JUNG ON JOYCE’S ULYSSES

Tags

Carl Jung, Consciousness, Creation, Creativity, Humanity, identity, James Joyce, Language, meaning, Metaphor, metapoetic, Modernism, philosophical, philosophy, poem, poetry, postmodern, power, psychological, Reader, Universe, wordplay, writing

JUNG ON JOYCE’S ULYSSES

he fell
into the maelstrom
or maybe he plunged

heroic, invulnerable as Achilles,
nothing about words
did he fear

and yet
the Sirens, his own Sirens,
when they sang to him, they tore
at his humanity
and Scylla and Charybdis
pulling at him
from opposite directions

threatened to tear
soul from self, author
from man

and so
to Homer

a beginning

and a time
before words

from there
fast forward
to a lost time
a divided time
a time
split from itself, savaged in the jaws of Empire
(no hope
of restoration on
the horizon)

but still
the words flow, the pages
begin to tower
up from the floor

flow like rivers mythological
(both Greek
and Irish

Liffey, Lethe

Shannon and
the Styx)

Oh little
Everyman
figure who
incapsulates us all

embodies our
broken, fragmented
common
humanity

swept aside
by tide
of the times

bobbing in an ocean of
self-
generating words

wine-dark empty, kenning free

this is not
the poetry that
proclaimed a civilization

every
moment iconic, as
if tempered bronze

no
this is the dance that goes
around and
around in
symbolic circles

this is the dance
of the cosmos

sleeping, dreaming, forgetting
emptying itself

until
not a word
not
a whisper

nothing speaks
beyond itself

nothing
says everything

so might as well
cross
every horizon
write
the life
to be
endured
forever

write until
there is no more space
to fill

write
the light
write the shadow

eighteen chapters, seven
hundred pages

and still there is space
place for more

Odysseus navigating the Mediterranean
sailing round in circles, prisoner
of conscience, convenience,
prisoner of love, of
the dark arts, by
virtue of
offense to Poseidon
extreme political prisoner

the words
hounding him
every step
of the way

on the return to Penelope
that will never
happen
can never happen

Penelope long gone
unfaithful to the core

****

no moment where
in supreme Catholicity
the cosmos
comes together

sub specie aeternitate
where it
all supremely means

maybe
an echo though

things seem silent but
are echoing out to infinity

everything so tired, outworn,
exhausted,
overdetermined

the mirror
in which we
first
saw things, composed
the image of the self

shattered
frozen in the moment
of shards scattering, pieces falling,

a razor-
sharp rainbow of a
zillion fragments

as images of creation
go
pretty
explosive
and extreme

no
arc of redemption, today at least,
for our great creator

driven
beyond all
limits

urged
to go demiurge

and this
our answer to an expanding universe
to the smoothness of steel
sharpening
all new technology

to
which

what dare the soul, overawed, say

how might it
speak truth to
final objectivity, absolute
science of meaning?

resist
the building of
such binaries as will

house
Western consciousness
in such
prisons of delight?

OUTSIDE

Tags

Alien, Humanity, identity, poem, poetry, psychological, science fiction, Universe

OUTSIDE

the alien
at the heart
of us all

the xenomorph
that sleeps
and dreams
and
gestates

not quite
a
chest-
buster
ripper

but child of the distant galaxies
nevertheless

as much as it be
stuff of
the soil

outside

thing of all the things
you never gave
much thought about

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY EVIL SELF

Tags

Humanity, I dentity, philosophical, poem, poetry, psychological

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY EVIL SELF

should perhaps set this up
as a little experiment, under
experimental conditions

a little experiment, even a tiny thought
experiment

can take you places
you don’t quite expect

can take you places
and then destroy them

seemed
nothing to amiss
about Professor Einstein
imagining himself riding through space
and time on
a beam of light

as he glides so beautifully, slicing through
concepts and postulates that
suddenly, instantly
no longer hold

and when
he hits the atmosphere

then he can decide
where on the planet he wishes
to target

Hiroshima, Tokyo, Nagasaki
such places naturally
pushing themselves forward
recommending themselves

all
wishing to be the poster-child for
the new relativity physics

all wishing to see
matter converted to energy
in sheer of heavenly light

****

if all is
relative

then what is this dark other
squirming around somewhere
down there

bringing to the surface all
pain of my childhood?

this figure
I have summoned to the table
for some kind of dialogue
— you talk
individuation

I would be happy
for some
kind of rapport

febrile, tenuous,
that’s all
I can
hope for

in this long continued
existential, emotional
drama
this long conflict
between such
fundamentally opposed
parts of myself

****

light versus
dark

would be such a cliche
to film this
exteriorized as
two players engaged
in a chess game

the complexities of the struggle
for mastery devolved to
an issue
sorted on a battlefield of
sixty four white/black squares

and who
in this situation gets
to make
the first move

who is
attacker?
who is defender?

who
offers the gambit?
who declines? who
accepts? who
figures on
a counter or
runs with this ruse?

