The sins of the father
lay somewhere to the left of Texas.
I pull off my boots to shake out the dust
as clouds of red disperse beneath an angry sky.
Accidents can happen to anybody.
I know they have happened to me.
The neon-lit signs pointing the way
Later, as we are lifted beyond fields,
barren and barb-wired,
I cannot possibly deny that the Apocalypse lives
inside me.
lay somewhere to the left of Texas.
I pull off my boots to shake out the dust
as clouds of red disperse beneath an angry sky.
Accidents can happen to anybody.
I know they have happened to me.
The neon-lit signs pointing the way
to a frozen paradise,
its numbing chill posing as warmth;
the bartender, smiling, attentive to every need.
The dirty glasses clanked in the hands
of the Mexican dish-washer,
while the sound of hollow pots and emptied tin cans
rattled inside a mind still reeling from
Later, as we are lifted beyond fields,
barren and barb-wired,
I cannot possibly deny that the Apocalypse lives
inside me.
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Rolling
metaness
James M. Emmerling
Chuck A. Stetson
Jimenace
Newton Fortuin
Salon.com
Comments
The sign sign pointing to frozen paradise - another vision track piece. I am a native american, i've met my twin and fallen. She is from the tribe anathema - we are forced apart. Flash of leaving, running, climbing the mountaine peak. We climb as far as we can to the sky - to lie lie down in the 'warmth' together. The memory of arms entwined and lips together carries us to the nNext.
Hollowed (revered, even as well as empty) pots and empty tin cans - no chicken in every pot here, and our emergency stock in canned foods is depleted. where's the food for thought? gone again in the aftermath of a red sky.
Our fields of honor and fields of verdant and lush thought are closed and barred (barred in the bar too) as we are lifted. What does the lifting? Like a temperature inversion brings the fog - a thought inversion lifts the nog - in'
It leaves breathes and writes inside - sometimes you have to flip it upside down and stand in front of a mirror to read it, tho...
peece,
dj
inside me."
Yes. Marvelous. Most people think of the Apocalypse as only destruction and the End of Times, but there is also this definition: "A prophetic disclosure; a revelation" I love how poetry brings out all the layers of meaning in words.
DJ - At last I hear from you again! Brother, Where Art Thou? Are you living on a rez? If so, which one?
You got me thinking about things I never thought about with your response to this latest poem. Never thought of the "hallowed/hollowed" possibility.
Name of the poem comes from a photo I took in Savannah, Georgia long ago. I took a photo of a bar that was closed that went by the same name. There was an iron fence in back of me and it was reflected in the window of the (closed down, darkened) bar. I thought to myself "That is what a bar can be to some - A Frozen Paradise." And the poem came a while after that. Blessings to you, my friend. Be well, and thank you for the gift of your heart, soul, and words.
I was referring to these visions/quests I had, mostly while in a fever dream. Those two (I call them memory tracks) were a pair. Your poem pulled them front and center - and my implicate order decided it was time to share :).
peece,
dj
peece senorita angelique simonetta,
dj
first,as an avowed & fervent dylan fan, i gotta point out that you 2 are on the same wavelength:he's absorbed mexican sound for his latest transmorgification, "together thru life", some seriously twisted love songs...
now...i would certainly hope you WOULDNT deny the apocalypse lives inside you. from "apokaluptein", apo="un",
kaluptein="cover". Rip the lid off, in other words.
The apocalypse, or, more correctly, an apocalypse, happens when we simply stop seeing the fallen world.when we are liberated from the false delusions of holiness.I'm not talking Christianity or some other religion here, we're too sophisticated to fall for that...( and any way "God is dead", said Hegel, then Nietzsche plaguerized, over 100 yrs ago.)
What is "holy"...ie delusional... today is what has always been holy: the self, the spectre, the shadow, the ego. Satan.The little cavern, the stone-encased skull: from which we view small portions of the eternal world, that ever groweth. And accidents happen to this little worm burrowing in the red night...yes indeed....
accidents...that is a vulgar term for a sound,serious philosphical concept.An accident is something without self-sufficient or independent existence, something that blongs, or exists, only in another being.They change, but substance remains the same.
Unfortunately, it's a bogus concept. The common sense wisdom, "there are no accidents", is the truth. There are no substances, remaining forever the same while things happen to them. All is impermanence. Substance is illusion...
Or better yet, go with Hegel and say: substance is power. It is a continual swing-over from the possible to the actual...it is identical with the change of its accidents....and...substance is Subject, of course. Fuck Spinoza. In substance/subject, which is the Absolute ("i gotta tellya: the absolute is subject as much as substance"....."phen of spirit"..gwf. h. 1807). error and finitude dont vanish: they are overcome, continuously, forever...
