Category: Circles & Squares

Pyre-amid Dream

I dreamt I was not quite a teenager.

I fed ducks in a park on a bench, with a Holocaust survivor. He was a mean man, and we got along well.

We did two things:

1. Feed ducks bread crumbs

2. Play a game.

Starting with A, we would name diseases/ailments in alphabetical order all the way to Z(ed).

Alzheimer’s

Bunyons.

Canker sores.

But, repeating was unacceptable.

Ex. Next round:

Acne

Boss eyes

Cataracts.

He always won. I did not care.

He taught me what floaters were but could not tell me why sometimes I saw white ones, like the sprinkles of 4th of July sparklers, and sometimes I saw indigo ones.

He only saw the white ones.

⊙

But, before that,

in the same dream,

I dreamt that

the crest of your wave foams white in its churning.

My c-heeks go red.

Eyebrows arch up high as your brow furrows.

You slide softly and I run nails over your rib cage.

I kiss your nape.

⊙

But, before that,

in the same dream,

I dreamt that

I went on a walk.

My arm swung by my side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

Wafting leaf smoke like incense in some ceremony.

I heard two staccato strikes against strings of an amplified guitar,

in time with my heels’ clicks.

Labouring in Unkind Kindness.

A day I play like Cool Hand Luke.

If you labo(u)r, you probably do not have Labor Day off.

You are probably extra busy with your labor, in fact,

because of all those non-physical labourers who do have the day off.

No judgement, just observation derived from experience as someone who has been on both sides.

This is pure assumption: I can tell if you have ever worked on your feet, by how you interact with me when I am running a waiting list for the restaurant.

Open secret x: I am the hostess. I want you happy.

Open secret x’: you will not piss me off nor will I say anything unkind.

You know why?

Because, nothing pisses cranky people off more than someone who will not take your anger bait.

Killing you with kindness quite literally, you silly folks.

This is where the Tao of Cool Hand Luke comes into play.

You trying to put me down on the ground?

I just keeping getting back up with a giggle and a smile.

I have been through far worse.

I can do it until you are uncomfortable.

Every now and then, I can even make you smile.

Score.

I appear daft. Too stupid to realize I am being insulted.

I appear sugary sweet, but I speak in a calm, deep, resonant voice.

Just so you get a grip on the power of my gravity.

Unkindly kind.

The benefits of walking the block

I decide I need a tab, as they say.

American Spirit: ingredients: water and tobacco.

And some kind of paper, right?: I wonder.

The point is moot as I have already inhaled the combustion of fire to leaf.

Why are you smoking when all you really want is to be walking, Little Wing?: the No-One man asks me.

Because I need to clear my mind and grease the wheel. So, I can count to ten.
Prove it: he says.

⊙

One is zero and unity. All and everything. I learned this lesson in the woods, whilst listening too hard and asking too many questions.

Two is a perfect number. Mathematically speaking.

Three is a trinity manifested in a pyramide.

Four is a group that trains themselves in martial arts, as advertised.

Five refers to commercial success. Why?

Six makes me recall you, beast. And what it is to rotate this figure about the x-axis.

Seven reminds me of a trinity of 7’s, of Parzival.

Eight is hate not so far past.

Nine is three, six, and itself. This was the universe to Tesla.

And, ten? Ten is an order of magnitude. Ten makes sense for orientation.

Ten let’s me catch my breath: I concede to him.

I near the entrato the condo and a Vietnamese couple pulls aside me in their SUV.

How do we get to the coast?: the driver asks me through his cracked, automatic window.

Take a right at the stop sign, then, at the fountain on Main Street, take a right.

It is a roundabout.

Thank you. How lucky you are to live here: they say, after we struggle through language barriers and we repeat the same sentences between ourselves six times in total.

Yes, I am lucky to stay here: I reply.

I wave as they speed to the stop sign.

I told you that I needed to walk the block: I tell the No-One man.

He rolls his eyes.

A Watery Whale Wail

Have you ever stared, for a long time, at a large body of water?

More than an hour, or

until you can’t remember if the water is actually the sky and perhaps it is you that has been submerged in water the whole time?

Like maybe the horizon is a surfacing point where you and I breathe like whales?

Spouting our exhalations and thrilling the star ships above our surfaces.

It feels like when you sit in a room alone and repeat your own name aloud, for a minimum of three minutes.

Incepting yourself as you dialate time through your subjectI’ve experience.

