Euphoria You Have Known
 

(97 depressing poems, 2,667 views and counting…You might have known this would be coming)
I'm here to break up this party of despair and isolation -- or perhaps more accurately ask that we step outside the room of doom for a moment and recall euphoria we have known.

IMO, Indubitably more challenging than writing poetry that is depressing is writing poetry that exudes euphoria. The kind that soars. Not the kind that smacks of saccharine. The kind that drips like honey. The kind that shuns skepticism and ventures into the mystical. Go ahead. Make my day. (I have nothing.)

On the Road Again

When following a hearse, I think a minute
Of how lucky I'm behind it, and not in it;
And nothing gives a feeling of euphoria
Like passing funeral homes and crematoria.

Facing the Demon

It was the time before time, before his first wristwatch
but he watched for its coming from the high appointed place.
On time? Who knew? But expected, inevitable,
it came small and muttering between the hedges,
coloured like meadowsweet, thinking to hide itself
among the dusty green and the pale plumes of it,
feigning innocence like a flickering lizard
under the sloping rays of the time-to-go sun.

Now he could hear the familiar arrogant challenge –
I come I go, I come I go, as it rocked to its own music
along the bright track that was singing beneath his feet.

Now it saw him and roared, its lances thrusting alongside,
the grey plume rising and swelling and fizzing with stars.
He stood his ground, repelling the terrible chanting –
rumpeta rumpeta rumpeta – with a long scream
that began as the blunt head entered the space beneath him
and became a triumphant gasp as the tail trailed through.

But the thick plume stayed, rising before and behind him
to make a dark handshake over his unbowed head,
sprinkling hot grit to nip and tickle his skin.
Slowly it thinned and went and he headed back happy,
taking the bitter stink of it home in his hair.

Well, they say laughter is the best medicine...

Life's a bitch,
And then you croak,
But still it's
A funny joke.

Aaron -

Yes, death's a joke
That makes me chortle
Daily - till then,
I'm still immortal.

After starting this thread before going to bed last night, I woke up this morning to find no euphoria here. (Except possibly for Ann's puzzling poem I'm still rummaging through).

I'll try...


Dog Tale

The tail wags like a sensitive clumsy barometer
of happiness that easily activates after words
spoken with the right inflection; the floppy ear
hears what the heart wants; the tail thumps
at once against the table, the chair.

Or a pat and a scratch behind the ear
brings to life the flag at the rear.
Without a word their thoughts are clear:
I'm happy! I'm Happy!
and, if you listen closely,
You're here! You're Here!

Vongole

I'm as happy
as a clam!
But what's
for dinner?
...... DAMN!

Happy

I'm as happy as hell
is hot,
and heat in hell
is all they've got.

"Ann's puzzling poem"? Oh. Jim, I'm sorry. I always forget that I am from an earlier age than many a Spherian. You may never have stood on a bridge while a steam train went underneath and played the game of screaming while it did. If you ran out of breath before the last carriage passed through, the train won. Blame it on a solitary childhood in a bygone era. (I did a gender-swap for this one because I was, in my heart, a boy in those days.)

Perhaps this one, then? A more contemporary joy.

A Good Day

I wake with an untroubled mind, rise easy and slow;
the clock on the shelf by my ear says, “well done, well done”.
I-spy with my little eyes for they are not stuck shut.
Breath comes in through my nose without sticking or whistling
and trickles out of my mouth with no hint of a wheeze.
Spine makes itself straight; unrolls with no fold at the foot.
Knees bend to their morning tasks with no trace of complaint.
Yesterday’s shoes will be perfect for today’s weather
and I am able to make quite tight fists with both hands.
But I stop short on the edge of an Alleluia,
afraid to praise. This is not lately the way with days.
This one has managed to sneak in under the radar
and if I grass, someone might ask me to give it back.


(Can anyone spot the form...?)
.

Ann: “I always forget that I am from an earlier age than many a Spherian.“

That you always forget is both confirming and endearing : )
We – all of us – are living in the same moment of now. To twist one of my favorite lyrics: “I am here and you are here and we are all together” (from John Lennon’s, I Am The Walrus).

Thank you for that explanation of Facing The Demon. You have now brought the euphoria of the smell of steam engines and the sound of rumpeta rumpeta rumpeta into my world, so for that I thank you (“rumpeta” is a fantastic, beautiful onomatopoeic word– is it yours?)

