Category Archives: Poetry

The Wisdom of Myth

Adrift by Locopelli at deviantart.com

In our modern arrogance we wanted to demythologize the world
Science and rationality became our new gods, but now they served us
Creation became merely resources for consumption turned to capital
Capitalism became the religion of the new age, money became meaning
Wisdom was abandoned for data and people became means to profit

Yet, I continue to seek the wisdom of myth, the reason of religion
Returning to the songs passed through the ages that taught us to sing
The yearning of our ancestors for a story that tells where we came from
That gives us a frame to understand who we are in relation to the world
Common stories that give meaning, that bear some ancient knowledge

Were the myths misused in the past to divide and to destroy, yes
Just as science, rationality and capitalism have all been used to enslave
And there is no going back to some imagined past before our postmodern age
Perhaps in listening again not only to these stories and the world they imagine
But also, to the society they tried to form and the wonder the inspired

How creatures of creation came to understand their place in a world of magic
A porous world where the divine and the demonic were not far from the surface
A world saturated by meaning through the stories that shaped the people
Perhaps they were merely the ruminations of old men or the tales of women
The ravings of a misunderstood prophet or the songs of kings and queens

And though it is the path overgrown with weeds, I still try to traverse
This quest for wisdom in the myths of our ancestors, the sense in the stories
Which might help me to use the data and science of our time in ways humane
To see the creation beyond the consumption, the people behind the profit
To seek a society where my children can know both knowledge and wisdom
Myth and math, story and science, money and meaning, and so I seek

Fortune

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The Prophet (nogard86 at deviantart.com)

Fortune

Ascend all you augurs and astrologers in agony but not antipathy
Beings banished at the behest of barons and bureaucrats beyond
Chance the chanting of your cadence clear into crystalline caves
Divining the design of destiny; you dabble and daub and deliberate
Echoing Elohim or Eros or the Ennead, earth and energy enervated
Fulfilled filter for future fortunes, fool fount of the fates
Grasping for grace, grappling with gods;griping, grousing gazer
Haruspex of Helen, hold hard the heel of Hermes, ye harbingers of hell
Inspiration or Justification, Karma or Kairos come at last
Magus, medium, medicine man, necromancer, obfuscator, ovate
Plundered prophet promising to prevail in profusely promulgated prayer
Recalling in a rasp revelation released or read rapturously
Scanned in the stars as you stand, stumbled upon softly is the surge of sea
Totem trying to thrive, timing the turning of the tarot or tea leaves
Universal venture of wanting, ye xenophiles yearning for zen

This was a challenge for the Common Language Project: had to be less than thirty lines and use the following thirty words without change to tense or form: agony, ascend, behest, cadence, chance, clear, crystalline, daub, design, destiny, echoing, filter, fool, fulfilled, grace, heel, last, plundered, prevail, rasp, revelation, scanned, stand, stumbled, surge, thrive, timing, totem, trying and venture. An enjoyable afternoon challenge.

The Air is Heavy

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Image from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140130190453.htm

The air is heavy as it fills my lungs with its leaden weight
For in this springtime of the year in addition to the pollen,
The heavy perfume of the earth reawakening from its slumber
The emergence of wildflowers and bees and leave on the trees
Comes the weight of our fears over the death of the world we know
While the rest of creation emerges from its wintry hibernation
We confine ourselves to our modern caves repaying sabbaths missed
While the bird songs fill the morning light, we sing a dirge
Like children caught between dance and death we are unsatisfied
And we grieve the world transformed in ways we didn’t forsee

The air is heavy as the alveoli slowly force it back into the sky above
Breathing out the pain and the sadness, the life and the death
As each lobe automatically works to push the moist carbon dioxide
Through the bronchi and trachea to be expelled out of the mouth
Carrying on its respiration a heavy prayer for some lighter air
When we gathered in great numbers to sing and dance and jump
Sitting at the banquet table eating rich food and drinking well aged wine
Eating the marrow of life and drinking the wine strained clear
Never thinking that death could swallow this up so quickly
And the shroud would lie over so many people from so many nations

