emerging visions: )mad magicks( Emerging Visions XX May 2011

20110522

)mad magicks( Emerging Visions XX May 2011

Beyond

created by Radio Free Clear Light

I am going beyond, to where you cannot reach me, but I can still reach you. I can hold you in my mind, cradle you as if you are one of a basket of delicate little things, but you cannot conceive of what I am becoming, where I am going. The words that shape your mind will not let that knowledge in. When I reach from here to there and touch you it is possible that you will feel frightened, threatened.

Who is this unknown other? You might write me a letter saying that I have become a stranger to you, you might assume that I am unhappy, filled with a terrible darkness merely because you can not see me. Just because you are blind, it does not follow that I am filled with darkness, or that the darkness that I am filled with is filled with terrible things. You fear what you do not know, what you cannot know. You fear what you do not understand, what you cannot understand. You fear me, or fear for the me that you once imagined me to be because I am moving beyond your reach, beyond your sight. I have gone far from your bosom and you suppose that it is a bad thing.

Why do I go? Why am I casting off blindness and stepping out of the chains that make us who we are, who we imagine we are? Why have I stopped playing the serious game with you? Why have I ceased to be serious? Because I am going beyond, stepping out, making a creative choice.

How can I say that, you have asked. I’ll tell you. I can say anything now because it is all meaningless, all as meaningless as red, blue, and yellow. All words are colors that I play with like a child with finger paint. I will not compare myself to a master, I will not say that I am to words what Rembrandt is to red, blue, and yellow, but the only way for me to get there is to begin here, playing with these words now. The way to begin is to say farewell to you and begin the trek beyond.

You may feel angry with me for refusing to play, for refusing to conform as you have conformed to the world made of words that is the shape of your mind. You may feel angry as those dogs locked behind chain link fences feel angry when they see another unleashed dog stroll by beyond their reach. Are you angry at me for choosing liberation, or are you angry with yourself for choosing imprisonment?

You may also feel sorrow. You may feel that I am breaking your heart by leaving you, that I am hurting you by releasing my ties with you. For this I have no answer that won't sting. Should an able man sit down in the desert with a man with broken legs?

I would drag you, but you have no desire to go where I am going. You prefer the desert, your perpetual suffering. These desires live in me as well, but in my case something else is growing, something with the power to override desire. I call this thing my will and it is carrying me beyond, to where you cannot reach.

THE MYSTERY OF WATERS

The Black River moved east to the Red Sea
as August crept in on soft hands,
all before a lost tribe of clowns
carrying cartoons and sacred images
high above their heads
close to the blue sky
close to their desire.

Calliope music beckoned them enter the
cathedral that nestled under a grand mustard tree,
as Mary Magdalene flew high above the center ring
Saint Agnes recited the seven truths
Lucifer blew fire and ice
ending the world as predicted by Frost.

Alice, their queen, kept watch -
Alice who knew the secret of grinning cats and wise caterpillars
smoking dope high above the cathedral on tree limbs,
purring to perfection in sitting meditation
dreaming of dancing mice
one minded mischief makers.

I remained silent and floated on to the Dead Sea,
where blood drops become rose buds in bleeding hearts.
Watching ash fall from the hand of an avatar
snow flakes in August
dusting me white as talcum after baptism.

These wandering mysteries.
These puzzlements of mind.
Meditations on the nature of rivers and seas,
breezes that dapple my mind in sunlight at midnight.

Will you float with me
On this river of grace?
Belly button pointing toward heaven,
umbilical eye staring into the mystery of love.

copyright Charles P. Ries

Witness, watcher, water dancer, warrior
And almost wilderness within
He was, a compass always pointing north
Alone a century in dark without a moon.
Unending longing, startled fast as noticed birds,
He knows a promise only half-fulfilled,
A once and not forgotten evil
Not recorded on the wall with any other name,
A loneliness though intimately
Known in blood
And will she
Always look at him with tears?

