poetry | Journeys and Star Gazing

The Folly of Creation

November 7, 2024

How do you record a moment of recognition? How do you capture moments of lost time and fill them with flowers? How do you grow a second self, one with ink for blood and paper for bones? By writing, of course.

Why attempt such folly as reshaping the world within your mind just to watch it transform again outside? It’s absurd, isn’t it? But if you’re not breaking down the world, how do you build anything new?

I’m making payments to the wind and sacrifices to the moon. Writing demands these offerings—it asks you to confront what threatens everything you hold dear.

If I understand you, then yes—now is the time. The time has come for flesh and blood to transmute into paper and ink. The only problem is, paper burns. But then again, man rots.

In that fleeting moment of recognition, we glimpse our own folly in this battle with mortality.

Leave a Comment » | alchemy, art, consciousness, Creativity, fiction, poetry, songs, symbolism, writing | Tagged: poetry | Permalink
Posted by stavr0s

Secrets Behind Sunglasses: A Poetic Conversation

November 1, 2024

The other day, I spoke with my friend who wore sunglasses, even at night. They were not just any sunglasses; they had thick, tinted lenses that turned his eyes into secrets. He sat in his bamboo chair, curled like an embryo in a second womb, and waited for the silence between songs on the record. When it came, he tilted his head, aiming his gaze—hidden behind the black glass—at me.

“Your passage shows a definite poetic sensitivity, an emotional quality that strikes one—but what does it mean?” he asked, words biting the quiet. “You are trying to communicate?” He leaned on the last syllable of “communicate,” stretching it thin, squeezing it like elegant toothpaste. “Aren’t you?”

I felt the weight of his question sink into my chest, leaving behind a sharp, echoing hollowness. I glanced at the poem I had laid bare on the table between us, exposed like a wound. His words transformed before my eyes into writhing maggots, their white bodies squirming towards the ink. Without thinking, I took off my shoe—a thin, worn sandal—and slammed it down. The thud startled the silence; the maggots burst, leaving wet smears across the wooden surface.

I didn’t speak for a moment. I scraped their remnants into an ashtray, their tiny corpses mixing with the charred remnants of past thoughts and past sins. I dropped my sandal to the floor. He laughed, a dry, brittle sound that cracked in the dimness. He crossed his legs, the fabric of his pants whispering like a taunt. The damage had been done—a single maggot had escaped my fury and burrowed, unseen, into my ear. I could feel it crawling, tiny feet clinging to the tender skin before settling into the cavity of my heart. It pulsed there, secret and vile. He knew it. His smirk was the proof.

Now I write to pull it out, strand by bloody strand, from my heart. I know that only when I spit it out, stained and gasping, will I be free.

This maggot is unlike the others; it shifts and moulds itself, a grotesque mimicry of thoughts, without shedding its true nature. Later, it transformed as I read Dostoevsky’s The Devils, a cigarette balanced between my fingers and a small, gleaming grain of eternity in the palm of my other hand. Between puffs and between sentences, I noticed that the grain had grown in weight. Kirilov had just explained why man must commit suicide to proclaim his freedom from fear. He was called a madman. I thought he made sense. I looked at my hand and saw that the grain had grown into a crumb. Realizing that Dostoevsky was performing the alchemy in person, I continued to read and commune with him.

The grain in my palm felt heavier, its edges pressing into my skin. My mind wasn’t playing tricks. It had grown into a dense and insistent crumb. I realized then that Dostoevsky had performed this alchemy, transmuting despair into something tangible, a weight that dragged at the fabric of the world. I kept reading, feeling the maggot shift inside me, watching with its eyeless stare as I communed with a man long dead but never silent.

The record ended while the needle turned and turned on the dead wax, and I looked up. My friend still sat there, sunglasses glinting darkly in the thin light, the smirk on his lips a question left unsaid. I inhaled, the smoke and the maggot’s secrets filling me to the brim.

