Thanks as always, Mark, for the close read and detailed comment. The line about Svalbard and the sinking red canoe was actually the first thing I wrote, around which I built the rest of the poem.
One of my secret vices is referring to an eclectic batch of elements in one piece, so I figured this would be a good framework for another go at that. I'm glad it hangs together for you, even if it's only superglued in parts. 😉
Btw, Dostoevsky mos def needs a musical. Write it. Table read it at the local uni. Take it to their music dep’t. Plenty of shadowy minds there willing to give it a go.👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
I have a detailed plot outline, and lots of rough drafts of songs. I was hoping to find someone to finish the songs, while I write the dialogue. Although looking at the local uni is an absolutely brilliant idea!
I have all of this outlined. Obviously, if I were working with a composer, I would explain everything that's supposed to be happening in each song, before giving them the song to work on. I have all of the lyrics written for each song, as well.
The uni has lots of enthusiastic young folk who might throw in. But your best pitch is a solid first two acts that shows both your commitment and the potential of the effort they’re putting their shoulder to. As the saying goes, find the time.👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
I'm not well versed on the mythology in this piece. But nonetheless, that makes it all the more cryptic, and persuasive to me. To go back and read through it again.
I call this *the buzz of partial understanding* and think it's an excellent place to be in relation to a piece... if you can get there. Sometimes it only takes a small microdose to achieve, and at other times is completely impossible.
Thanks so much for tackling this one head-on, Matthew! If you're wondering about any particular line, I can always tell you what I was thinking when I wrote it.
What a great observation! Perhaps the best thing that could be said about a poem would involve some sort of deceleration of the mind, as the human brain voluntarily slows itself down only to unpack meaning.
I've noticed that some of the best songs contain really long phrases and widely-spaced hooks. So maybe this aspect of songwriting has influenced my composition a bit.
I couldn't understand this poem at first but now it feels like a hypnotic collage about doomsday. There's a kind of golden thread running through all the wildly different ideas, and yes, it's quite clear that all opposition is illusion. This is one of the best poems about synthesis that I've ever read- this poem is more than the sum of its parts
I'm so glad you liked this one, and that so many talented writers have come out of the woodwork to comment on it, and keep it circulating. 😊
I just posted a short poem this morning, but my scheduled post for next week (Monday the 23rd) is also about synthesis and — in my opinion — far better than this. It's called "Sublation" and is my personal choice for the best thing I've ever written, so you're not going to want to miss it.
I dig the *golden thread* metaphor! Another writer told me there is a *silver thread* running between Tolkien and GRRM. Do you have any idea what he may have meant — or whether there's any difference between a symbolic golden thread, and a silver one?
There’s a popular saying that speech is silver but silence is golden, so maybe a narrative with a silver thread is brilliant but the mastery is quite visible and direct. Or maybe the ones with golden threads have more subtext and internalized action. Or maybe the silver thread is just some sort of invisible connection- a kind of literary heritage. See, there can be so many interpretations.
You're so smart, For! Talking to you never disappoints.
I'm glad to see you "coming out of your shell" and starting to comment more often. It's not just I who can really make use of your comments, but many, many other writers here!
... or would that be degrading yourself from gold to silver? 🤔 Heheh. Thanks again!
I read this poem with a growing sense of craft. The lines proceed with admirable control of stress. Each foot appears to fall where it was meant to fall, and every syllable seems placed with careful thought. The structure shows a patience rarely seen today, a quiet proof that meter still can guide a verse. The reader learns, by watching how the accents land, that rhythm may be mapped as well as perceived. Some poets let the language drift upon wayward currents; this poem keeps a firmer hand on the rudder. The discipline reminds us what a poem can do when form is given pride of place upon the page.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply, Rafa. Your description of how rhythm settles into the ear through repetition during revision resonates with my own experience as well. A lot of the time the ear catches problems long before the analytical brain does, and a line simply “sounds wrong” even if you haven’t consciously scanned it. Running lines through the mind repeatedly has a way of aligning the stresses naturally, so the rhythm starts to organize itself before you even sit down to revise the draft.