Like purposefully esoteric, alternative spellings.

Dreamt of cold chilling

“I don’t get cold,” says the cool cat, “I just catch a chill.”

“Don’t steal my lines and then try to impress me with them,” I tease.

I point the left foot, of my crossed leg, from my seated position.

The bones structuring the top, flat part of my foot crackle themselves loose.

I make a strange, welp noise as I feel a tendon overstretch and then reassert itself back into place.

“You are so loud,” the cat moans, stepping over, circling and pawing my grounded, left foot. S/he finally lies down atop my foot.

A robust, white-tailed rabbit plods along in little plopping hops.

It has the legs of a frog.

The cat pounces at it. Claws pushing off me.

Sinking in. I do not yelp this time.

The rabbit reveals sparrow like wings and flies away.

A flying frog that mimics hares.

Reading my dreaming mind, the cat nods at me.

“This would make a a good illustrated children’s book.”

⊙

“Hey! Will you do that thing I like?” asks the cool cat.

I flip off the light switch and light a candle.

I make shadow puppets play and flit on the wall.

The cat tries to catch the intangible phantoms.

Hiss

The flicker of a whisper appears in my ears.

I hiss a response, in kind.

Sssssss.

Only one international phonetic alphabetic difference between:

Sssssss.

[and]

Zzzzzz.

In the English language.

Fricatives

voiced and voiceless.

Aspirated or otherwise.

⊙

My eyes narrow.

Simply evidence of closer observation and inspection,

no signal of disbelief.

Curiosity is the momentary suspension of belief.

Investigative.

Mettle of metal

being testing

in the seriousness of this series of silence.

Dream of rueing.

Your name is Ruin?: I ask.

No. RueAnne: she replies.

Why did you bring me back here?: I wonder.

I didn’t mean to: I hear her say.

She does not realize that she said this.

I nod anyway.

Certain geographies don’t agree with dream me.

This place rubs me wrong.

Edgy.

RueAnne is staring into nothing.

Her energy has been summoned.

She just lost herself again: I think.

A goat ambles by.

I checked.

Last night, I looked it up.

Chameləons are cold-blooded.

Also, kind.

Colorful transformers.

Octipi kindred spirits.

I cherish.

Suiting the moment and not making every moment suit them.

In the former, you may see much.

In the latter, not so much.

Authentic moment to instantly.

A strang hum

What do you see?: his mind asks mine silently.

My mind races.

Let my cycle through my four breaths, three times each: I say..

[Time passes in our empathic silence]

My eyes hold the other’s,

In the meantime,

Strange music plays with præter-natural lyrics.

Goosebumps envelop me.

I see energy: I say.

What does that mean?: he asks

Nothing that makes much sense when put into conscious explanations: I shrug, smiling.

Tao: he says.

Tao adjacent: I respond.

Dream of the Rocky Siege

I dreamt I was under siege last night.

Like Bell Rock.

But ages before.

The rocks were boulders of dingy khaki and earl gray.

Choppy and round, not leveled and smoothed.

But, they too, like the current iteration, remain cool to the touch,

despite constant exposure to the pressure of the sun.

I do no know why I am here, nor why I am being fired upon.

I wear a sleeveless red, knee length dress which renders me a sitting duck visually, per se.

I have on my “clown shoes” as I call them in this reality.

The pair of red, canvas slip ons are not conducive to scaling mountain goat terrain quickly.

Rocks, boulders, are being launched at me by wooden catapults operated by an unseen foe.

I hear them screaming through the air before my eyes can see them.

This is the best advantage I have.

I can look where I am going while feeling assured I will hear the threat.

No need to look for the threat.

I drop to the fetal position under the precipice of a nearby boulder, if available.

I think. If I had an umbrella in the colors of the rocks around me, that might be handy.

Such umbrella appears in my hand.

This is a dream: I think.

I try the umbrella method during the next assault.

They lose me in their scope.

I believe they are hopeful they struck me down and thus can no longer see me.

I leap to feet

too soon,

spoiling the very advantage I just created.

I hear the next rock scream.

Howl. Bad bit of terrain beneath my feet.

This umbrella could deflect the projectile: I imagine.

I open it, crouch down.

My braced arms withstand the pressure of the incoming’s rock momentum.

It bounces off the imagined shield.

I feel like I have won the battle.

Energetic Exchanges

I wear all black with saddle leather boots, for work.

Straightened hair business.

As I walk, I unfurl my energetic wings.