The air that bears the unweighable virus can seem so heavy
As we try to launch our saline filled cries up into the heavens
Waiting behind the high fortifications of our walls for the day
When we can open the gates in joyous celebration and lightness
For the air is no longer heavy and we can breathe freely again
For the shroud has been removed and death is swallowed up
And prayers are finally answered as tears are wiped away
The city’s life which has been placed in a coma awakens
As our lungs fill with the warm but lighter air of summer

Song of Creation

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By NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) – http://hubblesite.org/image/3471/news_release/2015-01, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38165284

What is the palette in which the master artist dipped the brush that painted in colors?
Or what thunderous notes did the creator sing to tune the sun and stars and quasars?
Which no eye would see, nor any ear hear, nor thought comprehend for millions of years
Where the colors spoken into being or where did they burst onto the scene with the elements
Did spirits or angels go to gather them together at their master’s directing like treasure hunters
Or was it the act of a solitary composer working in silence waiting to create an audience
Crafting the depths of the universe and sprinkling brilliant light into the blackness of the abyss
Singing into the silence of space a symphonic composition whose melodies gave form and shape
Whose beat marked the passage of days and millennia as the spheres turned and the cosmos shone.

What runes were hidden deep within the caverns of the earth which are the hidden signature
Of the master artist waiting to be discovered by those who peer deeply into the painting?
What fingerprints might remain from the act of raising the mountains and carving canyons?
Do the notes of the songbird echo some piece of the melody of the maker, a reflected praise?
Or the whale song of the deep form a baseline with the rumble of the continental drift?
Might the human drive of curiosity be the imprint of the master’s image on the creature?
The drive to delight in the possibilities of the palette of the painting they reside within
The desire to listen to the melody of the cosmos in all its wide range of sounds
To develop eyes to see and ears to hear and minds to comprehend their place in the picture
To join the song and dance in delight at the magic of the universe’s echo of the song it learned
At the knee of its creator and which it continues to sing as it wonders at its majesty

The Suburbs of Hell

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Mauricio Garcia Vega “Visita al infierno’ shared by artist under Creative Commons 3.0

“All those eyes intent on me. Devouring me. What? Only two of you? I thought there were more; many more. So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE!” Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“Hell is a state of mind – ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind – is, in the end, Hell.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

What if the existentialists were wrong seeing in others eyes the mirror that condemns themselves?
That their self-directed focus loosed the bonds of the compassion experienced in community
Their desire to liberate themselves from the plight of humanity became their own chains
Which they forged like Marley in Dickens’ Christmas Carol when their neighbor no longer mattered
Their revelation became the great unseeing of their place within the covenant of the commonwealth
Where they looked at the unenlightened with disdain seeking to isolate themselves in their suffering
As they moved into the suburbs of hell to discover what one slowly but inexorably uncovers
That the mirror that condemns oneself is the looking glass of one’s own crafting they gaze into
Discovering in their loneliness that hell is a dungeon of one’s own mind that they are locked within
And the only key to salvation, though it goes against every practice they’ve embraced, every dogma
Is the other people they feared would see them as they are and would deem them unlovable

Perhaps they, like the denizens of C.S. Lewis’ vision, looked with disgust and moved themselves
Further and further away from the city, further away from the possibility of looking into another’s eye
As they move further and further into the wilderness to build their utopias in their grey worlds
Building the walls higher around their stately grounds along roads that no one travels
Locking themselves inside their places of paranoia and safety, hoarding their treasure like dragons
And still Amazon delivers to these unmapped places all the possessions which come to possess
Houses full of unopened boxes with smiles upon the side for people who no longer smile
“I think therefore I am” proclaimed their apostle Descartes as they declared the world outside false
No need for the flames of the lake of fire nor demonic torturers and devilish prison wardens
They in their own self-flagellation willingly wield the red-hot pokers unwilling to accept forgiveness
Remaining locked inside their self-imposed sentence of solitary confinement for unknown offenses

