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.

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

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

EPIC HOLIDAY #ohjpæan

NO SILENT NIGHT

holidays at our house epic
a peal of surreal cachinnation


©2015 #ohjpæan stephaniepope mythopoetry.com

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

POSEIDON IN WINTER : DISTINCTIVELY DRESSED IN END TIMES #OHJ #6WORDS #3LINES

A PRIMITIVE DISTINCTION

Achilles:  If you sailed any slower the war would be over
Odysseus: I'll miss the start as long as I'm here at the end.

Odysseus: If they ever tell my story let them say that I walked with giants.

                            -Homer, The Iliad

novembering oddly
anciently hungry
farrier guide


©2015 Things To Remember When Crossing An Underworld Water Barrier
stephaniepope mythopoetry.com #3lines #6words #ohj 

HEAR HEART AND HEARTH

left: silkworm larvae under a microscope  upper right: flying fish
lower right Phoenix detail from Aberdeen Bestiary
source/credit: see wikipedia 

HAIL HESTIA ANCIENT HEARTh

a Phoenix
a silkworm
a flying fish
and a fire that's in the eye.



One feels with similars into continuity
One feels with spin into death as new body
One feels with differences into no body

The fire is in the eye.

©2015 Intimations At The Hearth, En Kata Poetry Series
stephaniepope mythopoetry.com

PSYCHE & NATURE: A Story Of Insight

IN LOW DESERT
Hyperion was the great pillar of the East & as a Titan son of Heaven, may have been seen as a primal god, the first to order the cycles of sun, moon and dawn & thus, regulate rhythm of dawns, days & dusks. Likewise his brother Krios, presided over the ordering of the heavenly constellations and so in a complimentary manner ordered the year and the cycle of seasons. He and his brothers seem to have been viewed as the ancient gods responsible for the creation of man, each bestowing an individual quality to a man. Hyperion, meaning "he who watches from above", was clearly associated with watching and observation, just as his wife, Theia, was the goddess of sight (thea), and so theirs was surely the gift of eyes & sight. The Greeks believed the eyes emit a ray of light allowing one to see in such a way as both sun & moon together allow. Hence sun and moon alight, a gift of insight.

there are nowadays no bombs bursting no

secrets market, only the last light
saged and smudged in greying wind
an angel shadow long and lingering

and how no rain whispers
and how out of the absence
leaps the promise
and how out of the promise
leaps the animal
and the animal hides
in its bleached bone whisper
the pinned halluc-noosed bumps
of crucified skin

when the phantom sun-dances the dust and
as if cold, shivers in rusty beads, light bleeds

every silver life is precious here
and life lives on life so the precious ones
slither and slur closer to the ground
are quick to hide and press and shade
their water secrets low
 
geckos ghost in paths where
their water-echoes streak flecks
quick as javelins in silver thunder

 …if only it would rain

but only if it doesn’t will a gecko
hold the water secret close
to its cracking life and teach
me how to be filled-in with absence
teach me this weight of space,
where daylight and rabbit leap long
and last, last and on into night

          <<<<<<<<<
          <<<<<<<<<
          <<<<<<<<<

life
preys on moons and winds
but what it fears, is fluid

and what it fears, it wants
and what it wants rises from
its lower mind where such silver 
mined too low ensnares and
something larger and darker
and kept more deeply secret 
and something not quite living
disturbs

secretions
are deadly sins
sometimes clouded

and the not quite real spooks
the green life suddenly to bolt

(and you may know)
where such things puff
and screech and howl the dust

a dust, a rough, arid dust
kicks up

     <<<<<<<<<
     <<<<<<<<<
     <<<<<<<<<

no one knows how long
such surfaces have lived this way
red and low in a world on fire

how too much life is silence
and too much silence
rises from the dead
gathering the far away
stitching it close together

too much is a thin air unbearably light
and I am bound to dust and stars
in a lust larger than that in men for water

so I reach down and in to death
as if its angel comes to me at last
as if it were the life in the bone
I’ve sounded all along…

