I had to look up Mr. Camus & now I got another book on my list to buy & read...I don't know how I missed this write, sorry sir, as I enjoy all you post...Ed

How I wish I possessed your talent as well as your wisdom Gene.

I do wonder what logic life gives us to start us out so new & fragile
& helplessly needing a bib, and then educate us with skills & wisdoms while all the while allowing us to grow old and lose it all-while then re-needing a bib...hummmm....
I think it would be nice to start off with having it all, and gradually losing it as we go....then we would be none the wiser-so to speak...your words cause me to ponder about the labors of "Rock Candy"
Much Love & Inspirations
Vickie

Gene - Your "Rock Candy" could be written only by one of experience who knows the Myth of Sisyphus as reality, not just as an idea. Liked,

He unrolls the map,
secures it to his narrow lapel

that indicates the route of life that leads,

him around the specter of his youth,
beyond his psyche
into Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus,
dares to roll back the rock
of worn away logic

Especially liked the ending which ends in,

a rowdy standup routine
reducing him to bittersweet laughter.
　
The title "Rock Candy" is a nice touch, too. - David

This could be substance for a literary lecture, Gene. Thank you. Love and peace,

Regis

Such a visual and emotionally stirring tie between your lines. Enjoyed.

EDL

the true self is non-existent yet omnipotent, for it's always in a flexible state of universal impetus ...

stimulating poem, Gene ...

Superb!!!!...stops to make one think about his or her's life.
Blessings,
Christine

Oh how I can relate to this Gene, masterfully written.

You captured m from this line "with the index finger
of his right hand
traces the route that leads

him around the specter of his youth"

Powerful and very deep.

Very powerful write Gene that touches deep within all who read...boy I missed you...love and hugs, Bonnie

Very thought provoking and your penning, superb. The question which has often been my stumbling block, Who am I at my core? Am I what I believe I am or what others believe I am? If all the world's a stage and I am merely an actor upon it, who wrote the script, and must I act the prescribed part? Certainly most of us follow society's norms and folkways, in order to fit in but there are those among us who cast these chains aside in order to escape into an unseen reality of their own design. Do these brave souls follow the Great Designer unknowingly? Sometimes, I think. Being an artist automatically places me on the outside, makes my intentions suspect, and "their" notion of me affect who I am at my core, like so much smoke in the winds of time. I've learned finally to love my existence on the "outside" where my rational self exists. This is an amazing write and I'm jealous. So there, Love J'nia

'Of the universe in which he is a stranger /to himself/, victim of the comic showdown between his nostalgic self and his rational self...'--------I LOVE THIS!!!!!!!!!!! Liana Margiva

shackled to a lifelong struggle,
to escape the absurdity

Quite powerful, as is that Camus quote.

Well done indeed Gene.

Dear Gene, I am pleased to read your poem particularly analyzing Alber Camus. I fully agree with your view. Camus should have stayed simple as he was before he followed his teacher in the direction of studies. My mom used to say: "Life is simpler than we can imagine, we should not complicate it with study or analyze it".

In my view we should take life as it comes and not say it should be like this or like that. I feel it through the wind, the snow, the rain, the sky, and anyting and everything that makes me happy and can awaken the sleeping being in myself.

My favorite is Antoine de Saint Exupery, especially in his books "The Little Prince and "Wind, Sand, and Stars" particularly in the French original (since much is lost in the translation).

Love Emile

Ha! Love it! I share your bittersweet laughter, Gene, enjoyed your words choices, images and lower-case castes. Lovely interior use of alliteration, wryness and syllable control, such as your 'r's. A tumultuous letter if there ever was one! I don't 'read' rock candy as the end in this piece, I feel instinct combined with talent has pinned 'rock candy' down, into up.

Erin Elizabeth Kelly-Moen

We have an essence inside, gene, the real us that only some discern and fully connect with, but essentially we are all strangers in a strange land bound by custom and innate prohibitions. Mine's a beer, old mate!

k

retreat to reality's grip is painful, yet so frustratingly inevitable -- glances back overwhelm -- looking ahead, not possible --so we struggle, trapped in the present -- 'til the anguish demands we laugh in the face of our own destiny -- fools of our own design --
we then suffer the anxiety of self inflicted misconceptions -- there exist no charts for the voyage of life -- it is a journey we must each make on our own -- Gene, you have looked long and mighty into the naked truths we each face in this game we play, day by day - minute by minute -- a game not to be played by the weak, nor those without a sense of humor and a flair for the dramatic -- this is not one of your better poems, it is the best I have had the great pleasure to enjoy and sate my psyche with -- bravo! bravo! -- my thanks for sharing, the mighty, pen with us my friend -- I looked into the light and saw love, I entered and peace and joy wrapped their arms about me -- Jon Michael

Gene,

Undone by the power of these lines - a perfect blending! Delicious on my tongue. :) Thank you, well done.

