He brought jars of magic potions

Out of which flew ecstasies and dreams.

Then the ghost of Chris McCandless

Flew in threw my window

And leant purpose to my heart.

I go to the window and look out

To see  storm pregnant phantoms

And zombies wrapped in chains

Stretching all the way to the edge of the world.

My body is laced with fire and my hands

Pull at my hair as if to liberate

The rooted soul from madness.

Castaneda appeared in the shape of a shaman:

He cast my bookcase to the wind

And ripped a light filled hole

In the fabric of the universe.

Nietzsche led me dancing

Up steep, transcendent mountains

Where crisp, clear, cold winds were enthroned.

He showed me all his brilliant treasures and set free

So many laughing birds from antique, rusting cages.

William Blake, my friend of friends, displayed

The magnitude of intellect. He gave me

The universe within.

Keats, Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth too,

Were like so many medicine men:

They pulled out demons from my lungs

And filled me up with airs that took their being from

The Moonlit woods and Earth.

Then Mencken taught me how to smile,

Russell gave me his scales and compass,

And Emerson his gold and crystal telescope.

And oh so many more have come

And taken the time to converse with me.

My house is never empty.

It is like a gypsy carnival

Filled with apocalyptic doors:

So many worlds I can traverse – I must

Express my gratitude to friends

Whose presence in the living world

Not even mighty Time could end.

]]> http://www.scotherrigel.com/?feed=rss2&p=697 http://www.scotherrigel.com/?p=690 http://www.scotherrigel.com/?p=690#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:55:37 +0000 admin http://www.scotherrigel.com/?p=690 A socket in the woods: an eye;

A pond so placid, cold, alive.

A dark, mysterious window:

A pattern sheathed, a dark control.

What does the toadly tenant see

When through the kingdom of the leaves

A man and dog come walking by? –

The dog in just a blink of eye

Attacks as if an asteroid

Slingshotted through the empty void.

What monster must the frog perceive

Enormous and indifferently

Prepared to end a life without

The slightest conscientious doubt?

The frog retreats with all the grace

Of any human woman’s face.

Therefore the answer I derive

Is that all Nature is comprised

Of naked force without direction

And effortless, dancing perfection:

A Night and Day that, unified,

Perpetuate all living Time.

A conversation, itself, is a rather mystical phenomenon in which one soul clothes itself in a sentence or series of sentences and transfers this shrouded being to another soul to be denuded: how humans became humankind.  Thus, in reading, one comes into contact with an ever living ghost whose mortal vehicle may long ago have rounded its course and rejoined the rounding motions of undying Nature. A book is an identity sustained and crystallized, protected and preserved against the indifferent scythe of time. Books are magical bridges that enable spiritual commune across the yawing abysses of space and time. They allow for a genealogical splicing of thought and thus give to the dead the intellectual fecundity of the living. Language is a shield, a fabled cup of eternal youth that can redeem a soul from the nothingness of Death’s footprint.

Images of being periodically erupt in ecstasy in the mind of man. The revelations of Nature are derived from the under-self, which is equivalent to the under-all: the current of transcendent fecundity that vivifies the entire universe. Perpetual youth overcomes age and death. The cup of life is no object, but a perception.

How did hate crawl into the world? Claims to truth and artificial dogmas; false philosophies under the eclipse of which the multitudes subsist on the fire of a single man and learn to limit themselves. The world soul is broken into how many tortured pieces. Children are given weight, stones to carry, weapons to wield. The world is on fire with the fury of ideas!

Peoples are illusions! Countries are illusions! Hail, Hail the dawning of a new day: the revelation of the universal humanity.

Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew, all peer on the same matrix of stars that illuminate the quietude of space. Each possesses the precious light of mind. Each interprets the pattern differently and thus learns to foment a wrath based on a severity of certainty. Each sees only his paradigm. The solidification of a false perception represents the incubation of the dragons of religion and identity. The world is only at war to the extent that it remains reptilian.

Look! Man is a sun himself, a creative fountain of life and force: the universe is given edges and direction by his decree.

Christianity is paper. Islam is paper. Judaism is paper. Man is a king living under the authority of phantoms. The mind is the God of Gods: revere that which is immanent. The ego is a single flower sustained by generative soils. All things come from the union of the unconscious depths and the mystical and mysterious light by which the miracle of the living self is germinated.

Flying through the cosmic spaces

All fire and raw-edged implacability,

Impervious to the railroad

Elliptical conformities that befall

The lesser bodies.

Asteroid, Asteroid, Asteroid Man,

Self-directed, Iron-willed,

A shooting star is a joy to see:

Comet tailed silver slicing like a scimitar

Through fixed celestial geometries.

Asteroid, Asteroid, Asteroid Man

When I heard of the catastrophe I knew

That a cloud of laughing smoke

Must have followed the fallen fire,

Befoe ascending and disolving

Like a spoken poem into the mind of the sky.

Goodbye to the Asteroid, Asteroid,

Asteroid Man. Now, sometimes when I look

Up at the cold, revolving stars

I feel sadness and bewilderment.

The visage of the Night gives no answers.