Mythopoetics In Culture mythopoetry.com

Monday, April 17, 2017

POETS OF #MYTHOPOETRY: MARY HARRELL 3 #poems #NAPOMO APRIL #GUESTBLOG

IN THE GAP

For years too long to count

I had been stuck there

in the gap between soul

and the words that speak it.

I see me

first mute, then wailing,

then seared with pain,

looking for my little boy.

His face, a memory

stunningly beautiful,

blue-black from lack of oxygen.

“I will find him.

I will know him.

I will hold him.

I will take in his baby scent. ”

And in that moment of thirst quenched

and pain relieved

my heart will explode with pleasure enough

to warm the world.

For just one glance upon him,

one gift of seeing him breathe one breath

I will search an eternity.

Crazed beyond imagining by his cry one night

cat-like and forlorn,

I go down to find him.

I am Demeter, inconsolable

crying out for Persephone

her precious child stole from her,

swallowed by the underworld.

In the gap between soul and the words that speak it

I look down to the palm of my hand

where my own son rests his lifeless head.

I am there always in times of breakdown.

We all are there in times of breakdown

to die, to suffer,

to be turned into gold.

Out of this time in the gap

I find the words to speak my loss.

Pain is transformed into a union between worlds.

Tiredness in this new place is clean,

renewed with simple sleep.

Soft imaginings come on butterfly wings.

I am not afraid of the gap.

I am not afraid of hell.

Now I go with others,

fellow travelers.

I stand at the edge of the world

and give them the gift of knowing

that they can survive.

They will live for a time, long or short, it doesn’t matter

in that gap between soul and the words that speak it.

They will go down

and search

and grieve.

I will extend my hand.

I will go with them.

I know this place;

here lies the path to the end of grief.

©2017 In The Gap Mary Harrell mythopoetry.com
©2017 In The Gap Mary Harrell All Rights Retained

THE THREAD

Mythic hearts seek

old stories, lost loves,

riddles clothed in new robes.

Each circles wide,

meanders slow and

marks the way with jesters’ stones.

They find the truth

within the lie,

the lesson of the quest.

And still they’re meant to

start again, to

lose the newly found.

To hold the thread

that meaning makes

in soul’s recursive round.

©2017 The Thread Mary Harrell mythopoetry.com
©2017 The Thread Mary Harrell All Rights Retained

WHISPERS

In soft whispers and quiet evocations

We are called by soul to seek the depth of a thing.

To wonder what else, or who else is present

In the cavernous mystery of lived experience.

"Whispers" is republished by permission from Mary's first book,
Imaginal Figures In Everyday Life: Stories From The World Between Matter And Mind, Chiron Publications, 2015.

©2017 Whispers Mary Harrell mythopoetry.com
©2017 Whispers Mary Harrell All Rights Retained

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Harrell, a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist, and licensed psychologist received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is Associate Professor Emeritus at State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego. Her chapters, in the areas of educational reform and imaginal psychology, appear in five books. In 2014, Syracuse University’s The Stone Canoe, a Journal of Arts, Literature and Social Commentary, No. 8 anthologized her poetry. Her first book titled, Imaginal Figures in Everyday Life: Stories from the World between Matter and Mind was published in 2015 (Chiron Publications). Mary recently completed her latest project, a young adult novel titled, The Mythmaker. She lives with her husband Stephen in South Carolina.

MARY'S BLOG

http://www.maryharrellphd.com/

MARY'S BOOK

CAN BE PURCHASED THROUGH AMAZON

Mary’s Author Chat

Mary answers readers’ questions on the Chiron Publications website

MARY ON FACEBOOK

MARY ON YOUTUBE

Mary’s YouTube interviews include chats with Dr. Dave for Shrink Rap Radio, and withBonnie Bright for Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Discussions in Depth.

Friday, April 14, 2017

APRIL HIDDEN BUT EMPTY #EASTER #GOODFRIDAY #PASSIONWEEK #NATIONALPOETRYMONTH 2017

NEST stephanie pope

A lady quail came before Passion Week
this year & laid 10 eggs in the patio
flower pot resting just underneath my
bedroom window. But last night I lay
at rest and dreamed an emptied nest.

In the morning how not removable
is thy lost word nesting where I lay
so stunned & moved by inner losses
throughout my own night’s sleep. Yet a way
of knowing moves in & is laid to nest here

with me. Something else
having pierced my breast
gotten under my skin diminishes
the low point and then moves on.
My rest and my restless rest

sweetly worded wordless shape thy bird
what shaped in loss returns. In pale voice
a laid-to-nest begins in wing to seek
thy nearly touching hand: the empty nest
in likeness renders goneness small―_ _all

not read and empty yolks me

―I cradle your big history resting in
my emptied nap poetizing growth. How
touching,
centerless
nourishing

divine
no thing is in thy yellowing moment.

