Thursday, December 31, 2015

NEW YEAR'S EVE AND THE SONG OF LIFE: ON LIQUOR, PARADISE AND CELEBRATION #ToastPacifica2016




















THERE WAS A TREE OF LIFE IN PARADISE

 "Ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you… does not the ear test words as the tongue tastes food?” – JOB 12: 7-8; 11



God made all the animals of paradise
God also made their deep geography;
speak to this other earth and let it teach you

of image and likeness; out of god’s own
mystery god calls forth paradise; god
speaks in plurals way back when.

Watch the animals; how they will teach you.
Let your ear test words the way god speaks;
move to the edge and let god reach you

through image and likeness; out of god’s own
mystery springs forth first people, god
so fluid way back then.

       *****************


Once upon a timeless time
god’s creation in excess
on a paradise tree had hung

liquor more than a tree could bear
and there, it was a little too much
paradise for any one.

Nowhere in your
scents of paradise does sense make more
of scents at work without toil

making more and more till more and more
becomes attractively attractive to
animal eyes hoping for tastes of bliss again.

Come now to the middle; lush life
ferments ferociously in the belly of its
creation beautiful without question.

Do interrogate the image; seek it
beautiful beyond imagination & desirable
there where paradise hangs forever fruiting.

During a high summer just a little too lush
for the creaturely soul, test the world of that word
causing lion to lie with lamb, both eating it

and not each other. What is agile & strong
is made keeper of animals until creation
turns over-ripe and then it falls

free for all; even here and even so
in paradise it will always already have been
made with a tomorrow to face.

But just here, one’s own proud and tiny
funny and enormous
hilarious and pitiful, terrifyingly

creaturely, creative life will move its appetite
along the edge of night’s formless void
& will reflect, beautiful beyond imagination

“in there”; it will have been already traced
by animal spirits tasting of
vegetal soul an indefinite continuity.

One will have centuries already rich
in secret life; a life in which to
add to in life one’s own.


©2015 A New Year’s “Eve” Poem
stephaniepope mythopoetry.com 
#ToastPacifica2016

notes
1. Carl Jung on god as a psychic fact.

“God is a psychic fact of immediate experience, otherwise there would never have been any talk of God. The fact is valid in itself, requiring no non-psychological proof and inaccessible to any form of non-psychological criticism. It can be the most immediate and hence the most real of experiences, which can be neither ridiculed nor disproved.”  - C.G. Jung. Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche Bollingen: New York, 1960, p 328.


2. For  a collection of more Jung quotes on how Jung thinks about”god” and or with his “god” idea see
Caroline Myss blog “These Things Inside” https://thesethingsinside.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/carl-jung-says-god-is-reality-itself/

Also see Skip Conover's you tube video 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnPAoX58W_E&feature=youtu.be&a

3. It is told of the South African marula fruit how it has an ntoxicating effect on all animals eating it after it has ripened and fallen to the ground.



Monday, December 28, 2015

HOW TO FACE YOUR KAPPA

Takagi Toranosuke/ "Capturing a kappa
underwater in the Tamura River"
Image courtesy Wiki Commons






















WHEN A MUDDY SEA FACING


Bow deeply; feed your
kappa cucumber;
harvest goodwill


©2015 Kappa Fable: A Mythopoetic Turning
stephaniepope mythopoetry.com
#OHJ Daily words: cucumber and goodwill



notes

For the mythic image of the kappa in Japanese, Buddhist and Shinto tradition and how to gain the water spirit's good will, see 
http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/kappa.shtml 

For the mythic image on developing attentiveness or psychic awareness see The Buddhist Tale of The Monkey King and the Kappa or Water Spirit or Water Demon http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhism/bt1_22.htm

For more folklore on encounters with kappa see http://horrorpedia.com/2014/06/08/kappa-folklore/

For the Javanese tale of "The Golden Cucumber" (Timun Emas) visit  https://vimeo.com/17880115

Thursday, December 24, 2015

HARK! THE HERALD, PHEME




PHEME
Queen Victoria Memorial, Liverpool

























THE SPECTACULAR PHONE


O, The Spectacular Phone
Winged Ossa Pheme
leading spirited voices on high
great tidings & low rumor

©2015 HARK! The Herald stephaniepope mythopoetry.com #ohj #mpy

Sunday, December 13, 2015

EPIC HOLIDAY #ohjpæan
























NO SILENT NIGHT


holidays at our house epic
a peal of surreal cachinnation


©2015 #ohjpæan stephaniepope mythopoetry.com


Sunday, December 6, 2015

ON DOWNWARD LOVE: DEMETER'S HUNT


















from  "LIKE A WOMAN FALLING"
©2004 stephaniepope mythicartistpress 

TRACES OF A TRINITY
for David L Miller

when javelinas
come passing
wild things come out

come out of the last things
in a last light leaping away
in jackrabbit and foothill

wild pigs come
passing like
shadows hunting

shadow
hunting shadows
of likeness

where the holy
and the unholy
cannot be told apart

cannot be told apart
and must be
torn apart again

wild pigs hunger
in the spirit of times
that soil no certainties

in a season of thin light
wild pigs come seeking
a scarce food

somewhere past
the patios of civilization
wild pigs come

they step outside
the part of me that steps outside
broom in hand

and stepping, I step through
into this woundedness
living just outside my door

and there
I am reunited to another kind
belonging-together, feeding on

my own insides. While just below the
soil line I find I am digging down & in
toward my own rootedness

digging
so that the hurt in me continues
to deepen & die

while just as suddenly as they appear
these hungry ones
leave satisfied



©2015 Traces of a Trinity stephaniepope mythopoetry.com