The Vision

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Creek babbling through Benvoulin wetlands in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, Capture from video shared by Extemporalist under Creative Commons 1.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Creek_babbling_through_Benvoulin_wetlands.webm

The Vision

The stream burbled patiently singing its tune
As the sun shone in a ray through the break in the trees
While dragonflies danced and frogs played
In the early summer’s warmth of this peaceful place
My secret place where others rarely enter
A space to commune with the undisturbed world
To delight in the slow and steady rhythm of the creator
Where every mote of dust reflects magic and light
And heaven and earth are not so far apart
This thin space where sometimes epiphanies occurs

Into this peaceful space emerges a hawk, proud and strong
Soaring in to rest upon the branch an ancient oak tree
And it watches me watching it with knowing eyes
A herald of the mystery that awaits unveiling in that space
Rustling through the underbrush another unexpected guest
Emerging with his royal blue head from the undergrowth
Strutting into this magical place with his myriad eyes
As he quickly expands his tailfeathers in proud display
Looking imperially at the human who happens to be
In this space where creation came to play in delight
To dance in the joy of the creator’s masterwork

As nature continued to roll back her curtain of majesty
Rolling out her green carpet to await the celebration
Out of the mystery steps lady wisdom cloaked in green
With her escorts, a stag on her left and a wolf on her right
The frogs cease their croaking chorus
Dragonflies circle to land on the cat lilies
The peacock bows his proud blues head
the hawk swoops down to land upon her shoulder
While I stand transfixed by this moment of mystery
All watch as she brings forth an egg from her cloak
Which she cradles in her hands like the greatest treasure
As the creation watches this miracle of new birth

Somehow, I know to look away not to look unmediated
At the divine drama unfolding in this beautiful place
But from the reflection of the stream I see her lay
The dormant egg into a thick blanket of green grass
And from the bed of green emerges red, yellow, blue and orange
As nature’s nest burns and yet remains unconsumed
And I wonder if I, like Moses, stand on sacred ground
As the new chick emerges with a cry of victory
From fire and light and ash the new phoenix emerges
Spreading its wings towards the waiting sky
Looking to its dominion among the heavens

Before it flies away from this place it scooped
By the woman’s gentle hands and they share a second
As all the earth bows in this moment of mystery
Wolf and stag bend low, peacock and hawk
Even the trees themselves seem to stoop
As creation lifts its joyous song and the resurrection
The revelation that magic has not left the creation
And I, on behalf of humanity lie upon the verdant ground
In wonder and awe as a witness of this sight

As quickly as it was revealed it is concealed
Nature closes her curtain and the world returns
To the chorus of frogs and the dance of dragonflies
The woman and her escorts are gone
Back behind the shroud of the ancient trees of the forest
The phoenix disappears into the heavens
Shining as radiant and dazzling as the beaming sun
Yet, I remain stunned at this dream, this vision
Wondering at what I have seen as the memories fade
And so, I grab my pen and write furiously
Trying to capture the essence of the epiphany
Of the magic and mystery at work in the world
Masked but to those who sit in the thin spaces
Where heaven and earth are not so far apart

Hungry Ghosts

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By Unknown – Tokyo National Museum, Emuseum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8005338

These insatiable spirits prowl on the edges of our vision
Consuming the gifts left for them but remaining unsatisfied
You can open the storehouse of your treasures in offering
But these hungry ghosts will always leave with wails of despair
And if you let them, they will invite you to join them in their cries
To see the scarcity where once abundance filled the table
To be consumed by comparison between yourself and others
Becoming a haunted and gaunt person whose joy has left them
Locked into their spiritual plane of hoarding and isolation
Where others become those whose happiness you must haunt
And you are only a shadow of man or woman of generosity

