Finishing the document

So about a month and a half ago I turned in my dissertation.

I realized today that, as I have been writing that book for so long, another one was being written, in the shadows, so to speak, and that I also have ten years of poems, at least, written on paper bags, the backs of envelopes, the bits and scraps of other projects, in journals, each one unfinished. There are in fact so many that I could beat my record and certainly post more than just a few year on here while I think of what to do with them.

And now I have the head space to do so.

And the Moon is in Leo, which makes one, usually so private, with my Black Moon Lilith in the eighth house, audacious, wanting to put oneself out there, here we go. For, in spite of the lover who thought himself clever to call me so, I am no Emily Dickinson. I will not keep all these poems in drawers. Every few days or so, I will pick one out of the piles on my desk, and if I like it I will post it and I will throw away the ones I don't. And who cares if there isn't any reason anymore to write poetry and if I'm all out of sync with the times.

They were meant to be read by someone, by you, though I didn't always think so, though it isn't always true.

This one I wrote during the last few weeks of writing. It's called 

Finishing the document 

My small heart a rabbit
I leap and thump
I don't know why
a basket that didn't burn
a relic untouched
a body that rose from the dead
a dream she lost an eye
they retreated to their rooms.

I've loved before now,
I have, what hurt
to let go of, to
love again, what prayer,
what bell,
I rang the one
in my heart
it was in tune with yours.

What's inside
so strong one moment
so fleeting then. 

I think, perhaps, it captures some of the frenzy of that last month of writing, of what I was reading and feeling, of what it's like to finish a long project.

The Green Bench

It is spring, so I must write this thing, and it must go out, like so many other things.

Sometimes all there is to do is to make space in your body for it to feel a thing, feelings which must come, and then go. We are usually happier with the letting go.

I had a dream I was sitting with my love on a stone moss-covered bench.

Mostly I sit inside, these days, looking out. There is a tree growing out of a hole in the stone wall I can see from my basement library window spot. There are people outside on benches I can see from the upstairs window spot near the books on red attic vases. I wrote this poem the other day while observing two of them.

The green green grass

Two lovers on a bench
were men supporting 
each other were not
fearful in the spring
the new leaves like 
perfect capes just opening
another green, bright
against the grey
were leaning against
each other supporting
this spring were you
and I the same like
lovers we would sit.
Here, stay, I'd say.
You're far away another
green has come to sprout
each bud-miracle a gift
of life, we're the same,
I'd say. 

With my dissertation, I'm doing a strange kind of writing. I have old paragraphs, pages, no structure to rework, but my own mental work, eight years of it or so, to add, as a layer, to the already existing text. It is interesting work, sometimes frustrating, but sometimes strangely satisfying. I wonder if my readers will be able to perceive the layers. 

Maybe that is why this poem is rather strange. I don't want syntax, I don't even want form, I want a few commas, and some images, some green. These days that's all I really want, some green.

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.

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. 

Ace of Wands

Oh yeah, I write poems. I haven't in a long time, or I do and then I put them away and I don't think about them. But today a tarot card inspired me and this came out and I shared it with a friend and then I thought, it wants to go out wider, so I'll send it on its way.

I'm back again with Philology, describing the 12th century Quedlinburg tapestry. This somehow takes a long time. Maybe because I haven't seen it in a long time, maybe because it is hard to understand how to understand these figures from another time. Still, I love them. You can look at them. 

I'm about seven pages from really finishing this chapter I've been writing for so long, but I feel stuck and haven't made much progress for a few days. I have been correcting too, and this makes every word feel weighty, as though you don't want to let it get away and it must be just right and it can't be.

Anyways, I got the reversed ace of wands, thinking about a situation I am unsure about. I really like my favorite deck's image, Golden Tarot, an angel with a flower and a wand, and a book at her knees, and the fire behind.

I looked at this one when I wrote the poem, from the Holy Light deck, but the other one was there too, in my mind, since I've looked at it so much :

There is the flame and the branches and the leaves, a good message for the winter solstice.

Ace of Wands

I’m stretching myself up,  
I’m getting taller,
I’m alone, but I have branches
leaves, I’m fueling energy
for growth, I like the way
I feel, I want to continue
this journey, I want to heal.