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sorry for the philosophy. you know i am otherwise known as "the human abstract", and i feel i am descending from your red skies into this latest lovely garden of imaginative reflection...like some whacked out Father spirtit to meet the earth...get my hands a little dirty in the fertile soil before i gotta get back to the fucking clouds...
wish those clouds would "disperse" ....
the frozen paradise is the static becoming of a world gone mad. a safe projection, a movie where nothing of substance (ha) happens. except accidents. they happen all the time. all we educated morons know: contingency rules. it's in the atoms, even. it's all a casino...fields barren and barbed wired....like the "enfencement" in the early 19th century, when they parcelled out the land of Blake's Albion...
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to the left of texas resonates in some collective place in me...texas....the US is intimately involved there...now:drug wars rage. it spreads over the border. as does the wave of immigration. we fought there, 150 yrs ago, before we turned our guns on each other under Lincloln's wise gaze....we choose our faux royalty from there: bush1, bush2. it is a slaughterhouse , where 12 yr old mentally retarded children are executed....dont ever mess with texas...we kill presidents here....do you have one we can dispose of, now, for you? the greatest white bluesman alive johnny winter, the whitest man in the world, is from texas....i saw him!....a few months ago...
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to the north: a frozen neon paradise. the northeast, an absud dream, which i inhabit...yet perhaps once again the birthplace of liberty once the wars of the body are raged & done....the hotbed of liberalism, among a frozen populace...you should see the people here, angie....white patrician faces frozen in terror as the blacks and the browns and the yellows invade....we retreat to suburbia & the motherfuckers follow
Just a
we drink our troubles aaway...at least, i used to....the bartender was always pleasant ...it was always a she, by the way...she saw my need for drunkenness & then finally for sobriety, and the bitch cut me off....my dirty glasses, the mayhem i kicked up in my White Insanity....quietly cleaned up .....
always service with a smile....they serve, as they colonize....jobs we good americans are too damn pristine for...
hollow pots & pans & cans, empty of the temporary sustenance to keep the orgy gong, rattle in the mind,
counterpoint to a vagrant thought ...but no thought s are vagrant, for there are no accidents.....in these bars, where nightly rage the lost children, just as in the factories and modern workhouses---the corporations (corporation=incorporation=bodily existence=selfhood)---
in other words, in Creation, in the fallen world....which is NOT in itself good butsimply serves to bring all things to apocalypse---to the point where they are "un-covered", where they are SEEN FOR WHAT THEY ARE---
"here everything exists & not one sigh nor smile nor tear/one hair nor particle of dust/
not one can pass away..."....all are heard, seen, understood...in the invisible world...in the air....in the place we yearn for, and build through our continuous accidental thoughts & actions....we are building a home in the sky, and we
try to bring it to earth, and we succeed here & there...and we fail again & again...and in this fallen creation, yes, the sins of the father are passed to his progeny....and they are acted out again and again, until forgiveness is acquired for them....
______________________________
we'll be lifted beyond these fields of mental carnage when we learn the ancient art of flight again...and the sky yearns to
fall...
so grab ahold & pull the fucking thing down
to earth..
Jim
Newton: James hits it on the head (albeit I was delving into the proverbial collective/transpersonal well when I "executed" this latest work): Un/Cover as the most fundamental translation of Apocalypse.
Jim: If I smoked, I would surely be compelled to smoke a cigarette after reading your comprehensive (and, strangely, to me, at least) wonderfully comprehensible interpretation of these poetic images. WHEW DOGGIE!!! LAWDY, LAWDY!!! YES YES YES!!!!!!!
The previous , ...um....interpretation, i guess you'd call it.... was done in a rather...(again w/ the dot dot dots....) ...(!) ...suprapersonal mood, to put it in professional terms.
High as a kite, to use the vernacular. Not on mary jane. On your poetry. It reaches the apocalypse inside me, which I have always been well aware of, at least since the first marijuana hit. Ok, maybe the second time I did it...the first, I overindulged & ended up being sucked into the center of the earth...no fun....thank Goddess I dared to do it again...
Otherwise I'd be institutionalized. I'm serious. I was that bad.
Some people are born with this gift, to see...it's not our fault, and we shouldn't ever be made to feel abad about it. I hope people have been nice to you in yr life. (HA!
becasue you are a very very nice person. I know this, and so do you. The apocalypse doesn't have to be chaotic & spinning out of contro, if it is for you. Apocalypses are not by nature that way, though they usually are.
They can be soft & unfold like Renaissance paintings come to life. Trust me on this.I have been living with my apocalypse alot longer than you (I assume...?) and my solution has always been to deny it & run to shelter in the psychobabble realm: "Help me, mommy, i'm gettin bipolar again!" . Big ach. I am a coward.
Love is why the apocalypse roars in you, you know that. So start exercising it to the right people, not
those fiery ones who steal yr flame and say "oh, but by the way..." & then proceed to point out some defect of etiqutte or character. Some people are ungrateful littl e thieves of fire. Let em die out , and don't go back & reignite them over & over & over...
That's the easy solution. $100 for my time, please...ha...
James ( i keep wanting to preface that with something...hm.."sincereley"?...no, doesnt seem quite apropos)
another of their lies busted....
i got a truck-load ful