Bilocation

When one reads poems like this one, I think it would be totally futile to comment on stylistic peculiarities and other literary niceties... all that one can to is to read, to imbibe every word and to stand still for a blink of moment - so that the whole being would respond in empathy.

Blessings and best wishes - S.

The rather exagerrated image of yourself is a common type of expression by those experiencing great loss and grief. This is a very sorrowful lament that somewhat reminds me of some of the visuals Jermemiah used in his prophecy. May God comfort you and those who loved this man.

Wow John. This is an incredible howl of grief and loss. This must have been a great friend to ellicit such a poem. It reminds me a little of the Beat Poets. It has all the raw power and more of Ginsberg. Amazing and heart-wrenching. I don't know what else to say about it. It is incredibly moving.

Such powerful feelings and such a painful loss.

John, this poem resonates with me because I feel this way about my father. Although I have not lost him, he does have lung cancer. If I could take his illness and pain and make it mine, I would.
Your poem contains palpable feelings of loss, but also reveals a strong bond between male friends that is rare and precious. That is to be treasured. Thank you for sharing this heartfelt and poignant work with us.

Maybe it has to do with spring in the air, but almost every poem I've read today has made me weep. This is no exception. The others have said it all so well, but I wanted you know I was here and that your words touched me deeply.

Very powerful, an amazing poem of loss, a veritable howl.

Featured in the Triple Name Club.

A powerful lament and tribute wrenched from the heart.

Be consoled, my friend - you will meet in the golden halls of the Father.

Your poem is also featured in thepoetscircle. Thank you again, John!

Wow, I feel this. Such an intense and moving piece of writing. Beautifully crafted.

Your words dip again and again into the waters of love and remembrance, with all the pain of mortality and friendship. It's a raw and poignant emotion shared and I hope the sharing helps to heal you. Beautiful, spinning galaxy holding you both in its heart.

Powerful, John. HUGS to you.

One of the first poems you published on gather was written to David
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976730292
and it was then that I realized your immense capacity for loving, for never saying good-bye by keeping the love and the mirrored life of this departed friend inside you, by calling him closer through your poetry. David still feels so alive when you write of him. I am certain that he must carry you with him as well.....you two are part of an identity that creates best in spiritual tandem. I miss him for you......I wish you would post his photo here again.....he has the glow of a mischievous Buddha and eyes that startle the senses into a desired familiarity... like he would always be the secret ingredient to the finest flirtatious magic and carefree, playful mayhem .
Wherever we go after this lifetime, I hope I get to go cruising with the two of you. I cry with you for his soul-wrenching absence and smile with you for the joy and laughter you shared.

I remember the poem Laura refers to, and once again I am there with you to grieve and celebrate a life well lived. Damn well done.

I hover with you,
a legs length above the ground,
loss levitation,
keeping me from
completely touching down
on to that ache,
into it - forbid

and lucid dreams
where you are
as alive as forever

Yes, dear friend, you took me there - Beautiful and slamming. I want to know what is up with that white tuxedo?

The magic is in the mirror
And in your mind
Mojo memory of the loving kind
More John F Walter for pure joy of poetry
Don't you dare bust those electric blue orbs
We need you to see
So that you continue your artistry

I think a white tuxedo in your dreams is a celestial symbol as well as purity and snow.

well...sort of greenish blue...but electric through and through

I think I'll stick with Powerful and moving. Brought me back to the intense emotions and helplessness of losses in my life. All I can say is, I hope you find peace and a little less pain by sharing this sad reality of being human.

In this poem, you give David a great tribute - may he rest in peace - may you find joy in the fact that you knew and loved him and always will. Salud

Even though I had to look up half the words in this, I did so in an effort to decode the palpable wrenching I read in these lines. The premise is intriguing: existing in two places? Another approach might have to do with wavelength, with vibration, that exists in all cosmic matter; that life itself is merely another level of vibration or phase shift. Like its more observable counterparts Sound and Light, Life causes resonance with its vibration that diminishes and disperses with time but never truly disappears.

On the pages of lowly Gather, I am beginning to understand the purpose and majesty of poems.

"For you I´d gut grimoires;

find sigils that could launch

a telepresence that would take me

to the sepulchre of the ache in me."

Been there.

