"mundi" poems
I failed to love round, but fallen flat,
My head slumps down, over an ancient map,
My eyes roll back, over the mappa mundi verge,
Where waterfalls purl, and the sea serpent-sleep lies curled.
May 16, 2021
May 16, 2021 at 9:08 PM UTC
I find myself blithely content when she's around though at times I look around and find she's nowhere to be found
Till I close my eyes and smile having seen her in my my mind.
A goddess she is indeed,especially when the corner of her lips are in motion towards her ears. I admire from a distance,she's so ideal. I crept close with my weakened knees pulled closer by the anima mundi and force of attraction in it.
She uttered words to my soul which equalised to my heart to liquidise. Though I was in vagueness with what she said,she sure could sing.
But you know what "they" say that neutral cliché "everything is temporary."I woke up. What a dream.
May 12, 2015
May 12, 2015 at 12:25 PM UTC
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
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3
“Sic transit gloria mundi,”
“How doth the busy bee,”
“Dum vivimus vivamus,”
I stay mine enemy!
Oh “veni, vidi, vici!”
Oh caput cap-a-pie!
And oh “memento mori”
When I am far from thee!
Hurrah for Peter Parley!
Hurrah for Daniel Boone!
Three cheers, sir, for the gentleman
Who first observed the moon!
Peter, put up the sunshine;
Patti, arrange the stars;
Tell Luna, tea is waiting,
And call your brother Mars!
Put down the apple, Adam,
And come away with me,
So shalt thou have a pippin
From off my father’s tree!
I climb the “Hill of Science,”
I “view the landscape o’er;”
Such transcendental prospect,
I ne’er beheld before!
Unto the Legislature
My country bids me go;
I’ll take my india rubbers,
In case the wind should blow!
During my education,
It was announced to me
That gravitation, stumbling,
Fell from an apple tree!
The earth upon an axis
Was once supposed to turn,
By way of a gymnastic
In honor of the sun!
It was the brave Columbus,
A sailing o’er the tide,
Who notified the nations
Of where I would reside!
Mortality is fatal—
Gentility is fine,
Rascality, heroic,
Insolvency, sublime!
Our Fathers being weary,
Laid down on Bunker Hill;
And tho’ full many a morning,
Yet they are sleeping still,—
The trumpet, sir, shall wake them,
In dreams I see them rise,
Each with a solemn musket
A marching to the skies!
A coward will remain, Sir,
Until the fight is done;
But an immortal hero
Will take his hat, and run!
Good bye, Sir, I am going;
My country calleth me;
Allow me, Sir, at parting,
To wipe my weeping e’e.
In token of our friendship
Accept this “Bonnie Doon,”
And when the hand that plucked it
Hath passed beyond the moon,
The memory of my ashes
Will consolation be;
Then, farewell, Tuscarora,
And farewell, Sir, to thee!
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Once upon a Time there lived a peasant
whose poems were whisperings of nature.
Nature aims toward growth, abundance
and decays softly back to succulent soils.
My homeland is not for your feet to step
upon, you belong to surrealistic cynicism.
My psychedelia does not approve of horrors
mundi and skips on every third classical tune.
What was impulsively chosen, can be a mistake
in pompous rituals on established compilations.
Apologies, for all the misdeeds lacking a true
appearances. You implied my life is a great lie.
No, it's not! Sometimes it is a knotted charade,
noose chameleon dreams wanting to create in
Castles build upon puffy clouds, youthful Ars
Poetica meeting a Pat Metheney's wonderland.
Beck is a phenomenal artist loving green lands.
Bachus was a goat. And Artemis protects us all!
Oct 11, 2015
Oct 11, 2015 at 7:58 AM UTC
qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem
Bejesus we walked so far!
It was beautiful country, mind,
feet dappling through hedgerows
that led from the city, in silence,
to rest where all flesh shall come.
I remember how it started,
walled in with the others.
Lord you could dance!
How were they to comprehend
that the kink in my arm
and your off-beat jive
could lead us unguided
to narrow pathways forcing single file?
By a river we sat together—
amid long words and fingerprints
your skin bled dark with guilt
and for my part I saw coracles
sprout upon your breath.
We weighed down these little craft
with the chains of our sins
and tied fast the bones of our future
as payment for the ferryman.
One day perhaps, the river will dissolve to ash,
revealing our two disciples
discarded as the chance to heal,
there will be love
like a great and gentle pulse
mingling with cold stones
and memories our
downcast eyes, cheekbones to the fore.
Oct 22, 2011
Oct 22, 2011 at 11:07 AM UTC
"O where are you going with your love-locks flowing,
On the west wind blowing along this valley track?"
