Blog Business

Posted on February 24, 2021 by J

WordPress has become a stranger to me, and I am only slowly getting reacquainted.

When I started posting here again recently, after a long time off, I was pleased to find that readers were finding my posts and often Liking them. I wasn’t doing anything to publicize, so this attention was especially delightful. Naturally, I wanted to visit and read in return. But the first time I wanted to Like something, I could not figure out how. I looked for Like buttons on other blogs, and had no luck. What does it mean, I wonder, that I can’t find them even on my own posts, when other readers have been able to leave Likes?

Please be assured that I am interested in others’ writings and have been visiting. If you have any clues to the mysteries alluded to herein–feel free to leave a comment. As far as I know, they are enabled to those logged in to WordPress and the general public alike, but who knows. I don’t know what the default settings are, and I might once have clicked on the wrong thing and never even known it.

It isn’t just that I’m old(-ish); I’ve been online for a long time and was pretty active once. No, one just gets really, really tired of having to figure out the same things over and over because they change just a little too much to keep up with readily. Web sites seem to me like the teachers we all hated–the ones who gave a million hours of homework as if their class were the only one, as if we weren’t also juggling who knows how many other demands. My patience for all this is far more limited than my mental capacity.

Regardless, I will continue to post poems and tell a little about them and the process by which they came. If anyone is interested in poetry, and especially the magic inherent to its manifold ways–the magic that activates in both practitioners and sensitive hearers–I am here.

And if anyone would like to share outside resources along the same lines, as well as or rather than your personal insights, you are welcome here too.

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Persons

Posted on February 24, 2021 by J

This morning I was hearing measures in our dream meter again. They are terse, as usual; short lines don’t permit a lot of explication. As always, everything means more than one thing. They only sound as mysterious as need be–we would be content with prose if there were no mysteries to be invoked. As so often, this has a sting in its tail–and title. This title is highly significant. The last line quotes the content of the message received. It says, Let ‘her,’ not let ‘me.’ So who sent it?

24 February 2021

29

A Third Person

Tell me how the light of silver

first became the shining veil

and then the face beneath it, wilting

sadly–teller, tell the tale–

Outside by the lore of darkness

sorrow is not gained or lost

only magnified by starlight

through a lace of needle-frost

become a hermit-chamber’s curtain

keeping secrets close inside

even as the stars all curse–their

spears are small the air is wide–

little celebrations brighten

future moods unseen for now

razor sharp the bitter light of

looking at her eyes and brow

clouds amass and close the window

mind is changed but still in doubt

nothing ever happens incense

used to but it’s long gone out

she was by the window shining

light became her she became

intimate with my desire as

something in her shone the same

or seemed to shine–the broken window’s

tear-refraction meant my eye

unveiled a deeper secret signal–

let her let her let her die.

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More Than Happy

Posted on February 23, 2021 by J

Images that shift and change even as I am describing them are nothing new. They take a light hand to keep in just enough order to prevent the dreaded mixed metaphors from breaking out all over. I’ve been reading about dreaming, especially lucid dreaming. I’ve done it, but I’ve always been a little cautious about the whole idea. Why introduce ego into a place that seems free of it, where things can otherwise play out without frightened I-me-mine interference?

This has been addressed, and it isn’t so different from what happens when I compose verses. The images have to be allowed to come of themselves; I do not interfere. Just as in dreams, this means things can get a little corny, or cliche–dammit, is that another rose?–but not for long. Nothing holds still long enough to be one simple thing. Let the pictures form and move, and let any interfering mind busy itself with prosodical concerns. Is there another word that means ____ but sounds more like ____? That sort of thing. Keep the kids occupied, and they’ll let the singer sing on.

This work has a built-in between-the-worldsness that goes so far beyond what I was warned about. The divide between the literary world and that of experiencers of liminal worlds is wide and deep. Poets are almost always people who are attracted to strangeness in the first place, but somewhere along the way, the ones who play the academic game get frightened out of most of their wits. They shut down their real interests and get professional and correct. It’s sickening to witness. They all know better, but feel so constrained. Poets have such a high suicide rate. And academia controls public poetry now more than ever, because of the popularity of creative writing graduate programs and the need to employ at least a few of those who go there and complete the expensive terms. Their biographical notes in the journals that publish their work are grim. Degrees, awards, publications, check–as many as possible. No imagination, no poetry whatsoever–officially proscribed. When I was younger, the spirits advised me that those sorts of activities are excuses to put off facing the real work one has agreed to take on.