****

and so
here we are
facing off against each other

struggling as we converse
for power
and upper hand

my parable
one of
blessed acceptance

his
a twisted stance of
absolute rejection

so much rebel energy there
so much
snake-like coiled hostility
perfect poison
in those fangs

****

fire
to my water

air to my
solid earth

he takes my lines
one by one
turns upside down,
deconstructs, reshapes them

gives them
a raw, high-
voltage electrical power
that they never had

but cannot sustain
nothing can find a
place to be
a place to live, person
to be with
running
so ragged

too much
sulphur in the aftertaste of
each lightning bolt

I show him the pool
the stream
the lake
the river

the ocean
where things cannot
be otherwise, are
what they are
are as they should be

ticking over for
all of time

slow, steady flow
kind, forgiving,
beneficent

at peace in the reality
of its own empathy

****

evil self
responded
thanking me

for putting
my cards
on the table

telling me
that
some divisions
are impossible to bridge
wounds that
cannot be
healed

that the
pain and tension
will continue to
exist

driver of everything we are, battle
to be
evolving from
the swamp of
beginning

to what we
might become, if we
truly had time
lived infinitely

WAR BOY

Tags

internal, poem, poetry, psychological, War

WAR BOY

he was the Sun Tsu
the Von Clausewitz
if inner conflict
war with the
self

Civil War such as between
Cavalier and Puritan propensities

between pressure to
conform to the collective good
and the individual’s right
to be despicably bad

Oh the various factions, aligned
to different organs or functions
in the body
would ambush each other
and set traps
take
no prisoners
or take and
subject to vicious humiliation

the Great War between the imperial parents
had recruited widely amongst
the different classes of cell
making them swear
allegiance to
Father Fuhrer principle or
the people’s republic of
stifling maternal love

AT DISENENG DAM

Tags

loss, poem, poetry, psychological, Shadow

AT DISENENG DAM

happened to look at those old photos
of you and I at Diseneng dam

seems like a lifetime ago
(and we both
know whose lifetime!)

the two of us
so recently coupled, knotted,
united in wyes of God and everything
must have failed to notice
the shadows we cast
you in your marigold dress and
me matching in shirt sun-yellow
Pisces Capricorn, Sheep and
Snake
astrologically OK but
then that shadow
could it have been that huge, that massive?
(with benefit of hindsight inclined to
add the word “monstrous”)

something distended about that moment
if it set in place a chain of events
that led to
the years of destruction and pain

and yet
maybe I’m exaggerating stuff to
force the memory into some symbolic significance
where it won’t go, where
stubbornly, steadfastly, it
refuses to go

for, thinking rationally about it, it’s
amazing when you take time out
to think about it
how utterly colossal a
human shadow can
in fact be

and, as for collective shadow, there
sky is the limit, literally the limit,

here — you got me started, so
I’ll continue —
the Earth casts enough shadow
to eclipse the Universe
devour the
Sun
obliterate the Moon

slowly nibble away
swallowing its own shadow, digesting
everything
(as the shadow psychologists say, trying
to be metaphorically)
projecting and devouring in one
vast and diabolical psychic moment

transforming itself
metastasizing at the end of the day
(not that day and night now
look anything different) into

all that shadow wants
for itself
will have us become

SCARS

Tags

poem, poetry, psychoanalytical, psychological, Stars

SCARS

the stars
leave
scars

we look up to
them for inspiration

they
look down on us

teasing us
telling us
to reach that bit
further and
will soon be
able
to pull them
from the sky
own and
admire them

as if

TERNS

Tags

Hannibal Lecter, poem, poetry, psychological, The Silence of the Lambs

TERNS

“It will be turns with us too.”
The Silence of the Lambs

how is life treating you Doctor?
anthrax island must be
such a bore
even you
must have run out
of things to observe regarding
tern mating and nesting habits

and the weekly dips in the freezing ocean
make thoughts of an escape swim
across the Atlantic
little more than an abject fantasy of hope

daily I think of you
and your mode of existence during
this life quarantine
imagine a different reality where
you might have already secured your freedom
wiped the vengeance slate clean
and dined exquisitely, working
your way historically through
a more than impressive list
of dishes lovingly prepared
using treasures surgically elicited
from your A-list victims

yes, I thought about you
quite often Dr Lecter
imprisoned on this island
counting
terns making
sense of
their social structures,
their flight patterns

counting
turns

the number of rotations of the planet
to be computed between birth and death

housed here
we hope securely that
we might sleep safely

and now
having — I presume — heard
these words, divined the
deeper subtexts of
my message

the hidden flows and
treacherous currents

do you
mapping out your Universe inner
and outer

find time
to think of me?

