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Man and Dog

If all the days of all the years were made of wine and gold
They’d be present in the light of intelligence in this one dog’s eyes.
This friendship across species — a Buddhist mantra –
Rocks me like a good old boy, befriends me like the rain..
He’ll be with me when the gates fly open —  and the light pours in
Again, we seek out the depths, the shaman-spirits that will be:
Seen, glimpsingly, during the Paiut Wovoka ghost dance;
We drive away every morsel of this dirty money-grabbing life
This massacre of everything that be wild, that be willful,
That be wild, wondrous, free.We create resistance to the age of the machine
To the algorithms that manipulate us, behind the scenes.
In this stinking, respectable world of the empty self we resurrect
The unseen perspicacity and prescience that was once the common currency
Of the most illiterate, boorish, free-born, Saxon.

 

◄ Above the vaulted sky

The blues ►

Comments

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John Marks

Tue 19th Nov 2019 21:32

Thank you Paul and Ray. The tourist trail holds no interest for me. I think, Ray, a poet has to be 'clear' about her unknown unknowns, and be prepared to take any route in order to make even the smallest sliver of the unknown a presence in her poetry. You are not lacking in perspicacity nor prescience.

“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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raypool

Tue 19th Nov 2019 16:42

A beautiful and uplifting curse against those who would dominate and suppress, and your track proves the point in its exuberance and feeling. I like the way your poetry never sits on the fence or becomes precious, if we persevere to look for the heart of it.

All I can say is to beware of the tourist trail and its desecrations.

Ray

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