I’ve seen you here
I’ve seen you there
I’ve seen your eyes with their fiercest glare
They speak of hate
They scream at me
I understand just what they see

I’ve seen those eyes in times before
On different people
Different wars
They cried of rage
Spoke of blame
So with my eyes I made them tame

And now it’s you I must refriend
Please understand that’s how I am
For I’m sick of hatred
Disgusted by war
So I refuse to fight
With those eyes that are yours

No longer can I call you by name
But your angry eyes have started this game
So on to what rumors have stepped on me
As those before
They’ll be history

This thing is too old to allow it more life
I’ve seen too much heartache
To receive more strife
Prepare yourself most electric child
Prepare to lose those hating eyes!


© 1974

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10/07/2016

Author's Note: One of hundreds of poems written during the early years (1973-1975) of the Beginnings period. Totally inexperienced, I wrote constantly, sometime 3-4 times a day, for fear of losing ‘the gift’, only later to find out it doesn’t work that way. Many of these poems were self-indulgent, embarrassingly immature, and in several cases, employed monotonous rhyming. In the early 1980s, I went through the first major reorganization of my work, and because of the reasons mentioned above, most of these pieces ended up in the waste basket. However, out of every 10 poems or so, one would stand out for its unique interpretation of inspiration/subject and style, and gave me the incentive to continue writing...and to learn. Although a somewhat angry poem, what I like about Those Hating Eyes is its expression of willpower to defeat the negative energy of hate without becoming a part of it. What also makes it stand out is that at this point I had slowly begun to move away from monotonous rhyming, and experiment with slanted or irregular rhyme, which became a hallmark of many of my poems in the years that followed. This includes the triple rhyme pattern adopted in some poems in the next period/collection, Enter Every System, such as Mother, Atop The Central Yellow, and Session 10; the last two of which were later moved to Paper Guitar.

Posted on 10/07/2016
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