but instead, this solar creature
wails through the column of smoke
and, as if blown by the sun itself,
sucks into itself  the sand around me
the desert inflames and is drawn
like a column of bloody bits
through a red hose

what calls itself into form
sucks upon life
what sucks upon life
draws itself into fire
that life is a fire

and this is true my child,
so feed upon that fire
know that when it stands before you
like an evil
and teaches you how to hold its smoke
and teaches you how to blow
the red earth into form
and the red form into funnel
you must be wise;
quench it

some part of me could run like gecko
were I not so pinned in conservation
to bits of moisture left upon this breath

it blew Hyperion into living here
and now
something more ancient
than the one who walks
above these shaded hills
lives red in promise

gathers in the far away this promise
as old as freedom


©2015 Hands of Chaos stephaniepope mythopoetry.com

notes

Classical Sources:

Hesiod, Theogony 371 ff : "And Theia was subject in love to Hyperion and bare great Helios (Sun) and clear Selene (Moon) and Eos (Dawn)."

Homeric Hymn 31 to Helius (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C7th - 4th B.C.) :"Helios whom mild-eyed Euryphaessa, the far-shining one (phaithonta), bare to the Son of Gaia (Earth) and starry Ouranos (Heaven). For Hyperion wedded glorious Euryphaessa, his own sister, who bare him lovely children, rosy-armed Eos (Dawn) and rich-tressed Selene (Moon) and tireless Helios (Sun)."

Aeschylus, Prometheus Unbound (lost play) :

In Aeschylus' lost play Prometheus Unbound the chorus consisted of the Titan sons of Ouranos--Krios, Koios, Iapetos and Hyperion (and perhaps also Kronos)--released by Zeus from Tartaros. It is not known if the brothers were named in the play or individualised in any way.

Pseudo-Hyginus, Preface (trans. Grant) (Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :"From Aether and Terra [were born various abstractions] . . .[From Caelum (Ouranos) and Terra (Gaia) were born ?] Oceanus, Themis, Tartarus, Pontus; the Titanes : Briareus, Gyes, Steropes, Atlas, Hyperion, and Polus [Koios], Saturnus [Kronos], Ops [Rhea], Moneta [Mnemosyne], Dione." [N.B. Hyginus' Preface survives only in summary. The Titanes should be listed as children of Ouranos (Caelum) and Gaia (Terra) not Aither and Gaia, but the notation to this effect seems to have been lost in the transcription.]"Pseudo-Hyginus, Preface :"From Hyperion & Aethra [were born]: Sol [Helios], Luna [Selene], Aurora [Eos].

see also Hesiod , Theogony 133 & 207 (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th

mythographer C2nd A.D.) :

"Ouranos (Sky) . . . fathered other sons on Ge (Earth), namely the Titanes : Okeanos, Koios, Hyperion, Kreios, Iapetos, and Kronos the youngest; also daughters called Titanides : Tethys, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoibe, Dione, and Theia . . . Now Ge (Earth), distressed by the loss of her children into Tartaros [the Kyklopes and Hekatonkheires], persuaded the Titanes [Koios, Hyperion, Kreios, Iapetos and Kronos] to attack their father, and she gave Kronos a sickle made of adamant. So all of them except Okeanos set upon Ouranos (Heaven), and Kronos cut off his genitals, tossing them into the sea . . . Thus having overthrown Ouranos’ rule the Titanes retrieved their brothers from Tartaros and gave the power to Kronos.""

Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 66. 1 (trans. Oldfather) (Greek historian C1st B.C.) :"The Titanes numbered six men and five women, being born, as certain writers of myths relate, of Ouranos (Heaven) and Ge (Earth), but according to others, of one of the Kouretes and Titaia, from whom as their mother they derive the name they have. The males were Kronos, Hyperion, Koios, Iapetos, Krios and Okeanos, and their sisters were Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoibe and Tethys. [N.B. He omits Theia.] Each one of them was the discover of things of benefit to mankind, and because of the benefaction they conferred upon men they were accorded honours and everlasting fame.

Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5. 67. 1 : "Of Hyperion we are told that he was the first to understand, by diligent attention and observation, the movement of both the sun and the moon and the other stars, and the seasons as well, in that they are caused by these bodies, & to make these facts known to others; & that for this reason he was called the father of these bodies, since he had begotten, so to speak, the speculation about them & their nature."

Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 8 - 9 :

"The Titanes had children . . . Hyperion and Theia had Eos (Dawn) , Helios (Sun), and Selene (Moon).

HALLOWEEN LEGEND

LEGEND OF THE FIRST
MERRY HOLLOW THANKSMAS

One dark and stormy night…

Out on the lawn there arose such a clatter
zombies were mooning
to children who scatter

When what to their wondering eyes did appear
a trick-or-treat turkey quite stuffed through the rear;
yet they hear

him exclaim as he gobbles in fright,
“Scary Thanksmas to all
                   this dark stormy night!”

©2015  Gobblin’ Merry Hollows  stephaniepope mythopoetry.com

FRACTURED SONG TITLE: DON’T GHOST! BREAKIN’ MY HEART

"Tartini's Dream" by Louis-Léopold Boilly (1824)

ONE NIGHT I DREAMED AS I WISHED AND THEN
            
“A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces
       the sound is the reader’s soul.”―Stendhal 

thy servant touched my ear
and stole my breath with skill

things I gave away, a violin
rapture in the heartbeat

that tongue speaks
I fall ill

anticipates my soul & plays
with such great art and still

thy servant moves my heart
at will

impossible to live without, I trill
& mime this instrument I can’t repeat


©2015 Sonata stephaniepope mythopoetry.com

notes

The story behind "Devil's Trill" starts with a dream. Tartini allegedly told the French astronomer Jérôme Lalande that he dreamed that The Devil appeared to him and asked to be his servant. At the end of their lessons Tartini handed the devil his violin to test his skill—the devil immediately began to play with such virtuosity that Tartini felt his breath taken away. The complete story is told by Tartini himself in Lalande's Voyage d'un François en Italie (1765 - 66):

"One night, in the year 1713 I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil for my soul. Everything went as I wished: my new servant anticipated my every desire. Among other things, I gave him my violin to see if he could play. How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy. I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted: my breath failed me, and - I awoke. I immediately grasped my violin in order to retain, in part at least, the impression of my dream. In vain! The music which I at this time composed is indeed the best that I ever wrote, and I still call it the "Devil's Trill", but the difference between it and that which so moved me is so great that I would have destroyed my instrument and have said farewell to music forever if it had been possible for me to live without the enjoyment it affords me." 
                         Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Trill_Sonata

_____________________


1.  "The Devil's Trill" makes an analogy between the dream music heard by the dream ego and the power the sound has to overturn that state of ego soul; it is not unlike the one Stendhal makes about the violin's sound reflecting to the reader his own soul.  In considering the hard path of the inward way an individual is lead to overturn mass mindedness (dream ego) and evolve selfness out of selflessness consider the role art plays as you read the abstract and first paragraph of Francis e. Merrill's  Stendhal and the Self: a Study in Sociology and Literature. the dream is like a novelist. The novelist tries to communicate to the reader the way the dream does the dreamer an emotional and imaginative experience to which the reader and dreamer reacts respectively. The dream characters have no objective existence outside the dream pattern's display. This nothingness conveys a real something whose sound has a profound effect upon the dreamer's entire psyche-making. This may be something like what an encounter with wholeness in a selfless selving is like.  And then, the irrepeatable likeness of this like is what art tries to imitate.

THE TOILET PAPER CAPER

A MYTH?  A FICTION?  A STORY!