"The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye,
We shall escape the uphill by never turning back."
So they two went together in glowing August weather,
The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;
And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float on
The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.
"Oh, what is that in heaven where grey cloud-flakes are seven,
Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt?"
"Oh, that's a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,
An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt."
"Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,
Their scent comes rich and sickly?"--"A scaled and hooded worm."
"Oh, what's that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow?"
"Oh, that's a thin dead body which waits the eternal term."
"Turn again, O my sweetest,--turn again, false and fleetest:
This beaten way thou beatest I fear is hell's own track."
"Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting:
This downhill path is easy, but there's no turning back."
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What is the World Tree?
What is the Axis Mundi?
What is Yggdrasil?
What is Ygg's Steed?
What is Odin's Steed?
What is Sleipnir?
What stands at the Centre of the World?
What bridges worlds?
What is the rainbow bridge?
What is Bifrost?
Where is the Centre of the Compass?
Where is the Circumference?
Who am I?
Nov 24, 2011
Nov 24, 2011 at 9:34 PM UTC
“You are your own god – and are surprised when
you find that the wolf pack is hunting you across
the desolate ice fields of winter.”
― Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings
Crazy old men bellowing at each other
Crazy old women shrieking at us all:
The Spiritus Mundi is hard at play
Among the wreckage of civilization
The stripping of the altars 1 is complete
Holy innocence is a toilet joke
And the literature of millennia
Now serves as cleaning rags for The Machine
An executioner, while waiting for you
Pauses to admire his latest tattoo
1 cf. Eamon Duffy
Jul 30, 2018
Jul 30, 2018 at 4:14 PM UTC
“when you get up in the morning you must take your heart in your two hands. You must do this every morning.” Grace Paley
fall into me
on blackout days
for something beautiful
is here is everywhere
is nowhere
you knew it
Borges used it
beauty is a physical sensation
the axis mundi piercing
the palms of my hands
memory like a gipsy woman
who reads palms
beauty, yes, it draws the soul
ascetic
I figured it out in the smiling of your sleep
like babies smile to angels, they say
this game that keeps us alive is hers
golden beetles die for it
of for the love of dust
pastimes of gods its archives
everyday the light tastes differently
the body moves where the mind is
or the other way round
I'll read Cartarescu to you half naked
one page a day
beauty is the quest,
this spiral of wonder
filling up the rest &
my nails
Feb 10, 2023
Feb 10, 2023 at 1:42 PM UTC
Interpenetrating your cosmic tree
if I am to survive this visionary fancy
With my ever existent images
we skip contemplative thought
and descend into The Divine Abyss
Dec 17, 2011
Dec 17, 2011 at 1:46 AM UTC
_For as the curtain rises,
So too the curtain falls,
No accolades, no entourage,
No 'Brava!', no applause.
An unrehearsed performance,
By a monodramatist,
A solo show, a pantomime,
An improvised burlesque.
Critics stand in groups debating,
The value of my work,
They gossip in the aisles,
The playhouse now a kirk.
My eulogy their invention,
My obituary the prize,
The best review I've ever had,
A mix of humour and soft lies.
I have played the loving daughter,
The honest aunt *****
The independent sister,
The true and loyal friend.
The sympathetic neighbour,
I have played the errant niece,
The mentor, guide, and confidant,
The ***** and the tease.
In truth, I am a diva,
Living mostly in her head,
But this remains unmentioned,
In a tribute to the dead.
Once rose bouquets beribboned,
From the greatest and the good,
Now a solitary arrangement,
On a coffin made of wood.
For as the curtain rises,
So too the curtain falls,
No accolades, no entourage,
No garlands, no applause.
But wait, I see my error,
As indeed these things exist,
But not for me to comment on,
Nor as I would have wished.
For my aspect is fair frozen,
I cannot turn the page,
My performance has now ended,
And I have left the stage._
Sep 14, 2020
Sep 14, 2020 at 3:51 AM UTC
Quis hic locus?
quae regio?
quae mundi plaga?
what world is this?
what kingdom?
what shores of what worlds?
- girl, interrupted
1999
Feb 27, 2019
Feb 27, 2019 at 1:06 AM UTC
Nefertari
Amenities of the African lands
Indigenous black beautiful roses
Of the African soil
Dark and strong
In a black alluring archaic vogue
an amara in black woman
Sisters of samandzie
Balleting in a black dulcet rhythm
Of the African ancient song
With an
Idrissa desta
The power of Thee
Black Spiritus mundi
Brown eyes, Thick bones
Curly ***** afros
Dark is deep and strong
An authentic unique beauty of nature
Glows and Flourishing
From deep within
I like it black and strong
Dec 14, 2015
Dec 14, 2015 at 6:51 AM UTC
12/10/2012:
A very mellow day,
A day that makes one’s golden years actually golden.
