The Layman Speaks

THE LAYMAN

SPEAKS

MAURICE SIEGEL

Copyright © 2021 by Maurice Siegel.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-6641-4394-4

                eBook          978-1-6641-4393-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 12/17/2020

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CONTENTS

Books Published By Maurice Siegel

VIEWS FROM A LIFE

Essays In Various Forms Between Life’s Arrival

And Death’s Departure

HOPES AND DREAMS TO INFINITY

Quests In The search Of Love

Twelve One Act Plays

THE WORLD IS VERY ROUND

Six Full Length Plays

THERE IS NO SAFE PLACE NOR EVER CAN BE.

I WONDER WHY

Seventy Three Poems Of Seventy Three Views

Of One World

POTPOURI

Mixed Bag Of Life

Memories Possessed Is A Temporary Immortality

ANYTHING GOES WHEN AMONG POEMS

PLAYS AND ESSAYS

Emotional Outcomes Remain The Best

Of Life’s Games

Introduction

I have been taught to become a layman in this world from the very start of finding I am me. Nature made this person into the ward of my parents by giving me birth equipment for wanting self survival. Call this childhood. The length of this time requires me to stay dependent upon the collected experiences of my parents, themselves laymen and allowing their extension for me to be one more layman.

What is the demarcation of ending layman childhood for a youth of more layman years? For us all was to find and sustain a method and means to survival should parents disappear. Attempts at this sense of a self-independence for humankind is well noted, most clearly in the periods of wartime for intending to save society. This always means bringing about the death to childhood knowledge and making all of us layman in one form or another. As for myself it found expression in the emotions, to be read as feelings, for expression in poems, plays and essays.

To the point. Poetry, for me, is much like being attached to a rope to pull me along. It hauls me into essays as more concrete expression of poetic reality that can yell and scream about the world of which I am another of the visitors. And when essays refuse to suffice, I head for the higher hills of words, namely those of plays. In plays I can ‘play’ at a god-like-being looking upon the mixture of those dreams coming to life that are mixed into intimate plans for finding salvation before some chosen chaos makes the decision how to best enter upon a new future.

We are in our time of knowing, what with the availability of information transferred widely within moments of discovery, to make our attempt to show what is found to express to others. And so I have made my attempt by way of words of feelings rather than factual information about this tiny part of the universe where I find myself.

Maxims For The Twenty-First Century

To hate is to love the lesser of oneself.

Never wonder why you are alive while you still believe to be alive.

Knowing more makes no difference to a bird dropping.

The happiest remembered moment today won’t be enough for tomorrow’s dream.

Your goal just changed while reaching back to make it secure.

Hope is like rest. Both are waiting for an answer.

The soul is what you were, never what you intend to be waiting for you.

The worst fear is to have a truth entering a loved one’s joke.

When denying heaven for a greater meaning to the universe, look for a third choice.

Computers that people invent work so well but people will not.

The future is what the past never intended to be. Therefore be ready for the following advice:

Rule 1. Don’t ever die for a friend’s dream.

Rule 2. Don’t ever die for your personal dream.

Rule 3. Don’t ever die for strangers who need help to find their lost dream.

Rule 4. Don’t ever die for confusing reality with a look-alike ideal.

Rule 5. Don’t ever die for chasing after a want.

Rule 6. Don’t ever die for proving what the world is after.

Rule 7. Don’t ever die for someone’s not to be denied truth.

Rule 8. Don’t ever die for what you would die for.

Rule 9. Don’t ever die for those dreams that must be while you’re alive.

Rule 10. Don’t ever die for sorrow suffered hoping for explanation.

It is nice to have imagery but it is nicer to be sure it is imagery.

Beware of being right for the wrong person.

Time is all that every life is given free of charge. All the rest comes with a steep cost.

Love accidentally brings together two for need to be wanted at the same time and same place and by the same presence of willingness and most importantly by an arrival on time.

How interesting that children, so very desired, must struggle to keep in constant retreat for avoiding painful defeat until the only real horror is for an entry just that one time. This is the century to dare a new kind of god not holding hands to get down to salvation.

Any goal will be altered when trying to make it secure.

Hope is like a long rest. The both are waiting to give up.

The soul is found in what you had been and not what is waiting for a new arrival.

The worst of fears when speaking a truth is discovering it to be meaningless.

I cannot know as yet what I don’t know. This does not stop me from knowing what I intend to know.

There is no reality where there is no life.

Love is nature’s only concern about two life forms when they meet, people included.

I learn the most from those who prepare themselves against me.

Perfect Pair

Life brings pain as if its own.

Trying escape shouting I’m grown.

Death is life’s closest friend,

Ever there to call itself an amend.

Moving pain from quiet perch,

Death enters to end more search.

Whenever life is seeking a halt,

Its buddy silently adds more fault.

Hidden as all of night from day,

Without face or feet to stay away,

Death is in mind and a nearing fate,

Lurking ready to end every wait.

By knowing no need to retreat

Death lurks besides every defeat.

Be ready alongside each last hope

To fool the gods seeking gifts to cope.

But life is better than given to ants

To keep trusting without cant’s.

Such belief is easily kept by me

With a life whispering never flee.

Owning hours from all twenty four,

Try to use each wanting to soar.

Because life is just one long dare

Until death needs a perfect pair.

Memories

Piled one upon the other where do they go?

Reminders for reliving delights to glow.

The smile was my comfort waiting to cling.

Then pushed aside by others to be wise.

Attracted by sorrows defenseless, teary cries.

Then be followed by angry reprisal to bring.

Eyes that lose fear to brighten a face of love.

Then swept into horror seeing a crushed dove.