My mantle.

Cold steel blades slide out through my shoulder blades.

Clinking.

I shake them. Loosening.

They respond when I dress this way.

I take care to align each blade so they will fold away properly.

Inappropriate for the task at hand.

I call forth the other side.

gossamer feathers.

Carefully unfurling.

One flies a’loose, fluttering into the breeze like a shining bit of a spider’s web.

The feathers still smell of you from last night.

From when you came to my mind with your pain clear in your

energetic, non-corporeal eyes.

Come in: I told you silently.

You stepped behind my back.

Squared with my shoulder blades.

Your pain began pouring out.

I collected you in my steely wings. Making a box.

A safe place. An unobservable vacuum within which you may thrash and wail.

I dropped down my feather mantle for you.

Draping the steely interior in celestial down.

Those who would prey upon your moment of weakness

slay themselves upon my well-honed metallic feather-blades, trying to break in.

Ships, at night, on a rocky coast with no lighthouse.

With each slam of your energetic body against the walls of my wings, you felt nothing but goose down envelope you.

I took great care to ensure this.

You fell asleep inside. I opened the space, covered you, cupped your hipbone, and slept aside you.

Dream of a band

You and I went to an afterparty for a band called The Passé Posse.

It was in a place named Electri-City by an ocean.

But, there was only candlelighting.

There were water slides being used as public transportation.

Part of the city’s infrastructure.

I visited here previously.

As I took you by the hand to take you to my bed,

You said: You maybe too physical. Too physical for me.

Like the song?: I ask.

I do no know if you were kidding

because i immediately awoke.

Humbling a Tuesday Hostess

I say: I’m sorry, did you just ask if this wine pairs well with beaver tail?

He says: Yep. Nice top.

You’re lucky I’m the kind one: I say.

This is 9:30 a.m.

⊙

It will be a ten minute wait for a party of four: I say.

Can we not sit there?: she asks, motioning to a table behind a divider over which she cannot see.

No. There are still are people eating at that table: I say.

It does not look like anyone is there: she says.

I smile. It is much easier for me to seat people and not run a wait list.

I promise I would seat you if I could: I say.

She finally attempts to confirm her assumption by walking around the divider.

She sees two people still seated and eating.

It looked empty from this side: she said

In realization.

Thank you for your patience: I say.

⊙

Would you like the table by the window (sic. best table in the house)? I ask.

I know how you do. Sit me here so the place looks busy, right?: she asks.

I’d wanna sit here if I were eating: I say.

I realize she is joking with me, by virtue of her kind reaction.

I stop. Let myself take a deep breath. Let her see myself smile

In realization.

One of those mornings: I say.

⊙

Shelia and Don arrive.

I am Dimples to Shelia today.

I get a hug and a kiss on my cheek.

You are my surrogate granddaughter: she says.

My heart feels warm.

Half a mind two

When I am all these fathoms afar,

breath is rest.

I sleep with my eyes open.

My eyes close upon waking.

A nap is a blink.

A micro-sleep.

A relative delusion.

The pull of fo/u/rces enlivening me.

I am force moving through time and space.

Or, maybe, that is you.

Perhaps, I am your optimal conditions.

Your ideal ether enabling materialization.

I see from the vacuum of the abyss.

It is lonely but I am not alone.

Tactile not tactical.

Marco Polo is not a game but a call and response song.

Electricity and light.

Lidar and blackholes

howling in algorithmic keens.

Your mind is a cheshire, Schrödinger’s cat.

Punctuated Equilibrium

I watch talented women sit silently aside who they championed.

They simply sit and smile.

Power move: says my optimistic soul.

The strength to stillness.

Empowered or powerless?

⊙

I do not always know how to look for what I want.

It is no matter of courage.

Feeling lost and found because I don’t think there’s anywhere to go.

These places are just places.

Amazing and mundane.

Simultaneous.

Does anyone say what they mean?

⊙

And, everywhere, everyone finds a reason to use the word /cassette/.

It shatters my heart on impact into my ears.

A heart for a heart.

Who is your audience?

A hopeful foundation

for a handmade looking glass house.

Espy patience feeling impatient.

⊙

“A common woman goes far,” my grandmother told me.

“And, a comma can change entire meanings,” she said without saying.

So I repeat myself:

“Æ pay attention to your punctuation.”

35 going on 77

A sawtooth comb for newly brittle hair.

Almost raking the wet curls.

