Stories and poems

"The metaphoric image of 'orphan lines' is a contrivance of the detached onlooker to whom the verbal art of continuous correspondences remains aesthetically alien. Orphan lines in poetry of pervasive parallels are a contradiction in terms, since whatever the status of a line, all its structure and functions are indissolubly interlaced with the near and distant verbal environment, and the task of linguistic analysis is to disclose the levels of this coaction. When seen from the inside of the parallelistic system, the supposed orphanhood, like any other componential status, turns into a network of multifarious compelling affinities.'
Roman JAKOBSON, "Grammatical Parallelism and its Russian Facet", Language, 42/2, 1966, pp. 399-429, p. 428-429

Saturday, February 21, 2015

A Tribute to the God of Thought

A Tribute to the God of Thought

Please, look at both sides of things.
Do not fear your own inhibitions.

Take out your mind one more time
and dissect it, the ripples are there for a reason.

Don't balk at your own contradictions.
Don't strive for a dead unity that isn't one,
similarity that is not fecund,
the grey matter of impossibility.

Let your process grow beyond recognition.
It will find a way.

Take it upon yourself to keep growing,
despite this dead way,
make a tribute to the God of thought.


I wrote this poem the day I left Geneva in January for travels up north. I am back now, and the the new lunar year has begun, and I need to get back to work. I'm wanting and expecting things to be different. A change will come. 

I'm unsure of where this poem came from. Maybe I just needed a break in thinking. Maybe I was tired of the God of thought.

Who is the God of thought? My first thought was that it was Mercury, or Hermes, and it is. The internet first points me to Odin, who has two black crows who tell him things (two black crows tell me things too these days - I'm not sure what). Then someone in a comment on a strange page (one wonders where they all came from) said it was Hades, and thanked me for reading him, but I'm not sure about that, though it is in my poem, the dead way. Then there is Thoth, Egyptian God I don't know very much about but who surely is at the root of things, the root of thought. According to this website, he was the God of the moon. A scribe, he invented writing.

In any case, the God of thought is good at duality. Which makes me think, there is no good reason to think. We are better off without thinking, or, joy is a function of thoughtlessness, though reading messages from the world is a full time job. And Mercury married, guess who, Philology, and that brings me back to the reading and writing I have to get back to.


Saturday, February 7, 2015

Ten of Wands

I'm going with the idea of tarot card inspired poems, and since I drew this card today, I'm posting this old poem about the ten of wands.

Ten of Wands

Gathering, gathering reeds to myself.
The devil lies at best,
to transform my passion is the test,
to meet at both ends,
to catch and survive
these deep desires
that spring from long lost faults
in earth and founts of fire,
here, back to the ground, cool down.

Form, gathering reeds to myself,
make a balance between us,
your need and mine,
healing, breaking or broken, fine.
I'm working, I'm thinking,
I'm pouring my love into cups,
back out, then in,
sorting and shifting,
gathering reeds to myself.


I realize I often carry burdens that are not my own.

Putting the burden down can be trying, or at least difficult, though this seems strange. It ought to be easy to put something heavy down, but sometimes it isn't. Sometimes I want to lug this thing around, this heavy thing that isn't mine.

If I open my arms, the reeds fall, and I am empty handed again. Everything seems quite simple and I can use my hands to do the important things in my life that need doing.