Since man's highest mission on earth is to spiritualize everything,   
it is his excrement in particular that needs it most.  -Salvador Dali     

Epilogue

in the truth hides a hidden:
she walked in with the problem
and the truth of that thing
was  dissolving itself; some
where in some way was afraid of this resolving in herself remaining like a light made of
        the dark
what becomes a timely tale in unraveling a role
who told the way
a vision of uncertainty must know
it knew what flew
a sister with a sister
to a sister, making three
the one soul
and knew
the sole soul
tissueing the vision in what
tweened these sisters
and how it drew together
the affair
as if the excrement
of some imagining of air
still needed to
reveal itself
another way right there
  ~
and so, it needed three
the first, a veil
the next, a twin
the last, the shape it entered in
tore through the room, unwalled a space
hid itself just underneath a chair
to show the likeness in the like
of what it was -it was
a tissue of confusion in a heap of dis appear


it
was
a toilet paper caper
was a vision in a vapor
was a fusion to a fissure
of confusion and disfavor
when it waked into the bedrooms
of three sisters late one nite


it
was
a face, a facing, haunted allegory
reminiscing in the album of a dream
who dreamt this story? who
dreamt it blue, full of images
dreamt it gleaming
like some graphic mythopoeia
dreamt it
like it were a merely snoring living be-ing
caught there briefly in be twee-ing
through the chorus of the gloria
or like a living corpus will erupt the in-between
by calling down its night bird to the scene


it was
a slumber no one owned
a ground of dreaming just awakened
where it dreamt itself a story deeply staged
and where what dreamt into its mirror like a
figment of some fragment
was a fragment of some former kind of fray
left these performers a reminding disarray
and the performance of remaining just this way:

just like a toilet paper caper
like a vision in a vapor
like a fusion to a fissure
of an error thrice in flavor
dreaming through the bedrooms
of each sister late at nite




And so the vision moved in waking
from one sister to another
to another in an other sort of way
and once one sister couldn’t sleep
and left her light on
unmasking all that darkness that she feared
it left the vision free to creep
into another sister’s sleep, where it proceeded
to awaken in her stare



this sister left her window open
before she went to bed that nite
where a darkness in the nite began to blow
onto the inside past her cheek
entered the window like a sneak
windy shadowings foreshadowing in sound
what fashioned there a double
made a doubling in air
what moved around; what made the door creak
kept it opening and shutting while she slept
then made her feel into the room
into a very anxious state
and twinned like some projection on the wall
what interfaced her with that light she saw
diffusing down the hall




she left her light on! (I wonder why)
and then she wondered if the other were ok
just then the wind blew (it made the door creak)
and suddenly this twinning of the very anxious stare
was somehow there and shimmering a sway
it made the mask move; it made the sleeper eeek
for although it wasn’t really there
a vision of this ghosting in that hue of air
began remaking out of nothing in this field
she left her light on! could not eschew
and this very way the shadow sister grew
showed how the thing meant to erase
and to banish without trace
was enter-facing as this other kind of yield




it made the mask move! the sister err
as if already she’d digested the affair
she’d gotten out of bed (to use the bathroom)
because (she thought) she needed some relief
it made the mask move; the darkness grew
became a centering for riddance coming, too
became re-membering with less
the scatological excess
an other vision to the nonsense
that her senses should address
she put the light on! caught here this haze
and the shattering
sent scattering a guilt left in the gaze
she put the light on! could not eschew
it was the very way the shadow sister grew
the holy mission here on earth, a making, spiritual in worth
of a fragmentary nature of re-turn (that turns through mirth)
and re-members her the other of decay




now this final gal’s the oldest of the three
she’s about to groom
in perfumes of impossibility
and this ground will be the measure
for what will accompany
the ghastly ghost whose guesting through them all
it leaves them (in its calling card)
an other kind of word
leaves them here embodying
a tearing no one’s heard
leaves them here the night dream
we never tissue clean
leaves them like the one that leaves
the seer with our lady who is
seeing through this scene



