Love, loss, loneliness; affection, alienation, absurdity; poetics, politics, philosophy; humor, heartbreak, and humanity are passionately, poignantly, perfectly expressed in this fifth and best book of three hundred most unusual poems by this most unusual poet: the elusive, reclusive, enigmatic +Steven Curtis Lance.
An Honest Gift of Love
My new book is black with a picture of me On the front and the back in the middle The letters of the title shine in gold With my name in foil as the fruit of my toil
The design is suggestive of riddle And of the secrets those black covers hold For adventurers whose curiosity Would lead them astray from the commonday bland To enigmas of my heart drawn by my hand
I would give everyone my book if I could Hoping that somehow I might be understood Something new for the few for those with a true Heart open hand open mind to understand An honest gift of love from me to you
Back from that unknown I called love
To this known of being alone
Back to what I have known above
All else since all else was a dream
And I was alone all along
Seems things are never what they seem
To be to me reality
Is an elusive quality
The one I sang of never was
How ridiculous a love song
Or if she was she was because
I wished and dreamed and hoped that she
Might be but I see I was wrong
Too old too poor too far away
She just got tired of me one day
Rejecting me electing he
Who purchased her propinquity
Destined for ashes without graves
And doomed as I am just the same
They bought no freedom they are slaves
But she is his that is if she
Is at all whatever her name
Back from that unknown I called love
I have never been this alone
As dream turns nightmare push to shove
And soft sweet flesh to hard sour stone
As cornered now the mind gives way
Yet stings with folly sharp and stark
Nothing but sorry left to say
As stars fall and the world grows dark
A tattoo has been born again
Which once marked my not being free
Even as one once loved once slain
Transformed in its symbology
The star is fallen from the sky
A trail of fire rains in its wake
Where once it bore her name so high
Forsaken now thus I forsake
As she lies in the arms of he
Who kept his word that he would take
The one I dreamed I loved from me
She broke my heart and thus I break
The spell the hold of hell which she
Held me within her web of lies
As falls the star so would I be
Deceived no longer as I rise
Now ripen fruits of bitterness
Ever more bitter never less
When will this rock to gold refine
This vinegar ferment to wine?
I hate but will I hate them still
As spring warms sink beneath the chill
Of lost love never found again
Or is there yet an end of pain
If only by the trembling hand
Of one who failed to understand
That life is not fair after all
After the fall after the fall?
Calling on the phone alone
Holding only a phone
No one wants propinquity
To madness nor to me
Only answering machines
I understand now what this means
In darkness here I sense the fear
Of those who were once near and dear
As they all back away from me
And as I feel myself alone
On the lonely end of the phone
How empty now to realize
They wish that I would go away
Behind civility's disguise
I wish I had their strength today
Their machines are chirping hello
I am calling to say goodbye
But I am the last to know
To face the lie and die
So life was not fair after all
What does my life mean? It means
I face the lie and die
Fallen so far my fallen star
Chirping answering machines
After all chirp after the fall
Hello! Hello! Goodbye
My fallen star fallen so far!
What does my life mean after all
After the fall after the fall?
- - - -
Only Those Who Love Are Free
Let me love you wise and well
Sing you an enchanted song
Let me cast a magic spell
Sparkling starlight all night long
Not of heaven nor of hell
Past the right beyond the wrong
Only here and always now
Naked under full moon light
Weave a seamless garment of
Mystic elements of night
Moonbeam gossamer above
Shining silver and bone white
Magic cloak which will allow
Through invisibility
Us to be alone somehow
Wrapped within the warmth of love
Only you and only me
As the stars embrace and greet
You and me with ecstasy
Sprinkled on us as we meet
Nothing ever sweeter than
What the universe shall give
This one woman this one man
Only those who love are free
Die alone together live
Sing the spheres in harmony
In the universal plan
Spin and soar that we might see
Grasp we must while grasp we can
As we grasp the hand of fate
So it was and is to be
Always now and never late:
Only those who love are free
- - -
For Donna and For Scott
to speak the unspeakable
to bear witness for the dead
If I kill myself am I a murderer?
Is it as bad as killing another?
What of interrupted ones who never were?
I have lost a half-sister and half-brother
She to suicide and he to criminal neglect
Is it any wonder then that I do not respect
The father we three share?
I am the last and least
In the belly of the beast
There I have spent my life where
Although unbearable
However terrible it is for me
For Donna and for Scott
It is no more for they are not
To be for them was not to be
I honor you my siblings though unknown
The last and least and lost is left alone
+Steven Curtis Lance
Copyright MMV
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Reviews for "New Poems"
Reviewed by Jennifer Butler
8/3/2006
Those who were and are no more
are images left from past folk lore.
They leave no seed, nor life behind,
as the newness of now
makes former times blind.
You live.
* This is AWESOME STeve* VERy HAPPy 4 YOU! Keep up the Good Work... I have slowed dowwwwwwn, or shall I say, My mind has... I lost something somewhere,nothing is coming to me in any form. Oh well, a REason 4 Everything, but-
I give LOTsss Of CRedit to you and other writers like you, who just keep going like the Energizer Bunny- Many HuGs,Sheee AGain-C*O*N*G*R*A*T*U*L*A*T*I*O*N*S!!!OXXO.... I'll try to come back into the writing world- if I am pushed by my Spirit- Never sTOP! Steve- and writers of all kinds-
If you tend to believe romantic, passionate, masculine poetry is a thing of past eras, read "She Intrigues Me," and be swept away in the beautiful craft of a contemporary poet of love.