Reversed, I’m not reaching out,
I’m looking in. Inside
is the answer I am looking for,
though I doubt myself sometimes.
Though I am silent, I am not
ineffectual. I take action through
no action, I feed objectless desire.

There is a spark inside me that is ready
to burst into flames. Watch out or else
you might get burned. It’s all new and
waiting. This fury will become
something good, with time, this rod,
stick, wand, will grow in two directions,
both up and down, so hold on.  

May all of your darkest nights be bright!

New Pathways of the Mind

 In Russian it is called rasputitsa...http://www.thegardenerseden.com/?p=8453

In Vermont there is a season called mud season. I bet it exists in other places too, but in Vermont it really gets the respect of being its own time, when the sap flows and the snow melts. Normally it is in March. The dirt roads get really hard to drive on, you slip and slide out of pot holes. You try to stay in the less deep ones but fall back into those most used ones. You get stuck sometimes.

This came to mind as I was thinking of the pathways of the mind, which are habits really, the way we let ourselves be led down familiar paths of belief and consternation. The mind does not like change, though apparently it is always capable of it, you just need to keep reading, keep moving, making new connections between neurons, giving birth to new ideas. The Vermont road in spring is an apt metaphor for the striving, shedding, growing mind.

Remember the old pathways of the mind:
Roads, I wish they hadn't been mine,
well-rutted, pitted, full of mud,
I trode them to dark places,
when you were mine, I practiced thinking you weren't.

Those roads, I see them now grown over
with weeds, and I remember their appeal.
Did I feel brave? I liked the danger I suppose,
or maybe had too much time, was lazy;
I did not take my own hand to lead myself away.

Now I can. I won't take that road today.
But you aren't here to lead me astray,
the mind says, won't take the blame
for twisting fate to castigate your name.
I'm tired and I remember the gifts.

What if? All the love I wanted to give you,
did I drag it down that lane? Did I leave it there,
to rot, hot in the sun? I wish there was a path not yet begun
for us to wander, find in shade a glade in which to love. 

I wrote this poem today in an emotional spurt inspired by an exchange of words. It is an emotional day, where one feeling is passing like another in the sky. Another apt metaphor for the ever-changing mind. I cried reading about mud season in Vermont because I miss the beauty that is there. I laughed because I didn't like the style of what I was reading. I was angry, I stopped, I reread again. I liked it or I didn't like it, I judged it, I accepted it. I watched all this go by. Observation, perhaps that is wherein new pathways lie.  

What Power Art Thou

When the spring energy comes and the birds start to sing in the early morning, before the spring is really here, I wake up at 5, 6 o'clock in the morning. Sometimes I try to get back to sleep, but I usually can't. Lots to write, or read, or think about. Everything is active in my mind. Dream residue. First lines of other people's poems come: The force that through the green fuse drives the flower. My heart is alive too, in a gentler way. It asks the questions, sometimes shows me the way.

I like to be alive in the morning. One can't help but ask what is this power, this force that comes back again.

I think of the Purcell opera King Arthur and Dryden's words, the mountain waking up to love.
It is also called The Cold Song. Klaus Nomi sang it.

What power art thou, who from below
Hast made me rise unwillingly and slow
From beds of everlasting snow
See’st thou not, how stiff, how stiff, and wondrous old
Far unfit to bear the bitter cold,
I can scarcely move or draw my breath,
can scarcely move or draw my breath
Let me, let me freeze again to death.

Purcell died of TB at the age of 36. That's how old I'll be soon. Dryden lived to be 68.

I wrote this poem in response to those lines at this time of year last year. I wanted to hear Cupid, the new life of spring, and what he would say to the Cold Genius. I was thinking of a mountain I wanted to wake up.

What Power Art Thou

Here I am again, Cupid.
You're the mountain who won't wake up,
Genius. You're clever
or at least you think so.
No, you're asleep, and humble.

I'm silencing my mind,
trying to be more like you
but still I want you to wake up.

It's raining now, not snowing, you don't want to freeze.
You want to come to all this joy.
Though it's juvenile and you're not, it isn't below you.
Sure, you're tall, like a mountain, so you're used to looking down,

but don't. There must be some way
we could see eye to eye. Your heart
could then melt, you could wake up,
catch me, all wings and flutter, young and warm and
I'd accept the slow movement of your thawing limbs.