Now I am wondering about something that has drawn me, but not caught me–do called, inspired poets have a high suicide rate, or is it mostly those who have misunderstood? Calling is real; talent is real. The non-literary thinkers and researchers I have been reading, such as those involved with the excellent book Irreducible Mind, have no problem with the idea that inspiration is real, and spiritual, and that inspired artists do not work alone. This is such a comfort, I can’t begin to tell you. All these years I have prefaced nearly every attempted discussion of what I really do with a lot of hedging and as-if-ing. It has set in as a habit, but it is one I am trying to break. No more explaining: inspiration is real, and it’s happening. No beliefs involved.

Some days are better, easier, than others. Sometimes everything gets jammed up; other times it all falls together so gracefully. That is what I mean–working by inspiration means feeling the presence of that grace and leaning lightly on its shoulder, Don’t scratch yourself on its sprouting pinions! And–we are multi-dimensional, so we cannot help being religiously multi-cultural. If it comes from a true source, it will play out true. Winged nightmare horsey angels, weep your starry tears–we come to be with you because you make us more than happy.

23 February 2021

28

Your Future Night-Days

She’s starting to scare me a little. She told me–not even a moment ago–there were buds

that might, in a credible future, begin to grow open–and that’s when the tears came in floods.

I knew she was telling the truth. And the petals inside, and the warmth, and the heartbeat beneath?

Petals turned out to be feathers, and soon they were cast to the wind and its sharp winter teeth.

Riding the back of a nightmare behind them, I witnessed their terror–and ultimate strength.

Nobody shines a grim light through the eyes of the one in pursuit for the full drawn-out length

of the story to follow; it glows of its own hooded malice. The feathers grow birds, and their lungs’

very air-bearing power sustains, and has often, the climber whose teeth mount the air-ladder rungs

of the storm in its gathering menace and majesty. Storm, are you made up of wind, and ill will?

I am beginning to find myself frightened. She wounded me once, and she’s dangerous still.

A dream’s coming on in the sleep I will sleep when this moment has passed and a better one dawned.

Till then, my nightmare, turn round and remind me this tale has the mouth that most certainly yawned

like a black-cactus canyon and drawn in its badness just slowly enough for as long as it took

my own heart to be burdened with knowledge of gathering madness that won’t be confined to a book

to be written at some unknown date in a future that might never happen–but suddenly–this

little magical offering, gesture, and sigh–I’m a truth-telling creature; a rocket of bliss

shot out of–the picture, as if she propelled it by sheer force of flame in the eyes of a horse.

The treasure, the delicate offering never delivered before, is advanced on its course;

the grateful recipient pictures the spirit their pleasure will conjure on seeing this gift;

the one who is prostrate and barely holds on to their nightmare in flight will feel all their spine lift;

their skin will flow over with shivers of energy everywhere recognized, even by blood;

and the universe–always the most painful burden–will open its mouth to a song in full flood,

and the one who will catch its first undilute potency must be afraid till they’ve learned its edge ways–

but the moment will pass as it always will pass like the one close behind you, your future night-days

coming on in a rush as if memory burned itself backwards in mind as the weather grows strong.

Why were you wearing a hood, but for fear of the sky’s angry tears at the lack of your song?

You’re being woven alive between petals and feathers in two pairs of hands not your own.

Look up alive at the lowering sky and be gratefully humble for this sordid zone,

this humanest place in an echoing universe–skin prickled over with pinions by night,

night being lengthened till darkness grows endles– and yet there is silence that shines a strong light,

and incense that breathes forth the ozone of heaven as under the feathers the bird’s fragrant skin–

all of a sudden–releases its wonderful message–you’re here, where we all rebegin.

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No End of Dancing Days

Posted on February 22, 2021 by J

Whenever anyone tries to shut you down, you are touching something sensitive, and there is a reason for the negative response. And–having touched nothing that I can tell, the word-processing program I am writing this on just disappeared my cursor, causing me to stop typing and try to figure out where it went. What was I going to say?

Before the interruption, I was about to explain that being shut down is a clue to where the hidden power lies. You are approaching too closely to a protected area. Mockery and jeering are typical methods of blocking a dreaded topic from being spoken of. Watch out for such places, and spend some time there. What is being suppressed?