*I asked AI to make an image based on the writing. This is it.*

Leave a Comment » | alchemy, Experimental Writing, Expression, fiction, personal, philosophy, poetry, symbolism, writing | Tagged: Creative Prose, creative writing, Criticism and Creativity, Dark Fiction, Dostoyevsky Influence, Emotional Turmoil, Existential Themes, fiction, Inner Monologue, Introspective Writing, Literary Fiction, Metaphorical Writing, Mystery and Meaning, Philosophical Fiction, Poem, Poetic Prose, poetry, Psychological Drama, Self-Doubt and Writing, surrealism, symbolism, Visceral Imagery, writing, Writing Process | Permalink
Posted by stavr0s

The Dance of Mind and Heart: Finding Meaning

September 28, 2024

Mind: How can you know where you want to go in a non-conceptual way? Knowing is inherently conceptual. You claim to know your direction without knowledge. Can you explain that?

Heart: It’s true; my previous statement may seem nonsensical. Let me rephrase: I don’t know where I wish to go or what I want to write, but I feel a direction. It’s not knowledge as you understand it, but it’s no less real.

Mind: A feeling? Now you’re stepping into territory that doesn’t compute. You either know or you don’t. What you call ‘feeling’ is a fleeting, unreliable sensation—something grounded in chemical responses, nothing more. Don’t introduce it as a third state between knowledge and ignorance. It’s simply you grasping at shadows.

Heart: Shadows? Perhaps. But what if the shadows themselves lead me to something more? Something you, with all your calculations, cannot fathom. Feeling is my map—it tells me where to go, even if it’s into the unknown. And I trust that.

Mind: This feeling must offer you more than the uncertainty lurking at my realm’s edges. How can you venture into darkness without light or a map? I doubt there’s anything beyond my domain. This darkness could merely be the boundary you wish to cross.

Heart: (more impassioned): What if I don’t need your map? What if I navigate around you, above you, beneath you? What if you, dear Mind, are the source of my doubts, the cage that keeps me from leaping forward? Perhaps this very dialogue with you holds me back from answering the call of something bigger than us both—my destiny.

Mind: Be cautious; you’re starting to sound irrational. You’re proposing unfathomable ideas. How can you use words to traverse this invisible path of feeling? Words are my essence—my very being. Now, you claim to transcend them. It’s absurd, like trying to leap over your shadow or lift yourself by your bootstraps.

Heart: (voice trembling with frustration): Listen, Mind—my heart beats without you telling it to. My blood flows, and my breath rises and falls. Why can’t I express the words within me without your rigid orchestration? Words are surface-level—the crust, the shallow layer of something vast beneath. You think you hold all meaning, but real meaning is hidden below your borders.

Mind: Now you’re introducing another term—meaning—as if it exists apart from me and my realm. How can you have meaning without Mind? That’s utterly ridiculous.

Heart: (with passion): What’s ridiculous is your blind belief in your sovereignty! You may be necessary, but you are not the king. Meaning comes alive when you and I collaborate, yes, but it begins with me. It rises from the depths where words can’t reach. Look at joy, for example. Joy needs no words—it is felt in every part of you, a deep swell that exists without concepts or definitions. And yet, it carries meaning! Joy is meaning in motion. What about love, Mind? Can you break it down into logic? Can fear be measured by words alone?

Mind: Fine. I disagree with your abstractions, but you venture into places I cannot see. Have it your way. I will always be here if you need me, and since you’ve chosen to communicate through words, I will remain your foundation—even if, as you say, I’m only the tip of the iceberg.

Heart: (softly, almost vulnerable): Thank you. But even with all of this… the question still lingers: What is my way? How will I find it?

Mind: You don’t expect me to answer that, do you?

Heart: No. It’s my question. And I hope that we’ll find the answer together with your assistance—one step at a time.

Leave a Comment » | attention, consciousness, Creativity, Expression, fiction, personal, philosophy, poetry, Uncategorized, writing | Tagged: Balancing Logic and Emotion, consciousness, Consciousness and Self, Emotional Intelligence, emotions, Heart Wisdom, Holistic Thinking, Inner Conflict, Inner Peace Soul and Reason, Intuition and Reason, love, meditation, mind, mindfulness, Philosophical Reflection, philosophy, poetry, Psychological Insight, Self-Discovery, Spiritual Reflection | Permalink
Posted by stavr0s

In the Labyrinth of Cosmic Intricacies

September 21, 2024

In the labyrinth of cosmic intricacies, an unseen design defies the logic of minds—we try to walk upon the ethereal fabric of black holes, where reason stumbles into awe.

