[x]

Has she ever seen
so much of her world at once?
all beneath her feet.

Will this moment completely
transform her understanding?

Encircled1
Within a bright sphere
a complete world seems contained,
just for a moment.

This might be a soothsayer's
crystal ball, where trapped light writhes.

2
Intellectual
vision must be augmented
by the seer's blind eye.

The Ladder Of JacobJacob dreamed. Though we may know nothing about what kind of man this father of patriarchs was, the record of his dream has been preserved. We have no way of knowing if this was indeed ever a dream that a man experienced. The story has him traveling alone, so artists have portrayed him. In the ancient text he settles for the night, resting his head on a stone.
As he sleeps the vision unfolds, he sees a ladder that reaches toward heaven from the earth, a ladder by which angels are ascending and descending.

He hears the voice of god, so he believes. The god tells him how remarkable he is. We might understand this vision as an allegory of his

Suspended

A moment of change,
the anxious throng uncertain,
the police watching.

Is the President's Palace
safe? The mob is stirring.

Lily

The blossom that floats
above the layers of mud,
a bright little world.

Crushing

No space for spirit,
the crushing weight
of anguish, of pain.

Yet release is within reach
If the prisoner lets go.

Temerity

Cranes at the apex,
machines that seem driven
by undreaming minds.

The city a vast colony
directed by mysteries.

Blind Faith

Flesh can fill up space,
balance might only be a spell
stalling gravity.

The mind leaves the body
to juggle with tragedy.

Hypnopompic

A key too rusted
to turn, a door once solid,
now rotting away.

As sentience stirs again,
the dream's images decay.

Daily RoundA new day begins.
As the hours pass it descends
towards its dark end.

Each passing minute, wave-like,
breaks on the unchanging shore.

Dusk sinks into night
Light's final moments promise
that worlds emptied

of colour, diminished,
will bloom again - the wheel turns.

nodal

Delicate blossoms,
lures to attract the future,
to nourish fresh seeds.

Fatality

Does he deny hope,
fearing lest the contagion
be greater than he?

How will the plague doctor
survive, surrounded by death?

NecropolisThe city of hollow stones … you've visualised it, far distant, as your night thoughts writhe toward those dreamscapes denied you by the stubborn absence of sleep. Pyramids, obelisks, hollow shrines, all tokens of divine possession. In this city, those who are not possessing have been possessed.

This valley of departed kings has long since succumbed to the sand blasting of desert storms, buried deeply now beneath an ocean of dunes. Still the lost city's blind gods watch over the emptied spaces jealously.

Here past and future
will never part company,
fused in stasis.

On The PodiumThe art of conductivity
as the maestro explained,
is that the man with the baton

serves as a lightning rod,
earthing intuitions from god.

Obscure

What aspirations
might be contained within
a lonely garret?

Imagine that greatness starves
for want of recognition.

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DovesAlone, just sorrow,
paired, see unalloyed joy.
Birds that bond for life.

Burnt Out1

The fire, stolen from
the gods, has cooled. The fierce heat
leaves only ashes.

2

Rust - smouldering fire,
inexorably eating
the metal away.

The Conception Of Love1
Too versatile, that little word "love": verb, gerund, abstract noun.

I love chocolate, I love sleeping late,

I love life, deity, country, mother, spouse, daughter, friend, companion
I love nature, I love solitude, I love the society of others who love me.

I love love!

Does the infant love? The infant desires, demands, depends. The infant discovers loss.
The infant is hungry. Its desires, its demands, are for nourishment, for gratification.

Its demands, its frustrations are focussed on the provider, the significant other.

2.
Is there any occasion for philosophical consideration here?

Can analysis prick the bubble of conflation

To B Or Not To BTo B Or Not To B

B movies infest my head,

A childhood disorder, woken,
the way that such things go,
from its long viral dormancy

Which way, which way did the good guys go?
the baddies have taken over, they're running the saloon

The sheriff's been written out of the script,
he never came in on his cues, the town drunk
has a contract now to record an album of blues.

Nobody remembers the way the West was won
or why the proof of manhood burst
from the barrel of a sharp shooter's gun.

Touch

Did her fingers dance
across the keys long ago?
Her child's perfect face

might now be shadowed. Does she
still coax sound from inert keys?

Wastes

Sands of time erase
the dint of too many feet.
wind ripples wipe clean.

Wanderers are still seduced
by the dream of direction.

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The Perspective Of Hokusai

by *AlecBell, Dec 20, 2011, 5:03:59 AM
Literature / Poetry / Spiritual / Haiku & Eastern

The great wave surges from the left. The image is frozen as the great tower of water crests. Slicing the mountainous sea, three fishing boats in motion from the right, are threatened with inundation when the wall of water must fall upon them as the wave breaks.

On the far horizon the snow-capped peak of Mont Fuji can be seen, tiny, against the momentary bulk of the wave. Yet and boats are necessarily transient. The foreground is full of the challenge of survival, a moment in the struggle that passes fast into oblivion. The mountain, that appears so small, is wrapped in its motionless tranquillity, its snow mantle dazzles the eye.

Close to, the great wave
obscures the world. Far away
the snow capped peak sleeps.

The Perspective Of Hokusaiby *AlecBell

Literature / Poetry / Spiritual / Haiku & Eastern

This is my entry to *ladyrapid's Perspective contest,

see her journal here [link]

The subject of the poem is The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, one of Hokusai's Thirty Six Views Of Mount Fuji.