just now
the lovely one is thinking (as she’s stepping from the tub)
there are so many losses that my many losses scrub
how they bathe in me, and leave in me a leaving less in less
a scum in its belonging here again
never put together here again
see how such flesh re-turns me when it comes
steaming up the bathroom
streaming through this shroud
it comes as if it’s dreaming me out loud
gives to this, my person, what essentially is me
and matters to the gift itself that I shall never see;
this certain kind of blindness now befalls this certain drain
a certain kind that's kind enough to take away in stain
yet made me hear the haunted vapor tremor ‘neath my skin
hid me in its moisture where the mirror once tore in
became me in a gesture flowing through the haunted gaze
still seeking out some light there; hunting for some light there
beyond the dark, inside the dare, outside the way I am aware
the way I fear this lack and everything it takes
each body-piece in ruin holds my body to its wake
in seeing through my dreaming one -thus come
where I’m breaking in this breaking of the one
a hunted and a haunted life still softening and tossed
re-membering the body -the impossible that’s lost



she saw the light there
what made this universal joke
mattered here re-membering so much she never spoke
and yet, repeats in her our double nature’s foil
the one that tales as beautiful
as it now tales her soiled
with tears and tears of ruin through each look-
the lovely things of beauty specter beautifully spoiled



it mirrors the phantom, her body knowing dressed in dross
their senses for re-membering these mournings in her loss
while the presences now fill her limbs unsound
with the thing that grows and shakes
in her each time in passing round
the thing in her -in each of us
who makes




just then
she eyes along the edge above the tub a ledge
aligns aloft a host of elves or clowns
a group of spirit gourds a-ghost in grins
remembering her stepping through
recounts her steps through them
this flesh; ah yes, this flesh! the host that here’s it!
ah yes, these shapes! those grins that bare it!
and this the moment she will see these things
and bear them nakedly just then, and then
just then (a-ghost in grins)
noticing go they as she steps in
while she, so very unaware of them
now sees them by reflection in the glass
and all of her reflected then
what’s stepping from this bath -beware the host
when what embodies bodies you in brew
the host in whom the host in you rends clean
banqueting in gods in scraps in scenes
will shape them seeing you and seen:
the backward glance, the sweet Bauboo
the stepping down and in and through
the her-in-us be twee-ing that relates us and renews
hears YOU and in here-ing, sees
see? the edge-line holding back that laugh
see? the ridge’s furrowed corner drown the brow
see? she leaves behind what we become
in tub-lines holding back the flesh that falls
oozing dark in fluencies that guest
ghastly in the pipelines ghosted in our walls
and slumber calls



this
interrupts the thinking with a thinking juxtaposed
and soon our lovely lady knows
to settle with her best in chair
what chatter leaves to sisters fair
till one by one (as if on fire) these
other two retire
leave our lady here to doze
and the ghost free to disclose
still every bit unsayable of face
still needs of three, you see
to make the féte complete
the beast of heat that eyes
foreshortens in this space
before the body that preceded it in time
it hunts the one that it must always break
into the one that it will twin
into this one who shakes
and then repeatedly repeats this in our lady’s sleep
what moved around
outside the nite dream
shape-shifts in her its hunger as it hungers to invade
bathes there in another light the other bathroom shade
a purple glow of no-ing
into which our lady gazed




it was the bathroom (it wasn’t there)
it reappeared to her just underneath her chair
for when she fell asleep, the gesture grew
and the vision now appearing on our universal stage
was venting most relentlessly in rantings of enrage
a toilet paper strewn from everywhere
in tears and rips and rips and shreds of air
while the shock of seeing wakened her in fright


and so
this timely tale unraveling the roll
tells the way a vision of uncertainty must know
and so it goes; this slumber no one owns
ghosts a ground of dreaming which it dreams here deeply staged
a story in a story needing heard
a seeing past the saying for the words beyond the word
like a fragment turned through former kinds of fray
rearranges during performance to re-mind the disarray

Just like:

a toilet paper caper
like a vision in a vapor
or confusion in the fissures
of remainders in three flavors
waking through the bedrooms
of three sisters late one nite