Poets supposedly have license to take words where others are not encouraged to go, but even we face restrictions on all sides. We all know that some topics are approved, even fashionable; others are distasteful for any number of constantly-changing reasons. Curiously, many of those reasons focus on things associated with women–emotion, intuition, spirituality, change. Feelings–irrational, subtle, sometimes uncontrollable–that create change. Anyone might hesitate if they knew they were about to feel something that might change how they see themselves forever, so how to keep that from happening? It’s not enough to stay away from poets and the worrying things they say; better to get to them and try to stop them before they start. Ever heard of something called–the Church?

So many topics, or subjects, or domains of creativity are unfashionable, unapproved, and casually made fun of. The stuff of poetry is and always has been, everywhere, intense feeling and the change it brings in its wake, which cannot then be distinguished from magic–whatever one considers magic to be. And the intense feelings that call it forth–these are dismissed by those more critical than imaginative as ‘adolescent.’ There is a key power-word! What do sensitive adolescents obsess about? The very things that we are taught to deride as adults: any direct focus on art, romance, dreams–any admission that these things are being sought directly–and any hope of a response, certainly; any visible devotion as opposed to public piety. When I was young, there was a simple test: Have you read The White Goddess? Did you admire it? Mocked and dismissed. Not because it isn’t real–but because it is too embarrassing for critical sorts to acknowledge that it is entirely too real and means far too much. Here is another example: Where do young women, still coming of age, congregate to give themselves over to spirit? Church? More likely pop music concerts. They can abandon themselves to feelings of love and desire worked to such a pitch that they bring ecstasy. Though their ecstasy is fleeting, it is real, and those who partake of it will never forget it. They should have all they want of it, and more. Some poets would do anything in their power to bring it to them. But we all know how much the world respects young women. And poets.

So one could do worse than to refuse and reverse the blocking, and then to approach the proscribed sensitive places and mine them deep. Most of what will be found there is already well-known, but experiencing it all over again makes it far more fascinating. Every inhibition banished increases strength. And strength, once acquired, is somehow possible to lend. Borrow a little here if need be, and rave on.

And now I’m about to try to answer my own next question: What does one do when one’s ‘personal myth’ becomes known and is no longer a mystery to be unveiled? My suspicion is that one starts over, all over again. True stories always have deeper levels and secondary tales untold. All of this is still waiting–did you really have something more reasonable to do?

Dancing has been mentioned here before. It isn’t a metaphor; I started dancing as a child and only gave it up because of old-person joint damage. I knew it couldn’t last forever, so years ago I started using dance-trances as a storage battery. So much vision and energy remain alive within the permanent circle created by years and years of faithful practice. What I was seeing in dancing was seeing me. This is from that place:

22 February 2021

27

Seen by Dancing

I’d been told you were shy, so I lingered a little remotely before drifting into your ken–

only to find you’d been waiting and almost lost faith. Oh, the ways she escapes mortal men.

In the main, it seems magic will hover, then vanish–taking away with it so much you want.

Sometimes she’s followed you down the sad pathways–I’ve seen it in dancing. You’re starting to haunt–

your own self, recoiling from too-early contact. Poor little creature, in shivering fear,

help as I turn the next page of the story and what to uninnocent eyes should appear–

but a child with an apple in one hand, a feather and something too heavy to bear home alive

in the other. He’s wincing and limping; he’s used to it now, but it’s forced his frustration to strive

where there used to be laughter the length of the journey. Woe to the walker who goes alongside;

this flagging person is oftimes betrayed by his penchant for someone who won’t be a bride

because far higher causes have called her to worship at altars so distant, he’s faint as his hopes.

Staggering downhill, his body grown heavy–he’s passed it, the peak; these are steepening slopes

to the river that runs through the orcharded valley; wherever he wanders today, he’ll be found.

Up to his neck in a dream of a misty grey love-marveled story: A dead body drowned

its unfortunate teller in order to tell it more strangely, with watery figures–afloat

in the first rushing current, a sailor who worshipped the Moon. Now his sight is entirely remote

from its first place of contact with worlds outside windows where visions grow sharper and greener each day.

Little one carrying one pinion feather, the woe in your eyes for the one gone away

has attained to a depth of inordinate sorrow so eerie–so silently febrile with dread–

a splinter that flies from the tip of a newly lit match through a window inside his sore head–

When the wild conflagration is over and nothing but ashes remains on the floor of this room,

how will the child have begun the recounting of magic that spelled a whole world’s certain doom

when it entered his broad field of vision in serial forms, every one of them limpid with grace,

dripping like tears down the slightly-averted left profile of her who would not show her face

to anyone else–and will not to him, either, entirely? She’s waiting–he hasn’t tried yet.