I forgot to say how the father quail
sits a good long while on those speckled eggs
during the day. In heat, no word, these words are
so like thy yellow hand fashioning what a shape
in loss returns by thy nourishing masculine form.

A bird plays the big green role— my days, cracking
ten whole eggs darkly hidden in his feathers.
Night, too, is dream-shaping my nest & with subtlety
suggests a bright lady yolks in my unrest, her goneness
reappearing as light

& days in the kitchen have blazed.

©2017 Nest stephaniepope mythopoetry.com

visit @mythopoetry

Monday, April 10, 2017

#NAPOMO #GUESTPOST APRIL #POETRY SIX POEMS by RICHARD LANCE SCOW WILLIAMS for #NATIONALPOETRYMONTH2017

SIX POEMS

"pelts"

pelts & feathers

dead things

o my god

the thunder

says: you lit

me up then you

left me alone in the dark

or how you cannot remember

how the sea took you from shore

the dead in the streets of your heaven

suddenly underwater sign this with red seeds

with the leathery face of a madman aged in a day

the thin men in their gray mourning jackets

backs like wings of sullen angels

he did not want this distance

(but the distance knew)

the wheels turn

until only

the wisdom

of invisible light

reveals the stain of

having been the blood

removed without a longing

©2017 “pelts” Richard Lance Scow Williams mythopoetry.com
All Rights Reserved

CARNIVAL

a sea side carnival

the gaudy against the grey

no one on the boardwalk save

a few lonely ghosts—shadows hunched—

hurrying to appointments more mundane than sinister

all the rides locked tight—the barker’s voice replaced by gull’s cry

inside the tunnels the ghouls & zombies wait for their electric trip

no screams no giggles no nervous laughter to reward a patience

of plastic steel enamel paint the peeling of their cause

we imagine murder rape assault on body & soul

but no teenage fright fest hero today—worse—

a distance—a foreboding emptiness

the waves a hundred yards away

relentlessly pulled back

©2017 CARNIVAL Richard Lance Scow Williams mythopoetry.com
All Rights Reserved

Tortoises

tortoises bleeding

eggs calcified

Ramona

reports on

her exotic

charges

how to

keep

the wild

inside a cage

without damaging

what makes the wild wild

you don’t—you adapt

you make excuses

you wince & say

this is not

the end

& you act

as if you are listening

to a voice that is so familiar

but you have heard it so often

that when the world ends

it is like you never knew

the tortoise crossing

that finish line

the hare long

given up

for dead

falling falling

into a boiling pot

black iron deep & vast

it does not matter the stars

Sparkle Pony

Sparkle Pony was the name of a one-woman folk singer in the TV series Portlandia

those episodes were excruciating to watch in that they hewed close to the truth

i think of Antonio Salieri as portrayed in the movie Amadeus

of talent & near talent & no talent but ambition

an ambition to be seen as beloved

in & thru all time all space

you matter you glitter

your life is as wide

as you imagine

the depth of

all that is

fairy dust

sparkly

unicorns

magic princesses

knights in shining armor

deafening applause never ending

your name writ larger than Ozymandias

o ghosts of the nameless tell me you are

like blooms of stars to offer my small ego your coat

let me burn with you in the eternity of galaxies yet born

Sparkle Pony parades of countless knights & innumerable princesses

what matter the nature of a a burning truth

burn with me like time itself

SCAR

many can wound

do wound &

pick at

the scars

& you wince

wondering what

mercy could harm

the history of abuse

my friend says

we come now

to the end

of such

things

the world

now suppurating

in wounds too many to count

more than ready to form a weaving of scars

i do not want to look away from it all

i want to rub my scars

& remember

how kind

the flesh

to love

me enough

to remind me

we live in a world

THE FIREPLACE HAS A MESSAGE

shoveling ash from the fireplace into a metal bucket to take to the garden & pour it on the frozen ground—pour it or dump or deposit it (to pour seems more sacred)—my father said ash is good for roses (he knew about the growing of roses)—there are still some glowing embers—fist-sized pieces of char—when a human is cremated bits of bone can remain—bone & teeth perhaps & nail—my father’s ashes are in a box on the nightstand next to my mother’s bed—i do not know where we’ll take them & hers when she goes—Arkansas likely—Fouke or Texarkana north off Highway 71 or 82—my father when he would pass his grandfather’s grave (on Hwy. 82) would say, “i’ll smoke a Lucky for you” & turn to me smiling, “LSMFT—Lucky Strike means fine tobacco”

cigarette ash is not as fine as the seasoned oak piñon pine & cedar

that burns to a dust in our fireplace—bed of ashes still warm twelve

hours later—turning the bucket upside down the mountain winds

carry a cloud of the dusty ash north past the wooden garden gate—some ash still clings to my boots as i walk back thru the snow to fill the metal bucket again

©2017 THE FIREPLACE HAS A MESSAGE
Richard Lance Scow Williams
mythopoetry.com All Rights Reserved