But these ghosts that haunt the edges of your happiness aren’t dead
Like emotional vampires they seek those whose joy they can drain
For they believe that in draining the life of others than can return
Resurrected in the act of dogging another’s actions for the moment
Living off the sacrifice of another’s ego, creating another hungry ghost
But their curse is to remain unsatisfied, consumed by their greed
Seeking that which can never satisfy, spending on that which is not food
Seeking life in the paths of death, seeking happiness in their gluttony
Show them kindness, but never look for their thankfulness
For these hungry ghosts are never satisfied, though their bellies burst
And don’t dwell in their haunts, don’t heed their haunted cries
Lest you too take up their ungrateful calls and their mournful cry

Bleeding Words

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Captain Jay Ruffins, 17th Century Quills from Rufus King Manor museum in Jamaica, Queens shared under Creative Commons 4.0 Share Alike

Forgive the words that bleed out from this pen
For the ink that forms them is a torturous mixture
Of a wounded heart’s flow mixed with the saline
Of the river of tears which flow to the sea of grief
And the trembling hands which wield the implement
Shake as they attempt to record the wounds of the world
And like so much spilled blood it rushes like streams
To poison the wells of joy that once nourished

Perhaps like the prophets’ words later generations may see
That these harsh words were the fertilizer for some new growth
Where those who mourn may be comforted as the tears dry
And the poet’s heart is lovingly knit back together by time
Then perhaps the words will be the creative words of spring
But now those words are an unknown language strange to the ear
Words whose syllables have no meaning to the grieving soul
Who must drink of the putrid waters of their own well

For everything there is a time, a time to bleed and a time to heal
And I must speak the words of that bubble up from the well of the soul
Where the light of life seems a tremulous flame in the squall
Where the cold of winter penetrates into the marrow of the bones
And where the slow tick of the clock marks the passage of pain
While I wait for the pen to slowly run out of this tortured ink
For the rivers to dry up as the sun reemerges from its dormancy
Longing for the language whose sounds my tongue cannot form
Joyously drinking from the sweet waters of newly dug wells

The Quiet One

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La Porte dr l’Enfer a ete dressee dans les jardins du musee Rodin (The Thinker at the Gates of the Inferno and the Museum in Rodin)

My quietness has a man in it, he is transparent
Frank O’Hara, “In Memory of Feelings”

The Quiet One

I don’t have the words so in silence I stand
While everyone’s words are a radiant band
And the conversation lives all around me
But my silence is the one thing it cannot see
Quietly I realize my greatest fear
I dissipate into the atmosphere
With ease they shout and even scream
While I’m caught in this silent dream
They draw to them every light and color
Trying to verbally eclipse one another
While I fade into darkness, shadow and night
Merely a shape illuminated by their light

But in the dark corners of this private hell
Where the quiet ones so often tend to dwell
Look closely, you might just see a quiet man
One who few take the time to understand
Slowly drifting from their lusty laughter
Unwelcome in their happily ever after
Trapped by the words that will not come
That will not pass his leaden tongue
Desperately desiring that wordy key
Which unlocks the palaver’s mystery
The speakers’ words seem to simply glide
While his slow forming thoughts continue denied
Verbal impotence has come like a sudden attack
Their parlay continues as he fades to black

If you approach him for a tête-à-tête
Enter his silence and dwell there a bit
Seeking the thoughts that the silence may hold
If only the words were somewhat more bold
Would you encounter shadows and night?
Or would the thoughts unspoken be equally bright
For sometimes the quite voices screen
Rare beauties that are but seldom seen
The mind too full for conversation to proclaim
Whose inner world galaxies might contain
But the crowded world in conversation bright
Will never quiet down to see their light

Sign of the Rose

Searchings: Sacred and Secular

Category Archives: Poetry

The Wisdom of Myth

Fortune

The Air is Heavy

Song of Creation

The Suburbs of Hell

The Vision

Hungry Ghosts

Bleeding Words

The Quiet One

The Quiet One