The Poetry of Jeffrey L. H. Naylor

Dripping death and rain
Slowly feeds the pain
Suffered in primitive forests
Errare humanum est!

Sleek moves chase white fawn
Fear greets an uncertain dawn
Loud as thunder upon her chest
Errare humanum est!

Honeysuckle nector drops from red clover
Flows with darkness in crossing-over
One life boasts, one life rests
Errare humanum est!

Time! Can such a thing be more than a child’s rhyme?
Deep in the dwelling places of Reason, man
Creates Time as an illusion. Fantasy allows us to call upon Time,
To know to go, to know to stop. Life is as immeasurable as sand.
There is no before or now or even the yet to be!
Man creates Time like a pet to be his eyes, better his world to see.
Time unfolds man to rule constraining forces, to trust-to believe
That whatever space he occupies, he shall not be deceived.
Prophets, and Messiahs, and Kings augment for billions Time’s role,
Securing its grip, forcing them to follow the rules of Time as told.
Innovation’s deception is the soul of Time–man’s greatest invention.
The grip is strong; Reason’s pang proves man’s greatest deception.
What then shall we call our engagements within the place of space?
There are no words of meaning to signify man’s true knowing of place.
Olympic swimmers we are, within a complete infinite universe,
With unimaginable cosmic expanses so simply, deliciously diverse.
We swim the laps of eons, each stroke a separate, yet connected life.
Back and forth we go, living the eternal with unremembered strife.
Time is an illusory gift of the impenetrable, unapproachable divine.
Existence is forever living, living, and living the eternal sublime.

Time creates a searching life to find its pain.
Replacing the most precious things
Once lost, causes my soul to sing.
Life creates a quickening time, never to lose its gain.

My night is cold and hard,
My day is dark and charred.
With empty dreams I keep,
Repeatedly, piteously to reap
Some new genius, some new dream,
Some new word, some new scheme,
Which will stir my soul
And challenge others with a proper role.
However, the day is eternally too short.
The projects of the night always I abort.
Once upon a time, nothing was my detour,
Attempting anything I would not demur.
Yet, all the years have passed me by,
And now am I left to think with the sit of the sigh.
Somewhere, someone knows something I cannot know.
What is it, this elusive task upon me bestowed?
Where is it, that I might be freed from my solemnity?
Is this the full extent of now and all of forever?
How do I answer? I long to live all the live-long day.
Yet, all I do is stem the tide of growing gray.

Drink from this, my “Mother’s Day Well of Love,”
Love from your only child.
This innocent, purity of love.
Affection that is multi-farious,
A splendored thing of nature.
I, your only child, have created for you,
Five significant others
Who equally seek
To honor your sweet honey suckle.
These siblings, scoundrels here,
Dare to bring you even greater honor.
One day, To My Mother,
Bringing back to you when I am gone,
Five-fold…
The love of your only child!

The sullen crowd methodically moves down the aisles,
Through the otherworldly vestibule and out the enchanted doorway.
I stand before the ranks of silent pews,
I contemplate the fervor of ideas swelling within my head.
The nooks and crannies of this space overwhelm the expanse.
My world takes on an unexpected focus.
It’s not upside down, it’s inside out. But where am I?
Looking in or looking out? The oppression of this change
Weights me, lifts me, intimidates me, and challenges me.
There’s a gauntlet here, somewhere waiting to be found.

There must be!

That is the way it is with the unknowable,
It happens for an unknowable reason.
Unknowable reasons still evoke a response.
There must be something I’m supposed to be doing.

But I don’t see it!

—-I wrote this ten years BEFORE I married my dear, sweet wife who I found in the Philippines.
Jeramie Tamayo Benson now Jeramie Benson Naylor

There is a girl in another time, another place
Through the mist of distance I paint her face.
She sings to me sweet melodies in perfect pitch.
This lovely girl lives just a little into my future.
Yet unconstrained by time, she is always there bleeding rich,
Sacrosanct in love and promise so crimson and pure.
Up in the sky sometimes I see her dancing there,
Teasing me to come and join her in the air.
To this lovely girl and to my heart I guarantee to
Cantillate my love while playing my didjeridoo.
With songs of wind and ice, and fire and truth
Her empty heart I will savory seal with splendid routh.

it does me no good to pine,
within the oscillations
of this Conflict Theology
of mine. all of everything
is, actually, very moot.
without
her smile,
there is
no horizon
to my future
no fulfillment
to my hunger.
my life hangs loose on a vertical hinge
the land of plenty just beyond my reach.
you see,
every face is a blank
without the enigmatic,
vacillating presence of the tease of her smile,
which enables me forever to linger long
in daytime fantasies.

Yankee Doodle Dandy went down to Strudel Town,
Looking to latch onto likely Mr. Lapley’s old gandering hound.
He puffed and huffed, “Not a hound but, a weird dog,” this he found!
The insult spread everywhere and all around! No weirdoes in Strudel!
Y. D. Dandy caused more than one chicken hearted frown!
Thus, he boldly stole the strudeled mutt and sold him for a pound!
Well, now for such a weighty bargain, the folks at Elder’s Town,
Decided to sneak over to the Strudels, to look at the gandering hound.
Took one peek, hearts grew weak, a Pet finally they had found.
The news flew with swift wings to all a-listening all- around.
The folks at Elder’s Town bid not one but two pounds.

—For Chelsea, my daughter

Your dreams, your face glow with innocence strong,
And everyday I listen to the loveliness of your song.
I cannot bear to tell you that one day soon, so soon,
The world you’ve come to love will sound a different tune.

Though now you sing about the gift of everything new,
One day soon so soon, you’ll sing in notes of blue
And the yellow sunshine of everyday
Will find shadows marked in darkest gray.

Your dreams will face and strain to bear all tomorrow’s things.
Your dreams will endure to find the end to all the world brings.
Your dreams will never change, only the songs you know.
Your dreams will tone in tunes of gloom and bend and dim your glow.
Your dreams will change and embolden the courage you show.
Your dreams will never change, only the singing of the songs you know.

The cracks my soul feel for you my sweet, sweet one
Are deeper than the cracks in time and older than the sun.
I’ll listen as your peace breaks into a thousand parts,
And you sing too soon the weeping of your innocent heart.