And on those rare days when your youth bodily reappears - euphoria!

"Rumpeta" is to be found in The Elephant and the Bad Baby, a children's book by Elfrida Vipont (and illustrated by Raymond Briggs).

Dionysian Dance
 

Awakening Winds

Sucked dry by drought, my stand of trees
shrieks like maenads crazed with wine
when Santa Ana winds assault.
Their sires and whipping saplings moan
and frenzied limbs pound on my home
for three anarchic days of dance
that cease when twisting crowns bow down.
Inspired by Bacchic spins and tunes,
some trees burst buds to snowy blooms.

Fruit Market


I rob the bees
for my skull of wax.

Behind yellow sunglasses
and a summer cold
that keeps me distant,
that justifies syrupy reactions,
I am drowsy happy.

The day seems dirty gold
and reveals itself through
honeycomb lattice,
drip-feeds me glazed images,
traffic a choked lemon blast.

Others seem busy
in the hive, productive
as I should be:
a girl dances secretly, almost
imperceptibly buzzing
as she lays unripe fruit
on fake grass,
the just-lit smell of her sneaked
cigarette makes me
suck my pencil and
buy a plum.

It looks unreal as does
my tinted hand and
I hardly taste it,
but my teeth break
the skin and the wet spray
hits my mouth
like unpeeled reality.

Like summer.

Here's one that I didn't write, but was workshopped here some years ago. I think it's one of the best poems ever to be posted at Eratosphere, and it's a happy one. It's online at First Things as well.


FLIPSIDE
by Rose Kelleher

For joy like this, the only words I know
I’ve had to borrow from the other side:
knocked out, steamrollered, damn, I almost died,
familiar phrases for some crushing blow
that brings you to your knees. I’ve been laid low
by love, ground into dust by heaven’s wheels.
Funny how much like this rock bottom feels,
the tears, the weakness, and the letting go.

My blessing: May you, in your turn, break down
and lose your marbles. May you fall apart,
be smashed to smithereens and blown away,
scattered in all directions. May you drown.
May happiness make mincemeat of your heart;
and helpless, may you wring your hands and pray.

Yesyesyes to all of these.
This morning I woke up empty-handed. This evening I am basking in poetry-induced wisps of euphoria.

Roger, your Happy and Vongole poems are funny. They seek happiness but cannot avoid reality. Thanks, too, for Flipside. It is exhilarating. Have you heard L. Cohen’s “Ain’t No Cure for Love”? It mines the same territory.

Mark, Fruit Market is gauzily, honey drenched euphoric with a touch of sensuality. I am easily caught up in your altered state. (I’m reminded of your poem where you were enamored by the soft place behind a woman’s ear in front of you while attending a school meeting – I can’t remember the name of it – I’m pathetically unorganized in that regard). I think much of what you’ve written that I’ve read has a transcendent quality that is euphoria-inducing. At least it often produces that effect on me.

Ralph, In nature is where euphoria is best manifested, I think. Are the Santa Ana winds a good thing?

Here’s a poem by Van Morrison entitled, “On Hyndforde Street” that appears on his “Hymns To The Silence” album (one of his best.) It is all about that feeling. He finds it in remembrance. He recites it to haunting music. It’s as much a meditation as it is a poem. Van at his mystical best.

Euphoria I have known ...

I went mad in a Midlands market town

Let’s call it Jericho, I’m sure
they had a cattle market there.

I wore a tubular trombone
modelled on a curled ram’s horn
and cast from Israelite tin.

Each time I smiled the sun came out,
the light poured in, the world was bright
and looking on I saw that it was good.

And drawing fire into my lungs
I blew upon a crooked back
that leant upon a walking stick,

and by the magic of my breath
I made it straight – and lo, I learned
that I could heal the sick.

I walked into the market place.
The auctioneer began to sing:
Old iron, old iron. Oh, Chas and Dave,
you brought me quickly in.

I laid piano hands upon a cow
and calmed it lest its master’s stick
be laid against its side.

Before my gaze the TVs in
the TV shop switched on and sang
along, and when I looked away
they stopped.

And all this time I sang old hymns
mixed in with modern song

and marched around a market town
until the walls, the crumbling walls,
oh yes, those walls
had all come tumbling down.

