"heraclitus" poems
A SEAHORSE QUESTIONING
( for Onelia )
The cellist's hand
waits outside time
pauses
beside his instrument
like an exotic fish
steadying itself
in the flow of the music
before dashing out
from behind a glowing coral
eagerly snapping up
the little notes that swim by
at his head
his cello bobs
like a seahorse
questioning
all that is
happening
as he tries to enter
the same stream
(despite Heraclitus's advice)
.. twice.
Dec 6, 2015
Dec 6, 2015 at 6:28 PM UTC
“No man ever steps in the same river twice
For it's not the same river
And he's not the same man”
Heraclitus was right
Change does endure
But alas
The water may change but
The river will not cease to be a river
And
A man’s mind may be changed but
Man will not cease being human
Apr 1, 2015
Apr 1, 2015 at 12:31 PM UTC
what a shy event,
considering it,
to be supposed
to encompass, "life"..
a few fractures,
and an antithesis
of the river of Heraclitus...
the stillness of
the lake...
whereby Narcissus
was born...
from the philosopher
of the river,
to the demigod of the lake...
to the god of the sea...
grandfather god Poseidon
begot
the father demigod
of Narcissus...
who begot the son
Heraclitus...
what the sea is,
is what the river encapsulates,
which is what
the lake will never be...
the paradigm,
the writing of Heidegger...
spurned me to think,
to think, rather than "to be"...
how much of
cogito ergo sum
is ontologically, "satisfying"?
probably the nil of it...
counter Latin: in german:
denken werden sein?
oh, the shit-list goes on and on...
denken als sein?
reiterate that for me...
in Latin...
thought as the becoming
of being...
in German, first...
denken als die werden von sein...
now in Latin:
cogitatio quod dacens ex esse...
you know that almost all of
my childhood friends ended up
in prison?!
i'm just an oddity...
i infiltrated the theater of
intellectualism...
and i said: bogus, ********
and the supposed lost brimstone!
scent of cooked sulfur that stank
to the high heavens!
free speech, blah blah,
"free" & "thought"...
whatever the **** that means...
an antithesis of a claustrophobia?!
thought?
thought is the equivalent
contraceptive in terms of being...
thought liberates, but also
provides constraints...
thought is a being
that has non-being in its focus...
thought is a "being" that has
non-being as its focal point...
ontologically:
thought is a form of being,
that doesn't necessarily relate to
the existential "arithmetic"
of thought: thus done...
thinking is important,
but it's completely unrelated to being...
the thing itself,
and then... the thing in itself...
and subsequently: the thing for itself...
phenomenon, noumenon,
phenomenon...
since how much of
"thinking" is translated into
"being"?
i guess... not much of it
is ever translated within the confines
of the imagery of a cascade /
a waterfall...
zilch...
not a lot of thought crafts
the impetus to be...
as...
not a lot of being crafts
the impetus to think...
coincidentally a lot of:
out of every instance / insistence:
i.e. existence, happens,
simultaneously to said expression.
sam cooke:
don't know much about history,
don't know much (about) biology,
don't know much about a science book,
don't know much about the french i took,
but i do know that i love you,
and i know that if you love me too,
what a wonderful world this would be...
i could write this candy floss ********
point blank statement with
adverse feelings...
i have a pact of uninhibited
lying...
i could lie... but then lying
requires a prior experience in lies...
and...
i hate the economics of lies...
however much i might cherish
thinking, i seem to have picked
up a pattern whereby:
thinking doesn't translate into being...
so i guess...
as much of thought goes
into being, as it goes into non-being...
and that being said:
what is post-existentialism?
ontology.
Oct 27, 2018
Oct 27, 2018 at 10:33 PM UTC
*The Path up and down is one and the same.
~Heraclitus~*
Through dusty books,
pages as brittle as peanut candy,
I search for wisdom
among the Greeks;
question the meaning of life.
On distant shelves,
among cobwebs and boewevils,
fiery sagas shadow
the lives of lustful Gods,
tribulations of mortals
and destructions of nations
once as powerful as the Gods
they worshiped.
I diligently catalogue:
fill page after page
with lore and legend,
trace paths of ancient ones ~
their bones telling tales~
until I realize nothing has changed.
I too spin tales,
yarn of sagas rich as the Greeks,
worship Gods and muses,
like my own broken-spirited muse,
a Simberg angel.
Someday, I will join weavers of old,
and searchers of knowledge
will dust away webs of my tales
and realize that I am but one,
and yet, the same.
Nov 18, 2010
Nov 18, 2010 at 8:42 PM UTC
A SEAHORSE QUESTIONING
( for Onelia)
The cellist's hand
waits outside the music
pauses
beside his instrument
like an exotic fish
steadying itself
in the flow of the music
before dashing out
from behind a glowing coral
eagerly snapping up
the little notes that swim by.
