To make a terrible thief

tremors

skyeriverwinter wrote:

that is calm and beautiful....the sea rages on here....

tremors

White Egrets
Derek Walcott (2010)

The January sun spreads its balm
on earth's upturned belly, shadows that have always fitted
their shapes, re-fit them. Breakers spread welcome.
Accept it. Watch how spray will burst
like a cat scrambling up the side of a wall,
gripping, sliding, surrendering; how at first,
its claws hook then slip with a quickening fall
to the lace-rocked foam. That is the heart, coming home,
trying to fasten on everything it moved from,
how salted things only increase its thirst.

tremors

tremors

acrossssSsssshittt

tremors wrote:

He

At the heart
of my maelstrom of terror
I once stepped out
Into a white room
Calm as a lake

Four men (or five?)
sat whispering gently

They knew each other
They knew me.

The shy black man
at the centre
was leader; yet removed,
Who the others consulted, deferred, protected

He looked straight into me

Said without words
"We know you.
We love you.
We protect you.
Here'

and then they whispered
amongst themselves again
Gentle, quietly, with no animosity.

With the gravity of
the meeting
Yet the quiet grace,
joy
of knowing
They truly were good

this is nice... like a paintin... reminds me of one of my sister's paintings.

This poem's haunting... until the end, that is

tremors

acrossOceans wrote:

this is nice... like a paintin... reminds me of one of my sister's paintings.

This poem's haunting... until the end, that is

Thanks. I'm not generally a very visual person - 'aural' ?? But when I go into these 'intense' modes (shall we call them), it's like my eyes are set on fire, and I see lots of things very vividly, very clearly (sometimes way too clearly), and I'm receptive, and the things I see stay imprinted on the 'negatives' running at the back of my brain. When I come back to normal everything is a lot more mundane, and it's my ears that start working again. Is interesting though, because I have a very good memory, so when writing some of these my 'minds-eye' gets very clear images of what I have seen before, in different times, different circumstances.

I know some people access these states with hallucinogenic drugs, but I can't risk that these days - to be honest I think when I see clearly I can see and hear clearer than ever, and largely to do with lots of tai chi / qigong practice (and no drugs) over the intervening years. I'm not trying to be egotistical here - just honest (about me) - i'm not trying to say these poems are all that special. But I'm amazed how some people swear by their drug use, yet can't tolerate the idea that other people (like the ancient Chinese imho) have gone so far beyond some alternative perceptual modes that they have developed some complete systems for going deeper, (whilst staying stable) that Western science etc barely credits with any value at all. What am I trying to say? That a 'clear eye', clear mind, doesn't come with drugs, but with having roots and looking to the heavens. I need to work on my roots....

I don't really know why I'm saying all this here - just thinking aloud. it's just that I have been through a lot of challenging experiences, and I really believe that one of the major things which has helped me to keep myself, my body and spirit together has been the other years of tai chi practice.

Anyway, I would like to see some of your sister's paintings some time!!

acrossssSsssshittt

it's something that you see things so vividly when you enter these states of mind; intense modes as you call em...

I have mad vivid dreams which are real and often take effect but in complex ways, which is why I go on believing in this other world of mine, alongside this world...and then I've got clear images of my hereafter...

but what you're talkin about is of course very different, cuz you're awake and that's crazy intense... you're very right about tai chi...it's good shit that you're familiar with those practices... they're pure... no shit, western/ conventional science disregards a whole lot... hell Native Americans are known to reach states of mind in the beyond, and that shows where digging nature can get you so ...

tremors

Yeah it's frustrating it has taken us so many years to forget all the wisdom we already knew!

Even in the 1970s altered states of perception, psychosis, delirium, hallucination - were recognised as being aspects of the psyche, and often highly symbolic, meaningful processes, and in many ways 'constructive'. The current obsessions with 'brain', measuring parts of the brain that light up on a machine, observing neurochemical reactions - that is like 50 years of psychiatry and neuro-science, compared with thousands upon thousands of years of human understanding, thought, philosophy and evolving wisdom. It makes me want to throw a brick through a window.