Happy in retirement?
There’s a joke:
You slave like Spartacus in the Libyan salt mines for 30 or 40 or even 50
years, and now you’re supposed to re-calibrate the machine, re-gauge
one’s anatomy and metabolism for a habitat so far and away grindstone
gone.
The muckrakers Studs Terkel and Barbara Ehrenreich remind us:
Work is the only thing we can do for 8 hours, other than sleep.
Perchance even to dream out that Roman **** or Bacchanal.
No, alas, 4 hours is the legal limit for an ******** lasting that long,
During all our joy-juiced carnal desires,
Be they under the elms or elsewhere.
**Cialis! ******
Names already living it up in infamy.
A simple truth about Retirement:
Stop working and die.
A most intense public service announcement,
A vast digital image out of Yeats,
A very special Spiritus Mundi P-S-A.
Targeting Baby Boomers, especially:
“You better find yourself something,
Or someone to occupy your mind.”
Brought to you by the good people at
OCCUPY BRAIN STREET,
First a national, then a veritable global movement,
However so short-lived;
Like all the others.
Oh, Boomers, your attention span is down to 8 minutes.
Your mnemonic links are frayed and tattered,
Your hard drive noodle fragmented,
Yet still whirring white noise jazz.
A New Orleans Dixieland funeral,
And Al-Zheim trumpet blast to go out on.
Well, I don’t know about the rest of you,
But I am relatively well adjusted in retirement.
And today—previously mentioned as a mellow day--
Today is one reason why.
As is medical marijuana and the sultry voice of Chrissie Hynde,
With or without her band of Pretenders.
And let’s throw in a lovely bottle of Temecula red wine--
Doffo, if you’re going to get fussy on me,
Another blithe distraction cultivated and custom-made for old age.
Indeed, a very mellow day.
May 14, 2015
May 14, 2015 at 3:21 PM UTC
The night draws out --
as if still yearning to linger...
but a star will burst forth
and morning will quickly break.
We linger in dawn-dim rooms,
silently contemplating our fate...
Our lives seem so minute,
so limited compared to the
ever-lasting cosmos.
We seem staid -- and yet,
our hearts are not that way.
We need merely to step out upon
the great expanse --
need only take that first step,
and the eternal essence
will receive us.
Jun 14, 2012
Jun 14, 2012 at 5:28 PM UTC
poppies and chamomile bloomed roads,
covered in warm dust... such a pity
that these are the only ones left
to be pointing towards the eternal city,
where marble and stone still stand
on places gods used to walk bare-footed,
where belief was more than just demand,
until cassocks have had ancient ways sooted.
A place where manner was turned into art
And polymaths emerged from genius creation,
where Latin blood spills from heart to mart
In a continuous state of vibrant elation.
where green is the colour of oils and lust
and the sun can burn to a lemon flavour,
and the sand on the front of the boot is black
and the wine is more than a bitter-sweet savour...
There, where a walk through square paved markets
is bursting with hand-made stories,
where scratching through history's pride
would always end in timeless glory...
May 30, 2017
May 30, 2017 at 4:14 AM UTC
Down and out, broken like so many burned out automobiles
Yet blazing infinite with immeasurable conviction &
Rapturous with the weight of destiny
Manic hysteria drove them off the overpass
Hipster Valkyries raised them to avant-garde Valhalla
And the eight o'clock news made messiahs of the lot
Nirvana sold last weeks newspapers on the side of the highway
Rolling with a sweet glimmer of a shark toothed smile
On the horizon hunting for a high that can't ever be attained
Holiest of Holies on a red lipped mountain top
Or a supermarket bathroom stall scrawled with ****** madness
The Lord's Prayer in black ink, brutal and simple
There were misty eyed girls on the morning train to some great and unenviable elsewhere
And by night the crows circled six times, once for each of the dead end dreams swallowed that day
Candid and conscious, where the wild ones roam the city
Burning the flags they wave and waving the flags they burn
America's sweethearts on the run from the police
Sawing at heartstrings like bows on a twisted violin
From the mountains to the valleys the winds screamed senseless in their joy
Liberation and the kiss of a lipstick Judas were on everyone's mind
Martyrs a mile a minute, a dime a dozen
Down the line the angels wept gloria mundi
For the sinners sung with passion, the saints stoically mourned
The revelers and the rioters and the street kids looking for a ride home
The toxic kissed stars that set the city lights the shame
And the masochists, blessed with a gypsy goddess' double edged kiss
And broken down like so many burned out automobiles
Yet blazing infinite with immeasurable conviction &
Rapturous with the weight of destiny
Dec 19, 2014
Dec 19, 2014 at 2:59 AM UTC
Did I act any weirder than normal?