At Nazzareno's head
his cello bobs
like a seahorse
questioning
all that is
happening
as he tries to enter
the same stream
(despite Heraclitus's advice)
~ ~ ~ t/w/i/c/e/.
Oct 17, 2017
Oct 17, 2017 at 5:31 PM UTC
A single leaf,
nearly two-thirds torn,
floats idly down a mountain stream,
passing from light into darkness
into light again.
Refracted through the crystalline currents,
a bed of smooth, staid stones
cries, "Eternity! Everlasting!"
but the leaf drifts on.
And I, splashing my way upstream,
thinking myself the keeper
of this shadowed domain,
bend hurriedly
to pluck the leaf from my path.
Then, for just a moment, I hesitate,
to listen as the rivulets
lap against my legs,
longing to hear in them
Heraclitus' lonely, elegiac lament:
"All things are in process;
nothing stays still.
Upon those that step
into the same rivers
different and different waters flow."
But only the rocks sing on --
their same, unchanging song
of the stream's secret source.
And though I,
still deaf to the cry,
hear but the half-uttered echos
of my fleeting thoughts,
I can see,
as the radiant flux of the night
again turns the leaf into light,
how at last we, too, shall step
into that same river twice.
At death --
when in the new-found kenosis of time,
all will be one.
Sep 3, 2018
Sep 3, 2018 at 3:52 PM UTC
It's time to contemplate
the twilight of post-modern idols
- An Ideal
can we live for one?
We lay out what we stand for
in simple platitudes
then spend all our time
defining what we're not
despite all the death done
in its name
Protecting Freedom's
just an umbrella
replace "carpet bomb families"
with "neutralize enemies"
- who threatened our Liberty
but that means
sway elections away from those
that reject economic puppetry
Cut the cord
if you want us to buy Contras
Reaganomics define
Drug War: Sold crack,
bought guns from Iran,
fund death squads
in Nicarag-Hooah!
Freedom's lambs
they had to die
They tried to reach out
against exploited workers
so even Catholic priests
got murked
Yes, murdered
but also muddied
in the waters of
historiography's story
As in, no one studies history
Today's armchair historians
they just find bargains
and hero worship
while they channel surf
Pulled by yachts
they don't make waves
Oceans abound but
most just coast
in creeks and canals
No Wake Zones
Think you're woke, bro?
You just came up
with a narrow strait thought
that was simply dismissed
by Heraclitus of Ephesus
nearly three millennia ago
Your certainty of knowing
brings danger of you drowning
Cause "Ever-newer waters flow
on those who step into the same rivers."
All I know is fire
so burn a hen for Prometheus
and we'll topple poser's podiums
then yoga flame them back to oneness
Cause after horrific mediation
and barring off public relations
You'll catch me drunk playing video games
with butchers and their daughters
Jan 24, 2018
Jan 24, 2018 at 6:35 PM UTC
War is the King of All,
as Heraclitus puts it.
No Life without Strife!
What wondrous distress!
This eternal suffering,
This eternal bliss
I am the ground
I am the ground from which
hatred and love emerge
neck and neck
symbiosis
I am abstracted from these
and yet intertwined, consistent
and unyielding in my birth and rebirth
I am the perennial,
the detritivore
The soil,
the mycelium,
the forest,
the fire
born from a single point,
growing and consuming
that which is colder than I —
until all fuel is exhausted
until I am exhausted
I am the Ugly Lie, the Corrupt
I am the Beautiful Truth, the Just
I am the Bad, the Good
I am the Formless
The Form
colorless, odorless, tasteless
unreachable, untouchable
receive me and
I am no longer myself
a distraction from the truth
I am entertainment
Will you entertain me?
Feb 16, 2016
Feb 16, 2016 at 7:50 PM UTC
A SEAHORSE QUESTIONING
( for Onelia)
The cellist's hand
waits outside the music
pauses
beside his instrument
like an exotic fish
steadying itself
in the flow of the music
before dashing out
from behind a glowing coral
eagerly snapping up
the little notes that swim by.
At Nazzareno's head
his cello bobs
like a seahorse
questioning
all that is
happening
as he tries to enter
the same stream
(despite Heraclitus's advice)
~ ~ ~ t/w/i/c/e/.
