The smell of cinders and apples
the smell of cinders and apples
midnight alphabet
seeking lost symbols and letters
yearning for your mouth
to satisfy each - our own mutual hunger
of an individual destination
you of the honeysuckle ascent
I of the dried plum descent
shackle the love - cage the lust - negate the romance
desire unbound - panic in the sky
our sanity rests far away in nests
among eggshells of broken tomorrows
but tonight - today - even tomorrow morning
I will celebrate every inch of you
as your white heat permeates the false light we live
the dark tropical heat between your thighs
matrix jazz in your hips
entwined so deep
where do I end? where do you begin?
the cosmic serpent feasting
on its own plumed celestial tail
there’s no maniacal amputee starship captain
trailing behind
us
let’s atomize into stardust
create the universe anew
unfold myth of our lost ages
Ouroboros -- salshep
The ouroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. Its oldest extant appearance was in the Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld, an ancient Egyptian funerary text in Tutankhamun's 14th-century BCE tomb: two serpents, holding their tails in their mouths, coil around the head, neck, and feet of an enormous god, possibly the unified Ra-Osiris; the serpents are manifestations of Mehen, the god who protects Ra in his underworld journey. In other Egyptian sources it represented the formless disorder that surrounds the orderly world and brings about its periodic renewal. From Egypt the symbol was picked up by the Greeks. In "Timaeus," Platon compared the self-sufficiency and perfection of the created cosmos to the ouroboros: "The living being had no need of eyes because there was nothing outside of him to be seen; nor of ears because there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed; nor would there have been any use of organs by the help of which he might receive his food or get rid of what he had already digested, since there was nothing which went from him or came into him: for there was nothing beside him. Of design he created thus; his own waste providing his own food, and all that he did or suffered taking place in and by himself. For the Creator conceived that a being which was self-sufficient would be far more excellent than one which lacked anything; and, as he had no need to take anything or defend himself against any one, the Creator did not think it necessary to bestow upon him hands: nor had he any need of feet, nor of the whole apparatus of walking; but the movement suited to his spherical form which was designed by him, being of all the seven that which is most appropriate to mind and intelligence; and he was made to move in the same manner and on the same spot, within his own limits revolving in a circle. All the other six motions were taken away from him, and he was made not to partake of their deviations. And as this circular movement required no feet, the universe was created without legs and without feet."
ReplyDeleteCleopatra the Alchemist, the 3rd-century Greco-Egyptian alchemist who invented the alembic (Greek "ambix, meaning "cup" or "beaker"), an alchemical still consisting of two vessels connected by a tube, used for distilling chemicals; in the "Chrysopoeia [gold-making] of Cleopatra," she depicted an ouroboros in an inscription in a double ring ("One is the Serpent which has its poison according to two compositions, and One is All and through it is All, and by it is All, and if you have not All, All is Nothing.") In the gnostic "Pistis Sophia," written perhaps a century later, the ouroboros is a 12-part dragon surrounding the world with his tail in his mouth, symbolizing eternity and the soul of the world. In the late 4th century, Maurus Servius Honoratus noted that the image of a snake biting its tail represents the cyclical nature of the year. In the 13th-century Eddur, Loki and the jötunn Angrboda ("the one who brings grief") had three children: Hel (whom Odin installed as the ruler of the underworld), Fenrir (a monstrous wolf who will kill Odin at the time of Ragnarök), and Jörmungandr (the Midgard Serpent which grew so large that it could encircle the world and grasp its tail in its teeth). The motif also spread to India; for example, according to the "Yoga-kundalini Upanishad," "The divine power, Kundalini, shines like the stem of a young lotus; like a snake, coiled round upon herself she holds her tail in her mouth and lies resting half asleep as the base of the body." In the 20th century Swiss psychologist Carl Jung saw the ouroboros as an archetype: "The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This 'feed-back' process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites."
ReplyDeleteThe "maniacal amputee starship captain" Mike refers to is Captain Ahab, the protogonist of Herman Melville's 1851 novel, "Moby-Dick; or, The Whale." In his acceptance speech for the 2016 Bobel Prize for Literature, Bob Dylan spoke about the novel at length: "The mysterious Captain Ahab – captain of a ship called the Pequod – an egomaniac with a peg leg pursuing his nemesis, the great white whale Moby Dick who took his leg. And he pursues him all the way from the Atlantic around the tip of Africa and into the Indian Ocean. He pursues the whale around both sides of the earth. It's an abstract goal, nothing concrete or definite. He calls Moby the emperor, sees him as the embodiment of evil.... A lot of Zodiac symbols, religious allegory, stereotypes. Ahab encounters other whaling vessels, presses the captains for details about Moby. Have they seen him? There's a crazy prophet, Gabriel, on one of the vessels, and he predicts Ahab's doom. Says Moby is the incarnate of a Shaker god, and that any dealings with him will lead to disaster. He says that to Captain Ahab. Another ship's captain – Captain Boomer – he lost an arm to Moby. But he tolerates that, and he's happy to have survived. He can't accept Ahab's lust for vengeance. This book tells how different men react in different ways to the same experience.... Everything is mixed in. All the myths: the Judeo Christian bible, Hindu myths, British legends, Saint George, Perseus, Hercules – they're all whalers. Greek mythology, the gory business of cutting up a whale. Lots of facts in this book, geographical knowledge, whale oil – good for coronation of royalty – noble families in the whaling industry. Whale oil is used to anoint the kings. History of the whale, phrenology, classical philosophy, pseudo-scientific theories, justification for discrimination – everything thrown in and none of it hardly rational. Highbrow, lowbrow, chasing illusion, chasing death, the great white whale, white as polar bear, white as a white man, the emperor, the nemesis, the embodiment of evil. The demented captain who actually lost his leg years ago trying to attack Moby with a knife. We see only the surface of things. We can interpret what lies below any way we see fit. Crewmen walk around on deck listening for mermaids, and sharks and vultures follow the ship. Reading skulls and faces like you read a book. Here's a face. I'll put it in front of you. Read it if you can.... When Starbuck tells Ahab that he should let bygones be bygones, the angry captain snaps back, 'Speak not to me of blasphemy, man, I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.' Ahab, too, is a poet of eloquence. He says, "The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run." Or these lines, "All visible objects are but pasteboard masks." Quotable poetic phrases that can't be beat."
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