Mindful of my sandy feet skimming the sea-foam
I still try tiptoeing
the silvery flicker that parts the waters because
unlike Christ’s canonized stroll upon the waves
my miracle
of wresting words loose from language
& setting their dolphin bodies forth
to swim into their unbound meanings
slides past
ensconced in a halo of mist
along with everything
every last pearlescent thing
that was lost to us
when we were emptied
& jettisoned into the sea
This thought experiment was inspired by the (impressively copious) weather satellite video loops of convection clouds popping into existence, which my son has been tracking down online and sharing with me… just another example of the uncountable, humbling insights into the natural world that I’m sure would have failed to blip on my radar, if not for his beautiful influence.
Yaroslav Gerzhedovich’s Stormy Sea, courtesy of Google Images
“/kənˈvekSH(ə)n/ noun: the movement caused within a fluid by the tendency of hotter and therefore less dense material to rise, and colder, denser material to sink under the influence of gravity, which consequently results in transfer of heat.”
“In the beginning, when God created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God was moving over the water. Then God commanded, ‘Let there be light’ (…)” Genesis 1:1-3
If before the beginning
something had not yet appeared from
nothing
how did
nothing
manage without lungs no less
to take in that convection of a god’s breath
that marked the beginning of creation
(particularly since before there was something
there surely wouldn’t have been things
such as gods or breathing)?
For that matter out of what non-thing
was said sudden cloud burped
into the foggy slate gray chaos
that hung but didn’t
in a sky that couldn’t have been there but was
ostensibly sandwiched tidily between
the turbulent blue water
(we’ll address that later)
& the gauzier brighter frothier ether
that was not yet the air for the deities
who were not yet themselves?
& if in the beginning
(as the story goes)
those twin neonates
formlessness & desolation
comprised everything
(however antithetical to actual substance)
that was spontaneously no longer
nothing
from where for the love of sanity did that ocean arise?
& why (never mind how) pray tell was it raging?
Of the untold passions
we might’ve presumed preceded
all extant matter & manner of cognizance
why did we resort to imagining rage?
Do we unknowingly float
upon the ocean’s foamy resentment
at the resonant indignity of not yet
being not
nothing
but still getting scapegoated for concealing
the primordially shapeless absences of
nothing
with its own nothingness
(unjustly condemned for the volition & malice
that nonbeing precluded it from possessing)
even as it itself was entirely concealed
in the total darkness we all know is really
just another way of saying a whole lot of
nothing?
To wit aside from being a bit fishy
the story does lend itself rather poorly
to proper revelation
amounting no doubt
to the non-existent body of water in question
being (or more precisely not-being)
rightfully fraught
that antiquity could do no better
than to liken it in myth—
in its purported (not to mention impossible)
shared subsistence with
nothing
before the beginning began—
to Phorcys the weedy-bearded
progenitor of the gorgons…
Is it any wonder the artists should depict
this mystic transference of hot air
as the wisp of a ship
dissolving into the mist?
“…since you disregard all my advice
and do not accept my rebuke,
I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you;
I will mock when calamity (…)
overtakes you like a storm…” Proverbs 1:25-27
Icefalls—
freezing streams of tears
formed in the weather of her own invention—
rip a hidden dominion
of chasms
beneath
this Mecca we faithfully revisit
upon surviving each prior pilgrimage
& restless penance at base camp.
No snow-blind bid for ascension
will leave its trace upon this cruel, white slate,
as cold-pierced flesh, violated senseless, chases
the gossamer promise of substantiation
in the biting night silence,
scaling massive vertical icy rises that crest
on the barren horizon, as intimate as distant;
in this alien nest we recognize
lies the black womb’s waif—
the silky red dawn
drawing its first cerulean-cradled breath—
heralding the bloody miracle of life & death.
So tiny are these pitons & ropes
we follow toward willful, brutal injury—
they mark the fabled way through
this bone-strewn wilderness
to the sun-frozen summit,
her brimming lids blinking in feigned oblivion,
now hiding her sinister eyes,
now revealing
contrived glimpses of rapture.
I decided to post this “Challenge” (also located on my About/Challenges page) as a single blog entry on my Home page, since I am quite pleased with how it all turned out. The quotations are from among my favorite literary influences (one representative each from poetry, fiction, and non-fiction), and the artwork is my own. Enjoy! 🙂
4yearoldadult has very graciously taken it upon himself to give me a much needed swift kick in the pants, to get myself into the habit of “blogging” more regularly. I know that this medicine will be good for me, so I thank him from the bottom of my heart for his encouragement and enthusiasm, and for his efforts to connect with people through cyber-space, to make the world a little bit better!
Day 3: From Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
When a woman pretends to press her life down into a nice, tidy little package, all she accomplishes is spring-loading all her vital energy down into shadow. ‘Fine. I’m fine,’ such a woman says… Then one day, we hear she has taken up with a piccolo player and has run off to Tippicanoe to be a pool hall queen…
This is about how it happens.
One day, we decide that we are DONE being everything but who we are. Unfortunately, we usually have to learn the hard way that we are really not all that into piccolo players… We owe it to ourselves to remember who we are and what we do want to be doing, and then we have to start doing it, at all costs — because the alternative, which is existential death, is a far, far cry from a substitute for life.
Day 2: Excerpt from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy
Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth.
I very much share the view with the late, great Douglas Adams that there are some very particular offenses that one can perpetrate on the universal device of communication/language, which without exception, result in the phenomenon known as bad poetry… For instance, I am sure that some of my renderings from my early high school days could have competed handily with the ignominious works of the Azgoths of Kria — and just for the record (in case anyone is taking notes), they have all been dispatched in flame…
Day 1: “On Pain”
From Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet
Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break,
that its heart may stand in the sun, so must
you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily
miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous
than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your
fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters
of your grief.
Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you
heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence
and tranquility:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the
tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been
fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with
His own sacred tears.
Kahlil Gibran has been and continues to be one of my favorite literary influences. If he had been our contemporary, today’s theorists in psychology might have made him the poster child for the “Highly Sensitive” personality type. To me, he is a timeless and ageless genius, whose wise insights into both the seen and the Unseen have enriched my development as a writer, artist, and “Highly Sensitive” human being. I can’t imagine anyone could read his works, particularly The Prophet, and not come away with something life-changing, every time.
SLHARPERPOETRY 