A Little Bliss, a Little Enlightenment: a Meditation on Risk

There’s no loss in a reach for the sublime, still success rates vary.  Note fates of saints and philosophers, of mothers steady on the path:  A little bliss, a little enlightenment. Love. I paint a warning on the clouds: Don’t be hasty, ask only for what you reason to be true and may I suggest you don't assume symbols mean a thing or the thing that symbols are said to represent.  Symbology is creative guesswork born in none of the chakras. Don’t trust your eyes, practice patience, listen.  Bliss-filled, you will die and shed the body, what was it there for, anyway.  You can’t train one eye on sin the other on perfection.  Ah,  you perceive The One to be dual. This means you've turned apostate and a traitor in some folks’ minds but your confusion is sincere, which is more than can be said for many folks. For a time you’ve watched stars flare gasp and die. You’ve gauged risks. Let yourself be singed.

[Sarah Sarai, June 14, 2013] [written because you want to know if you can maintain a series of prose poems]

[beautiful artwork by Hayao Miyazaki]

Emily D. bets it all and wins, plus ". . . industrious angels . . ."

Here's some attitude from Ms. Dickinson. Or a combination of attitude and party line, the party being the Protestant work ethic, in which industrious angels are rewarded.

All those laggard angels, the ones smoking dope in celestial alleyways, skipping out early on promises to us (that explains a lot about life on earth) have to (with their wings) inscribe Divinity For All on passing clouds.

I get it, Emily. Who wants to hang out with sodden youth not half as bright as you are, when there's a promise of beatification. That's taking a risk but Emily's bet-hedging paid off.

That Crown and Emily Dickinson achieve immortality here and there. May we all win that bet.



God permits

God permits industrious angels
Afternoons to play.
I met one,—forgot my school-mates,
All, for him, straightway.

God calls home the angels promptly
At the setting sun;
I missed mine. How dreary marbles,
After playing Crown!
___________________________
Emily Dickinson courtesy of Bartelby.com

Nada lost; thank you, Dada; Kat Georges; Allison Joseph

Nothing is ever lost. The fact impresses on me more and more.

Last night while walking on Bleecker from the 6 train to the Cornelia St. Cafe, I decided I would sing a poem onstage. I was on my way to Kat Georges' 3rd annual dADa reading. Ms. Georges not only organizes the event—with featured sideshow acts, an appreciated feat on a night of foreign adventure—she publishes an accompanying journal through the offices of her Three Rooms Press.

MaiNteNant. Over 50 pages of purposefully meaningless echoes of arguments in favor of insanity. This year's journal included my poem "Ahead."

So, okay. My previous posting here was on my short story "The Devil Is Her Friend" which labored over twenty years to get in print (see issue #2, stonesthrowmagazine.com). "Ahead" is not similar in scope and effort, but there is a parallel. I wrote version #1 of the poem fifteen years or so ago.

It was short and not quite there. Then in late 2009 poet, professor, supporter of poets, poetry ringmistress, Allison Joseph (http://therondeauroundup.blogspot.com/) announced a triolet contest (triolets are one of the interlocked, rhyming, repeating forms). I don't write formal verse, in part because I don't think my brain is up to it, but the contest was free and I rose high as I could to the occasion.

"Ahead" turned into a triolet. The reincarnated poem was rejected, fine, that's part of the submission and, sometimes, writing process. Then a few months later, Kat Georges put out a DaDA call and holy cow.

In the spirit of Dada so-driven by furious frivolous intellect I conceived of the grand idea, as I walked Bleecker, to sing the poem. The crowd liked it but even better, I liked my improvised tune.

Here's "Ahead": the final (a triolet—or such was my hope) and the fragment from fifteen years ago

Ahead*

Dragged by lessons strapped to your waist
a snakeskin belt Bad Angel snatched

You long for light, a slower pace.
dragged by lessons strapped to your waist,

lessons you feared you couldn't face.
Could be grief only seems attached,

dragged by lessons strapped to your waist
that snakeskin belt Bad Angel snatched.




Ahead

dragged by lessons strapped to your waist
like the snakeskin belt the bad angel snatched

you reach for anything willing to join you in
the blaze you become anything


Nothing is lost. It all can be used or reinvented.

*MaiNtEnaNt is published by Kat Georges' Three Room Press (threeroomspress.com), New York, NY. Last night's Dada event at the Cornelia Street Cafe was helped along by the lovely Peter Carloftes, poet and comic.