----
For the culturally deprived: Chas & Dave Any old iron

Ceremonies

I saw the Brazilian Olympic team strut and sashay into Meiji Stadium
.....Tokyo, 1964, opening ceremony.
My friend Klaus in the outside row,
two years running, world champion, Flying Dutchman class,
here as the favorite with a brand new fast new boat,
windmilled both arms over his head,
threw kisses to the crowd,
sang the anthem aloud like a big rube.
Stumbling to a samba beat,
he pawed at his eyes with huge sailor’s hands.

I am the most Brazilian on the team.
It was me who decided to be a Brazilian.
I sailed twice around the world, and when I came here
I saw the mountains touch the sea,
and the brown and gold girls on the white beaches.
I ate shrimp cooked with lemon juice and coconut milk
in a straw hut on Praia do Salvador,
and I heard the laughter
and the music.
When I came here I stayed.

When the new boat broke apart in an early round, he
left the Olympic Village,
moved into our four-tatami guest room.
We could hear him weeping every night,
as he did his push-ups, sit-ups, crunches.

He skipped the closing ceremony
where the drunken young athletes of the world broke
ranks, jumped fences, cartwheeled across the field,
picked up the Japanese flag bearer and
carried him around the stadium,
tried to kiss every woman on the Japanese team;
removed and exchanged
clothing, embraced each other, invited spectators to join them,
refused to end the Games
as the loudspeakers repeated:
Will the athletes please march in ranks
Will the athletes please follow their nation’s flags
in five languages.

I saw the Brazilian Olympic team
parade down Avenida Presidente Vargas
at midnight at Carnaval,
covered with gilt paint, feathers, rhinestones, mirrors.
Someone was hitting a hubcap with a little hammer;
they had flutes, whistles, bells, sticks, rattles;
one girl was bare-breasted, twirling in a half slip,
a light-skinned man shook a gourd with pebbles.
A few wore huge dildos and threatened the crowd with them.
Stones on Coke bottles, drums, singing;
.....Cidade maravilhosa
tens of thousands of team members
streaming down from the Rio favellas
.....Coracao do meu Brasil
to dance half naked in the streets.

I have the most beautiful woman in Botafogo
sings the taxi driver.
Sunday, I will go to the beach and meet another.
Then I will have the two most beautiful women.
I will call them both Patricia.

The Brazilian Olympic team stretches concrete arms on a hill above Rio;
eagles perch on its finger tips and scream at the new sun.
I must take Klaus here.
We will drink cachaca, and fly like eagles to the sea,
and call it a closing ceremony.

Never put down "puppy love".


The Flying Moment

One season, back in ’65,
when cups and saucers came alive,

when time stood down — and up — to death,
when dark dimensions, length and breadth,

soared off with senses, bees and birds
in a futility of words,

a purple, orange, silver kiss
anointed ignorance with bliss.

But now the world’s a shadow box
of butterflies. And there are clocks:

the sun comes up, the moon goes down.
Love’s just another common noun.

Yet — somewhere — constellations swirl
above a fifteen-year-old girl.

The world is getiing crueller and gorier,
Yet every day, I feel this strange euphoria.
Why is it permanently resident?
Because I'm smarter than the President.

A Kind of Rain
 

This wasn’t a light drizzle that comes and stays for a month
growing mildew and long shank weeds.
Not a thunderous downpour that drives up under doors and window sills
chokes gutters and washes garden plants away in a rush.

This was a generous rain that the land celebrated in advance.
(ants built raised mounds, birds played acrobat on overhead wires
farmers got high with anticipation)

This rain showered morning soft on the dry earth
a tip toe around the yard giving new purchase to old roots
by afternoon it was a fox-trot in your head
then turned into an evening jig a jig on the roof
a soft shoe lullaby came later.

This was the sort of rain that made ducks quack louder and people go quiet,
this rain was gone by first light and left the countryside bejewelled with promise
making you want to go out and do something outrageous

it was that kind of rain.

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness. . .


Still Breathing

To still think words

still on the page
though still are breath
unseen or read

still latent breath
read silently
when lips are still

when said aloud
or recorded
are still still—

still blows my mind!

I know one person that,
in the face of this title,
recalls the first bag of dope;
Thank god it's not me.

“If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Letters

Wishing I could experience the same much more often!

