HE TALKED ABOUT ARCHETYPAL ENCOUNTERS
To My Father
Poetic imagination
a fathering spirit &
son to himself,
but in likeness
unborn; what comes
to material existences
forms a kingdom
of spirit moving over the face
of that deep but bodiless
poet, poetry
where the slaying
of deity happens.
Nonsense matters dema
(dema)teria material, the distant closeness
of bodiless things
spreads throughout all materiality.
A dema spirit of depths works
where not-language matters.
Divine pregnancies (& deaths)
open gates of heaven
using extraordin
airy pause
(for nonsense matters to poetizing form)
and it makes us human.
**********
That matters to the poet
first and most
for his life―de
ep
ends on it. (Just as life
here depends on it.)
***********
Boats are we
but our sail is red & sea-parted
are we
rowing towards
a proper burial
what we will have lived.
a fathering spirit &
son to himself,
but in likeness
unborn; what comes
to material existences
forms a kingdom
of spirit moving over the face
of that deep but bodiless
poet, poetry
where the slaying
of deity happens.
Nonsense matters dema
(dema)teria material, the distant closeness
of bodiless things
spreads throughout all materiality.
A dema spirit of depths works
where not-language matters.
Divine pregnancies (& deaths)
open gates of heaven
using extraordin
airy pause
(for nonsense matters to poetizing form)
and it makes us human.
**********
That matters to the poet
first and most
for his life―de
ep
ends on it. (Just as life
here depends on it.)
***********
Boats are we
but our sail is red & sea-parted
are we
rowing towards
a proper burial
what we will have lived.
Yes, empty your life overboard
so it remains here
when you sail away
(and you will, won’t you?)
Our want is ever faithful
to this unborn, poetizing
dema
teria
material;
the proper burial
of one’s immaterial material
left behind; left here.
In the end
[he said]
the most we can do
is tell stories
and of that want
he said
[he rubbed his belly then]
“I keep it here.”
[She said,]
“Go about the world now
so it remains here
when you sail away
(and you will, won’t you?)
Our want is ever faithful
to this unborn, poetizing
dema
teria
material;
the proper burial
of one’s immaterial material
left behind; left here.
In the end
[he said]
the most we can do
is tell stories
and of that want
he said
[he rubbed his belly then]
“I keep it here.”
[She said,]
“Go about the world now
&
gather yourself
into an immanent immortality
an autobiography in red
into an immanent immortality
an autobiography in red
©2014 What He Said stephanie pope mythopoetry.com
notes
1. "Even now I can do no more than tell stories--"mythologize." Carl Jung p. 299, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. For Jung's mythopoetic image regarding the interplay between the "here" and the "here after" see Chapter XI, "On Life After Death" pp.299-302. It is on p. 300 he suggests we lend an attentive ear to the strange myths of the psyche, and take a careful look at the varied events that come. Soul-making carries itself in the belly of the story going on between the "here" and the "here after" like the biblical whale carried Jonah.
2. For the labors of heroic man see the 12 labors of Hercules
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/labors.html
3. “Dema” have been imagined as the Earth Mother, guardian spirits, ancestors, ancestral soul and that in part which helps formulate the image of the high-god (aka the limits of the human situation) in monotheistic imagination. For the latter see The Master of Animals: A Study in the Symbolism of Ultimacy in Primitive Religion, Ralph L. Slotten Oxford University Press, Journal of Bible and Religion Vol. 33, No. 4 (Oct., 1965), pp. 293-302
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