Salvador Dalí, Portrait of Picasso, 1947
tell me the entire face is mine, even the subtle interior, like a self-tied knot or the crutch of a malformed pearl that rests a weakened fleece on its forehead and tell me the riddle at the end of the nose is also mine sunny cranial jukebox sly rhythm edible noise the entrails of the intellect are an elixir like a hardened spoonful of clouds and madeleines and the kind of prickly nostalgia that sings accuse the eyes (as someone dropped the tongue) like two muddy pinballs rusting beneath the covenant of a crying sun —but it didn’t have to begin that way— with an arc of revolution a pinch in the atmosphere the size of a sleeping whale, a gap between legs that straddle time and space like a vagabond mouth or two soiled roots giving birth to a seed it is our duty to liberate ourselves from our own stillborn perspectives our eyes rotate on a narrow axis of order but our ears mistake the prisms of sound for a rain of tweets like a house of hummingbirds or the toll of a bell on a broken glass an analogue for chaos and a weeping reprieve the depth of our experience is devoured by a lifelong assault on the senses (and only the indigestible stays silent) with two knives and a fork we abandon ourselves to sleep (only a fool or an unbelieving genius would forget the knife)
The Used Life 
12 responses to “Elegance in Circles”
The messengers of poetry are also of the unknown and the beloved: when we are assaulted, our astonishment and our useless questions cease because of the anticipated answer –the prolepsis of rhetoric — that languish in the epithelium.
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As I was scrolling through my WordPress feed this morning, I came across a Lawrence Ferlinghetti quote that made me think of your comment instantly: “Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.” Poetry that leaves us speechless, contemplative, arrested is often the harbinger of universal truth, that which we recognize only by the light of intuition and imagination. A temporary suspension and reconfiguration of perceptible reality in which we are challenged to find new grounding.
Interesting: I’m still reading a bit about sensory processing sensitivity and creativity. Some psychologists view creativity as akin to a kind of processing, like a channel or an outlet for “extra” sensory input, those environmental stimuli (and even extra-powerful or lingering emotional reactions) that exceptionally sensitive people are unable to filter out or process quickly. Indeed, one thing I like about this explanation is that it accounts for a deeper kind of cognitive processing (It takes highly sensitive people longer to think.), which allows them to make all kinds of new and previously invisible connections. Uncover deeper meanings. Just like poets and other artists do.
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Sorry chérie, but I’m working right now and I can’t respond to your comment as you deserve. Everything you say in it is absolutely brilliant.
A propos de la citation de Ferlinghetti: When the poet speaks of himself, he not only performs an act of love, but also of poetry, albeit under an inescapable condition: that when he speaks, he blindly believes in what he says.
A propos de votre ‘Intéressante’ réflexion: My grandma would be very happy to meet you.
Bon week-end! 🙂
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One day, Monsieur Xyz, your grandmother will speak vicariously through you when you finally decide to complete your responses to my comments and questions. 🙂
Also, real poetry always comes from a place beyond certainty. Creativity is an act of faith.
Bon week-end!
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C’est la vie! 🙂
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Hélas, c’est toi. 🙂
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I admire your erudite, well-turned language and elegant simile.
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Thank you very much 🙂
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When someone writes in this way, how can one not love poetry? 🙂
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Thank you for the lovely compliment. It makes me happy to know you feel that way. ☺️
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I love how you take what you see and then weave a poem around it. It’s difficult to do, but you do it with ease.
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Thank you so much! 🙂
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