The vertigo of standing,
Planless, at the start of my career,
My future a shimmering dazzle of the possible,
My present, the town before me
An egg for the cracking.
Hold that moment of wild indecision
Not for long. But hard.

Adrian, Wonderful! Euphoric!

Ralph, same here. Shivers up the back of the neck. It's almost all I search for in poetry -- at the very least it has to be present in order for something to come from a poem and into me. Euphoria, if that be the right word, is always in the company of beauty.

I love strong winds and trees that move in them!
I did not understand 'sires'...

Ah, you used the word 'maenad'! ... I enjoy it, it's uncommon.
I always want to ask... is
AMANDA DE CADENET
A DECADENT MAENAD?
;)

By sheer euphoria-inducing good luck, I have an old poem that just fits here.

SUDDEN EUPHORIA OF A MIDDLE-AGED SOUTHERNER

Youth gone and beauty never having come
nor money either, where’s it springing from,
this sudden joy? Fine weather and the slope
of green lawn to the bayou, snow-white shape
of heron fishing on the bank, it part
of it. The rest is books and art,
good health, two cats, a marriage going strong
for twenty years, a friendship just as long,
plus writing and the love of what I write.

Summing up joys, I savor my delight:
this is as close as I will ever get
to the mystic’s peak of holy self-forget-
fulness, the warrior in his savage bliss,
the lover’s ecstasy. I’ll call it this:
a sense of living in a world well-planned.
Is this contentment? Yes. Well I’ll be damned.

Here
by Grace Paley

Here I am in the garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face

how did this happen
well that’s who I wanted to be

at last a woman
in the old style sitting
stout thighs apart under
a big skirt grandchild sliding
on off my lap a pleasant
summer perspiration

that’s my old man across the yard
he’s talking to the meter reader
he’s telling him the world’s sad story
how electricity is oil or uranium
and so forth I tell my grandson
run over to your grandpa ask him
to sit beside me for a minute ... I
am suddenly exhausted by my desire
to kiss his sweet explaining lips

Gail, Roger -- such rich poems of euphoria! Both are mining the same rare contentment that comes through aging gracefully.

Gail, the ever-so-light touch of southern charm in your poem is sumptuous. The convergence of the contentment you speak of -- both the gratefulness of simple things and the acceptance of one's place in the world -- produces euphoria of the highest degree, I think.

Roger, Here is where I want to find myself one fine day - sans heavy breasts and big skirt ;)
But oh, the place she calls "here" is paradise, however fleeting. The final lines are breathtaking.

More euphoria (sort of), this time from Yeats, Vacillation, part IV:


My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.

I had been waiting for this one to arrive.

Plumb wonderful!

To a Poor Old Woman

munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand

They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her

You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand

Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her


by William Carlos Williams

I found this poem fascinating for, among other things, the speaker's reconciling the other side of euphoria at times, as well as the questing and surfeit of sensual delight at other times... Excerpts from THE THOUSAND AND SECOND NIGHT in five parts, courtesy of James Merrill; all of the first, most of the third, and all of the fourth to be exact.

I. RIGOR VITAE

Istanbul. 21 March. I woke today
With an absurd complaint. The whole right half
Of my face refuses to move. I have to laugh
Watching the rest of it reel about in dismay

Under the double burden, while its twin
Sags on, though sentient, stupefied.
I’m here alone. Not quite—through fog outside
Loom wingèd letters: PAN AMERICAN.

Twenty-five hundred years this city has stood between
The passive Orient and our frantic West.
I see no reason to be depressed;
There are too many other things I haven’t seen,

Like Hagia Sophia. Tea drunk, shaved and dressed . . .
Dahin! Dahin!


III. CARNIVALS

Three good friends in as many months have complained
‘You were nice, James, before your trip. Or so
I thought. But you have changed. I know. I know.
People do change. Well, I’m surprised, I’m pained.’

Before they disappeared into the night
Of what they said, I’d make a stab at mouthing
Promises that meant precisely nothing
And never saved my face. For they were right.

These weren’t young friends, what’s more. Youth would explain
Part of it. I have kept somewhere a page
Written at sixteen to myself at twice that age,
Whom I accuse of having become the vain

Flippant unfeeling monster I now am—
To hear them talk—and exhorting me to recall
Starlight on an evening in late fall...

IV.