Evening will lower itself very gently, immense with the cast vatic shadow of wet

night altars in rain in a valley of orchards and springs that are fed by a source he can’t see.

Why will he stand with his bowed head uncovered and weep for the lover who’s here, even–me?

Someone once whispered so softly, so shyly, and reached with a hand that so trembled–poor child,

the reasons are many, but one bright among them is burning with shame that, if left to grow wild,

he might–will–on the instant–in rushing of winds down a mountain on fire like the peaks of our past–

dissolve into oceans of limitless weeping. This cannot be real. It’s all happened so fast.

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Elf-Shot Arrow

Posted on February 21, 2021 by J

The bells of the local Catholic church just rang out noon as I finished today’s work, only a minute or two ago. It hasn’t been that long since I always worked in the evening because the world outside was quieter. That was important to my concentration. Now, I am trying to trust that I will hear what I need to hear even if there is a bit of interference.

Some of the verses I have posted lately might have a familiar sound to them. They are still in my favored amphibrachs, but the lines have been cut in half–four beats each, rather than eight. The long lines are important because they can convey more substance than small swift verse lines, but the smaller lines must be tighter. They have to seem like fragile little wisps of air and yet have load-bearing strength because only ‘time’ will tell how much heaviness they carry at heart.

The piece below did not come as swiftly as yesterday. First I saw a large, tightly-folded pink rosebud, which was shot and transfixed by an arrow before it could open. Then that dissolved, and I saw an orchard that was either in bloom or snow. There was concern over human activity, which has always tended to prove destructive. Can the orchard protect itself? Should it? The cousins were close long ago, but they seem to be on either side of a perceptual divide now. One fey, one human? It seems the answer can never be fully yes or no. Then this:

21 February 2021

26

As They Imagine Us

Our cousins first met when these mountains were wrinkles

in Earth’s distant future, its face was so young.

Down in the valley the trees were all singing,

their branches with faery snow heavily hung.

When in the autumn the orchard turns gloomy,

the trees in their numbers and staggering rows

stand sadly surrounded–a wind bearing human

malevolence steadily, steadily blows,

and they know where it comes from–another world’s weather.

Before, long ago, the same wind came by day,

and everything caught in its outbreath lay dead in

a heartbeat–a breath that taught cursewords to pray.

These trees are close listeners. Ghosts sing out secrets.

They might need a while yet to foster the blaze,

but ours lit a marvel of flame at the peak of

the mountain to come where the cousins part ways

between then and this most human-tainted of moments,

ancestors silent as incense’s song.

Everything leans to the lore of the slow-growing

wind of a dead future–grown overstrong–

till a sighing ghost-breath comes to play at the edges

of all the green orchard–and every young face

that peers from amidst the embrace of fresh petals.

What faeries imagine will likely take place;

when we look ahead, there’s an orchard turned gloomy

with winter approaching us–death-weather grim–

but petals like mountains of snow. In their future,

we’re cursewords turned music–less human than hymn.

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Un-Thought-Out

Posted on February 20, 2021 by J

This will probably be brief, because I am still considering what just happened. The verses to follow came very, very quickly; I only paused at one point because I was unsure I could hear clearly enough. I have been reading about dreaming and feeling cut off from mine. My recall is quite poor now, so sometimes the things I read make me a bit nostalgic. I don’t fight the amnesia, though, as I was once sort of burned out on working so hard all night long and gave myself permission to rest. That will wear off someday. Until then, I have been learning more about how to dream awake. The poems have always known.

Allowing song rhythms to gently entrance one’s waking mind is key. In my dancing days, song rhythms literally surrounded me. My last beloved favorite song artist for dancing was Dorothy Love Coates, an African-American gospel singer whose work carried extraordinary power. In one of her songs–she wrote them–she sang, Have you ever seen the saints do a holy dance? I would be in my room dancing, feeling that she could see me.

Something in my character needs to do the hard part first and get it over with. Then, we say, we’ll sing and dance. Nightmare and her various masks started out as my Night Mother–the one who was a little scary because darkness is scary, but she was kind to me and helped me protect myself when my day mother was unkind. My day mother feared and hated my poetic vocation, so with her I pursued a dual strategy of fighting openly for the bookish side of my work and completely hiding the magical and inspired side. Nightmare fostered me in magic. In spite of the slightly gothic name I gave her, she also insisted on integrity at all times and strengthened me only in protection, never aggression. Everyone who works for Love has to pass that test.

