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Kissing and Horrid Strife

from Last Poems by Bob Arellano

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words by D.H. Lawrence

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I have been defeated and dragged down by pain
and worsted by the evil world-soul of to-day.

But still I know that life is for delight
and for bliss
as now when the tiny wavelets of the sea
tip the morning light on edge, and spill it with delight
to show how inexhaustible it is.

And life is for delight, and bliss
like now where the white sun kisses the sea
and plays with the wavelets like a panther playing with its cubs
cuffing them with soft paws,
and blows that are caresses,
kisses of the soft balled paws, where the talons are.

And life is for dread,
for doom that darkens and the Sunderers
that sunder us from each other
that strip us and destroy us and break us down
as the tall fox-gloves and the mulleins and mallows
are torn down by dismembering autumn
till not a vestige is left, and bleak winter has no trace
of any such flowers;
and yet the roots below the blackness are intact:
the Thunderers and the Sunderers have their term
their limit, their thus far and no further.

Life is for kissing and for horrid strife.
Life is for the angels and the Sunderers
Life is for the daimons and the demons
those that put honey on our lips, and those that put salt.

But life is not
for the dead vanity of knowing better, nor the blank
cold superiority, nor silly
conceit of being immune,
nor puerility of contradictions
like saying snow is black, or desire is evil.

Life is for kissing and for horrid strife,
the angels and the Sunderers.
And perhaps in unknown Death we perhaps shall know
Oneness and poised immunity.
But why then should we die while we can live?
And while we live
the kissing and the communing cannot cease
nor yet the striving and the horrid strife.

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from Last Poems, released February 5, 2021

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Bob Arellano Talent, Oregon

90's-band survivor. Lost album FISH+CRABS with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy & the Shelbyville gang available 1st time in >20 years on candy-apple red vinyl & digital; HAVANA CLUB with Jasper Speicher downloadable or just $1 more for factory-pressed rum-label CD; MR. LOVABLE fifteen never-heard solo tracks & LAST POEMS with Bonnie Billy & Jodie Jean Marston now streaming. Follow for blue-moon news blasts! ... more

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