Oct 18, 2017
Oct 18, 2017 at 7:59 AM UTC
bah bah black sheep... ok... the black sheep knuckled you to sleep
and now you’re asking for directions using a map and not a satellite navigation
across europe, esp. tremendous in germany near dortmund
and the rhine cities getting confused... but that’s no reason
to drive with ease from new jersey to florida with a glum pickers' pride
en route... i can play the ‘i spy with my little’ game into midnight passing me and spare myself inventive optics -
like shadow like hallucination in consistency, both flimsy,
i can recognise the real filth from packaged recyclables
from the orient.
well there’s that and there’s old russell the schizoid affective
outside tesco drinking a bottle of old speckled hen
and talking about snowfalls... 3 / 4 years ago last time i spotted
saint clause... i slipped and imagined myself breaking a knee...
didn’t happen... what happened was was a clearer truth:
why this fake image stimulant... i cant’ watch the stars
but have to subconsciously watch candy crush?
it’s **** i want the days within the insignia of war,
i don’t want my subconscious patented with candy crush,
i want the stars to remain... better an autocrat than a technocrat...
at least a human face... adolf touchy-feely,
here we go...
i imagine all those rivers of heraclitus concerning a coordinate
known as a waterfall... and post-humous exactness expressing peace...
then i spot picasso on the roof outside my bedroom window...
i support his elevation through evangelicalism from halo to angels wings...
you know what the three wise babylonians said...
you scared them to egypt you idiot announcing reign of the ditto,
you scared them them with myrrh, melchior you’re already close to malachi,
that will do... look at it... it’s babylonian already...
it’s a babylon of orthodox christianity (greek / russian), catholicism,
protestantism, baptists, pantheists and other offshoots
like being mormon!
well you can never make an omelette by the dozen involved
without asking the thirteenth egg: chicken or egg first? crucifix?! oh.
Oct 28, 2015
Oct 28, 2015 at 8:57 PM UTC
it's not really a shortcut to philosophy when writing
it in a shape of a poem, hardly a reason to trust
there's an orthodox choice of subjects -
unresolved problem, or even having to warrant
that horrid academic style of narration - and even if
not academic then simply in the vein of vanity: 'he's
wrong, he's wrong, oh he's definitely wrong...'
after all poetry can be philosophical,
after all heraclitus wrote sparingly and wore a cloak
of enigmas - as joseph and the multicoloured dreamcoat,
so too heraclitus and the multinigmatic (πολυνιγματικoς)
cloak; then there was parmenides of elea &
empedocles of arcagas who just wrote poetry,
albeit much less self-involving
as modernity would like to believe - and i guess
if qualified as didactic poetry, the instructions were certain
disguised as faults of their own understanding,
thus the instructions are of a higher calibre, in that
they are wrong and the reader must service their
wrongs... say... with something like galileo or newton,
because who the hell would like to constantly read
didactic poetry of specific instruction to be fulfilled
while the poet has to only write it in the comfy abode
of the page?
Dec 20, 2015
Dec 20, 2015 at 7:34 AM UTC
too much poetry decides on what's essential,
nothing, is, quite, necessary. although: existential:
too much borne from inexperience
and too much from anticipating it,
yet the fewest to mind the passing as it was,
anticipation reduced to vaccines on the ready,
so much ******* idealism that it makes me sick...
quiet likely... variation of the onomatopoeia yuck,
and there are plenty... da pacem domine...
or questioning Babylonian tactics:
hanging garden' madness remembering the pyramids
prior the Eiffel overcoming...
the tongue! the tongue! the tongue prior cranium!
knock knock... who's there? who's who? who knows?
no, who doesn't care.
i don't know why tilting on the Byzantine titling,
seemed appropriate, what are you?
the leftists who took apart communism
and want censorship to curb right-wing opinions?
Mary ******* Poppins from afar! Birmingham thus far
and so should Venice mind - no river... no flow.
the left are truly readying a box, two gloves,
tango of feet, a header in a football match is like an
uppercut, grey matter extending... well d'uh d'uh d'uh.
glossognomia - the alter to Heraclitus' tears or Logos
v. Gnome, the laughing one's, atomic Democritus -
both a cretin's fancy without a wife -
wisest speech of the *** without womb -
men and tombs, women and wombs... shame we were
born yesterday and certain scripts were deemed holy
and subsequently undecipherable, unquestioned,
requiring prayer, necessary Koran, poetic justices of
expression, Milton und Blake... well hello the idea
of photosynthesis! maybe an Aladdin pyramid or two
on the flying carpet! who the gold digger now?
Jun 13, 2016
Jun 13, 2016 at 7:39 PM UTC
"The only constant is change." -Heraclitus
I think I subconsciously needed a little constant
When the world was making me nauseous like the teacup ride at Disney
I needed a little something to remind me
Hey, you've made it this far by yourself, be strong, keep going
That's probably why I haven't taken off this ******* ring in three years
Probably why I often find myself staring at it
Or twisting it around my finger when I'm nervous
This tiny little citrine stone, my own personal constant
A symbol of my obstinance
"The only constant is change"
But not if I can ******* help it
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 9:05 PM UTC
Each day
when I take
my morning walk
along the creek,
everything
is different;
some things
never change.
