In Manibus Tui

In Manibus Tui
Christopher Bogart

It is rotting like a decayed corpse,
Stagnating as a quiet pool,
Bathed in the oppressive heat
And humidity of the stale air.

It renders no sign, no feel
That it feels or has the power to feel;
Is moved or has the power to move;
To sense, or to command its senses.

Its eyes stare upward, transfixed
On layer after layer of empty air.
Its visage belies a curious smile
That relates, unknown to it, a curious satisfaction.

It breathes not.
The air has long since left its lungs.
No sign of warmth emanates from it.
No moisture clouds the mirrored blade.

It cares not,
For in caring, it cannot care.
It demands nothing,
And receives nothing in its turn.

And yet,
All elements of life hover ‘round it,
Like angels ‘round a sacred form,
Waiting for it to need a need to survive.

Beware

Cave
Christopher Bogart

Within a form so full of life, it sleeps,
Unaware of the power that it holds.
It sleeps in restless fearful solitude
Inside the chaos of its loneliness.

Outside, the world awaits the golden morn.

Within, its eyes see through
The heavy lids of their own darkness.

One day, one ray of light must truly come
And raise the heavy lids to see the sun,
Dissolving darkness, filling it with light.

For it can never
Sleep forever.

Of Chemicals and Chemistry

Of Chemicals and Chemistry
Christopher Bogart

Escaping with a slip
By placing on the lip
Something in a clip
Produced by E.R. Squibb,
Releasing just a bit
Of chemical fits
And archetypal trips,
Involving just a dip,
Or a sip,
Or a nip
Is nothing but a rip-
Off.

"Nearer My God to Thee"

Carpathia
Christopher Bogart

We are foundering, Carpathia.
We are foundering in the sea.
We are drifting from our charted course
In confused reverie.

We’ve struck and iceberg, Carpethia,
And it’s ripped into our holds.
It’s the ice of bleak indifference,
And it’s freezing us with its cold.

There’s California, Carpathia.
She’s only forty miles away,
But she doesn’t seem to hear us.
Why? Her wireless doesn’t say.

We were unsinkable, Carpathia,
Unsinkable – or so we thought.
We were unaware of peril,
Yet with peril we were fraught.

It’s our children, brave Carpathia.
It is them we chose to leave.
We have lowered down their lifeboats,
And they drift without reprieve.

It’s getting dark now, Carpathia,
And though you’re just two hours away,
We are nearer to God than thee.
Our only course now is to pray.

Tutankhaten

When I first started writing poetry in my late teens, I was into "angst" poetry, chronicling the trials and tribulations of being young. Once I started teaching, in my twenties, my poetry took a more romantic turn. I don't mean romantic in terms of romance, but more in terms of an historical romanticism. Looking more closely at historical figures, I was touched by some of their lives as well as their deaths.

I recently found a book of this poetry, and have tried to see whether any of it was worth salvaging, or whether it should remain as a road sign to my youth. The poem I posted last night, I felt, with a little revision, still had something to say. I feel the same way about the poem I am posting tonight. The last time there was a major Tutankhamun exhibit was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in the 1970's I visited that exhibition, then later on, researched some of the prayers that Tutankhamun's father, Amenophis IV (Akhnaten) wrote to the sun disc, Aten. He had, for a few years, changed the face of ancient Egyptian religion, moving the capital to Tell el-Amarna. The priests of Amun Ra rebelled, and when Akhnaten died, forced Tutankhamun (originally named Tutankaten) to bring the capital back to Luxor, the city sacred to Amun.

I wrote this poem in the spirit of the prayers Akhnaten wrote to Aten. Some historians believe that Tut's lapse into his father's religion cost him his life.

Tutankhamun
Christopher Bogart

Still the softly sweeping sands.
Harness Ra within the sky.
Turn back Hapi’s gentle flow.
Re-teach Horus how to fly.

Take a child, nine tender years.
Place on his head the Double Crown.
Cloak him in two thousand years.
Try not to let it weigh him down.

Smother all his boyish dreams
Of Aten’s rays of living love.
Amun’s hawks in swiftest flight
Soon will outstrip and crush the dove.

Let him shiver through the nights.
Give him cause to quake in fear.
Challenge him to be a god,
Yet keep his manhood from drawing near.

Still the softly sweeping sands.
Reteach Horus how to fly.
Place poison on a needle’s tip;
And teach a pharaoh how to die.

Beyond the Bus Window

I spent the summers of 1965 to 1967 working in New York City as a social worker for the New York City Housing Authority's Anti-Poverty Unit. In that capacity, I saw first-hand the disparity between the "uptown" of Broadway, Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue and the "downtown" of the Bronx, Harlem, the Lower East Side, the West Side and parts of Brooklyn. Every night, as I boarded the bus at the Port of New York Authority to go back to my home in New Jersey, as the bus winded around the ramps to leave the terminal, I could look into the tenements that surrounded the terminal. It typified the kind of poverty I was seeing each day at my job, a grinding poverty and a simple despair that seemed to have no boundaries. And I wrote about it.

Beyond the Bus Window, Leaving Port Authority on December 5, 1964
Christopher Bogart

It is a city, a bleeding city,
A deep running sore it is,
Amid the tumult of ever-moving feet,
Between the rubber of ever-moving wheels.

It moves and yet it mourns.
It dribbles the saliva
Of every drunk that lies
On each of its unnamed byways.

It cries, and yet it laughs,
Through crooked, gritted teeth.
Its echoes rebound from story to story
Up and down the cold grey sentries of its streets.

It is a city whose pulse
Is entirely composed
Of the nervous twitching of its ever-moving populace,
A pulse that never ceases.

You can’t touch it, you can’t,
But it is there.
It filters through the granite and the steel.
It runs along the walkways and the roads.

But it can be destroyed.
Pity will kill it.
Love, love will purge it.
But do we want it purged?

What will be left when it dies?
A big city, a thriving city,
Or a shell,
Cleansed of its filthy ugliness.

Steel girders, stone and glass
Will not move for love;
But the city will be destroyed.
The city will be destroyed.

In My Life

In My Life
Christopher Bogart

If you could live
My last sixty years
In one single day
In time,
Then you would know
The ebb and flow
Of thoughts upon
My mind.

You would know
About Howdy Doody,
Viet-Nam, Selma
And Rootie Kazootie,
Kent State,
And state
The Dream Speech
By heart.

You would have danced
To the Blues Magoos,
Saw Woodstock,
Little Rock,
The Asiatic Flu –
And saw social issues
Tear the land
Apart.

You’d have felt
The warmth
Of puppy love,
The thrill of crush,
The flight of doves –
Raising your emotions
To the sky.

And in time you’d learn
Of loss, despair,
Retreating youth,
Receding hair,
Split seams,
Lost dreams,
The value of a lie.

For then you’d know
The highs and lows
Of one small life –
My life;
And know
That through
Experience
You’d learned
Just this:

Life’s a long, long journey
Through the years –
Filled with days of wonder,
And nights of tears –
All glued together,
Somehow,
With just one kiss.

For man is not
A lone creation,
But destined
To achieve salvation
By loving one another:
This is his bliss.