Rebellion stirs, a cosmic key in hand, unveiling truths long lost in shadows of accepted wisdom, a door swings wide to whispers carried by the solar winds.

Some mysterious force, an ancient hand,weaves its stories through the constellations,an eternal presence watching the ballet—the rise and fall of stars, beings, and lands.

Matter becomes the frozen music of stones, Pythagoras’ melody echoing through time, each stone a note in the silent symphony, resonating through the star’s long sighs.

Art becomes the footprint of the soul, its brushstrokes on the cosmic canvas, a dance of thoughts, of dreams, of love, that falters when the soul’s light fades.

No soul, no footprint—only shifting sands, where glittering dust replaces vibrant marks, a desert where creative echoes vanish, leaving silence in the place of song.

Yet still, absurdity spins through the air—inside-out policemen, dogs, and cats create a dreamlike dance of chaos as space folds into a single doorknob.

Poetics, the study of soul’s strange symbols,scribbles that transcend mere meaning, tracing the whims of wandering minds and the patterns that the cosmos leaves behind.

1 Comment | poetry | Tagged: poetry | Permalink
Posted by stavr0s

Autumn Memories

September 10, 2024

Autumn leaves on sandstone steps
are days and nights I remember still.
Your breath was just a sigh,
a goodnight and a long goodbye.

If you were beside me
I could hear the Word
That whispers through the wind,
barely heard.

If you were beside me
I could have the strength,
that lifts stones
above the ground.

If you were beside me
I could see the light,
that gives the sign
for the lost to be found.

Autumn leaves on sandstone steps
are days and nights I remember still.
Your breath was just a sigh,
a goodnight and a long goodbye.

Leave a Comment » | poetry | Tagged: poetry | Permalink
Posted by stavr0s

Fish Tattoos and Redemption: Stories from Baxter’s Community, Jerusalem, New Zealand.

August 12, 2024

In Sydney, I heard about a community started by James Baxter, a New Zealand poet. It was located in Jerusalem, New Zealand. Baxter saw this place as a canoe, a lifeboat for the drowning. I expected a hippy commune but found ex-thieves, ex-addicts, ex-gamblers, even an ex-killer who had done his time. I didn’t know what I was an ex of. Some clung to the sides of the canoe, others sat steady inside, and some rowed and steered. They were changing their lives with prayer and community, guided by Baxter’s poems and the Bible. The native Maori lived nearby, sharing their land and mixing with those on the canoe.

I arrived, in 1973, after a 20-mile walk and found out James Baxter had died the year before. They gave me a bed on the verandah, a few feet from his grave. At night, the moonlight cast shadows of the mound onto the wet grass.

The man who gave me a Bible had left the Hell’s Angels, Auckland Chapter (A chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle club was formed in Auckland in 1961, the first Hells Angels chapter outside the US) because he fell in love with a born-again Christian. He took a liking to me and took me goat hunting. It was my first hunt. I helped kill, skin, and butcher the goat. He saw me squirm when we gutted it.

One day, while we were having a piss, he said, “Hey, look at my dick.”

I didn’t know what to do.

“Look at it,” he insisted. “I’m no homo, look at it.”

I glanced down. He laid his flaccid dick on his palm. The word “FISH” was tattooed on it.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why have you got FISH tattooed on your dick?”

He laughed as he put it away. “That’s for women who don’t eat meat on Fridays,” he said, then burst into a belly laugh.

I laughed along, thinking he got his penis inked for a joke.

He was a carpenter and wanted an apprentice. I just wanted to visit the community, float on the canoe for a bit, and then move on.

A photo of the Bible the Hell’s Angel gave me.

