Perhaps this is a bit of plagiarism but sometimes it is fun to take various lines from an old poem and come up with a new poem.  Give it a try.  I took the first lines from each stanza of "WHY THIS LONGING" by Charles MacKay to make this one.

Why this longing, clay-clad spirit?
With the roar of wintry forests,
thou wouldst fathom Life and Being.
With thy feeble logic tracing,
be contented with thy freedom
clogged and bedded in the darkness.
Cease thy struggling, feeble spirit!

WHY THIS LONGING?

 By Charles MacKay 

    Why this longing, clay-clad spirit?
      Why this fluttering of thy wings?
    Why this striving to discover
      Hidden and transcendent things?
    Be contented in thy prison,
      Thy captivity shall cease--
    Taste the good that smiles before thee;
      Restless spirit, be at peace!

    With the roar of wintry forests,
      With the thunder's crash and roll,
    With the rush of stormy water,
      Thou wouldst sympathize, O soul!
    Thou wouldst ask them mighty questions
      In a language of their own,
    Untranslatable to mortals,
      Yet not utterly unknown.

    Thou wouldst fathom Life and Being,
      Thou wouldst see through Birth and Death,
    Thou wouldst solve the eternal riddle--
      Thou a speck, a ray, a breath,
    Thou wouldst look at stars and systems,
      As if _thou_ couldst understand
    All the harmonies of Nature,
      Struck by an Almighty hand.

    With thy feeble logic, tracing
      Upward from effect to cause,
    Thou art foiled by Nature's barriers,
      And the limits of her laws.
    Be at peace, thou struggling spirit!
      Great Eternity denies
    The unfolding of its secrets
      In the circle of thine eyes.

    Be contented with thy freedom--
      Dawning is not perfect day;
    There are truths thou canst not fathom,
      Swaddled in thy robes of clay.
    Rest in hope that if thy circle
      Grow not wider here in Time,
    God's Eternity shall give thee
      Power of vision more sublime.

    Clogged and bedded in the darkness,
      Little germ abide thine hour,
    Thoul't expand in proper season,
      Into blossom, into flower.
    Humble faith alone becomes thee
      In the glooms where thou art lain:
    Bright is the appointed future;
      Wait--thou shalt not wait in vain.

    Cease thy struggling, feeble spirit!
      Fret not at thy prison bars;
    Never shall thy mortal pinions
      Make the circuit of the stars.
    Here on Earth are duties for thee,
      Suited to thine earthly scope;
    Seek them, thou Immortal Spirit--
      God is with thee--work in hope.

My Hands

My hands:

(what is beyond the commands?)

i am a small person
in a small place
here at work,
a dead body in a chair.

not part of what real people
are doing beyond my desk
i'm typing what you tell me
on the keyboard you gave me
because that is what you taught me
to do.

there are no windows.
no birds fly by. there is no wind
save stale breath.
my freedom only a thinking space
between the keyboard and i.

beyond these walls
i am told there are dreams
in a blinding drift
i could never climb,
i could never experience.

my hands type the commands
you taught me.
but it is not my hands.
it is a rivulet
of the common conscience
on a commonplace stick.

i can’t do this
out of human nature
because i am asked
to exceed human nature
in doing it.

i am an unnatural seed
in this dead-root chair.
my roots are still young
and barely under the surface.

Mark David Jordan, 2011

SOUNDS FROM HOME
By Alice B. Neal

Last night I dreamed of thee, beloved!
   I held that tiny hand,--
Encircled by my clasping arm
   Once more I saw thee stand,--
The blush so faint, yet fairly traced,
   Rose to thy changing cheek--
As when upon thy brows were placed
   Farewells I could not speak.

Thine eyes were filled with softened light,
   But welcomes now I read,
As to my heart, by love's fond sight.
   I gently drew thy head;
And oh, so eloquent were they--
   So full of earnest truth,--
I knew what fain thy heart would say,
   The promise of thy youth.

I knew that thou hadst faithful been
   To vows of long ago:
That speeding time, and changing scene,
   No change in thee could show,
That absence had but bound thy love
   More firmly to its choice--
It needed not one word to prove,
   One sound of thy loved voice.

Yes, silent was that long embrace,
   Though tears flowed fast and free.
As gazing down in that dear face,
   I read thy love for me;
And thought of all the lonely hours
   When I had wildly yearned
To press thee thus unto my heart,
   And feel my kiss returned.

