and you and you and you Options

[Guest_circumsolar_*]

and you and you and you


too soon, too soon, the eagle flew
while you were busy drawing down
the moon into your icy hands,
purchasing one-eyed wisdom
to crowd your poppied mind,
until you could no longer stand
but gently tumbled tousled thoughts
to fall asleep in twilight lands
- asleep in the laps of legends.

and as you dreamt, a river of woe
washed over you and carried you down
to those blasted banks, where the rocking stone
could be toppled by the gentlest touch:
you stroked the smooth-skinned serpent's egg
and, though asleep, you cried real tears
for emotions that somehow eluded you
and for the names of the faces you seemed to remember
with a distant and palsied anxiety.

and you dreamt you wrote a mystic piece
where vague and shuffling demons danced;
where Odin cast aside his mask
and settled on your shoulders round
a mammoth task...
a burden irredeemable -- a lance:
a lance to bear in diamond jousts,
advancing through the teeth of fear
to seize that chance to win the soured prize.

Methusulah, with his long grey beard,
whispered in your sleeping ear of
fools and wise men, sons and daughters;
of the Devil's love for holy water;
of a single, human footprint in the sand;
of the perils of duplicity,
the rigours of respectibility,
of such passions as can tear apart a man.

and on the sharp infliction of
such sorrows' textured wounds, you woke
with knotted hair and eyes still chasing phantoms...
and even though the darkstream coursed
still dully in your veins, you spoke
of fields of blood and lonely death's cold tantrums;
and lifelong cravings threatening to choke --
to strain and break the slenderest of throats:
with that distempered mind you reached
for lightless needles littering the floor;
and as a stray dog to its vomit, warm,
to poisoned dreams did you return, once more.


{published in Epiphanies and Other Absurdities 2005
 and also in Cold Eels 2005}

[Guest_Jox_*]

Hi Jan,

Thank you very much for your most interesting explanations. I have never studied mythology and, apart from oddments which I have picked-up (many on MM) and I totally ignorant about all mythologies - so your new notes are most helpful. Appreciated.

You are, of course, right, addiction is unrelated to intelligence per se. Many medical doctors are addicted to drink and other drugs, whereas many less intelligent people may not use drugs or may just use them recreationally.

Education does help greatly but - in the end - it comes down to psychology and then, when hooked, to physiological dependency, too.

Thanks for the read and the interesting ideas.

J.

[Guest_poeticpiers_*]

I totally enjoyed your work with its plenitude of legendary references You captured the altered mind states achievable by use of drugs and ot other methods so well. Ivor