Today you forget again
You stay with forgetting
(again)
Today you forget again
You stay with forgetting
(again)
You taste forgetting
Again
You taste
Forgetting
You taste forgetting
(again)
You stay with forgetting
(again)
You forget forgetting
You taste forgetting
(again)
(again)
You taste forgetting
You forget forgetting
You taste forgetting
(again)
Today
you
forget
(again)
In 1981
The Phantom of Liberation
Paid me a visit
Commanding
A sketch
I obliged
Thinking that was all
That was all
There was to it
Hello and goodbye
To the Phantom of Liberation
But the Phantom
Must have said
Eat my body
I complied
Thinking that was all
That was all
There was to it
Hello and goodbye
To the Phantom of Liberation
They found a foreign body
In my heart
And said it’s spread
To your brain
And your wings
I said I don’t have
Any wings
They said I was covered with wings
Beating ferociously
Refusing to stop
And bothering the neighbours
I asked if I should move
To a cemetery
They wanted to know
If I was trying to escape
Liberation
Or the conditions that require
Liberation
I listened to their question
Thinking that was all
That was all
There was to it.
I realized (too late)
We had left alchemy
Out of the equation
Configuring
Stars, pathways, and
Heartbeats.
I hastened to manipulate
The voluminous footnotes to my
Apology.
Rounding and pulling
Like working with clay.
Evaporating
Like working with love.
My apologies began
To glisten.
It is never too late
To listen.
First a bit of background: I’ve been wearing a cast on my leg and foot for over 40 days. Xrays tomorrow. I’ll find out how well the 7 screws (and my body’s healing processes) have done their job.
Had surgery on May 31st. Pushed through and had my book launch on June 12th with Never More Together. My friend William Beauvais played classical guitar. Mother Nature cooperated during a week of rain & gave us a glorious evening on the ‘Tango Palace Coffee Company’ patio. I was exhausted yet enjoyed it all.
During the last 44 days regular life has come to a standstill. Getting from point A to B is laborious. Summer plans changed. One notable illusion dissipated, a couple of very hopeful (creative) ideas germinated, names and faces came (via telephone and in person) out of the past, I met many kind people and had interactions I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I’ve come to the simple conclusion that (living in) the universe gives us experiences and it’s up to us to make of them what we will.
And yet I’m also puzzled by synchronicity. The why of what, the what of when, the when of why. This seems to exist of its own volition. Unless the self has the power to mysteriously will coincidental events into existence. Paging Dr. Jung…
The first four drawings from my sketchbook are from a planned series showing facial profiles as well as a spiral motif. Again I return to Jung’s quote that in times of crisis humanity returns to primal symbols. The final page is post-accident and shows the symbol but not a profile. It has a different feel to it. The drawings from ‘before’ seem to be describing an immersion, or perception of reality. The most recent drawing seems to be aiming. Has ‘experiencing perception’ been replaced by a direct line of reception? Is this what pain does?
The streetcar stops beneath a railroad overpass
Snow still on the ground.
Melody stirring a pot of homemade soup
In the apartment she shares with her mother
Near the courthouse.
A scratchy sofa
Something forgettable on TV
I pass through her kindness like a boat cut loose.
How can I prevent
What I don’t know will happen?
Her eyelids lower
Contemplating a surreal image,
Her laughter like the northern lights,
Her smile
A Maya Deren film.
Jealous ghosts
Lay in wait on darkened country roads
Rising against immortal young gods
Speed-yearning into the future.
Does one simple gesture reconfigure a timeline?
Take the second bowl. The cauldron of vocation.
Leave town with her though you hardly know her.
Study poetry or dowsing,
Wash the ghosts away,
Listen to the northern lights sing into her,
Singing blacktopped roads into a charcoal labyrinth.
Freckled with sparrows
Thrushes for tresses
The hedge-girl turns
The dial of the moon
Marie Noight A’Shunning
Through the rushes running
Call her name
When the night is long
Then she’ll shout
the stars down
John W. Sexton’s mind was poured into his body in 1958; since then his life has been dedicated to poetry.
How Marie Noight A’Shunning came to be is a transatlantic astral event (Canada, dreamtime, Ireland). I heard this name in my sleep and in my half-sleep wrote it down. I posted on Facebook about being puzzled; who she was, what she represented. When John W. saw her name he felt an immediate response. Translating these feelings into poetry. My images create a parallel narrative exploring Marie’s identity.
“When it is gone,
passion leaves behind a dark longing for itself,
and in disappearing
throws us one last
seductive glance.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
I taste the light
coming through the window.
(from “Odysseus and Circe,” Anne Simpson)
Pouring, like you,
into my heart,
washing over my skin
falling
through glass
lightly
flowing waves and circling particles
currents of surprise, delight.
I am water, and I am a gull, flying …
a gulf wide and deep as Mexico
replenishing after spills and spoils
You fish me, for stars
for pearls
lost boys and missing girls
fallen into the hole of our fears
O is an open mouth,
one closed eye,
and one open
a black hole where light cannot flow
out
now light from the window of opportunity
swallows us whole
and we shine
we
shine.
Ellen S. Jaffe’s most recent book of poetry, Skinny-Dipping with the Muse (Guernica Editions, 2014) has recently been launched. Tasting the Light is a new poem, not yet published. Ellen lives in Hamilton, writes poetry and prose, and teaches writing in schools and community centres.
Thinning my studio
I discover your unlined face looking into the future,
sketched with charcoal on lightweight paper.
My memory of you
a weak pulse
sealed away like a forgotten dimension.
I drop clear, blue, plastic bags to the sidewalk
like fallen
sections of sky,
reported by pilots
nobody believes.
“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
A (forgotten) charcoal drawing digitally contemplated.
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