poetry critical : poem

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the goatherd's crooked staff

AlchemiA

Tuesday Lobsang Rampa made	1
tea so his Third Eye could open	2
to see dreams fortifying in aspiring hearts	3
as they reach for the next beat in their comings and goings	4

Socrates played the lyre by	5
banging on the strings while	6
humming and hawing about the trouble of	7
always stressing and straining against the chains	8
though he loved Phaedrus in the Symposium	9
it was Xanthippe that made him a muse	10

Hermann Hesse spoke in tongues	11
while translating the synapses of a goatherd	12
who arranged new ideas like glass beads	13
which almost always came undone	14
except when Siddartha played the lute	15
in exchange for his crooked staff	16

Nietzsche saw the cunning linguist	17
would never solve the puzzle of the dead body	18
which Zarathustra carried to his bed like a wolf	19
where he lay dying of syphilis wrapped	20
in the wool of many sleeping sheep	21

Sibelius finally gave in to the seduction of despair	22
when for many restless nights he looked up at the	23
stars in the same Elysian fields where	24
the goatherd lay asleep	25
smiling	26

08/15/08

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poetry critical