I once saw a talk by mental health commentator RC, who speaks publicly about hearing voices, and the treatments he's received to obliterate those. I remember really really clearly one sentence he said, and it has stayed with me for about 15 years. He said

'You know, the voices I heard, they are not random things, coming from nowhere - they are the voice of the Catholic priest that sexually abused me when I was 6 years old, the voice of my first lover who took her own life, and the voice of my father who died when I was a young man'


Anyway, I should probably quieten down a bit, since this is the 'poetry' forum, and there is no greater crime than speaking about a topic in the wrong place. Thanks for talking. I might delete these last few posts. Not sure. Speak again soon?

acrossssSsssshittt

why delete... this is the right shit in the right place... voices and pictures in our heads, that's where freakin poetry, music, art come from ... better yet, post this on The Porch

tremors

hahaha - I'm loathe to post anything of substance in the porch - for fear of recrimination & retribution. It is a bit tiresome getting told off for speaking more freely than the subject line. Can you imagine having a dinner party with porch standards? 'Yeah, that's a great point my friend, but I really can't relate, seeing as we are currently on the 'desert' topic - would you mind saving that idea for the 'what I did at the weekend' discussion which is currently being held in the other room'.

A very boring dinner party!!

Why delete? good question. Why remove your underwear from the washing line? even better question!!

I think it's time for me to go to bed!!

acrossssSsssshittt

tremors wrote:

Going Home (1996)

When my Dad finally
came to collect me
From that place
And take me home,
All I could think of
Was the mass of newspapers
And mess left under my bed.
What would become of them?

A nurse gripped my arm
'Don't worry,
Get out of here -
I don't ever
Want to see you here again.'
Dispatched
To the Outside World
With abrupt steely kindness.

Still, I scurried back to try
and tidy up the detritus.

What chaos to leave
For the next resident.
What if they became haunted
By my horror?
As if every image
Hallucination, vision, terror
and dissolute idea
Still lay there trapped under glass
Between the dull and faded sheets
of last year's magazines
secreted under my bed
And might haunt them too.

My life: the regimen of dormitory rituals;
Of locked and unlocked drawers
Possessions, trinkets, cryptic codes
Cheap amulets and talismen
Which only I knew how to decipher
Had already been meticulously dismantled
Dissolved, dismembered by
The Staff
And now seemed inconclusive
Impotent, insubstantial....

Nevertheless I shuffled
my legs towards the shuffling the magazines

'Leave them, Go!'

Next thing I knew
I was outside,
And as I shut the solid heavy door
Of my father's off-white car
Clunk
I knew it was over
It was finished

The viscous & solid green-blue world
Rose up to surround me
In my Dad's firm embrace.
He looking more troubled
Than me.

I was calm,
Just bewildered
Stunned, staggering
Stumbling blinking
Into daylight
Reeling, drunk, yet still on my feet.
(You would not believe the nightmares I've just seen)

I shook myself alert, awake
Looked squarely into my father's unblinking eyes,
and said
"Can we just go home now please Dad?"

read this a while back... what a gripping story

acrossssSsssshittt

tremors wrote:

Depths

There is no depth
No pit
No door
No lock
from which you cannot escape
No rock
from which you cannot
build

and I was just sayin to Pandora what lil figures in such surroundings do for me... in short, relief from the pain in this world ...and from growin numb... your words are also positive... thank you

tremors

'There's always hope'

and right now we can bounce good karma straight off a geo-stationary satellite in the exosphere- words zipping out across the oceans, across the world in 'real' time; + we still have time to look at breasts or pecs as much as we feel like. People died for this - a right royal mix of the depraved and the sublime.

'Hit submit!'

tremors

Stripped

You lock me up
You beat me up
You strip me of my lighter
And drug me up

But I come back
tougher

tremors