  ~
Epilogue

Three sisters tell this story of suspense
with nonsense as the outcome of its sense
but narry can a soul explain the toilet paper roll in the morning with no tissue to dispense


©2015 Toilet Paper Caper stephaniepope mythopoetry.com


notes

1. This author notated the line she’d gotten out of bed (to use the bathroom) in her original publication of the poem noting how it links the reader to a poem(no longer published to mythopoetry.com) Letting Go, a poem containing the blessed and broken body motif as if that same motif is also being hosted here.  Because the artist notes this movement operates in-between the spatial (poetic) body-field of several of her poems, it has led her to explore the notion of stercoric creation whereby an ever withdrawing creator opens the space for a furthering of creative action and hypostasis through this absence and this empting, i.e.  'voiding' act.

The inspiration for the piece, in retrospect, indeed erupts such sense in this poet who considers the poem image as the depth-author of the poem. At the seminal moment the creation itself (in the form of three sisters as image-maker) is creating. Now these three as the one (image) that goes on to 'make' or 'create' amounts to a revealing and a reveiling of a hypostasis or new emanation. The mystery remains uncertain and unidentifiable, still unknown but not entirely unknowable. The artist further notes the idea of a stercoric chair in play and has gone on to explore how image doubling around this motif unveils additional meaning and sensuous potency for her (a graphic mythopoeia). She notes this doubling moves something inner and hidden into personal & conscious view while keeping it veiled from collective & public scrutiny. (a revealing/reveiling sense). It also has a dark trinitarian element. This causes her to re-turn images of descent in Christian theology (the artist, as were her sisters, was raised Roman Catholic) particularly digestion/stomach,  womb/genitalia, wake/quake/war, baptism/bath/moisture & the dark/the depths/the magical art. If you are interested in reading more here, you may want to buy David Miller's Hells & Holy Ghosts. (This is a reprint of an early book very hard to get.) More regarding the two chairs is provided at the end of this set of notes.

2.  The line, a centering for riddance coming, too links the reader to the poem Coming, Too (“Like A Woman Falling”, Arizona: Mythic Artist Press, 2004.) In one sense this reference link re-minds for this artist one of the "others"  being re-membered here as part of or belonging to the dark, other, pubic side of the excremental & public vision our senses need address.

Stercoral Chair & Porphyritic Chair

Sometimes I cannot help marvel in the twists and turns of soul-making, when one keeps one's nose close to the ground of images, how often they reward one with a good laugh. While researching scatalogical ideas, this artist began musing over the idea  that we think  of our commodes as 'chairs' (potty chairs) and even THE chair (The Throne). Upon closer scrutiny she discovers the linking of a seat of power/rule/moral order with a dung chair as belonging to one and the same ritual motion that confers divine authority to speak and act on behalf of the divine will although merely 'man-made.' I'm referring, of course, to the ritual that turns 'man' over into 'pope'

If you've ever wondered, the future pope sits upon a crescent shaped stercoral chair while a choir of cardinals sing psalm. In essence such a sing re-tells the old story of the dung nature and creation's fall into this mattering soul-thing. The Sing re matters the dung story (Shit matters, you see. Or this excremental vision is really what is making the good thing 'good.') The One Creates. And, that's good! And Creates. And creates. Creation itself is eXcess[ive].  That evidently is not so good.  The One becomes less and less nameable in kind, make and modeler of making. Creation itself lets go. (It floods!) Letting go, you see, is 'The Fall'. But, in 'The Falling' creation is that which will have always been what issues forth that never again tissues clean.

Now, the one letting go without material be-ing (spirit) who has no solid body(soul) and is therefore ghosting creation, (interfaces or) penetrates or begins mating with what it will have made  (its own fluid capacity for making) and creation itself also becomes creative; meaning creation begins making the most of its creative moment.  Creator, creation and creativity itself, these three go on to make new in hypostasis an emanation (a soul) that will both reveal, twin, and veil the ever X-panding originating absence ghosting creation.