Nightmare, like the wrathful Tibetan deities, will without fail reveal a far different face before the story is all told. We know it in our bones; we knew it before we set out. The Lord and the Lady are still in their bedchamber, entertaining one another. We are their stories and their dreams, one which is starting to dream about waking up from a dream of its own.

20 February 2021

25

New Moon and Eye

She dropped it, and then she stood looking down sadly.

Many a glittering, beckoning shard

shone from a very dark place on the carpet.

You’re thinking about it a little too hard.

She might take you over and move you to murder.

She might find you absent and send you away.

Nothing that shone in her eyes like the yearning

you worshipped her with did her face once display–

till you glimpsed a small spot in the gathering future,

held it in mind, and in close central view

found a long-lost secret room and made use of

its library opening volumes of you–

who knew she would only submit to entreaties

the instant they’d crossed a strange line like the edge

of the shard of clear glass where it focuses gleamings

of light to an opening razoring wedge

that slides down a fold in your love-rendered garment,

gently revealing one wearing a clear,

clear light in its liquid dimension like starry

designs in the heavens that wish you were here

in her arms as she stares as you sadly and beckons.

All the sharp razors lie melted with new,

strange species of what could be light if you let it.

That wasn’t magic, what happened to you.

She held a glass in her hand till she dropped it.

You picked it up and drank deeply–still full,

it glowed in your hand till you drank–and forgot it.

New Moon and eye, she’s your sky’s tidal pull.

P.S.: True story–just as I was about to click ‘Save’ on this post, my neighbor knocked on my door with a bowl of amazingly fragrant homemade soup. Signs can’t get much better!

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Magic Is Afoot

Posted on February 19, 2021 by J

Recent entries here have fallen into a format that I see some potential in and will probably use for a while. The Vita Nuova example I mentioned in an earlier post has always held a lot of interest for me. One can read only the poem itself for privacy with the text, then read the author’s perspective on the poem and its arising. It’s a bit self-correcting, too; if one post gets too far into its topic, or off-topic, the next day brings a chance to continue on course or change, a little or a lot.

‘Writer’s Block’ has always troubled me a great deal. It hasn’t always been easy to explain how I mean it. It isn’t so much been the legendary fear of the Blank White Page and the difficulty of getting started as the fear of not being able to stop, of feeling compelled to continue for as long as the words and ideas keep coming. An empty page always made me feel I was standing on a precipice. Once I started falling, I could not stop myself–once the words were rushing through my head, I could only keep writing them down. This need not even involve poetry. School papers stressed me just as much. What would happen if I quit in the middle of a page? Something so dreadful it mustn’t be thought about, apparently; that is what my apprehension keeps saying.

There’s a split in the world of words and people who write them down that has always affected me. My commitment to poetry is strong, and has included the study of classic works and the English canon. But, being a lyric poet, I must concern myself with magic as much literary precedent. And I have also studied spiritual traditions and texts, but I cannot plant myself there for too long because, again, being a poet comes first and real poetry just absolutely will not bow to human ideology. I am happy to work anywhere I feel living spiritual grace, but I grow restless and have other places to be if I start to feel too associated with anything fixed and/or manmade for too long. When that happens and I fall back on my literary foundations, my work eventually threatens to fossilize in the other direction and become too heady and self-aware as an undertaking of text-production. This shows in my verses when there are many references to pages and leaves and sheets–we are reminding ourselves that we are working in a visionary world but also writing it down and trying to keep up standards. Standards, flags, red flags, spirits flagging–it’s happening even here. Vision never rests, but poets must, so….

One can cut off a poem mid-stanza, of course, but it’s like waking in the middle of a dream–one will never know how it was going to end. And yet we are considering the nature of time, and its unreality. The ending that will never be known is already and will always be known.

Ultimately, my work as poet is to write it all down both while and after it is seen and lived as far through as I am able. Then we can talk about what it means and what human ideas it seems connected with. Try keeping that in mind for more than a minute–it isn’t easy! Everything here is slippery and ever-changing. That’s how we know it’s alive.

Until a few years ago, I danced every day. Around and around in a circle, since I was very small. Dancing always preceded composing verses. When I began to accumulate a coherent body of work, the influence of dancing was everywhere. The songs circle around and–THE ELECTRICITY JUST WENT OUT! We haven’t had the harsh storms here that much of this country has had to deal with, so this is quite unexpected. Curiously, today I did something unusual. When I first got up and went to say hello to my altar, I decided to draw one Tarot card just to see if it shows me a theme for the day. The card I turned up was The Magician.

