An Imaginist

The Poet

The Poet 9-21-2010

The poet reaches into flickering passions

to wring out drops of nectar

that excite our taste

and slide across our tongues

to flavor our breathing,

making us drunk with life.

New Ones as of March 1, 2010

New York Morning
I raise the window of the second floor co-op
to inhale the sound of horns
and heavy buses bleating.

My skin absorbs the perfume of
exhaust and a thousand different
cooking fires light my imagination.

Laughter challenges mortality
at the rampant sensuality
of the humanity before me

and I feed joyfully on the
raucous, beating heart of the
city awakening.

Vagabond Lovers
Lying under trees I gather
clouds through spaces
in branches catching
color changing light.

Earth embraces spine
as I go with this mote
through canyons of space,
wild and at peace.

Breathing the wind
rivers flowing through veins,
trees grow between fingertips,
shape curving to hollows and hills.

This craggy sphere and I,
vagabond lovers,
tumbling through star rhythms
laughing, sacred and free.

Elemental Communion
Fruit of the earth and miller’s trade
manna of our breathing
holy sacrament of flowing water
and hands bury in.

Matter and spirit exchanging blessings
palms rocking in to push and turn
rhythm of all eternal rhythms
and then rest…

before entering the fires,
to bring us communion
baking bread, breaking bread.

Daily News
dealing death on angry streets
still the raging greed for life

anguished howls torn from bodies,
yet the feral lust for breath

pointed fangs bare and dripping
still the thirst to join at hip

infant limbs torn asunder
yet the fiercesome taste for birth

savage killing of the earth
hungry grasping for the stars.

Bean Counters
(March 2010 jury duty)
Wherever you go
people count beans.
Then other bean counters check on
who counted the beans.
Then more ‘others’ mark down how each of
the bean counters counted the beans.
Then still more note the location
of each of the beans when they were counted.
And that’s not all…
Others come along with charts and photographs of the beans,
of the bean counters, of the location of
each of the beans when they were
counted and ask you to study
them – seriously –
because somewhere
in the vicinity of some of the beans
at sometime
something happened
that had nothing to do
with beans!

The Singer
(4-16-2010 after listening to a Leonard Cohen cd)
The singer’s voice is raspy with life
and he brings me to love.
Words travel through curls of clarinet,
of sax, of guitar and his voice
enters my waiting body
making it sing along
in welcome.

Celebration
Life I celebrate your touch
Sing a hymn to your caress
Feel your soft breeze on my parted lips
Surrender to you wantonness

Turn my face to your blazing sun
Warming through my tousled hair
And thank the Lord for things undone
Yet to know and still to share.

The Loving Process
More than my lover’s hands,
I love,
his words.
More than his ardent touch
his cool, articulate
voice caresses.

And more than his catalytic
thought,
I love,
the responses of my thinking
and grow engrossed
with the inner workings
of my own
imagery

Loving him for his being
but, perhaps, loving more,
the process
of my loving.

At the Existentialist Cafe, Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails

At the Existentialist Café, Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails by Sarah Bakewell, Other Press, New York 2016

When Philosophy meets up with the actualities of life that are happening on your doorstep, what happens? Bakewell takes existential philosophy out of the theoretical and abstract and breathes life into it with stories of the challenges, arguments, loves, and bitter fallings-out amid the world changing crises of the times that the most well-known expounders experienced. Heidegger, Sartre and Beauvoir, Camus, Merleau-Ponty and others are fleshed out with the colors of the events that formed the stage they played their scenes on in Paris, Berlin, and wherever else they were driven at times to flee. The passionate questions they asked and the unsettling answers they variously found helped shape a generation of thought that sent echoes still vibrating now in the 21^st century.

Not your grandfather’s philosophy textbook but a book that offers fertile ground for understanding that ideas of life come from people who have done some living outside of the ivory towers their works may end up in. What answers would we find today for what it means to be free, is human nature variable or fixed, how does morality mesh wish loyalty, what does it mean to live authentically? A few interesting questions for our own times, this is the way philosophy should be taught, in my humble opinion. Bakewell has given us an ideal primer.

The Last Road

We are infinite in our variety, we humans, as are the paths we take from our first breath to our last, each of us appearing with our own oddities and talents. In Roman times talents were coins of exchange and so, perhaps, are talents of being that we gather and spend in our comings and goings, our wild energies of purpose and tangential wanderings, decorating and designing ourselves in our shared realities. We may travel a lot or hardly at all, but all come, in time, to a last road, carrying in our pockets coins we have not yet spent.

For me, these words may be the coins I have left. Here I drop them along the path to be picked up if some might find them worthy, or let lie to serve, perhaps, as compost for the future. In either case, I have no wish to carry them off with me even if I could. Feel free to join me anytime.

An Imaginist

Celebrating curiosity and offering musings, sometimes mine, sometimes of others, free of being limited to what is already expected. Browse the menus on the left to discover book reviews, poetry, Tarot meanderings, the occasional essay and maybe, eventually, artwork and more as the spirit moves. Comments and thoughts are welcome.