereas a blink, or two, away
dream aspects wait
quite patiently
who think THEY’RE real?
Do we create THEM magically?

I’ve much to learn, I realize,
from siren sounds, and otherwise.
Only a fool thinks she is wise.