All waste and wasting wound the wilderness
And also freeze his soul to witness yet again.
Four compass points, four winds, four trout,
And four cliff images of never lost again
Are his, a fortress, magic, wonder still his armor
As he walks alone in darkness,
Treads the hall where she is wasting, bloodless,
Soon to join the gone, the lost, the never knowing.
This time he has read her name and whispered it,
Will read in stone and paper that there were
For her no fortress and no grizzly bear.
He wished for eagles, feathers wide.

At close of light and birth of stars,
Chokedamp, firedamp, no zephyrs, he is. He is
Not in conquered wilderness nor close the rapids,
Only crowded concrete. There again alone unless
A seeker, sailplane, sapphire gentle-bright:
Set fire the sky, she knows
His heart in blue and purple, red, and gold,
And fur and feathers, wind and longing.
Soar, set fire the sky, the gone, the lost,
The never knowing
Candles of forgiveness in the darkness,
Spirit guides.

bej01/30/99

copyright Beth Johnson all rights reserved

Jude Cowell "Shroom Trio"Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative 2.5

T'Alçae ElFaken and the Lady of the Crimson Dance

T'Alçae ElFaken draws a circle around the Fire dancing

Careful to faithfully render the twilight dividing line

Between the fire’s light and the Night that sucks it away

Higher wizards might use enchanted staffs or talent devices

To inscribe the shielding circle

But T'Alçae uses a common stick from the forest

And achieves an acumen far above his station

Achieves the highest protection

Achieves a Circle of Ages

(c) Adam Pinson "Cycloscope Kaleidoclops"

“Fair Salamander

Dear Lady of the Crimson Dance

An admirer seeks a knowing. . .”

The hues of the quick flickering Dance sputter and hiss

The pop and crackle of the Undulation become a staccato

“Fair Lady I offer sustenance.”

And the prepared measures are cast in the proper fashion

Billions of tiny spark angels become the comely curves

Of a Lady both dark and light

A Lady of Fire

T'Alçae holds a proper silence

Awaiting her pleasure before speaking

And this pleases her as she has not been pleased in years

She considers the young warrior wizard

A zephyr whisper

Softer than the vampire feathers known as snowflakes

A voice so soft and subtle

Asks:

“You are not entirely unpleasing to me

And I would know your name. . . "

“Fair One I ask to know the proper manner to address you.”

“Oh a gentleman. . .

A gentleman would not ask a Lady to reveal her secrets

But he would never be so rude as to refuse his name to her.”

“I am T'Alçae ElFaken.”

And he is wisely silent, offering none of his titles of honors

The Lady smiles

The sky above the circle tips the balancing point

Spilling over the spine of the night

And everything slides toward Dawn

“Speak your question gentle Wizard.”

“I seek an understanding of the mad magic known as Love. . .”

She is laughing, a not entirely pleasant sound

“Lady of Heat and Passion. . . "

Now her cackling has become embarrassing

He is silent

“Oh child of Fear and Flesh

Serve me another portion.”

Flask – Floom – Chortle and Cavort

“Silly mortal

Love is the only divine magic you ephemerals may know.”

She is growing into a fountain of spark salmon

Her voice is quick and relentless

“Love. . .?

You ask of Love?

Look Kid you have been respectful

And I have no taste for your flesh

So I’m gonna grant your request."

(c) little lightening bolt mccoy

"Love is the weirdest magic of all

My sister obeys no laws

She will not be conjured or abided

Sacrifice is the coin of Her Realm

And all who come to know her caress

Find Love to be the shortest distance

Between wherever you are

And total madness.”

A whoosh and a whom

T'Alçae shields his eyes

And she is gone

He stands

Still quivering

When comes the Dawn

Quixotic as ever

copyright William C. Burns, Jr.

Twenty-First Century

A moon walks into a bar
and forgets to take off his soccer cleats.
A lady friend bellows, Look at those cankles!
Moon is embarrassed, his face turns
pumpkin and sunflower in the cheeks.
A flashlight mistakes him for another flashlight,
and tries to pick him up. The moon is too drunk to trust
his own diminishing moral code,
so he consults his lady-friend in the bathroom.
She tells him, let him blow you, but don't touch him or anything.
The bathroom is playing “Kiss From A Rose” by Seal,
which is Moon's favorite song.
He takes it as a sign and goes back into the smoky bar,
ready to be fondled by a stranger.

