The Door in a Field

[rowens]

The Door in a Field


We enter a closet to an icy land
and find it melting, in heat
as such an invitation often 
granted—rarely stands,
nor mildly would it whirl in place.

Now, in the open, chimes
of former midnights noon that
pelted effigy, blazon foliage
scarecrow-flash like a ladder on sight,
spiral patterning the midget brain. 

That vultures would open pond 
to amphibian chaos, and sire 
beknighted friends to heroines 
marching sigils and banners hardened
in glitter, and pyre the question dear
that, after all, who would think
the wind itself could pipe the gates
for paths more silver-tongued than gold. 

A master sees all as arbitrary,
the mage absolute;
together, the pulsing zero
of the here and now
shares routine difference
on a plane, flat,
curving and in flight.

Simon Magus levitates 
in an order in which
to fall is to dunk
in the very water
the fish who share it
breathe.

This is first, second nor third idea,
but the rondelet of affirmation
and accusation, cautious as a bridegroom
before the very cross he trusts.—
Liquid modernity culls grave
imagisms in frames that flash
and counteract the way
dogs, once the enemy of cats,
now, though not far from friend
to man, are more a lunar clamant
than a cute and coddling meme.

If the Lion of Judah can still
comfortably hang from a tower,
horning the very moon it distrusts:
there may be an age of imagination,
unfiltered through the orphic hieroglyphs
and token margins that wink and shoot
and tangle, tongue to feted cheek,
obituaries and morning blinds.

What the sun has to offer,
after millennia of shouted and quiet 
abuse, may be that annual burning
may be not only dots connected
but worms to other lives.
Resting costly on the table,
but free, and shelfless, and fairly,
saintly, maligned.

[busker]

Not a big fan of this one.
There are some striking lines, but there are too many lazy similes and metaphors, and lines that seem to say things that are actually nonsensical.
'unfiltered through orphic hieroglyphs' is right down there with the worst.
You can do better.

---

I mean, I like orphic hieroglyphs. It's an interesting phrase. And the poem is full of similar ones. And that's the problem, too many of them.

[rowens]

That makes sense. I'm not sure if after all these years you are surprised when I don't make sense. But I'll try.

"For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business"


Resting costly on the table,
but free, and shelfless, and fairly,
saintly, maligned.

Those lines could describe the poem itself. It takes too much time that doesn't pay off, but it's free, and unpublishable elsewhere (like the following essay).




The "Problem" I've been looking at is so many options of nothing.
These lines from another poem:

Symbols, milky way
seeds of connection, implant
density on the shallow graves

are the same thing as:

unfiltered through orphic hieroglyphs

Not only poems but all language is so overcoded or codified that even generic words have political or religious or slang meanings we don't know about.
The second aspect of that is that I don't have anything to say other than what I've already said. So, as in the poem Romance (and all my poems), I make stuff up and add new meanings and conflicts to keep things going.

I don't have anything to say about any issue, even my poems. Yet the urge to write and other things go on.

So, in this poem, the poem starts with buried references to children books, and then moves through wormholes to other cultures and topical, at least was topical when I was still watching the news, themes of culture wars. As the instability of sense and cultural values was the only thing I found interesting about the news.


Another thing I keep doing is taking the so-called High Modern scene and taking its "chaotic newness" which is a hundred years outdated, and using it, not to say what can't be said, but because there is nothing to say. Not sorrowfully, there's a lot of peace in having nothing to say. But poetic lines pop and surge and need somewhere to go.

So rather than metaphors, I'm mostly only using allusion. And I am using Nonsense, but in a dry way. I'm going for vaudeville deadpan and multicultural wormhole-logic.

The Door in a Field is something that leads to nowhere, but is in a wide-open space and is signifying threshold and connection.

In other words, or these words anyway, I'm entertaining myself. Energetic Enthusiasm (magickal shorthand for sexual excitement).

As to whether or not the poem can work outside of my own private symbol-system, I'll show my method over a few lines:



Now, in the open, chimes                                 
of former midnights noon that                                       Old (see the show Mad Men) falstaffian excess giving way to new sensibilities 
pelted effigy, blazon foliage
scarecrow-flash like a ladder on sight,                               the effigy ties in to the burning at the end of the poem, as this is Burning Man/Wicker Man, cultural conflagration
spiral patterning the midget brain.                                             dna and evolving. And midget is simply marking with scarecrow

That vultures would open pond
to amphibian chaos, and sire
beknighted friends to heroines                                                          so that I can make this joke: quixotic "friends of Dorothy"
marching sigils and banners hardened                
in glitter, and pyre the question dear                                                       The vultures are the old conservatives, 
that, after all, who would think
the wind itself could pipe the gates                                                    the wind and vulture symbols are based on the old belief that vultures impregnated themselves or by the wind
for paths more silver-tongued than gold.                                               so this is a same-sex pregnancy notion   


The poem, whether or not it would work anyway, would have to grant me the tricky tendency of working primarily with obscure and outdated superstitions and works not considered "canonical".    But, I use Google as my alibi, and actually like reading poems that don't make sense until I read secondary sources, and even then . . .


For instance, with those two stanzas, wind, pipe, gates, and gold are referring to The Wind in the Willows, and the liminal horned figure at dawn. And the burning and the morning sun at the end of the poem are calling back from these lines and the burning man reference above. Also, the gates and silver-tongued gold are doing a lot of, maybe unearned but good enough for me, heavy-lifting. We have the paths of the mage and master coming up, we have the Yellow Brick Road, we have Sun and Moon imagery that comes up again later, we have the Tower and the Lion: the lion is the cat meme, the "Hang in There" poster, Aslan from the first stanza, as icy land is Narnia, and Christ: So we have the Lion as the Sun and the Dogs as Lunar Imagery, these are hinting at Master and Mage and the Moon and Tower tarot cards. The piper at the gates of dawn is horned, and the towers in the Moon card refer to madness and duality, but then I don't say ivory, I say horning the moon it distrusts: which is literalizing religion of whatever kind there, as the gates of horn or/are true dreams. 

The Simon Magus stanza sums things up. The fish are Christians and water imagery is chaos before form in bible and blake and thelema: so, Simon attempts to "transgress" but culture is still saturated with Christian values and notions, even unconsciously. The which is a pun with witch, the dunking is alluding to witchhunt torture synonymous with baptism. 


If you don't like the friends of Dorothy joke, you can see the knight as the White Knight and Alice as the heroine; I load my poems with direct subliminal allusions to Nonsense as a defensive move. I'm playing poetry like chess, and I am a High Romantic (emphasis on "high") and believe in the game driving the player mad.

---

James Dickey is one of my Secret Chiefs. He wrote whole books explaining his poems, and even annotated his own Biography.
The Two-Fisted American sensitive drunk man self-advertising that runs through Hemingway, Mailer and Bukowski is a lineage I'm holding to.
Dickey's Biography is called The World as a Lie.


...........


Here's an opportunity for more magickal insight: A man's Ruach may be overjoyed with the chance to discuss and elaborate on his work; while his Nephesh may be having the emotional reaction that his work is being dismissed or his failures exposed. This explains why for every 20 good reviews, one good review with one negative detail can dissolve all the good reviews. The Nephesh is about reacting to what stings, not what is rational. Even saying this is the Ruach; the Ruach sees, but is distorted and distorts the Nephesh. The Ruach is the Sun and the Nephesh is the Moon, Alchemy is their Wedding and Marriage, and crossing the abyss is living spontaneously with Sun and Moon making out on autopilot while Master and Mage are two mates together so long they can carry on conversations without ever opening mouths (this is also a Tower Card masturbation joke).