falling & falling & falling & flying looks like falling
poemimage
The visual & the poetic.
Tag: heart
January 22, 2023
Heart
The great ship going down
Heaving like a lost city,
No water anywhere
No voice like an echo calling,
Swim to the heart of symbols carved long ago,
You know you never will
(In your heart)
Never swim
To the heart of symbols carved long ago.
TV on a throne
The great ship going down
Heaving like a lost city,
No place to swim
No place to dream
No voice
Like an echo calling,
Swim to the heart of symbols carved long ago.
In your heart you echo
The heart carved long ago,
You kneel in disbelief
TV on a throne.
No place to dream
No echo, calling like a voice,
Swim to the heart of symbols carved long ago,
You kneel in disbelief
The great ship going down.
An echo like a voice,
echoes,
And you will not
You will never
In your heart, still and quiet,
Swim
To the heart of symbols carved long ago.
A place to swim
A place to dream
A place to reappear.
A place to cast aside demons
Far from the killing fields.
Voice like an echo
Echo like a voice
No water anywhere
The great ship going down
Heaving like a lost city
Heaving like a ziggurat on the plains beneath the flood.
A place to swim
A place to dream
A place to reappear.
Swim into the heart of symbols carved long ago
Breaststroke upon tidal waves, push barrels of cinnamon sheaves
Buoyant amulets crest a tidal wave
Pages of an unbound book
Unbind slow-motion,
The sigil of a sun-god
No water anywhere
No clocks no grasshoppers no sky
No echo like a voice
No echo like a spinal column
The great ship going down
Heaving like a lost city
On the plains beneath the flood.
A place to swim
A place to dream
A place to reappear,
Mirrored in reflection,
In your heart you reappear
On the plains beneath the flood
Breaststroke like a ziggurat
Curving like a spinal column
Sigil of a sun-god.
Voice like an echo
Echo like a voice.
Voice like an echo
Echo like a voice.
February 23, 2022
GIF Experiments: 32 (Mandorla 1, 2, & 3)
The mandorla symbolizes the intersection of the two spheres of heaven and earth.
A Dictionary of Symbols, J.E. Cirlot
December 10, 2021
Conversation With a Tree
I was walking down the street on my way to the club,
though it was a bit early,
to see if my connection in the underworld
could score me a certain device
when I heard my name.
I looked up and saw a big face.
Tree said, ‘Where are you going?’
I said, ‘Canterbury.’
Tree said, ‘Wrong way. And you’re not Chaucer.’
I said, ‘Blake lives down that laneway. Maybe I’m William Blake.’
Tree took a step back and said, ‘William Blake!
Imagine I told you I was a reindeer or a shaman wearing
an enchanted curvilinear headdress.’
I said, ‘You could easily be
and still be Tree.’
Tree stepped back once more and said,
‘Imagine enchanted space all-round, horizontal & vertical.
Me pumping air, enough, for the two of us –
both of us, Blake & reindeer & shaman too
day & night.
So tell me what you really need.’
I considered the question and said,
‘ More so than a certain device
I need the light of one star
flooding my plum, smoke-swirled heart.’
Tree said, ‘In this you are not alone.’
Tree huffed & came up close again curvilinear & vertical
Pointing away, far, to distant golden sand,
horizontal beneath vast night, black as smoke, arcing.
Tree said, ‘Over there. Those three figures
on camel on foot
swirled up & fishing about
aimed into a brilliance
& trudging below,
sloughing into the vast night…’
Tree said, ‘Go.
And while you’re at it, stay away from the underworld.
I know about your connection.’
I said, ‘Okay Tree.’
Tree said, ‘Okay,’ also
in a voice rough as bark
familiar with the underworld.
April 27, 2013
Symbolic Romance: A Gustave Moreau Painting or Odilon Redon Lithograph by Steven McCabe
Information is a jewel encrusted codpiece
Worn by a eunuch on his death bed
In the hands of the wrong person revealing everything
In the hands of the right person revealing impotence
The wheels roll and plants grow
A man and a woman approach one another
Diamonds nick a valve in my heart and I wake to find you
Dressing me with misinformation
from my collection Jawbone (Ekstasis Editions, 2005)
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