Magic is clearly underfoot, but then when is it not?

Electricity came back on a few minutes later….

Can one’s shadow become one’s friend?

19 February 2021

24

Come Home Who I Am

You wavered a little. The dawn light grew filmy.

I watched from my window–your hesitant form

stood casting a shadow. I prayed it would kill me.

And then from its center, a powerful storm

rose and settled in one sudden instant. The moment

of trouble had passed; there was peace on your brow.

When I look out on a world newly frozen–

the one you inhabit this new moment now–

the wavering runs into static dimensions

through which a clear calling comes cracking the ice

your illuminate greyness complains is a temple

of breakage containing a twilight device

within its most arcane enclosure–bear witness

her shadow side tells you–bear witness alive

and when you are swept from the world and admitted

to mine you will see what I’ve had to midwive

dear lord she has spoken. The window hangs open.

You move back from where you cannot stand again.

Outside the storm has been breaking and broken

forever and now in the sheets of the rain

hangs the plane that was cloven between you all winter.

With spring on the rise and the land turning green,

turn back the light in your eyes–it’s like tinder

to far greater light–you’re about to be seen–

compose yourself traveller sing for a lady

whose wavering form is your lightning-struck own

where it struck first was the ancientest maker

where it has lately can only be known

in the distance behind you wherever you worship

only a shadow of grey like a flag

shuddering under an access of unearned and

absolute magic come home nightmare hag

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Changing Places

Posted on February 18, 2021 by J

This is different and weirder than I have any idea how to begin to explain. The Poetic Mysteries clearly run very much deeper than anyone can see at any given moment. Because I intuited that I should study them in every way I was able, some years ago I turned to dreams as the most readily available source of understanding. For five years, I made dreamwork a full-time occupation. Everything changed because of that.

Dreams provided me with evidence again and again, over an extended period of time, of psychic faculties I knew I had but could not consciously use. And then they went further, to show me abilities I would never have dared to believe in. Chief amongth these was precognition–accurate visions of future events. That part is still sinking in.

Since my days of focused dreamwork, I have continued to think about precognition and to consider what it suggests. Others are working on the same project. For instance, several years ago I ran across a blog called The Nightshirt by a science writer named Eric Wargo. He was posting the most fascinating essays about his own precognitive experiences. Soon I realized I was reading a book in progress. Indeed, it turned out to be Time Loops. I haven’t read the book yet, but I can recommend the validity of the material he posted online. Anyone who wants to argue with him can try!

When I was in ninth grade at school, about 14 years old, I woke up in the grip of a fascinating insight. I tried to write it up into a short story while I could still hold onto it, but I didn’t get much further than the title before the rest escaped me: War Crimes. All I could remember was that it had to do with going back in time to intervene before atrocities took place–future humans, more aware of consciousness and the actual nature of reality, would shift back to the past over and over on clean-up missions to avert disasters, then individual traumas, then bad-energy days in general, and finally even tiny hangnails. Sharp little fingernail parings on the floor, even. Our future selves are trying to tell us, We love you and we don’t want you to suffer, so we will continue to dream and redream the past until it is entirely free of illusion. Time is not real.

Suffering, real suffering and not just unpleasantness, is an altered state of awareness–a bad one. It lies. It says, Time has all but stopped here; pain is all there has ever been and all there will ever be. The profoundly lived insight that time is an illusion is the antithesis and antidote to suffering. If one can keep it in mind–a future self is trying to reach through with the knowing that this is even ‘now’ being resolved. Dreams are infinite, eternal, all encompassing; then they end. Consider by this light the meaning of Boddhisatva vows. Those who have sworn them will not enter enlightenment until every other sentient being has entered before them. No one will be left behind. Along with other illusions dispelled, the true nature of time will be so thoroughly revealed that no one will be able to be trapped in it anymore.

Death by hanging has been a recurring theme for a long time. The interval before the rope snaps taut goes on and on and so does the timeless song. Sometimes I hear echoes. Today feels less Virgin and more White Goddess, so perhaps I ran across a stray thought of e.e. cummings’ “All in Green Went My Love Riding,” and then this happened:

18 February 2021

23

All the While She Sang

Through the forest run the pathways

often dreamt of, seldom seen.

One is woe transfixed by sadness.

One rides in a coat of green

tied all round with silver laces

knotted fast against her breast.