Recalling dreamy day
Picking apples on a ladder
What a stupid girl.
Made apple jack for you
Not talking to me
You learning space and time
I was learning dream language
Dreams are out of control.
Much interference.
Cota mundi protects
loves his wife
Protections were set
But are broken
Afraid of metasphere
Afraid to make new metaphors
They suggest...
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 9:25 PM UTC
When I was little
And the hot world outside my house
Was blessed with summer rain
I’d stare outside and be lost
In a world only I could see.
As I met others I found
That this place of collective consciousness spiritus mundi
Was shared by others
Beautiful tapestries of adventure awaiting just around the corner
Shared time and time again.
But time is the passage to the great equalizer to the end
And fireflies that shimmered behind our glowing eyes
Dimmed as the calls of Neverland and lost boys faded
So playtime was replaced with homework
And toys with video games
And imagination became madness.
So when I tried to exit reality in my early teens
(When I was younger
I’d be lifted by an angel into the starry night sky
And see the Earth illuminated
By spiral staircases made of rainbows
Leading the dead to Heaven
Where I’d meet God on their coffee break
For wisdom and advice on staying alive)
The state of Massachusetts sentenced to me to a hospital for my brain
And I decided it was a bad idea to confide in my psychiatrist
That the wind spoke to me
And told me the secrets of the world.
Beyond the brightly colored pills
That are washed down my throat
I look for an answer to madness
Amongst the hundred voices in my head
And auditory fever dream
Hallucination delusions of hearing my name.
The answer is always the same.
Stable sanity is serenity
Imagination is devoid of practicality
The lone child in the back of the classroom
Staring out the window daydreaming,
Will be the first in the unemployment line.
Are we human beings or trees
Being fed on a steady steam
Of halogen and pixels
Recirculated air
And to others who work at computers replace the use
Of that landscape of infinite possibility.
So I’m left to ask…
(When you wake up from a dream
Where someone loved you
You don’t remember their name
Or maybe even their face
But you’ll remember the ghost of their touch
On your skin
The warmth of their body
Pressed against yours
And whispers in your ear
Of things you never hear while you’re awake)
How can you prefer reality
When all that you ever wanted
Is just a moment away
Past the darkness when you close your eyes.
And embrace that you’ll be lead
Behind the white door
Leading to the white room with padded walls
Labeled madness?
Apr 17, 2015
Apr 17, 2015 at 2:53 PM UTC
The fire burning.
The liar turning
away from realities
decomposing core
while the doors
of perception
remain barred to
all but a privileged
few.
Truth lies not within
abandoned pews or
the Jew’s unread book
but in eyes willing to
look beyond the concept
of time and space to the
place where nothingness
and being coexist without
apprehension
Nov 6, 2010
Nov 6, 2010 at 6:58 PM UTC
I watched the world decay.
The sun burned bright for such an awful day.
And in the sun the buildings burned.
Smoke and ashes fluttered and turned.
Like fresh snow the ashes fell.
Darkening the oceans swell.
A woman stands just a silhouette.
In the darkened ocean soaking wet.
She looks into the ruined city.
And tears fell down a face so pretty.
Lost in thoughts of days long gone.
Glory fades and time drags on.
I felt her pain in such an awful way.
I watched the world decay.
Sep 3, 2013
Sep 3, 2013 at 2:53 AM UTC
This life accused me.
I didn’t answer,
Because under my skin;
I found Anima Mundi.
Apr 15, 2023
Apr 15, 2023 at 4:26 PM UTC
it is nothing I could begin to say to you
for it came to be without words
without sound
but not quiet
it was with the sound of something as you look upon it
The hum of tiny waves
shadow not shadow and the space beneath, that is to say,
between
life without a need to be
without purpose,
failure and not failure so close together because (finally I saw) they are not separate
it was steps that unfolded to infinity around the block
and around again (sic transit gloria mundi)
it was arms swinging like pendulums past ribcage clock faces
waving away the concept of time
In this small corner of the world
it was saying thank you for handing me over to solitude and meaning it
dying in order to let me heal you
it was following the jet trails with fingertips touching them like you taught me to
it was letting the poetry come in and pass through and move off
not holding it in, anymore
When I learned for the first time, to write.
it was when I heard something behind me
it was I am.
it was when I drove on the freeway and the cloud broke and we passed out into the sunlight at 67 miles per hour, even though I was alone
when I was disturbed with the thought
today (dei gratia) I am happy to be alive.
Green was your favorite color.
Mar 4, 2011
Mar 4, 2011 at 3:23 PM UTC