| the goatherd's crooked staff
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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15 Aug 08 |
Rated 8.9 (8.9) by 9 users.
Active (9): 2, 7, 10, 10
Inactive (0): 7, 8, 10, 10, 10
(define the words in this poem)
(101 more poems by this author)
(3 users consider this poem a favorite)
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Comments:
title apostrophe.
nice poem - good references. except i'm not sure about socrates' lyre.
— unknown
i like references, but i think that this may have too many, and some too specific for most to grasp if they're not super familiar with them.
well written, though.
— shakeit
You think you are clever posting a poem with fullstops? Maybe drugged instead, or probably just stupid.
— wasp
this verse/essay is inane, but the grammar of it is, appropriately, the grammar of 'the goatherd's crooked staff'. you need to get your concepts tightened here if you're going to crit us -- just having tight lips won't do, because the only way we can see them on the text page is if you write them, and you don't write very well.
— joey
Thanks for the correction unk --
shakeit yeah I got these references off my chest and they are personal
wasp -- done what? I'm too stoopid to know the differance
joey thanks for dropping by and telling it like it is
— AlchemiA
Clever stuff. Well woven fabric of irony. Enjoyable.
— davehz
davehz Thanks for reading and commenting
— AlchemiA
Thankyou to whomever gave me the 6 -- the number numerolgically signifying Love
— AlchemiA
yes, i do love you, al.
not so much the poem though. i think you are trying too hard to be clever.
the second strophe is more prose than poem.
you know what i am alluding to. i know you do. you know poetry too much to deny it.
— unknown
ha ha ha ho this I know -- but it was a kinda bookmark for me in my study of each of these char actors you see -- a homage of sorts, these, my old cohorts -- thanks for seeing through the written word that as you do -- ho ho ho hum
— AlchemiA
just out of curiosity, where do you live? there is a reason why i ask.
— unknown
North Vancouver over looking the sea from the side of a Mountain where I write verily -- I watch the Eagles fly aloof while the Ravens complain cacophonetically -- I ride my bike up that Mountain to the sky and fly back down while wondering why the Mountain dreams in streams rushing to the sea where the waves all gather but disagree about the many splendoured Suns glittering around and whether they are jewels the Mountain found
— AlchemiA
haha...okay.
i want to relate the last strophe with you, but damn, a crooked staff?? lol.
keep smiling:)
— unknown
the crook on the end of a staff is emblematic you see -- it sort of echoes the shape of the spine which goes up to the head where this curious crook is -- apparently this has to do with the subtle energy flow through the knots or chackras from the base of the spinal tail to the back of the head -- everyone has a crook'd staff and some are more crooked than others
— AlchemiA
alrighty, then.
so i'm reading too much into this? thinkin' not, genius, but it is written to/about and maybe even by the intellect(s)? ha ha ha ho...hum.
goat staff (satyr)? no?
not sure how l9 and 10 tie together. no need to explain the character credentials..i know how socrates is worked into the speeches and who xanthrippe is, but tie them together for me.
why do you use two same 'images' for two separate people in two separate strophes? 'speaking in tongues' and 'cunning linguist' sound clever, but not. merely redundant. or was this another 'unintentional' play on words?
i want a question ending the fourth strophe. naturally?
and sibelius? nice change to erase the image from my mind (though I rather liked it), but what were you thinking with that one?
i like your bookshelf (i should, it's mine too), but you did realize you packed them too tight, right?
— unknown
thanks for really reading unk -- Xanthippe was not only the devoted wife of Socrates but also availed herself as his most deriding critic thus riding him toward his muse -- Hesse and Nietzsche both saw the individuation process as the process of mind and were given to bending and forming the word into their own image of what they were becoming -- the 'cunnilingus' of Nietzsche is emblematic of the Prostitutes ( sleeping sheep ) he most likely contracted syphilis from which helped him form Zarathustra = Sisyphus as his Anti-Übermensch -- Hesse really turned me toward the Golden Thread of History which helped me to acquire a Loom for myself -- Sibelius as others looked deep into the well and fell in -- yes I am the goatherd and I sleep like a baby or a dirty Saint
— AlchemiA
ahh..i thought it was another play on words. but it is a supposition. had you alluded to his strokes, maybe, but writing in a definitive style about a suspicion (for that's all it was)...well, on the other hand, you did note the 'crooked' staff;)
your description of xanthippe doesn't tie line 9 in. you see, you added 'though' which would tell me they are connected somehow and we know the two don't have any attachment except in the poem and your mind.
i like the original version of the last strophe. there was a smile on my face thinking (you) were having wet dreams...ha ha ha ho...
i almost like the poem (regardless of my 5), but you haven't quite convinced me yet.
