RED AT NIGHT BOTH BLACK AND WHITE
You and I at sunset
inherit racism
our blackness
a christic night― white mythology
feeding horses red adam
in a descending series.
The horses know we must
see how they see
the apples that have us?
Those horses re cognize
our appetitive eros― have
we must
& should & ought & our parentalisms peal without pea(r)l
peal unpeeled (still red outside and white within the spell as if)
retracing her trace, red at night and winged
what part of monism doesn't have all of us
rose from the sea
falling from above
©2016 Under The Spell of Horses stephanie pope mythopoetry.com
notes1. A response to the poem, I Fall Drowsy (March 1, 2016)by Richard Lance Scow Williams.
i fall drowsy
the horses
know i
have
apples
i know i
must feel
sweetly indebted
to things enclosed
all those cages
locked doors
barred windows
barbed wire electric fences
prisons jails lock ups dungeons
we tell stories that justify our violence
as a natural consequence
of being an animal
reverse engineer
in a line that
reinforces
a predilection
proving simultaneously
our exceptionalism & our being
subject to brutal but natural impulses
o stories that we tell stories to
i protested that a photo
posted on FaceBook
seemed to be at
hard odds with
Christian values
a responder said:
stop using Jesus
i asked: against racism?
the link went quiet
drowsy America
Tarot has it
the chains
on the Devil
are always loose
meaning one can slip
out of illusion at any time
i grab a bag of apples
& walk to the field
2. Under The Spell Of Horses is sparked by both the line in the poem, I Fall Drowsy, "stop using Jesus" and a photo of the funeral service for the late Justice Anthony Scalia. On the altar cloth is a reference to Jesus as the logos spermatikos. It reads, "The seed is the word of god." Justice Clarence Thomas is speaking.
When I saw the line in the poem "stop using jesus" I had the thought that it may not refer to racism. That is, it may not be to the sorry business of racism to which this line refers but to a certain psychic, archetypal pattern, a mythic dominant interpreted as conferring divine status to certain men on earth, privileging a certain interpretation from which is created a rule of law. The archetypal pattern to which I refer is, of course, the logos spermatikos. This archetypal pattern is the one some scholars say is that to which the Platonic Dialogues address calling this form of eros "socratic". It is what first recognizes the "I don't know" you and I and everyone else doesn't yet know...which is like the flea that tells us the apple is rotten. The socratic gadfly wakes us up. What we have lost is the sense of twoness to which the logos spermatikos refers, knowing and loving. What law can put god in your heart?
Supposedly Plato recognizes in the Socratic form of erotic loving that knowing and loving are somehow the same thing and more than an appetitive eros, erotic loving is not about having something. It is about being something. This is "logos spermatikos". Be a sensual place in your natural depths.
Supposedly, too, theological scholars suggest this pattern that is the birth of philosophy was known to the biblical John and written into John's gospel which then attributes this pattern to the historical Jesus imaginally. In your natural death, your sensual place is like the rotting seed in the dark earth giving rise to Psyche's orchard, psyche-making, a second Aphrodite.
This suggests to me now we can all reach this state of eros inherited imaginally by turning back this past still present in ourselves, soul as that killing into being within ourselves; psyche's psyche-making rising up in the life force. This must be the timeless sea of the world to which the night garden returns us.
There is an old story that Aphrodite spends her early years with a playmate in the sea of the world during the time before time. When Zeus calls her to Olympos she gives her playmate, Nerites a pair of wings to try and coax him to go with her. He refuses. It is then she reclaims her wings and, rising from the sea, gives them to Eros of Olympos. Those wings! They are hers! Early Aphrodite... a winged woman; the world sea, Aphrodite's vulva is world time not of earth but of the virgin's garden out of which grows the logos spermatikos, her desirable apple orchard. That makes Psyche of the tale, Psyche & Eros this site where loving and knowing unite in oneself while remaining not one's ego soul at the same time. This site acknowledges twoness. In our twoness I and the other are one deeply feminine and we are reborn lifted up in rich soil like the branches of a tree lift having risen out of the sensual place in its natural depths.
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