Those midnight hours! by sea and land!
   How heavily they sped!
Sometimes upon a surf-beat strand
   My weary feet would tread,
And when the stars looked calmly down
   From cloudless foreign skies--
Their soft light seemed a radiance thrown
   From these pure, earnest eyes.

'Twas but a dream! the light breeze swept
   Soft touches o'er my brow;
The spray's cold kiss my lips had met,
   Oh, still afar art thou!
'Twas but a dream! and yet I heard
   Thy murmured--"_Art_ thou come!"--
Then woke, to feel my spirit stirred
   With these dear "sounds from home."

DUTY
By Alfred B. Street

In changeless green, and grasping close the rock,
    Up towers the mountain pine. The Winter blast
    May like an ocean surge be on it cast;
Proud doth it stand, and stern defy the shock,
    Unchanged in verdure and unbroke in crest,
    Although wild throes may agitate its breast,
And clinging closer when the storm is gone,
Tired, but unbent upon its granite throne,
Not always doth it wrestle with the storm!
    Skies smile; spring flowers make soft its iron roots;
Its sturdy boughs are kissed by breezes warm;
    And birds gleam in and out with joyous flutes.
Duty proves not its strength unless defied,
But pleasure has it, too, bright as have hearts untried.

My comments:  I love the last two lines of this poem

Stabbed

Stabbed: (disserted, empty, sated)

Foreboding & Forgotten.
It's 2:00 AM & the streets are disserted.
Rain from an earlier downpour
makes its lonely yet soothing cascade
down into a street drain.

I walk as a zombie on vodka.
I think one foot is falling
in front of the other.
Am I who I say I am?

I know I am
as dense as air tonight.
The only sound my footfalls
on wet concrete.
They make a statement
that I am out here
guarding the sleeping
who do not know me.

It is 2:30 AM & the park is empty.
I cut across its wet grass,
my footfalls are drowned.
Now I am I,
a stalker with secrets.

Startled into pause,
he lay in a pool of blood
near the dark swing set.
The sweet land
falling up to his open eye.
All was still
except the sound of mist.

I rested at the swing
& told him my story,
how I had pretended
& never felt right about it,
how I wandered as a stranger
even to myself.
I watched him listening.
Determined.

Kneeling down
I smelled fresh blood
oozing from his wounds.
I whispered goodnight
into his ear tenderly.
He looked willingly absent.
I appreciated his honesty.

It is 4:00 AM & I walked sated.
I walked out of the park
into the band of light.
The stranger stabbed
& forgotten.

Mark David Jordan, 2011

The Internet

The Internet

is Empty


My head sagged to the left,
a line of caramel candy drool
fell
from my mouth to my tie.
The internet is empty.

My hand
pulled by a thread
wrote my opinions on topics,
my entries in the social world

The wheat was growing
too thin
in the field where I stood,
empty of color and blending
into the sky.

Looking back
at an unfamiliar house,
it was leaning to the right
and lacking any definition.

A man came out
and stepped into a stream
passing in front.
He yelled something to me
as a white paper
drifted down his hand
to float away.

I could not hear.
My distance grew with no motion.
I shifted backward
and the man became
tiny.
I stepped into the stream
that circled to me.

I looked down
to a soggy piece of paper
floating by.
Reading the type,
all it said was
"This is the answer
to a thousand conversations."

The paper drifted from my hand
and floated away.

I lifted my stiff head.
There was a caramel stain on my tie.
It was a Rorschach pattern.
The internet is empty.

Mark David Jordan, 2011

Wake up: (slap)

 

 

We were on a directionless bullet train,

lovers exposed to fast want,
bone thin on the intellect of our own affair,
we hid behind the edge of mature time.

Dangling unskilled between our breasts,
we never took the time to see ahead
of our own bodies freely exposed to each other,
in uncompromising saltiness and sex.

In our dim lit room they called us
the unenlightened, but we drank wine
and making a mockery of the morning and
evening we relished in unenlighten-ness.

Overstuffed with our own egos,
the jar cracked and the ingredients ran
out onto the floor,
     -leaving the mold behind.

If time was to teach us, let it try,
but time will teach accidently, bluntly,
we did not travel with time in one direction,
our polestar was only two heart's touching,
refusal was the strength of the young.

Yet, time passes even for lovers,
imbibing on the juices of passion, we forgot
passion's danger, when it twisted into passiveness
for other things. passiveness twisted into restlessness,
time became small.