The flashlight is talking to a boat-shaped chandelier.
He orders her a mind-eraser and thinks he's suave.
The flashlight avoids eye contact with Moon
while telling the boat-shaped chandelier about how pre-Raphaelite
she looks, how bright she is, like a banana leaf.
Moon thinks, don't get so down on yourself.
People don't think about you as much as you think they do.
They keep trying to cop a feel, claiming,
I've never felt anyone's moon before. They ogle
at his big soft legs, like they're made of sugar and his hair
looks a bit oily. Some Chinese claim to worship the moon,
offering him a slice of honeycake. He prefers to drink beer
out of a sippycup, gets salt-hard. People notice,
offer him their business cards, trying to network.
They ask Moon, what was your major in college?
He replies, rhetoric. It shuts them up. Somebody says,
My friend Jupiter has a lot of moons, and people barhop
to get closer to the sun, where there is more breathing room.
They finally leave Moon alone.

Quietly he prays to Father, Son & Holy Spirit. He looks for Earth,
his own Father. He forgets that right now he is living on Earth,
not in his crater-womb but holding his hands on the ground.
You know that trite quote about footsteps? You know the one,
the way it's endlessly re-printed on funeral programs: I was carrying you,
my Son, all this time. Not many people know that Moon's footsteps
are clouds. On overcast days, Moon exercises with sooty allure
and a pedometer, hoping to shrink to the size of a goose-necked banana.
Earth stares back at his son, disappointed.

(c) Christine Reilly

Where forgotten Scarecrows weep.

I saw you in the land where forgotten scarecrows weep
dancing with an old Guy Fawkes that had somehow escaped the flames,
a cellophane rose gripped firmly between your teeth.
Skeletons clacked castanets and a mariachi band who had drunk too much tequila
and missed the Day of the Dead played xylophone on human bones,
tapping tom-tom skulls and strumming pelvic guitars.
Beneath a thousand falling stars I fell in love with you
again and again and again, beneath an always rising Moon.

"There're playing our tune, my dear," I whispered in your fleshless ear
but you couldn't hear me and couldn't see me either,
My phantom Lady Godiva, dancing Shank's Pony up and down
the cobbled streets of Cornwall, along the spine of the Pennines,
in secret forests of Merlin-haunted Scotland
where old stone circles jig and reel beneath cold northern lights
and on a clear December night the Lord of the Arctic
gazes out from his castle windows dreaming of Summer.

All through January and February I followed your shadow,
throwing tiny stones and pebbles at your roughly stuffed companion,
willing him to fall apart. Finally in March a cold gust
of easterly Siberian blew his stupid hat off...
but still you kept on dancing,
whispering sweet nothings to the old broomstick
sticking up out of his neck.
Only with the coming of April did your faithful Guy finally disintergrate,
cheeky birds just returned from warmer climes
stealing his stuffing to line their nests.
By late July you too had all but dissolved
but before you vanished away completely
I trapped a little piece of your vegetative essence in a jam-jar
and even now it sits upon my marble mantlepiece
inbetween the cuckoo clock that doesn't work
and a little clay ballerina with a broken leg.

But sometimes in my dreams at night
I walk with you beneath a thousand falling stars
and a moon that never sets.
You gaze into my eyes at last and whisper tender endearments.
I have been lying in this overgrown cemetary now for ninety years
but still the dream of love keeps me alive...

copyright Willowdown

Chalice

This empty chalice to be filled by spirit's essence, placed open, according to ritual, waits for its turn.

The Goddess stands over Her cauldron, deep in this hidden chamber of Her chthonic cave. She tosses in the herbs, recites the liturgy, long-practiced but never without supreme concentration.

Sprite sparks, disembodied voices, curls of smoke stained with potent ash, swirl about, crazily careen, above and around Her pot of charming, of magicks.

Goddess of so many duties, many eras, supplicants, sorrow-filled worshippers, She bears the longing, the emptiness.

"I cannot fill you. I can not fill your chalice of emptiness. That is not my gift or purpose. I can offer only to guide you to what is already within."

