Saturday Pomes & Words, 01/03/2025 - Kundalini Thirteen to Fifteen
Something darker this way winds
I think I can spare you the intro this time and just let them speak for themselves. Although this is where the collection gets a little darker. Mind you the whole thing is a bit dark, come to think of it. But certainly in these ones some of the imagery is deliberately darkly provocative. So do bear in mind that it’s deliberate.
Anyway, for the previous Kundalini Eleven & Twelve, click there. If you want to read the collection from the beginning, then Kundalini One to Three is there, and you can simply follow the links to each next one.
The previous Pomes & Words, by the way, just happens to be Seven to Ten from the collection, for which, click ye there.
After these three, by the way, there’s Sixteen & Seventeen, then Eighteen & Nineteen you already have. There’ll be two more after that, which will be Twenty to Twenty-Three, and then the final two, Twenty-Four & Twenty-Five, to complete it.
There are some extras, but we’ll see about that when the time comes.
I hope you like these ones, even if they are a bit dark. But I do think poetry should be unrestrained. It should be challenging, and it should be deep. And if that means dark, so be it. You don’t write good poetry, after all, without having stared into an abyss or two, and having that abyss staring back at you - then, maybe, dictating some poetry to you whilst you stare there in a trance. Kind of like a trip into the Underworld.
Oh dear - I’m really no good at short intros, am I?
Fortunately, I am saved by the Great Image Generator, who has excelled itself this time.
[Wickedness]
Wickedness in the Modern World
I neglect too much of me, 1 Waste my waking hours on dreams of sleep, 2 I am a demon 3 Descending Into darker days, 5 Deep they wept and sleep these depths of me, Repressed and trying, tired And the old ways suddenly seem again 8 Engraved, stars end. Only to rise again, Seep in mind. As this sacred sun steers across bluer skies 13 I leave me behind.
[Kundalini]
Kundalini
You are a snake, my love 1 The path you take is fraught 2 The way 3 I would want to play All night this way 5 On and on Something as if nothing ever ends. And not this way. 8 I wish you and you wish me I know you do Accelerated yeah Kabbalah 13 Particles in a gorgeous storm And all I know it’s fraught For you were waiting for again. You were waiting, I know Around and now A tree of life 21 And last night Naked and bright and gorgeous In my charms and in my life I loved you as If just for a while. In the dust I see you Ruby and a different to All the rest all the bodies A chariot in a different lifetime Moving in a different train The way I like you rattling Rattling in that cage and waiting, 34 Waiting for a future day When I, too, may… Freight you are a snake, my love, a snake. With a future fraught with mine. And I am a German panther and It’s nineteen thirty nine…
[Charon]
Cloak and Bone
Have I a heaven? 1 I opened a thread when I caught you 2 In bed for the first lifetime, 3 Insert your hellish name in the blank spaces When I look for you in Troy. 5 I have never been, I was bred for better beings, 8 A sociopathic star, unseen Father When I have these binary flings And pass the time in Thebes. 13 Have I blacked out your souls? War is raging, still, and I am a blackened storm Crashing against your fragile panes, Time is made of glass and I Am a lying relic in the sand Here in Stalingrad, I am the noise You make when you love my German power, 21 I am the sane river that straddles your cities And strangles the pangs of birth, Placenta to the plane of spirit. I watch you so from the west bank, See you slaughter in fear from a distance, Wish I was a plague in Paris, with dignity And you, resistance girl with childlike passion In the century in my pregnant memory I found you in the rubble of my heart, Rebel girl, you strewn and blown into bitter fragments, Spiders threading through your buildings, corners, 34 Alleyways and subway sewers, war is overrated, Streets and stars spreading through open roofs, Skeletal frames, charred and blackened and praying for better ways Because you hate but they will never come because you hate Every one of you every day I am yours You made me I am your shot in the dark Your poisonous precious saturnine fate. I am your dark days. These ways are gone now but I am not dead, My haunting Parisian music has me tailed, Stranded in time. And I am gone now But I am not dead, no, not even death. Just home.
Told you they were dark!
Sixteen & Seventeen coming soon… Well, they’re there now.
Of these, Cloak and Bone is my favourite. Less abstract, more personal, and more recognition, as the SOE trained the bravest of women not so far from my home.
I have read all three of these numerous times. Wickedness does not bless me with any understanding, other than feelings of regret and resignation, but I am not sure what for or to. The last stanza re the panther and the reference to the start of WW2 or perhaps the pre war stage, just before the blitzkreig begins - I don't really know what this alludes to given what comes before it, although it does seem to segue to the Charon piece which is much more evidently war like with the focus on conflict zones.
These three are all deeply personal aren't they - coming from places of turmoil, conflict, disappointment; confusion, power plays and struggles.
It is really hard to see a clear meaning to these - it is mostly feelings of emotions that come out - I suppose in that sense - unless I am hopelessly wrong about these manifesting your feelings as the writer of the words - the poetry is very effective at what it has done.
I do find it intriguing the difference between your poetry and your fiction - you write great stories, with great narrative scale and dialogue and intense technical detail and exposition, and then at the same time (or maybe at a different time.....) your poetry is as obscure and even, secret? encrypted? Well, certainly mysterious as such a thing can possibly be.