We became small ourselves, too small
to see what hearts felt fading to a singular point,
we paused to breath, we took a breath to pause.

Becoming larger than our hearts, out of necessity,
lovers with no desire to part,
we had to strangle each other, sit on each
other until the breath was gone.

Struggling for air, we blocked love
from going in different directions,
our hearts still beating near each other
but not together, passion in metamorphosis.

We gathered the knowledge we needed
while we were young and naive,
the best endings were comfort without risk.
we sat still over time consuming the juice
of desires, reaching fullness.

Overstuffed with our own familiarity,
we cracked and ran out onto the floor
     -leaving the mold behind.

Mark David Jordan, 1990's, revised 2011

Awaken: (into this)

 

 

The damned alarm clock sounds again.

     -It is beautiful music 101.5
waking the dead
from the land of pleasant dreams.

I sit on the edge of the bed
     -dizzy with morning sinuses.
Is it really a new day again?
Already I hate the day's events.

I try to get my bearings a little at a time.
     -I'm overcome with flashbacks from the past
but I'm already organizing today's life
hoping it is all a dream within a dream.

I can't get the justification for this.
     -I wonder what it is like to be dead.
The only thing motivating me at the moment
is that I have to take a bad piss.

I look down at my hands in the dark.
     -They could be a black man's hands.
     -They could be a hispanic man's hands.
The morning fog slowly burns away,
delirium becomes necessity even as I fight it.

I'm in this half-baked life of my own doing.
     -A bird on the roof chirps outside my window.
Why was I born into this body and not the bird's?
This is no existence for an animal.

I rise and walk into the half-lit hallway, coughing.
     -This is my great achievement.
I see the familiar crack in the plaster.
I've reached the same spot I was at yesterday.

Mark David Jordan, 2011

Love: (an echo)

 

 

I could call you my love

     -and be right.
But would you know it
before you woke in the morning.

     -The window is open.
I was alive before you,
and now wind passes over my body
like I am not.

We.   You are open.
I repose as one mass.
     -I know I am here.

I am lying naked.
     -it is on a sidewalk,
gleaming wet.   stillness.
Raindrops drip on my body
trying to avoid their own pain.
Each one makes a tiny noise.
     -It is the echo light.

Steam rises from the concrete.
Until I met you,
     -the grass was not viridian,
     -the night sky was not dark,
     -the spring breeze did not calm.

Your misty breath.   Hotter,
hugs my body where I least expect it.
I was dead for now
     -but wanting it.
I stood solid and dripping.
Freezing.   Hidden with chills.

The cold cloud stuck,
on the echo lights between.
Each space in its own self-importance.
I was glistening to the music.
     -The rising sun. warmth.

My body dried into the sheets.   evaporated.
Dried human cells flaking off,
the last of the tiny lights.
It was dark on my skin
at the border to the brighter air.
     -no echo.

Your eyelashes twitched in knowledge.
     -I called you "my love".
Sunshine fingerlings peeked over
my bare belly onto yours.
     -and was right.

Mark David Jordan, 2011

I Am

I am: I am somebody

you aren't

I am somebody.
     -I thought I was somebody
     until somebody told me every body said that.

I did those things
     -drinking & cumming.
Like others I came to tell you why
and be there for you as
somebody.
I wanted to be somebody
you didn’t know.
But new.

Being somebody
     -is something.

Wrapping my hand around your face
I felt a vein beating in your forehead.
You are alive.      somebody.

Two people who are wrapped
around each other
     -are every body.
Only two parts forming the whole.

The air was thick
     -with old oil and recent dust.
While two legs ending     one.
One was beginning.
Somebody screams
Some body creates.
The blues of death is something.
Lonely emptiness          two.

Being somebody
     -is something.

Everybody is somebody beneath the other body.

Mark David Jordan, 2011

Group

Group & Think

A man who sits by me in the office
   -won't shut up.

All day long he is gabbing
about all the trips he has taken,
all the problems he has solved.

On occasion he leaves his desk,
   -not often,
and ends up in the office of a boss
next to my cube prison.
   -Talking.
It is gossip about people they have in common.

He doesn't have a nose.
He tried to blow it off
in a botched suicide attempt,
or so people around me talking have said.
Fuckers.

I went to ask my boss
if I am suppose to get any work done.
She is not at her desk, off to a verbal presentation.
I just sit and stare at the wall.
At least I am not talking.

Mark David Jordan, 2010