Love. Warmth. Fist of sunlight at last
Pounding emphatic on the gulf. High wails
From your white ship: The heart prevails!
Affirm it! Simple decency rides the blast!—
Phrases that, quick to smell blood, lurk like sharks
Within a style's transparent lights and darks.

O skimmer of deep blue
Volumes fraught with rhyme and reason,
Once the phosphorescent meshes loosen
And the objects of your quest slip through,
Almost you can overlook a risen
Brow, a thin, black dawn on the horizon.

The lips part. The plume trembles. You’re afloat
Upon the breathing, all-reflecting deep.
The past recedes and twinkles, falls asleep.
Fear is unworthy, say the stars by rote;
What destinations have been yours till now
Unworthy, says the leaping prow.

Except that in this virgin hemisphere
One city calls you—towers, drums, conches, bells
Tolling each year’s more sumptuous farewells To flesh.
Among the dancers on the pier
Glides one figure in a suit of bones,
Whose savage grave alerts the chaperones.
He picks you out from thousands. He intends
Perhaps no mischief. Yet the dog-brown eyes
In the chalk face that stiffens as it dries
Pierce you with the eyes of those three friends
The mask begins to melt upon your face.
A hush has fallen in the marketplace,
And now the long adventure

Let that wait.
I’m tired, it’s late at night.

Tomorrow, if it is given me to conquer
An old distrust of imaginary scenes,
Scenes not lived through yet, the few final lines
Will lie on the page and the whole ride at anchor.

It’s winter. I’m home, of course. Real
Snow fills the road. On the unmade
Brass bed lies my adored Scheherazade,
Eight-ninths asleep, tail twitching to the steel

Band of the steam heat’s dissonant calypso.
The wind has died. Where would I be if not here?
There’s so little left to see! Lost friends, my long ago

Voyages, I bless you for sore
Limbs and mouth kissed, face bronzed and lined,
An earth held up, a text not wholly undermined
By fluent passages of metaphor.

One more then. Because in the first place, I thought it apt; and in the second, I could not resists. Politics by Yeats, of course.

In our time the destiny of man prevents
its meanings in political terms.
in aapolitical ts meaningiTHOMAS MANN

How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here’s a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there’s a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!
e

That strikes me as a somewhat sad poem, Erik. I don't think one gets a sense of euphoria from wishing one were young and vital again instead of a prattling old politician among politicians.

To me, the wisdom of age is not altogether disparaged, but the euphoria of youth is yet more warmly recollected. It is the advantage of age and wisdom to estimate things at their true value. There are many things of which we cannot apprehend the true value until we have it not. The value of youth’s euphoria is not fully apprehended until one is no more young, that is, when one can reflect on it from the wisdom of age. I am made to imagine just how profound that euphoria must be in order for the speaker to say such a thing. What cannot be lived again becomes available only through memory; yet it seems a more powerful testament to just how sweet such times were as the realization comes from the profound perspective of candor and wisdom. Nostalgia, though tinged with sadness for what cannot happen again, equally exults the same with a keen awareness of just how special it was.
Anyway, this Yeats poem is more obviously suitable.

Sweet Dancer

The girl goes dancing there
On the leaf-sown, new-mown, smooth
Grass plot of the garden;
Escaped from bitter youth,
Escaped out of her crowd,
Or out of her black cloud.
Ah, dancer, ah, sweet dancer!

If strange men come from the house
To lead her away, do not say
That she is happy being crazy;
Lead them gently astray;
Let her finish her dance,
Let her finish her dance.
Ah, dancer, ah, sweet dancer!
l

My name is Vlad. You think me mad,
Or very bad, or simply sad?
Tomorrow will be gorier!
My foes are wailing, flailing, failing,
I am happily impaling -
That is true euphoria!

"That strikes me as a somewhat sad poem, Erik. I don't think one gets a sense of euphoria from wishing one were young and vital again instead of a prattling old politician among politicians." --Roger

So... the question is can euphoria arise from sadness? I think it can.

Well, I acknowledge that happiness and sadness are sometimes close cousins, or, as in Rose's poem, flipsides, but an old man wishing he were young and vital again, and finding his current occupation to be empty and unfulfilling, hardly fits my definition of euphoria. Or at the very least, even if I could optimistically squeeze a silver lining out of it, it's not a poem I would point to as a classic example of euphoria.