John, I really like the revisions you've made in bringing this poem, if possible, even closer to a one-way conversation with someone who obviously has not left the premises. This comes through in an amazing way, and supersedes the writer to reader plane; the poem is almost other-worldly in its part elegiac part bro to bro plainspeak.

grimoire: A textbook of magic.

sigil: A symbol created for a specific magical purpose.

I know that those we love live on in our memories, but I've never thought of trying to re-animate them from those memories. What a brilliant theme!

I, a lesser intellect, understood and suffered with you. I appreciate the poem.

The choice of words sometimes become important while they are certainly not the entirety of a poem, they helps in reflecting feelings.

Whether you've lost this person to death or self destruction, your precise and powerful words convey such truth and gut wrenching agony. I lost my best friend to suicide and I too have a "sepulchre" within. Brilliantly versed John.

After reading this again, I was struck by the rather hep things your friend did that you so admire.

John, this is an incredible mix of passion, grief, memories, and wishes to continue ... You have pulled me into your grief and here I will stand with you. What a wonderful tribute!

Thanks for posting in Journey Into Poetry !

Into this basin, before the mirror, you pour an elegy of a lament that is almost a death-wish in itself, so powerful is the desire to maintain a connection with a beloved departed friend. Splitting one's atoms "for the you alive in me" is a stunning way to say the love felt is still strong within. And the deft dissolve into the mysticism that composes a grimoire and the sudden flash leap into contemporary metaphor, telepresence, cell phones, is a tour de force. The sepulchre of grief, leaning into the gravestone, the presence of your friend in the mirror as you remember him and the water washing your face weeping at his grave and your desire to maintain that memory even by the heat of water that scalds the lips and burns the eyes, makes this poem especially riveting in its hard-edged metaphors, images that leap and flash like burning lightning.

A passionate cry against death that the poet achieves through the sigils of a grimoire, symbols, alive like spirits, brought into the world by the magical practice of the poet, his writing, the divine alphabet behind the grammar/grimoire.

What is alive in death is resurrected in life through memory, here almost Proustian, washing the face in the basin, suddenly remembering tears at the grave, and seeing David looking back in the reflection.

An existential howl of the heart, powerful poem my friend. xo

I want to thank every one who read this poem and felt it and expressed their own emotions of grief and loss back to me.

And Brenda Clews, thank you so very much for so brilliantly ¨reconstituting¨ this poem´s elements into a whole after you ´deconstructed´ it first into its constituent bits of language, memory and qualia.

In so doing, astute and insightful critic that you are, pellucid friend, you mirror back to me the pre-Simulationist techniques that our Movement is trying to develop as it learns from the postmodernist and modernist masters and attempts to extend their legacy while tackling the ´hard questions´ of consciousness´mystery, what it means to be human, and life lived in time against the backdrop of death.

I would like to have known your friend, John.

The purity of feelings are deeply felt, John.

while schmoozing on
your eternal cell phone

Brenda: "What is alive in death is resurrected in life through memory", and

John: "what it means to be human, and life lived in time against the backdrop of death".

I've been synchronistically drawn to your powerful work today Sir, in that I'm grieving for the youth of today so many poised on the edge of oblivion. Many see no point in living thereby reflecting back to this junior elder, a sense of pre-grief, for lives not yet lived.

"Life lived in time against the backdrop of death" for them becomes:

"Death, lived in time against the background of death"

if: "What is alive in death is resurrected in life through memory"
then what of those who've not been able to establish valid reasons for living much less establishing memories? For those, our young tomorrow, will a "resurrection" of sorts still occur?

That we're able to pass on a vibrancy, an immediacy, a passion for life that you Sir, as a poet have shared in this work for your friend, and that he must have shared for life, is of the paramount importance. You've gifted everyone who reads this with a lust for life shared.

In that there is timeless magic, and a reflective surface of the life and death of your large friend David Lipshultz that shines on.

Thank you for this,
Adrian

Powerful, vivid and heartfelt. What an excellent tribute.

This is an extraordinary piece ... filled with your love, your respect and your passion. I am sorry John for your loss.

That this poem is so excruciating some years after David's death is a reflection of how intense your grief remains. I wish we could lift that burden from you. That said, the result is a poem of a singular command of poetry and the English language.