(((HUGS))) and love, Karla.

Gene,
Irony, pathos, reality, rationality and the finest essential grasp of futility blended poetically by a master craftsman, you've sent in the clowns and put us all on display. This is excellent.
John

In reading "Rock Candy", what strikes me first is my own inclination toward the word "absurd", which I've always viewed more as "incongruent" than say "ludicrous" or "meaningless." I like your reference to the map and I especially like:

"dares to roll back the rock
of worn away logic..."

The "rock" being the weight holding something back or down and the sense that rolling it back frees what had been held. As for the struggle of which you write, I'm not sure life is really suppose to be about escaping the absurd or the incongruent, but to some extent embracing it or transcending it, but that's just the idealist/philosopher coming out in me.

I'm also taken by your choice of the word "reducing" in the last line - it seems to connect to "victim" used in the fourth stanza at least in terms of connotation.

I've found this to be a very interesting poem that seems to have a resignation of sorts at its core.

As always ...it is a pleasure to read your wonderful writing sweet Gene..I sure have missed you..stay safe and well..keep smiling OK...Hugssssssss

Gene: This poem grabbed me (as have some others, but you know that ijust have the full plate thing going on now. I had just quoted Camus at a poetry workshop: "My greatest fear is of dying without having been truly known." I am an absurdist like Camus, which is much like being an existentialist -- but anyway, having to put one foot before the other as a very conscious act, in the face of an overwhelming Weltanshauung (sp?) that really, what does anything matter? Many religious people think that they are taking the difficult path. But I have always believed that the path of the absurd is MUCH more difficult. I like the tracing of the spectre of youth and the psyche, the time traveling there, which goes with the quote, and the continuing referral (implied) to the Sisyphean struggle. I'm assuming that in the dichotomy between the nostalgic self and the rational, that in the former, you refer to a time before you were "bound" by the absurd worldview. And yes, you know, really, the only thing that we can do is simply to laugh. If you've never seen the children's fairytale/movie "The princess who had never laughed" (it has Robin williams in it, I THINK), then you'd know that in the end, what finally makes her laugh is the absurdity of her own life. Or all of life. I like the alliteration at the end of routine reducing, and I think the inclusion of bittersweet, rather than simply, laughter, is a good move. Because it's not that hardy-har-har laughter one is talking about, but the laughter mixed with pain, be it physical or, in this case, psychic, spiritual. But you see, I don't think that you are really a stranger to yourself, except maybe in a larger sense, as in, who and what are we, really, ? What purpose do we serve? it seems to me you know yourself quite well. That basically, you know what you know right now, which is that Camus had it right, and that you are, for better or worse, "shackled" to Camus.
Again, I think the bittersweet, and preceding that, "comic," are the keys to how we go on. We go on. We can weep and rage, which perhaps sometimes you do, or we can laugh at the absurdity of the absurd, and the seeming or to-date inescapable nature of it, while still leading our quotidian lives, pursuing our various strivings, loving things or people who will die, and etc. Perhaps the only non-absurd thing we have in our lives is the ability to poke fun at ourselves and the universe, i.e., to turn up the corners of the mouth, and giggle like little children, who have the good fortune not to have our full consciousness/burdens, but to give in just to the bittersweet type laughter, because, aside from checking out, what else ya gonna do???

I commend you on one fine piece of poetry. We in the Theater world have what we call "The Theater of the Absurd" I was feeling some of this with your poem. I find Sage's comments to echo some of my feelings also. You definitely have been doing some scotch with this one..lol
Anyway, as always you make my mind go to places that I normally wouldn't. Thanks for that!
Much peace, love, and light,
Amber "V" (aka, Karena)

Ah yes... I find myself envisioning the masks synonymous with Mardi Gras. Your wordage is always so interesting to me... and makes me stop and wonder.. and enjoy every second of doing so.

Myrna

Evocative of if I may, indulge me, folk hero comedian Red Skelton and his brilliant standup mimes of silliness...Greek mythology plays itself out on stage big as life...Camus introduces this philosophy as man's futile search for meaning, unity and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world devoid of God and eternal truths or values...which requires revolt and rebellion to the approach of absurd life...Red Skelton's antics and absurdity on stage, I think, demonstrates the crux of Rock Candy very well, Gene...Chapter 3: Absurd Creation in Camus's Myth of Sisyphus is my favorite, these lines,

"impossible, absurd art is restricted to a description of the myriad experiences in the world. "If the world were clear, art would not exist."...you have your thinker's cap on today, Gene...and your Scotch cap off...Cheers!

Love,
Sage