Leave a Comment » | poetry, writing | Tagged: consciousness, poetry, travel | Permalink
Posted by stavr0s

The Quest for Inspiration

April 18, 2024

The oppressive Australian heat bore down as I trudged along the endless road to the small Queensland town where my friends had once lived. Car after car whizzed past without stopping for the wayward traveler. After hours of walking under the relentless sun, I finally reached my destination only to find their house abandoned – they had moved on.

Feeling lost and alone, I sank onto the front step, uncertain of my next move. That’s when the wizened old man appeared, his weathered face seeming to defy the laws of age itself. He fixed me with an inscrutable stare for a long moment before speaking.

“Your mates are gone. But you’re in luck I’m still around.”

His humble shack was a one-room timber structure that emanated an odd warmth, the air carrying the scent of freshly-hewn wood. We sat on tree stump stools as he poured our drinks. I explained that I had come to Queensland seeking inspiration to work on my thesis about the mystical poetry of William Blake. His response took me by surprise.

“Ah, Blake could perceive the hidden truths, my friend. The rest of us are blind to such mysteries.”

This peculiar old man had me rapt as he delved into the sacred geometries, the mystic language of numbers, and how words and logic obscure the greater realities. His words wove together theosophical concepts and Pythagorean numerology.

“Within these corporeal shells, we are mere observers,” he proclaimed. “Catching fleeting glimpses of the vastness through sensory keyholes.”

I could only listen in silence as he added with a sage nod, “Having nothing to say may be your salvation.”

As I bid farewell to the enigmatic stranger, stepping out into the crisp air, the world itself seemed transformed around me. The return journey, hitching rides and passing through landscapes both familiar and foreign, carried an ineffable sense that I had been granted a glimpse into something far greater than myself.

With each passing car and transient vista, I felt I was traversing the synapses of some vast cosmic mind, every experience and perception flickering like synaptic connections within the neural network of a greater consciousness. Finally arriving home, I marveled at the profound interconnectedness of it all. I could taste the words Blake had penned in “Auguries of Innocence“:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

What once seemed an impossible task no longer felt so hopeless. The thesis that had tormented me for so long now carried the promise of insight and meaning.

==================================================================

The above event demonstrates for me the ideas of synchronicity and hyparxis. Below is a schematic diagram of a “MOMENT”. It shows 3 dimensions of the ‘moment in time’ – Serial Time, Spatial Time and Timeless Time. This diagram is based on J G Bennett’s ‘Dramatic Universe‘ where he explores these issues of Time. Yes, it’s my hand drawn version!

2 Comments | consciousness, fiction, numerology, philosophy, poetry, Pythagoras, symbolism, William Blake, writing | Tagged: consciousness, meditation, philosophy, poetry, William Blake | Permalink
Posted by stavr0s

A Cosmic Ballet

November 28, 2023

In the labyrinth of cosmic intricacies,
an inner design defies the logic of minds,
attempting to stroll upon the ethereal fabric
of black holes, where reason stumbles in awe.

Rebellion emerges as the cosmic key,
unveiling truths hidden in the shadows
of received opinions, a door swinging wide
to truths whispered by the cosmic winds.

A mysterious “something” wields a wand,
spinning tales within the tapestry of constellations,
an eternal presence observing the cosmic ballet,
the rise and fall of beings, mountains, and lands.

Matter transforms into the frozen music of stones,
Pythagoras’ ancient melody echoing through time,
each stone a note in the grand symphony,
resonating through the cosmos in silent cadence.

Art becomes the footprint of a soul’s journey,
imprinting the cosmic canvas with hues
of emotions and thoughts, a dance
that loses its rhythm without the soul’s touch.

No soul, no footprint, only shifting sands,
where glitterati and flash light grains
replace the vibrant imprints of creative expression,
a desolate landscape devoid of artistic echoes.

In the topsy-turvy world of this surreal realm,
inside-out policemen, dogs, cats, and cars
create a whimsical ballet of absurdity,
three-dimensional topology reduced to a mere doorknob.

Poetics unveils itself as the study of soul graphics,
a journey of the scribble that transcends meaning,
exploring the intricate patterns woven
by the whims of imagination and cosmic whimsy.