A mind sulking over some lost piece of life, perhaps?

Everything is easier under the cover of my clouds and stars, dear,

including your lucid waking and dreaming.

⊙

I take the long way home.

I pause.

From outside the pub, I listen to the band play.

I consider going inside.

I see someone eyeball me and motion to an empty seat.

I smile and shake my head.

He cannot take the place of the one on my mind tonight.

I do not seek distraction.

I will enjoy my own smouldering.

A game of patience.

A study in control.

A tyre pyre burning.

⊙

I pass a man followed by a woman.

He has his hand extended behind him.

Fingers shifting in an effort to convince her to hold his hand.

I wonder why she didn’t take it into hers.

Dream of alternative spelling

I see a man atop a mesa at sunrise.

I laugh as I have the thought: I know him.

Everything is bathed in ruddy red and sunlit pink.

I can see for miles despite being at a low elevation.

Looking back at the man, I see him hold up two configurations of stick bundles.

They form the two letters that sound like my first name.

I think: I shall climb up.

Having the thought, I immediately arrive at his side, atop the mesa.

This is a dream: I say.

The last time you met me here, you slapped me hard and kissed me harder: he said.

I feel embarrassed. I do not remember this.

Do you remember my name?: he asks.

I remember your first and middle name. I remember you refusing to tell me your last name: I say.

Guess it: he says smiling.

Keyes: I conjecture.

Closer. Keynes.: he said.

Almost like the mathematician. Like keening me up: I think.

Waybacks

They sucked us into the parallel decades ago.

Don’t you see the change in the quality of the sunlight?

It is a thin space here.

Closer to the Other.

Go through it.

Come right and clear on the other side of my arch.

Parçigal from between time or Circumstance

Background notes:

Parzifal is the “collective tradition of mankind…is not subject to Time or Circumstance.”

Is for those born of the ‘Heart’s Affliction.’

Researching Parzifal led me to the works of C.S. Jones who wrote The Chalice of Ecstasy “to make the points dealt with [in the drama] as comprehensive as possible to the uninitiated enquirer who is prepared to ‘wake and harken the call.’ “

The writing below is an exercise in synthesis.
All quoted text is pulled from The Chalice of Ecstasy.
All quoted text within quotation marks are quotes Jones included in his work.
He also used WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH’s text Parzival as his basis. He does recommend a good translation of the Libretto from R. Wagner’s Parsifal.

Parzival is “written in the keynote of ecstasy” according to Wolfram von Eschenbach and “provides a glimpse of the Eternal Reality.” A key event in the story is Parzival shooting a swan from the sky. The swan represents ecstasy. Parzival should have been condemned for this but is not because of the unique confluence of his circumstances. I like to use the allegory of Parzival which is considered a “living text” as a means of discussing sexuality and gender roles/definition. I also like the idea of the newest incarnation of Parzival being from the perspective of a feminine knight questing for love and understanding with the former.

¤

My ecstasy has indicated I was “born of the ‘Heart’s Affliction.’ “

I found my “way to that spot where they, ‘scarcely move, yet seem to run’ “.

“Having become one with The Way,” I have just come to Tao.

I “discover that the shifting scenes of the world [I] had though so real, will pass [me] by as a pageant until the Vision of the Grail itself is presented to their pure Understanding.” But howl surprised was I to see both you and I.

I fear I believe that all that is written above has occured to me again and again.

I simply continue for long enough to forget and remember it all over again.

A chALice emptied and refilled.

My heart “learned to beat in time and tune with the Soul of the World.”

Rhythm and vibrations are everything we think we know. What is rhythm but

a wave? A wavelength. An S rotated 90% and crossing an axis. Periodicity of the pendulous arm’s swings.

Rhythm is the steady crashing of waves falling.

The entire ocean is every wave.

¤

I feel my being “to be a highly strung musical instrument.”

Fret awaiting fretting. Tuned to the proper tone to be strummed and plucked upon.

A fitt “burn[s] up the veils which hide [me] from Myself.”

It reveals you. A familiar stranger.

Strum me.

“Will runs over [my] strings” and I come to know how to reveal how it is “causing complete and harmonious vibrations.” Do you choose to experience this in your own being? Show me the “unformulated but delightful melody” that is the same song Whitman sang.

The Song of Myself.

I will dance to your song simply because you choose to perform it for me.

I will conduct your currents as you emit them.

I will empty you to refill you.

I am an empty plenum. I contain everything in my nothingness.