Nearly quiet, sea sounds, dank odor of lowtide, creeping Spring carries melt of harsher climes. She stokes the fire to remember when the Sun was high and strong, and present. Fire has its own secrets, its own order. As do we, each our own furnace, nurturing a flame that is destiny. So old, She has been burnt by many flames -- blistered, scarred, hardened. She still tastes every fiery spice, seasonings, marinades. It all moves Her to cackling hysteria. You don't want the pain of knowing what She endures. You just want soothing fantasies to believe in.

She understands your fear, withdraws. No need to escalate sorrow. She is self-contained in her work, close-knit layers of exquisite aeons, sense memories, distilled lives.

"Was I a woman, then, upon the Earth, feeling succulent breeze of early Spring uplift me while returning birds and budlings rushed into new beginnings?"

In the dark, in the cold, enclosed below that hopeful ground, stirrings still find Her. She can not miss Sun, Sky, open fields. They are ingrained in Her, as immediate and intense as ever they could be. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow. Always all times, all places, all emotions, overwhelm, yet gentle strand by strand amuse. She has no pity. There is only action, including the action of long enthrallment, of stasis within unfolding storms. There is no room for judgment, no excuses. She sees beyond all the rationales, the weak flailing attempts at blame, at justification.

Laughter takes Her. It makes so much more sense to revel in release, expelling, cleansing for exploration, for readiness to take the next step.

The rampant confusion clears. Her eyes explore moving scenes; Her ears hear the clamor of supplications. She feels, breathes, their stories. She cocks an ear, widens the circumference of her eyes, takes in this kaleidoscopic landscape, cacophonous data. Minutely, she discerns cloying strings of powerful souls as yet unaware of their gifts, gladly grasps familiar flavors. She narrows in Her focus, becomes more attentively intent in Her seeking, images of journeys to be undertaken. It has never been that She demands worship. She is fully aware of Her responsibility to those few who demand Her influence, those who, knowingly or from inchoate intuition, claim kinship.

Chthonic wilds, primordial castings, build into eternity. Silent, archetype of will ponders life, intrinsically senses despair, bottomless sorrow, waste of intent on such a merciless plane. Invigorated, challenged, She gives challenge to her wards. "Find me, at the root of desire. Your truest wish of will to be fashioned, you must give only the price of who you were made against your nature."

*************************************

Long that Full Moon night she stood on the balcony, staring at Lady Moon, breathing in sweet night blooming herbs from the cloistered garden. She fancied hearing faint music in the rustling wind. Slowly, not knowing that her body moved, she danced, the wind carrying her like a lover's arms caught up in dancing slow and closer than a kiss. "Goddess?" Her voice quavered at the audacity; but she felt surer of her course. She felt helpless, unloved, unsupported. She felt a slow, undulating anger move through muscles and mind.

"Goddess, I am your child." Nothing had ever felt more true.

"I am of you; and in need of your aid. You know I have not asked anything of you before. We are independent, a self-dependent kind. We enjoy challenge, figuring out the puzzles, crafting our own prize, facing the demons square on with defiance and grace. I know these are your attributes when I see myself thus behaving.

Tonight I am lost. I have lost my lust for challenge. I am defeated, unable to marshal the means to fight.

I beseech you, turn to you in supplication. Tell me, what can I do? How can I escape this false fate that will seize and drain my soul, if I can find no exit?"

Reveling in the ecstasy of the dance, eyes closed still facing moonlight, she felt a calming presence, so near, palpable. The perfume was like sleep, intoxicating, evoking dreams. That funny way that dreams have, half-baked images, fragments take on narrative.

She was somehow, without memory of travel, deep in archetypal forest. It was deadly dark; but the trees, the moss, flower petals, glowed, an unearthly light from an unannounced source.

She was drawn to a particular tree, indistinguishable from many others, yet a presence unto itself. Without segue, a shovel was in her hands, shoveling. Her apron pockets (an apron that had apparently fashioned itself and appeared atop her dress) had supplied themselves with a mixture of particular herbs, most of which were unfamiliar. Somehow her arms and shovel had excavated ground to reveal the tree roots.