And what has past piles into grieving now.

Try to alter it for the place of mountain green

Ever told by nature as if sharing secrets serene.

But not to last longer than a lifted brow.

Again to see the child holding a heart as a toy.

And harsh given shouts. I’m a nasty boy.

Now the adult arriving for any that is best,

While magic casts dreams into ever newer self.

With searches into memories hidden by stealth.

Always with hopes the problems to be blest.

All of it gone for only sorrow staying near.

Those to feel, know a step forward is fear.

So sadly, where are they to dance without me?

Turned into watchers of this world for a sign.

Hoping, as if for them a force is ready to pine.

Time holds memories allowed to float free.

Ah, yes, those of memories never lost.

Some are ones carried with heavy cost.

Learning to change of bitter to savory gift.

Had come sweet wisdom of distress caused.

Never to leave endless pain unpaused.

So simple to impart happy with joyous lift.

Memories cling to each oneself by nestling in.

Keeping always ready to see where it had been.

Any Time Some Wine

When I owned age ten, only worry was when.

At age aged, fifteen alive, trifles are to strive.

After these two my life swept through.

Poured upon the worst with joyous burst.

Fear of Sphinx, every teacher’s toned links.

I brought forth my own, the enigma of grown.

Solving riddles in dreams as each one deems.

No surprise did await for a struggle with fate.

And so, hold me high with some wine and a lie.

Discovering life is worth answers to my birth.

Love?

To have a love as my very own.

Possess it when life is sad alone.

Having kept as a higher goal,

I claim it instead of wanting a soul.

Years with no sight of that love.

Is it my fault not a sight of?

Nature stays ruthless while clever.

No joy believing a love can be never.

Love, as mine is the perfect form.

Nearly everything without a storm.

This love, I will give of myself more.

However, I’d like proof add to the lore.

Should be accepted a wonder found,

Or grand deception held and bound?

The World I Once Owned

I walk in the streets of New York at dusk to make use of an easily tiring body and searching inside a mind by skimming over what has been trashed and forgotten, a view that can be perilous of the people passing me in haste along this city street also gathering daily sights while recording newest of observations to help to bring focus of the events of this day, so busy integrating information into mind’s personal collection, each to own as a very own, but then there is me still in a need to find final answers of life’s questions hopeful to rise out from my brain to give new meaning to all things of those kept from me withholding an ending to each clinging thought to become memories for running back into the decades passed by adding to what another human being is waiting to come across, that something large as revelation that stays put instead of heading for a memory trash bin after having passed through many changes before getting turned into insights, and so I welcome what I think has now become a me of right now.

Life’s Ocean

Long swim in a shortened ocean is life.

Between any of strokes requires the rest.

From hidden rocks silent below waves.

A grateful rise to arrive before drowning.

Loudest roar is to lead the last wave.

Joy of shallows ends fear of the unseen.

Float with pleasure believed for every direction.

Satisfy the imagination of dread to awaken.

The deeper depths is believing of a wonder.

Beware how the quiet surface holds hope.

Remember place can exist untouched.

Gain satiety will want to chance another dive.

Ocean of any deep is another’s invisible soul.

Stay tied down for someone’s ocean brings lashing.

Finding any bottom begins a greater journey.

Jump in head first is for unbelievable fun only once.

By moving against a tide will enter that best of you.

To exist wending a way across the ocean

Makes known of life its most dangerous potion.

Perfect Pair

Death is life’s closest friend.

Never once to make amend.

By pain from some quiet perch,

Death jumps, ends every search.

From the living seeking a halt,

Even before owning a fault.

There! Hidden from light of day,

No face, no feet, death stays away.

Just beyond a mind’s lasting fate.

It lurks, death will no longer wait.

Bring on the pain of life’s moan

That adds no escape of death’s groan.

Death holds that power of no retreat.

Never a care to a prayer’s defeat.

Carried along as if there is hope,

All clever gods have that gift to cope.

But never added moment for an ant.

No time given to can or can’t.

That joy of oneself, as special me,

Is life’s perfect fit as one, two, three.

Then there is arriving number four.

Over grand stars still to soar.

By outfoxing death, if to dare,

Before we become a perfect pair.

The Endless War. Who Is God?

Characters

Unseen Voice

William Daniels

Roger

Nurse

Aides

Doctor

Scene 1

Unseen Voice

So to begin. The purpose for this view into reality is it to inquire who is god? Yes. Do lean closer. So where is god? But not what is god. Sounds straightforward, the seeking for the answer, only when desired solution is to be found in the following observation, god is somewhere if not surely here. Why can’t it be both or anywhere? Let’s find out. You see, the problem is found in the answer. Let’s get god before us, in the open, so to speak. Yes, the way god should be examined as each one of you is examining almost every day. (Light laugh.) No, no. I’m not god with an answer for you. From the first of life and on to yours, the answer has to be usable so as to keep you moving forward to grander conclusions for your thoughts. Eventually to come upon the whole story of what is life for. As of this moment, you are where every real story begins and is to progress. The next moments will move you on by pushing against the over depended upon past into that ever clearing up future.

The room of a hospital slowly becomes visible slowly to show a fully equipped room with two beds, one with a patient sleeping. Medical wiring extends from the wall. Hospital sounds are in the background.

To begin with, I am here as the inquisitive part inside everyone of you. I am intended to observe and discover the hoped for entrance that stretches beyond each brain wanting to find the way out of the present to that magnificent future. Yes, I, too, seek the only entrance into an ever best to be, which is spelled to sound like god even when spelled backwards and that includes that person asleep from drugs. Together let us get on to that waiting tomorrow which is worthy for trying to find and hold on to