Not Just Yet
(listen to the poem, read by Diane R. Wiener)
I don’t want to die just yet —
not with so many poems
still in me, crying to get out
sensing something’s up
jostling for the exits
clambering for the door
looking for the lifeboats
diving overboard.
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Rendered Unto God
(listen to the poem, read by Diane R. Wiener)
Ananda, please rein in your galloping verse
clumsy foal, you couldn’t sound worse
Sorry I am, my Splendid Friend
your ear so ’round to twist and bend
But you see how helpless that I’m driven
and tossed about in metered thought-rhythm
For words they ride a rocking saddle
when lips are tangled and Love-addled
With drunken Muse as certain sire
the o’ertopped cup can never tire
And verse trots out what must be said
just like some jockey in my head
O why must you drive me so, my Lord
to canter on ’til all are bored?
Learn to kiss the whip, my child
for Rapture takes a touch of Wild
Then is felt a searing Crack!
bringing in just what I lack
To open wide a Vedic dream
dance with gods and drink the cream
Each mudra finger now a burning candle
nearly more than I can handle
To comb profusion from confusion
and from the Presence, draw its Essence
A timeless catch now comes in the breath
snatching the Ego to his death
Light the Fire! Burn the Pyre!
feed base root to Flowering Fruit
As life it swoons from cold to Heat
and tears they run from salt to Sweet
Prayers and praise I mean to gift
are why this pen doth fly and lift
And Love to farther outward fling
is why this Soul doth rise to sing!
To melt himself right thru the Portal
and truly know the Life Immortal
This horse is off to be fully rendered
and pour into the Many-Splendored!
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About the Author
Roy Wahlberg, OID# 103429. Born: 11/20/1951. Life sentence: 1976. His brain later determined to have been so ravaged by early life disease, even hydrocephalus surgery was long denied as pointless (as it proved to be). Ultimately, however, miraculous “compensations” emerged from his brain deterioration and epilepsy treatment: the “Grandma Moses Effect” of late-life artistic drive. For him this took form as musicophilia, hypergraphia, and compulsive versification–the three stabilizing legs of his intellectual stool (both the furniture kind and his overall function, at times a bit scatological).
With autism, dysphasia (verbal deficits), and attention/memory scores in the bottom 5-7%, only through writing can Roy achieve a solid and continual sense of self–that essential ingredient of normal life that is otherwise entirely missing or only flimsily maintained. Halting and forgetful in speech, it is writing alone that releases his mind into smooth and tireless eloquence as the logical thread is held reliably before him by the medium.
Perhaps most importantly, writing allows Roy to find deep and meaningful solace in his almost unbroken solitude, instantly expanding his tiny cell from a lonely cage of despair into cognitive banquet halls filled with infinite imaginative possibilities, a doorway for the spirit, and an inexhaustible, cathartic feast of dream and reason. In many ways, and much more than most, Roy must write in order to truly live — making the writing, as he sees it (though happily so) practically ALL that exists of him.
Two-way email communication with Roy is possible through the website Jpay.com, searching for him as Roy Wahlberg 103429.
His mailing address is:
MCF-Stillwater
970 Pickett Ave. N.
Bayport, MN 55003