Strange roots, these, alive. Yes, I know roots of a growing tree are alive; but these were lively. They wriggled, pulsed, seemed to dance, though in circumscribed place.

The shovel was now a knife. She cut open a finger of root. It bled copiously, a brilliant green. She mixed the root blood with the herbs from her pockets. A song came from her lips, from her throat, from her gut, bubbling through her as the herbs and tree blood mixed into a viscous paste.

"Root of desire calls
infinite melodies
binds the seven seas
spills through centuries
cast out among the stars
essence of who you are.
Feel the root of desire
enflame your heart.
Realize your part.
Play its haunting melody.
Charm vibrations repair your fears.
Released from harm, from chains
of foes,
find your destiny
rooted in the throes of desire."

She recognized the Goddess's chalice that held the potent mixture as it touched her lips. Drinking the potion of the root, she felt light and free. Viscous green light poured through her, igniting every capillary, every neuronal fiber.
Suddenly she knew what she had always known.

There was that moment when her Goddess spoke through her, to her, seering, branding with faith that all she could ever need was hers.

The dreamlike night receded. She slept deeply, curled above hallowed ground beneath protecting leave laden branches.

Her immediate fears and cares no longer matter.

She will awaken into a life she does not expect.

The Goddess smiles, spent for this evening. She fills her chalice with consecrated wine to drink, savor intoxication of liquid fire, as embers of her night's workings settle, gently, into history.

(c) Laurie Corzett

In the valley of fallen idols.

In the valley of fallen idols
A thousand dethroned Gods sat and debated
The quality of various types of dust.
"The sand over which my shadow falls"
said a great, cracked eidolon of Baal,
"is tinged with the blood of a million sacrifices
offered up to me in reverence and fear
- the very dung-beetles that breed beneath the bones of the desert avoid the touch of its lingering pestilence."

"The sand over which my shadow falls"
said a disfigured statue of Astarte,
"glitters like a spilt cornucopia of gemstones like unto the precious jewels, rings and necklaces that a multitude of suitors have offered up to my incomparable beauty beneath the Evening Star
- the Moon and stars themselves lean down from the horizon to cast their jealous gaze upon such scattered wealth."

"Beware", said a fish-headed image of Dagon
half-buried beneath the silt and rubble of wind and time-blasted temples,
"Beware the treacherous false sand o'er which my baleful shadow falls.
Beneath its seemingly smooth and innocent surface
the bones of countless mortals fester in slow decay:
priests, sacred-virgins, great Kings and Queens with their retinues of concubines, catamites, soothsayers and slaves by the score.
Even after the passage of ten thousand Suns and Moons
it is still hungry for the blood of worshippers
And trembles lustfully at the softest tread of distant footfalls."

Beneath the ruined figure of a particularly hideous three-headed,
multi-limbed deity the shadows were thickest of all,
A pool of clotted midnight wherein a shattered stone gryphon crouched at the feet of its many-eyed Master
(was it Time, Eternity or Death?).
Presently, a young child came skipping lightly between the broken and half-toppled statues,
Singing sweetly, tossing a golden ball up into the air and catching it.
Between the fallen Gods and Demons she skipped
From patch of burnished sunlight to shadow and back to sunlight again,
Oblivious of all but her happy game.
Lost in their reveries of splendour and power
The dethroned deities of the Ages debated the various qualities of various types of dust.

Estariel.

Estariel,
a laughing-eyed river girl
is staring up at you from beneath
the water's rippling mirror
- has the impudent creature no manners?

Estariel,
whose is that slender shadow following you about
in the silvery starlight,
leaping and dancing at your feet
with scandelous mockery
- why do you allow it to behave so boldly?

Estariel, Estariel,
there are moths of gossamer and ethereal fire
engaged in some erratic display
above your moonlit hair
- is it the scent of your dreams that attracts them
or are they merely drunk on your beauty?

Estariel,
has that impudent river's daughter
plugged your ears with water blossom?
I have been playing plaintive love songs on my catkin-harp
all evening long
but you have not looked my way once
- are you, or I, under some subtle enchantment?