I know not the rituals. Yet still I seek to continually “unite the mind to some pure idea by an act of will.” This is the brick wall against which I slam my head “again and again.” The wall where you found me bleeding and dizzy, next to the eggshell pieces of Humpty Dumpty. Alice remembers her name again.

I know not the “Way of Holiness.” I may not impress upon the consciousness of your onlookers.

No-One is the only one that looks upon me thusly.

I am a pure Fool, ignorant and earnest. Before that I was a dummy. I could not speak. I have always been an idiotē.

I have always been the unaffiliated Maverick roaming through the initiated herds, admiring the brands, the symbols emblazoned upon their skin.

My skin is marred by time and circumstance.

My skin is completely unmarked.

Canvas.

¤

“ “There is a Swan whose name is Ecstasy.” “

Also known as you and I.

I “ “wingeth through the blue” and at “[my] coming they push forth the green” “ because I bring spring.

I herald an easter Sunday for your tired soul.

You shot me down from the sky.

And, you did it by virtue of No-One’s weapon but your own.

A Happy Death for me. A Swan’s life born anew in you.

“ “In all the Universe [a] Swan alone in motionlessness, it seems to move as the Sun seems to move; such is the weakness of sight.” “

“ “O fool!”…”Motion is relative; there is nothing that is still.” “ Let me shoot my arrow at you this time. From your “ “ [feathered] breast poured forth blood” “ and I felt ecstatic and you discovered ichor. Now, let me ecstatically enrapture you until your veins flow with it so richly as to sustain this demiurge. You are no longer a Pure Fool because you know. The men that smote you last time will not let you pass again. But, I can sneak you through the gate. Folly is my protector. Let me use it for the protection of the soul of another.

⊙

I am ignorant of the rule and the action taken breaking the rule was kindly intended.

(says the little boy who cried ‘Wolf’)

(says the collective mind who was “just taking orders”)

⊙

Consequences occur regardless of intention.

Risk is underwritten.

In tension, intension.

Suspension of beginning an action and witnessing the resultant reaction and effects of your affect.

I have been called Artemis, Sagittarius (until the stars changed), centaur and satyr.

I read of the marriage of Christian Rosencrutz. Send them my congratulations and best wishes, please.

Where is the Castle and what of the Tower?

“ “By my word, I know you are Parzival-son of Herat’s Affliction” “-and I have recovered the weapon that you flung off after using it to pluck me down from the sky and into the blue lake.

I have discovered-upon that Might of Love which you used to render me slain. You “succeeded where all others had failed,” dear one.

You say you do “now as yet know [t]he True Name-the Word of [Ewer]-Being, though in the past [you had] been called by many names.”

You mention this: “one thing [you] desired to know and to understand. What is the Grail!”

You have already been told that “ “By no one can it be detected Who by itself is not elected.” “

And, you then did “ “Bestride the Bird of Life [because] thou wouldst know.” “

I desire to know if you came to me by slaying me because you wanted to know or because you wanted to know me. And to what end did you intend this knowledge?

The difference between a means to a desired end and being the end desired.

Dis-ingenuity. Do not be disingenuous, sorrel.

It will make it so much worse for you. Through it you turn three pounds of pleasure into three pounds of misery. Should misery please you, you will never be miserable again, if you act duplicitously or maliciously.

A knight need only be kind. Do not attempt to placate with being nice. Kindness does not impress. It empresses upon. Kindness is a way of being and not an act of valour to be selectively undertaken. Kindness can appear cruel to outsiders.

So, I also ask: are you kind?

I desire to know how you found yourself at the intersection of right now. Face to face with me.

This is the cost of admission. Tell me these things and I shall sneak you through the gate.

I just hope you are as brave as you believe yourself to be. Sometimes it will get dark. You have coronated me a Queen of Magnets. I attract all poles.

Howl I hope it is not just a ceremonial sobriquet, sweet fool.

“We are the ELLIPSE OF THE UNIVERSE.”

Watch “Brittany Howard – He Loves Me (Official Live Session)” on YouTube

No rights: homage and mega ups to Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes fame.

I saw them open for Crazy Horse in Tuscaloosa, AL.

There was a small wooden desk to stage right.

An awesome artist out of my home state.

Hometown heroes, huh?

Here are her thoughts on the South and music.
Deontay Wilder, falls into this category, too.

[sic. Wilhagan’s Irish Pub daze.]

(But, that’s another story.)