In between and changing places,

shadow riders face northwest

find the pathway leading farther

follow it across a stream

flashing green amidst the starlight

have you seen your rider dream

frequent breaths a ragged answer

fraying at the edges coat

rainy water running after

icy rivers close a throat

knowing narrows in on seeing

nothing but a ghost remains

after she has shared her greenest

mantle and her silver reins

she bids the rider after her, Be

so transparent, no one sees

the hands you hide the while these words in

running rain you bring to me.

In a mantle on a mountain

in an airy field she sang

then he drifted down and down and

snapped he’d had too long to hang.

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Just This Moment

Posted on February 17, 2021 by J

Another piece hot off the presses, with some comments while they are still within reach:

I have mentioned the idea of ‘parings’ enough that it seems to have sunk in. Not only am I considering how they present throughout the day; they are also calling attention to their presence in my work. I found them there in the first place, so it’s only fitting–they can speak for themselves if anyone is listening. I don’t mean ‘they’ as if they were sentient. Sentience is apparently behind them, but they are the finger, not the Moon.

‘She’ does not have a strongly assigned character in most of the lyrics. Her nature is either inferred from the details of the poem, or is familiar from previous work. This work is meant to be shared; it isn’t intensely personal. Readers read from where they are, and will see in her what their own imaginations–or She–needs them to be. Lately she has had a sort of Virgin Mary aura because there has been a lot of pain and conflict in my world and the things most dearly sought were comfort, protection, and healing. My friends and I appealed to the most generously loving female Higher Self we could imagine in ourselves, and prayed to her. This is a process, not an ideology.

In everyday life, the result of a prolonged focus on healing and kindness has borne obvious results. My neighbors and I talk more and have been cooking and sharing food. This place used to have an own-business-minding atmosphere, but enough of us are stressed by the pandemic and general stresses of being poor that we have decided to pull together. Not by chance; the benefit of reaching out is a lesson introverts like me have to learn the hardest ways.

When I started really buckling down and practising hard to become a full-fledged poet, I was strongly influenced by one particular poet-songwriter, and one of the aspects of his work that I admired most was that he could take his audience through some terrible and very real places in memory and bodily experience–but he always brought them back out into safer places where the knowledge could be borne. Many people trusted him for this reason. They knew he had witnessed and felt what he sang of and was finding ways out that others could use after him. Some artists are more known for working with ‘magic’ than others, but leading others safely through hell is real magic. He always used to put me in mind of the Harrowing of Hell. It was Christ who did that, in tradition.

The model for accompanying a new poem with background and authorial comments is La Vita Nuova, Dante’s New Life. I read it early and often, under the influence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A couple of my books are organized along similar lines. It will probably be an ongoing pattern. Listeners at poetry readings have told me the comments are helpful, although the poems should be able to stand on their own.

This is the very moment, this one, in which I reach the end of a lyric and–everything shifts:

17 February 2021

22

This Moment

She stood looking at you sadly;

you stared down and saw your feet.

In an instant, nothing happened.

All has always been complete,

but you are still a missing something

no one in your self recalls

without a lonely longing under

shadows lining endless halls–

greyness in the middle distance,

fog and clouds outside, and more

confusion–and then heavens lifted

slowly, with resounding lore

found nowhere else to echo, only–

hollow ways in which you stood

lonelier than ever, knowing

beauty’s use for kindling wood–

till the winter gathered over-

head and left you mounds of snow.

Million-drifted crystal snowflakes,

show me what I’ve sought to know–

tomorrow drags a weary shadow

I must walk along within

hopelessly as drifted answers

find my freezing, fevered skin–

and they rush back and I am wrapped

securely in her lore’s unloss.

Forever in this ghost-grey mantle,

knowing moments meet and cross.

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Grounding Oneself…

Posted on February 16, 2021 by J

…On a Peak of Petals…

First thoughts after rereading the piece to follow: How does one feel grounded, knowing the real ‘ground’ is elsewhere? The poems get pretty far out there sometimes–even I wonder if they will make any kind of sense in a year. They do, let me assure you or myself. But sometimes, while composing, I wonder.

I do all I can to work by what tradition calls inspiration. I focus my attention on a sort of empty but articulate place inside where the Imaginal begins, shift my own felt presence to that place, and write down whatever words form in my mind. I guide the process; I am an active participant. I don’t try to tell the words what to say or figure out where they are coming from. I have done this long enough to know by feel if they are from a place I want to hear.

My personal relationship toward my work and its sources has changed in many ways over the years. I was always serious, even reverent, toward Poetry and those who had made inspired work before me. My interest was obsessive and my dreams reinforced my devotion, but I still felt too small to take it on. My early poetic self was already afflicted with impostor’s syndrome! It took decades to get over. I gradually learned to let the work speak for itself. It is meant for something; whether I recognize it or not, it comes with a purpose.