Estariel,
my throat is tired with praising your beauty
and my eyes grow tired with the dust of so many stars.
can you not spare a single glance
or sigh a single sigh
before the birds begin to sing
and the world begins to waken?

Estariel,
what a cold and heartless girl you are,
sitting beneath the moonlight all night,
unmindful of my vigil,
shamelessly allowing the wind to caress your bare arms
and plunge its lewd fingers into your hair...
tomorrow I will take my harp to the Forests of Gold
and sing my song to the tree-nymphs.
I will not be made a fool of in this way!

Estariel,
the invisible Prince of some faraway Kingdom
has laid a garland of phantom flowers at your feet.
His ghostly shadow is sitting quietly next to yours
as he gazes into your dreaming eyes
and tries to fathom your name.
A white owl flies across the stars,
a feather drifts slowly down from the Moon;
tiny droplets of dew are arranging themselves
aesthetically on the petals of flowers,
blades of grass and strands of frost-silvered spiderweb.
All the little river girls are gently swaying in their
beds of fresh green weeds and water-cress,
dreaming of mischievous games to play the next day
and sunbeams to chase through fields ripe with summer.
Estariel, Estariel
- what fortunate thought has strayed into your soul
and fallen under your spell?

copyright Willowdown

(c) Jennifer Lange
"The Gaze"

For the May Queen

Tick Tock
Time's a'creeping
Maidens weeping
beating rags along the river's edge
Shallow floods keep the land aware
destiny is seatide

Crazy lady mending her endless tears
Throat flumed, a voice to run from
Love never tarried, though many she married
She cocks an eye, arrowing flocks of fears
Cackles and coaxes sweet mourning doves
to carry her coffin to market
Buyers beware

Don't stop
Don't answer
Don't stare
Don't be seen
Hide in the green
Hide in the hole you call home
Never admit you belong
to the caste you belong to alone
Never assent to succeed to the throne
Wait for cover of darkness
Wallow in comfort of sleep
Trade what time you're given
for a secret you can't keep
Destiny is seatide

libramoon

Guns ‘n Butter

I’d been having an affair
with a hydrocarbon medusa.

"Medusa"

A crude relationship
based on heavy metal
m.r.e.’s and gunshot residue.

I wanted her to meet the folks
but she couldn’t come inside,

said their roof blocked out the sky,
said she could only climax
on her back
with starlight glancing
off the soles of her feet.

At water’s edge
Medusa pulled me atop of her.
But as I plunged in she was cut
on a scrap of beach glass.

She bled out on the sand
and left me lying in a pool
of thirty weight.

A classic conundrum.

It was infatuation;
I couldn’t get enough of her.
But my mother is happier now.
She says a hydrocarbon medusa
was too old for me anyway.

text and image (c) David Blaine

LIGHTLESS

Each year the light is less.

We can barely see it now,

The faint necklace of

The Milky Way.

The old ones were wrong,

You know with their waxed fingers

Pointing up like abandoned adobe.

Yet you know better in your cubical gardens

And half moth-eaten moons,

You have arrived in

Handcuffs.

copyright Clinton Van Inman

It Is Written

I stand, open and defenseless,
Waiting for Pluto to overpower me,
Take me where he will,
Suit me to his purpose.
Or, is that my sister Hecate
Coming to meet me,
Coming to embrace me,
To set me free?

Wondrous are the ways
of the shifty, glamour-ridden mind.
We peek out through rainbow slits
Onto a sinuous landscape.
Slippery bits of meaning slither along
Hissing out of forked tongue
Oracular riddles.
"Oh, yes, my love awaits me.
In the tall grasses we will twain.
Great fortune is to befall us.
It is written."
And rewritten, and rewritten
On and on through the fever.
Burning molecules, organic fuel,
Dancing, wildly, within a fiery pentagram,
Within channeled schematics,
Ignited by a living passion.

I am beyond words.
Tumbling through shiny bubbles
And iron-wrought hieroglyphs.
There is nothing to depend on
But pure will
And the ability
To suspend belief.

libramoon

// 03:15

<< Home

emerging visions

20110522

)mad magicks( Emerging Visions XX May 2011

Links

ARCHIVES