Two accidental cosmogonies

original poetry & philosophical discussion
with reading

Click the links below to hear me read this poem:

► Listen on DSound

► Listen from source (IPFS)

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I.

Abreast of umbrella'd freefall,
I am a jellysail for clear tendrils
Keeping my descent buoyed through cotton.

Through tufts of sky, through a transparent planet,
Into the painless core, lava unburning I phase through.

This entire construct is the ghost of a feeling:
The wireframe of ambition, carapace'd idea
Shed liberally in spirit's impetus.

I extinguish myself avian
Through these plumed swaths.

II.

A
Silty
Microcosmos,
Exuberant halo
And planetary ring

Gnat swarm of luminescence
& kiss of geometrical death:
An ambitious architecture
And its demolition
By the mind.

This entire waveform
Is a photographic negative
Where the impossible is
Made real.

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Notes & discussion

What is a cosmogony? It is a theoretical model of the origins of the cosmos. It is also the branch of science concerned with the development of such models. Why apply this term to an abstract, and brief, poem? I find it quite humorous to perceive that, in the course of improvising poetical abstractions about life and existence, one is, casually, or "accidentally," establishing entire conceptual models regarding the origins of the universe.

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By the way, I commonly get comments such as "I do not understand this poem," "I find it difficult to understand," etc. It is my view that the purpose of poetry is not to be understood, but rather, felt. Of course, the faculties are related, because to feel something, one must comprehend something of the symbols used to portray the feelings. A while ago I began to upload more recordings of the poems being spoken, because in this way one can experience a closer transmission of the poem's inner vibration without requiring the intellectual comprehension of its construction.

Also in my view, when you ask the poet the meaning of the poem, you are asking the wrong person! You ought to be asking the poem. For poetry is a living art, and the poem comes to teach something to the poet. So when you ask the poet for explanations you are asking the student to instruct the class!

One could also make a case that art has no meaning, other than what it already is. That is, no external, objective explanations will be able touch the art's inner essence. They flit about: dance upon the surface only. Even the most lofty and refined analysis of art is utterly shallow in comparison to the thing itself.

Let us also recall the zen tradition of purposeful paradox, wherein angular materials are given as fodder for meditation in order that the mind will be stunned into silence. At the end of the day, we look for the beginning. And where the conclusion ought to be, we find the inauguration of one million more expansive queries, feelings, and ideas.