The following are lines from a poem from Deissyio called The “Solar” System. They illustrate, through metaphors and symbolism, how the subjective and objective, mythical and real, and the spiritual and the natural can be blurred, and thus suggest a divinely inspired vision of Meaning and Reality (as we shape them in our image) more broadly:
“… the sun as the Light of the Good,
of fairy gods during the seasons
and mountains worship the Titanic elders
during the unfinished time sprawling on to eternity
the wind holds its Breath.
Did the sun do well enough on the scoreboard?”
Where is the genuine philosophical ambition in poetry-writing? Where is the pragmatic value of works of art that effect genuine change through sowing the seeds of individuation? Why have we all, almost collectively, heaved a sigh and given up defining for ourselves higher ideals like Freedom, Truth, Beauty, Meaning and Enlightenment in favour of socially reinforced patterns of conformity that leave our soul crying to be brought into focus? Since when did settling for mediocrity as opposed to prioritising the ideal of (moral and spiritual) Perfection become so very normalised? These realities need to be problematised if we are to advance as a species.
“Philosophical Poetry” that offers a coherent and novel sort of spiritual, metaphysical vision in terms of a fresh synthesis is in ways, an untapped area, despite the many successes of T. S. Eliot and Lucretius and other writing forces to push the envelope further in this direction, not to mention the metaphysical poets like John Donne who subtly infused elements of theology into their poetry.
EXCERPT FROM The Karmic Tides in “Deissyio”:
“Fires streaked with faces stoked on and on,
never Revelation as the oil stoking
Belief’s water, thus exchanged,
with the believer’s flowing Ichor, god’s blood, burning.
As the Believer’s Mind opens, so pearl-encrusted gates
of Heaven unlatch; as the knocker rams the sky
and cordons off the Lord, the upper
clouds meet the lower atmosphere.
The undercurrents and surface water pool
and flow to and fro’ down a gorge slit side to side.”
The project “Deissyio: Philosophical Poems & Prose” (85 page edition) has always been about ending the ‘Ancient quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry” via verse, and presenting a spiritual short story of Biblical proportions, in which I have my protagonist descend the “Bottomless Pit” of Philosophy to the diseased roots of a corrupt social order and find the deepest truth at the bottommost depth to cure society (Dantean in many ways!).
I also offer a spiritual & religious article and a short philosophical tract that ties it all together by advancing the philosophy of emotions “Romantic Platonism”.
The image below is a poem from Deissyio, and the poem in question explores the relationship between Identity and Being in terms of poetic language.