— unknown
yes in my own mindfullness I saw that Xanthippe probably had misgivings about her older genius of a husband glad handing his young learners and thusly pushed and provoked him -- the critic has a way of provoking the muse in the man you see -- Phaedrus speaks of Love in the Symposium which is defined viscerally by Socrates as a strength, such like " when irrational desire pursuing the enjoyment of beauty, masters judgment which prompts to right conduct and has acquired through other desires akin to it, fresh strength to strain toward bodily beauty; that very strength provides it with its name - it is the strong passion called Love' -- so I memorized that tidbit on Love when I was 11 or 12 and that became my quest, i.e., Love -- I found after all that the model of beauty and Love that Plato alluded to was somehow wanting -- after dumpster diving through the verities of Western forms and rituals I came upon Hesse and Jungs queries into the Eastern zones of silence such that I read the Bhagavadgita and other such stories -- the definition of Solipsistic Love in Western ideology became the Pantheistic doubt free version when Krishna spoke to Arjuna on the battlefield of life saying, amongst others things, " in the many ways that men Love me, in the same ways they can find my Love; for the paths of men are many but in the end they all come to me " -- inwords out without a doubt at which point I became an avowed Solipsistic Pantheist or Poet who has his center everywhere and her circumference nowhere -- I amy change that last strophe back after all -- thanks for your time and queries unk
— AlchemiA
my last comment, then i will leave you alone...
are you mixing love and sexual gratification? intentional? yes, as per the last strophe's strength. but that's what i liked. and yet it all tumbles falsely down the 'sticky slope' because you cease to write for the reader and only for your own interpretations. that's okay for you and i who have immersed ourselves in the debatable issues, but what about others who aren't sure and take it on its own merit?
keep it true and close, with just an edge of inauthenticity.
it was fun humping your leg, al:)
— unknown
no worries unk I've always gotten over the hump -- yes I wrote this for myself really and shared it for what it's worth as a kinda prophylactic prophesy of a book Lovers yearning and burning to ascend Mount Analogue and then find a heart expanding full of wonder and awe like today when on top of Goat Mountain where the vista took my breath away in the exuberance of glee so merrily -- nothing more can I say
— AlchemiA
Thanks for the 7 of mystery
— AlchemiA
I'll tell how this is: pure genius, and what poetry is at its best. No criticisms, no "buddyism" here. This is masterstrokes without any over-painting. Best thing I've read here in memory.
— netskyIam
thanks for that netsky -- it's really just a placeholder and homage to my milestones of realEYEsations from my early years of Philosophical investigations
— AlchemiA
Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.
-- Albert Camus
— AlchemiA
poetry is inspired by the muses and is not rational.
--Socrates
hi again, al:)
— unknown
Hi again unk -- yes I was aware of Socrates misgivings about the irrationality of Poetry -- that is the deal when you put the cart before the horse -- you see in the Left/Right Brain paradigmension the linear, step by step, time based, tunnel vision of the Left brain is the root of all reason and without the la la laughing Right brained wonder and awe is given to fits of control paranoia like you see in the Western based cultures with their over zealous Police state infrastructure coupled with their over weight Judiciary -- the 'cart before the horse' because when we are DNA dancing in the womb the Heart is made first than the Brain which is a Natural indicator to how we ought to make all of our decisions in this Great marvellous unbounded universe, i.e., with our Hearts first than our Heads -- every decision must be preceded by Joy otherwise it becomes a farcical darWINian legal issue -- fear makes very linear decision trees while wonder sees the Forest and the Mountains and the Sky and it takes the breath away followed by a sigh --
— AlchemiA
this pome http://www.poet rycritical.net/read/50478/ goes even further in Platonic forms dancing as sahdows on the cave the light of fire making a haze
My Heraclitus Ideal (of love) - for AlchemiA
— AlchemiA
ha...thanks for linking the 'poem', al, but links don't work in the comment section.
— unknown
yeah Donald made a bot that splits the domain or merely inserts a space into the domain so the link don't work -- it's an Anti-Spam technique of which I concur!
Neverthe less if you simply copy the URL and insert into the address bar above and remove the redundant obvious space it will work --
"http://www.poetrycritical.net/read/50478"
— AlchemiA
yeah, but i wrote it, i don't need to read it;)
now, go read my other poem...it's posted under the same
user name as My Heraclitus Ideal :)
hope you are keeping well, al.
— unknown
as 6 becomes 2 in the language of duality made into relationship we come to the realEYEsation that 2 times 3 becomes the Six of Love where triurnity is the changes wrought
— AlchemiA
no. 6 became 8. someone else gave you a 2.
— unknown
Stupendous! Amazing! 7/10
— Poe
thanks unk -- Poe how do you know?
— AlchemiA
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