FOUR POEMS
PAUL VERLAINE'S AIM
You have me disadvantaged, dear Arthur.
You possess the sharp, quill tip of your pen
And your youth.
I have only this pistol…
If only my wounds were so easily mended.
I have not yet come to terms with written words
As you have--when you were yet a boy!--
And now you leave them,
And me,
Adrift in a drunken boat.
©2017 Paul Verlaine’s Aim Bradley Olson mythopoetry.com
©2017 Paul Verlaine’s Aim Bradley Olson All Rights Retained
WINTER LEAVES
When I first heard it, I thought
It was really only rumor,
That this late in December's unforgiving draught
One golden leaf could still be in good humor.
Yet there it was, a palsied beggar,
At the mercy of winter's biting caprice.
How often have I (unwitting figure!),
Governed by an unattractive eye, failed to give notice.
I entered his world a puzzle, mostly skulking about
Then, by turning each leaf, I saw myself reflected.
His folios revealed me, so shockingly fleshed out,
That the sound, the fury, the Lear-ing suspicions no
longer infected
A dislocated soul. A
corroded spirit.
The littered psychic landscape unveiled by a warm spring
sun
Is healed by the call away from winter if one can hear it
And grasp that, though logos
contradict it, there is never, finally, a "done."
©2017 Winter
Leaves Bradley Olson
mythopoetry.com©2017 Winter Leaves Bradley Olson All Rights Retained
FLIGHT INFORMATION
I watched her from behind my newspaper
Trying to read a pulpy paperback
While the disembodied voice of flight information
(in both English and Spanish)
destroyed her concentration and sent her
eyes scouting the page for the word she last read.
When she left to board I wondered if she would ever finish
If the heroine would find love at long last
If the evils in her life would be overcome by good
If the someone waiting for her at some other airport gate
loved her Passionately, Deeply,
And Truly.
She looked like someone I usually wouldn't think about
twice
Unless she were to trade the battered paperback for Hegel
Or someone else I couldn't understand.
I don't want what's familiar to me; I
ran from the provincial long ago
I know instinctively by watching her
I ran away from everything like her; not towards anything.
She looked happy--comfortable in her
own skin--it alarms me to think she actually was.
©2017 Flight Information Bradley Olson mythopoetry.com
©2017 Flight Information Bradley Olson All Rights Retained
LIMINAL SPACE
I am puzzled of late
by my single and peculiar life.
I am not what I used to be:
An airy dreamer
with a too truant disposition,
nor any longer a dark, upheaved soul
alone and lonely,
but rather betwixt and between
suffering from a usurpation of the senses.
La belle dame sans merci
draws from her black sack
“beautiful untrue things,”
the necessary deceptions
symbolizing and signaling life;
those heralds most deeply felt and dreamt of,
yet remaining oddly unapprehended…
the soul’s fugitives
bringing substance to an insubstantial life
and imagination to a
mundane world.
From this sack,
the very same one,
She brought forth Ilych’s death.
Grotesque to those who watched,
but did not see,
beautiful to him
whom it brought forbearance and joy.
Beautifully used and artfully worn was It.
Beautiful and holy.
So holy It seems
It can hold nothing at all
but air…
and light…
and time…
and space.
Giving room enough to live,
saving room enough to die,
proposing room enough to discover (to my surprise!)
where It is,
Death cannot be.
©2017 Liminal Space Bradley Olson mythopoetry.com
©2017 Liminal Space Bradley Olson All Rights Retained
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bradley Olson, Ph.D is a former police officer who returned to school
to earn a Bachelor’s degree in psychology and literature, two Master’s degrees
in psychology, and a Ph.D. in Cultural Mythology. Dr. Olson is
currently a psychotherapist in private practice at Mountain Waves Healing Arts in Flagstaff, Arizona; his work with clients is heavily influenced
by his interest in Jungian Analytical Psychology and Mythological Studies. Brad
is also the author of the acclaimed Falstaff Was My Tutor blog, which has earned him a nomination for the 2012 PUSHCART PRIZE in nonfiction.
BRAD'S BLOG
FALSTAFF WAS MY TUTOR
BRAD ALSO BLOGS FOR JCF.ORG
MYTH BLAST
WEBSITE
MOUNTAIN WAVES HEALING ARTS
VISIT BRAD ON FACEBOOK AT
https://www.facebook.com/bradley.a.olson
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