So now, there has to be an Order of the One and one's order appears to assume responsibility for what the world-creative creativity wants in its making. It wants a solid ground.  A seat of authority. It wants its spirit and its body and a face to reflect itself. But, 'it' is an opus contra naturam, a soul-making. Its ground of be-ing, seat of authority, face, body, and spirit belong to this absence or deep space of shadow or what we now call, psyche itself.

Every future pope is merely man and part of this dung story I've just told. But, the incarnational and dynamic nature of ouisia and its arche over ethico-political creation provides men a social order and chair number two, the porphyritic chair (a god's seat of law on earth) Now the poor man trying to become more than that has been sitting in this crescent shaped stercoral way for quite a long time, but once he has been sufficiently sung over (and this chair shape and this length of time both were meant to show enough people he had a 'sufficient' anatomy to be pope in the first place) he will move to the other chair and receive the insignia of power to speak on behalf of the collective and objective divine creation absolutely. His name changes. He is now called The Pope.

Since the artist knows her own contribution of images to this story-in-progress appears in the guise of the second sister, the one who sits on the stercoral chair that doubles for the "divine" throne,  she cannot help laugh before the poem's hidden & humorous mythopoetic comment. (The artist's last name, also acquired by way of  ritual action, is Pope.)

The artist also discovers three meanings around the term 'porphyritic'. First of all, the word is Greek for purple. It reminds the artist of the third sister's dream in which the vision is bathed in a purple light. Evidently, this ghosting emanates from a creative authority of the highest order! Second, the term 'porphyritic' suggests Porphyry, a student of Plotinus. Porphyry writes a 15 volume treatise in condemnation of Christians (not Christ). Needless to say, only fragments remain. Perhaps the return of some figment of a fragment of Porphyry's treatise raging has returned to wake? The third sense for 'porphyritic' takes this artist in the direction of alchemical notions. It refers to  a red and white crystalline stone/ore. In alchemy red is to be contained in white. Navajo tradition refers to this vessel as 'the heart stone'. And this link returns the artist's thoughts to the poem, Coming, Too. The rhythmic scale  in the weighing of the heart is not about light against darkness good against evil god against man and man against nature. It is not a put down of the flesh, its mourning, nor its losses.. It is the lightening up of the heart's life itself. To be light hearted. That is what this soul wants to now eXpress. That is also what the spirit gourds, elves, clowns or avatars of the divine creation (this poem) grant. Spring is re-turning its creative flow singing this body. But. Who dunnit is no body's best guest!

OCTOBER ORCHARD

WHEN THE BELLS SING ON THE BACK PATIO I REMEMBER

How I was there the day Helga married you
yes, she married you, because you asked

I remember afterward the bells hanging
from threads, the threads themselves left
hanging, blew in the breeze.  They formed
a breezeway, a threshold crossing into an
old orchard, the pass through we all
passed through to gather
awaiting one important thread about to knot―
not left hanging, because she said yes

I had gone that day to the swap meet
I found my own set of bells
they too hang above now in threads
dangling just off my patio

as time goes by, threads have broken
bells have cracked and accumulate
on the ground in a basket below where
they once hung but more still hang
in the upper breezeway tiding through
windy weather just how well tied
some gatherings & knots truly are.

©2015 October Orchard Song stephaniepope mythopoetry.com

THERE IS A RAW BEAUTY IN A LANGUAGE OF HUGS

THE COFFEE HUG by Niya Christine

 WATER SPIRITS LIVE IN BOWS & BOWLS

rainbows
during a time of rain

el bow’s el bowl
holds coloring

well-armed, well-used
gloves

for little bow(l)s that are
sing where raindrops ping and scar

©2015 WHEN Molly’s Moly Blooms (Get Ready for Rainbows)
stephaniepope mythopoetry.com