- mce
Apr 5, 2015
Apr 5, 2015 at 10:17 AM UTC
'The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth
uttering things not to be laughed at,
unadorned and unperfumed, yet
reaches to a thousand years with her
voice by aid of the god.' (Heraclitus, fragment 12)
She curves into touches like neurosis
beyond the threshold of insanity
breeding desire into a lovely oddity
She mends the lie in facades to
empty them into our secrecy
With a banshee's throat
she splinters time's agonies
into the likeness of what
we ordered and
brings solitude to morning's arms.
She is of Sibyls.
Bold women who once dreamt
in ambiguous shadows and
lucent prophecies.
Jun 10, 2017
Jun 10, 2017 at 8:29 PM UTC
We sit on a river bank
our bikes resting
against a tree;
Milka throwing
small pieces of branches
into the river's flow.
Some one said
you can't walk
in the same river twice,
she says,
don't know
who said it,
but some one said it.
Heraclitus,
some Greek guy said it,
I say.
She looks at me,
her eyes cow-like,
deep and sad.
What's he mean?
It's not the same water,
it moves on like our lives;
we can't stand still
no matter how much
we wish we could.
Where'd you read that?
I study her sitting there;
her hair brushed back,
tied by a ribbon;
her grey coat,
the brown and pink dress
coming to the knees,
black stockings.
Reader's Digest,
I guess.
I hate cold water;
had to wash in it
this morning
because the fire'd
gone out,
she says,
looking at
the river again.
I know,
I heard you moaning
at your mother.
She shrugs her shoulders,
continues throwing
branches in the river.
She moans at me
often enough.
But she's the parent,
that's what they do.
What would you do
if I stripped off now
and walked through
the river?
She says, smiling.
What would your mother say
if you did?
She'd not know.
If she did?
God knows;
slap me one, I guess,
but what would you do?
She asks me.
Nothing;
just watch the scene.
You wouldn't join me?
And get wet feet?
no, not me.
Spoilsport;
too cold anyway.
I open my cigarette packet
and take two out;
one for her
and one for me.
We light up
and sit musing,
the river flowing on,
slow,
moving over
small rocks and stones,
down a slight hill,
we sitting
watching its flow.
Jan 5, 2015
Jan 5, 2015 at 7:14 AM UTC
Sing, beloved, blessed, with boldness!
Sing to the causes of life and love,
Sing to the hoary stars above;
Such grace to bestow our promise!
Not without misery, pain, or woe,
Sing to the blackness and make it unso!
Sing to the absence of memory, time,
Sing to the love, the rhythm, the rhyme!
Sing, my beloved, to countless regrets;
Sing to the face of cold harbor chills;
Sing beneath arbors of turbulent skies;
Sing above witness, without claim distilled!
Sing to the freedom, that which we find,
Kept off and distant, no notion of time,
No more hubristic than a solemn man’s rhyme,
No more than a mystic foretelling sublime.
Sing above apathy, sing above pain,
Sing beneath empathy, lowly with shame,
Sing at the level of the beggar and call
That solitary banter which draws us all.
May 8, 2014
May 8, 2014 at 2:22 PM UTC
A wave implodes,
impaled upon
impassive rocks...
this evening
the thunder of the sea
is a wild music filling my ear...
you are leaving
and the ungrieving
winds demur:
telling me
that nothing returns
as it was before,
here where you have left no mark
upon this dark
Heraclitean shore.
Heraclitus said we can't step in the same river twice, because it won't be the same river and we won't be the same either. Everything is in a constant state of flux, thus "nothing returns / as it was before." Lovers who part will not be the same people if they reunite later.
Feb 22, 2020
Feb 22, 2020 at 9:19 PM UTC
i love being the drunk, you wonder less about the pre-ready
lexicon of: the sobering thought.
i have that, the sober thought,
makes being drunk a little bit more sentimental;
and when a sobering thought comes
along i tango with it, less blurry cross-eyed
loosing my inhibitions of finding work
in the eyes of others for the manually skilled
to let tree be a tree and stone a stone,
un-differentiating a plumber from a mechanic
as a shadow of a tree’s branch at night under a street’s electric bogus -
for the river of heraclitus’ paraffin oozed sesame
with aladdin: to compass north for me
and consider animation outside of acting likewise frowned and believed.
we took acting as ******* and canned laughter as amphetamines
to equip us to loot utopia with our populace and say: cambozola. only that?
i smiled prettier dead in victorian hopes for a quick one-two resurrection off the photograph,
because it was a dross dribble of skill on the pitch that
made me the ideal counter to feminism... a lazing lion in the house sometimes vacuuming.
Sep 28, 2015
Sep 28, 2015 at 10:18 AM UTC