UNTIL

Tags

identity, poem, poetry, postmodern, psychological, Reader, wordplay

UNTIL

that other life
the one which called me
from out on the moors
where no one wandered
from behind every shut door

***

the door is shut
we are having a session
our session
and frankly, going
nowhere ever felt that
good

I fail to mention my other life
fail to remember it ever calling
but now I do
here in this hot, arid,
sun-bleached landscape
where the scrub and bush and send
stretches across a boundary
far to the North

not as
far to the North
as those Pennine moorlands
of my childhood
where each
visit to the city, city
of cotton, canal and
economics
city where
Marx and Engels shared
their analysis of
poverty and power
over cups of tea

****
against the wall
it is
as if I see projected
the stilted grace of
Indonesian Wayang puppets
turn into
thrashing anger of
a defunct robot
needing reprogramming
needing a
life upgrade
clunky Robbie-style figure
of good 1950s English metal

my father
worked for English Steel

****

and so here we
are
returning to the psychologist
(or perhaps it is the self-same
appointment mentioned
earlier
barely a moment ago

the truth
turns surreal when
you locate
its unconscious source

and
at that moment of impasse
shut door
to other self

time freezes, the heart gets Arctic
same tune playing
the record
always stuck

until the monster knocks politely
or does not knock but
just barges in

stormy weather
from another time
another old country
suddenly

as creature
sits itself down speaks in
language circular

starts (uninvited) to give your true story
your curse your autopsy

I use the second person
because I am no longer myself, in myself,
what I imagined I was born to be

so much I missed, so much
of my other half that disappeared somewhere
so much lost
never to be recovered but
at least
my jungfrau, you
are if not actively recording, writing the key points down

then
true to form
on the far wall the creature it projected
its trademarked warped masculinity
as a kind of dance

the images
strangely shuttling between (zooming in
and out?) between
smaller and
bigger

grainy precise and totally
blurred focus

narrative being
how well I was nurtured but
how painfully difficult and thus
how little
sank in

and the pathetic attempt to
prove self-ingratiating
(of course
when you smile your
bad toothless smile
etiquette demands
that she
should smile too)

and suddenly
monster was not one
but monster
was a couple

monster and its mother
hissing, chiming as they fought
their way to supreme agreement

and the mother figure cursing
those who
bring and brought shame
who shamed her with
unguarded, open revelation
who forgot that
the child’s mind and
tongue
must always
censor itself

****
time is up

distracted by my
crazy, almost literary,
moment of
monster imagining

realize
I have lost my thread
my narrative needs
re-
inventing

unless it is
same old, same old
stuff
I unload
stories I tell

self-
fulfilling prophecies
without hope of redemption

hot tears inside
can only

see them
in the gaslight

peace
comes with giving
at the end
of the Wasteland

faces once beloved that somehow
came yo be fixed forever
as smirk, snarl, leer

I leave
say goodbye (until
next time)

the door opens
a door opens

that other life

ACHTUNG FRANKFURT

Tags

apocalyptic, art, Capitalism, Censorship, Consciousness, Control, Critical Theory, Deleuze, Ending, Fascism, Frankfurt School, Humanity, identity, liberation, loss, media, Metaphysical, mythology, Nazi, philosophy, poem, poetry, postmodern, poststructuralist, power, psychological, radical. left, Reader, transformation, Twist in the tail, value, writing

ACHTUNG FRANKFURT
“the mapping of countries yet to come”
Gilles Deleuze

achtung Frankfurt
achtung Frankfurt

stuff you thought
locked inside that box
beginning to ooze out

thick
as instant pudding
thick as
vanilla blancmange

overloading all
your circuits
rewiring your smart
keen rational mind
down
dial adding
minus one

Oh it’s hardly
day of judgement
hardly battle
of the gods
as gotterdammerungs go
it’s quite pleasant really
big brother
without the brother
somebody
got talent
without the song

all in all
it’s mountainous
the wisdom here to
be heard
and seen

is putting your chess game
off the scale
general knowledge
through the roof

your consciousness
we take
a piece each day
teleport away way
nothing too
apocalyptic, though

there are torches
in the street

SUFFER NOT

Tags

poem, poetry, psychological, writing

SUFFER NOT

suffer not
for your art

way I suffered
first poetic breakdown

sat with my analyst
marking time
struggling
with a rhyme

thought one
on the tip
of my tongue once

but still
no sight of
a solution
(my
absolution)