notes

1. For The Story of The Coffee Hug see the blog of Niya Christine 

2. For more on mythic imagination and mermaid soul see rainbow serpents and water spirits in "Becoming Mermaids".
3. For The Water Spirit & The Rainbow Body see Stephanie Phelps facebook post
4.  See Ric Scow Williams, October 9, 2015 poem, Scars from which the  following excerpt is taken

the water sprays

cloud flowers

blue table

a meal

of light of

stars & geese

a murmuration

do skies remember

how they looked yesterday

Helga’s hands hold the well used gloves

AN IMPULSIVE DARING

Telesilla of Argos

“…an impulsive daring, divinely inspired, came to the younger women to try, for their country's sake, to hold off the enemy--Under the lead of Telesilla….” ~Plutarch, Mulierum Virtutes [Moralia 245c-f]

Before a sanctuary to Aphrodite
in relief Telesilla’s poetry gave song
unto the day she donned an impudent coat & won
well-armed against a wrong.

©2015 Poetic Justice stephanie pope mythopoetry.com#ohjDailyWords #ohj coat, impudent (impudence)

notes

~Plutarch, Mulierum Virtutes [Moralia 245c-f]


Of all the deeds performed by women for the community none is more famous than the struggle against Cleomenes for Argos (494 B.C.), which the women carried out at the instigation of Telesilla the poet. She, as they say, was the daughter of a famous house, but sickly in body, and so she sent to the god to ask about health; and when an oracle was given her to cultivate the Muses, she followed the god's advice, and by devoting herself to poetry and music she was quickly relieved of her trouble, and was greatly admired by the women for her poetic art.

But when Cleomenes (I), king of the Spartans, having slain many Argives (but not by any means seven thousand seven hundred and seventy seven [cf. Herodotus, VII.148] as some fabulous narrative have it), proceeded against the city, an impulsive daring, divinely inspired, came to the younger women to try, for their country's sake, to hold off the enemy. Under the lead of Telesilla, they took up arms, and, taking their stand by the battlements, manned the walls all round, so that the enemy were amazed. The result was that they repulsed Cleomenes with great loss, and the other king, Demaratus, who managed to get inside, as Socrates [FHG IV, p. 497] says, and gained possession of the Pamphyliacum, they drove out. In this way the city was saved. The women who fell in the battle they buried close by the Argive Road, and to the survivors they granted the privilege of erecting a statue of Ares as a memorial of their surpassing valor. Some say that the battle took place on the seventh day of the month which is now known as the Fourth Month [tetartou], but anciently was called Hermaeus among the Argives; others say that it was on the first day of that month, on the anniversary of which they celebrate even to this day the 'Festival of Impudence', at which they clothe the women in men's shirts and cloaks, and the men in women's robes and veils. 

To repair the scarcity of men they did not unite the women with slaves, as Herodotus (VI. 77-83) records, but with the best of their neighboring subjects, whom they made Argive citizens. It was reputed that the women showed disrespect and an intentional indifference to those husbands in their married relations from a feeling that they were underlings. Wherefore the Argives enacted a law, the one which says that married women having a beard must occupy the same bed with their husbands.

SUNDAY POETRY

 ANASTASIS

    I.

Freedom
I hear

being no thing, once burned
like a tree of life and

nothing
went up in smoke.

    II.

Having
displayed itself

a cold matter
being

being a cloudy word, shows
behind it all things disappear

all image
scatters.


   III.

Our sense of incompleteness, an empty
loom where, in spirit, a deep loneliness

has woven being larger than
any sense of love can reach

setting
the son― let him go.

©2015 Walking Beyond Autumn stephaniepope mythopoetry.com

notes

The poem is influenced heavily by another poem, Kirsten’s Path and the following notation by Leonard Park on spiritual loneliness:

VI. PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSTACLES TO EXISTENTIAL FREEDOM

A. Interpersonal Bitterness.

B. Holding a Grudge.

C. Love of Psychological Trauma.

D. Self-Hatred.

E. Fear of Change.

F. Lack of Full Selfhood.

see http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/XP275.html