These days, I am old and feel pretty sure than I am a real poet and not an impostor. The work I thought I would never live to compose I have in abundance, and it is still coming. I still think about who I am in relation to it, and feel I have much left to do. The work has taken us on a far journey, and we’ve returned most of the way to tell the tale. The reception of the hearers of the tale is what remains in question, and my responsibility there. Hearers will hear what they will, of course; what their own story has taught them to hear. Even so, successful work reaches people and creates a place for change in the way of growth toward access of one’s own to the imaginal, the spiritual, the dream-worlds–the places that offer healing to the here-world where it is so easy to feel trapped in gravity and to feel trapped feelings as pain.

My old seriousness in working is lighter now. Making a lyric simply for the joy of it is enough, and if the lines come in high Victorian purple or pure highland hillbilly, I write it down as I hear it. Who cares if it’s dignified–it’s here to be fun. If a poem wearing a bordering-on-disgraceful costume comes to sit by the bedside of my suffering spirit, welcome to my world; we’re always dreaming awake. Something will still feel undone, though, until I know how our messages are received. As long as I am still here to work toward any elucidations that might be helpful, I can reach in and try again to record more faithfully. Poetry is magic, as we all secretly know who are drawn to it. Magic has to bear results in the waking world, or why go there?

Visionary insight was enough, and more than enough; then understanding began to come with it. Now healing is why we are here.

16 February 2021

21

Sometimes You Just Know

Peak of Petals

The mountain grew taller the while we drew nearer but as we approached for our final ascent,

the snow on it melted, then so did the surface of stone that was–rose petals, roses she’d sent

who kept watch on us always. We gathered a few of them there, at the foot of–the red running sore

that the petals were fast turning into. The heat of the day is too much; we can’t bear any more.

The story goes on like a river and turns dreadful mournful and sad without warning, so please

release in as many kind ways as you’re able the reins that entangle the ankles and knees

of the one who would dance, but she’s spiraled all round by a species of serpent her pain knows by name.

And it’s leaking its poison and while she remains on her feet, see her swaying. A primitive claim

has been laid on her good reputation, and she must defend it. And so in the night of false dreams,

something entwines with a feverish whisper its own sordid lies interspersed with her screams

as they echo in ears she can see as a face slowly shifts to a shadowy glare on the wall

and she knows what she’s seeing the moment she wakes–it’s a face very ghosts hesitate to enthrall

because nothing remains of a purified air when it’s breathed out full force, leaving no ghost behind.

Fetch me a broom from the closet I closed after winter was over and what will you find

stored away there as well but the end of the story as was–in the telling I’m leaving to you,

alternate endings will tempt you, and possibly even require you to help them come true–

if you’re up to it. Here, at the base of the mountain, the staggering number of rose petals grown

by a similar number of once-living rose-bushes–how can that number be witnessed and known,

if it’s larger than even the mind of the penitent angel who’s knowledge directs the great choir

by which grander and more-living roses assembled their knowings together and laid the great fire

that you glimpse even now–sheets of water-like flame as they ripple between lifted petals and air.

She’s still as patiently watching as all of us wondering here if ascendance will wear

the gown of a saint or a goddess or merely the translucent shadowy dream of a ghost–

one I could scarcely retrieve without too-poignant loss of her profile. Her features were most

familiar before they grew clear as the weather before us. Our climb will be over too soon,

she tells us. She goes alongside us; she’s gone here so often. Each mirror-like turn, a new Moon

shines over the crest where the petals rise up to a peak, then red-river-like–freeze into hail.

We have stood frozen and looked on in awe as the watery red becomes liquid as pale

as the face it is meant to convey through the gathering storm–oh my insight, you pain me sometimes,

but she is still silently, smilingly watching and shedding a tear for dear love of good rhymes,

and she’s leading us on–but we’re happy to let her. Whose was the hand by which these roses grew?

Nobody planted them, nobody tended them; they had a purpose they always just knew.

The following was meant to be part of yesterday’s post, but was inadvertently left off:

Poetry exists for itself, but if it has a purpose, this might be one–that those in any kind of pain, in need of a paradoxical sudden shift of view, should be able to find one here and follow it through–at least in a transient mental way–to a place beyond pain. It’s a window, and what I call a Paring. It’s also a practice. One gets better at it through patience and persistence.

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