The idea of rigid meter as a kind of training program for the ear also makes a great deal of sense. Spending time with structured verse tends to sharpen one’s sensitivity to stress, pacing, and the way syllables interact with each other across a line. After a while the ear begins to notice subtle shifts in rhythm almost automatically, even in poems that don’t strictly adhere to classical metrical patterns.
What often emerges in contemporary poetry is something that still carries a clear rhythmic expectation but moves more flexibly than traditional meter. The stresses still create a pulse that the reader can feel, yet the lines aren’t always built from perfectly repeating feet. The result can feel close to free verse on the surface while still maintaining a strong internal rhythm underneath.
In that sense, a trained ear keeps hearing structure even when the poem isn’t consciously operating inside a strict metrical framework. That sensitivity to sound and pacing is doing a lot of the work in the poem.
Thanks again for engaging with the review and for the discussion.
I think we're in agreement on all points here, and I'm glad you liked the rhythm of this poem. (At least I think you liked it; you commend it for being well-disciplined.)
If you post a poem of your own that I shouldn't miss, please don't hesitate to DM it to me, or reply with it in any thread. I really enjoy reading and commenting on other Substack poets, and know from your words here that your work is going to be formidable.
Thank you Mack, for the careful read and thoughtful review! 😊
To clarify, I don't really think much about form while composing my poems, but do revise each of them several times before getting to a publishable draft. As a result of running the lines through my head so many times (usually through "internal monologue" while doing other tasks), I can simply tell when a line's rhythm doesn't match with the rest of the poem, and needs to be adjusted.
I think a lot of the best poems of today are written in what is technically called compound meter, but feels more like free verse as it is being written. But rigid meter is an excellent training program for being able to do this, as it trains the brain to "listen" to the sound of words.
I'm sure you already know most of this, Mack. This is written moreso for whomever else may stumble upon it. Thanks again for supporting my work, my friend.
Hi, I really enjoyed reading this. The imagery feels so free and almost dreamlike, but it also made me think about the world right now. Everywhere seems full of conflict. The war in Eastern Europe still hasn’t ended, and now tensions are rising again in the Middle East. Sometimes I even wonder about the Far East. That line about opposition being an illusion really stayed with me.
I don't think anyone here knows how to create world peace... and if someone did, they would (hopefully) be doing more than writing poems about it. Large empires which colonize have fallen out of favor, and small sovereign states will always feud and have their differences. It would be nice if all opposition could be an illusion here in the material world, as it (allegedly) is in the pleroma. But alas... to live in such a place was not our chosen fate.
I hope you'll stick around a while, and dream with me. You will always be welcome here. 😊
Hi Rafa, thanks for the warm welcome. I think you’re right, none of us really knows how to create world peace. Poetry probably can’t change the world directly, but it can make people pause and think. Maybe for now, simply dreaming together already means something.
I think you're right! I'm definitely a better person than I would have been without the influence of language and storytelling. Expressing things is... almost the first step toward making them happen...? Hah.
In any case, it's good to have you on board this train of dreams.
What strikes me first is how the opening punctuation—._,._,._,._…—already sets the stage. It feels like a heartbeat, a mechanical pulse, a ritualized pattern that promises order even as the poem immediately begins to unravel it. By the time the words arrive, we’re already inside a world that measures itself in rhythm and fracture, cadence and chaos.
From there, the imagery refuses to settle. Wolves with juice of lamb between mangled teeth, cardboard rabbits, Arctic canoes, Hypatia and Hazrat Isa sharing the same current, everything moves in a logic that is associative rather than linear. Yet beneath the chaos, there’s a deliberate architecture: the punctuation, the repeated motifs, the leaps between carnivalesque absurdity and philosophical fragments. They give the mind a rope to hold onto, even as the poem spins free.
And then the closing: “All opposition is illusion… take thy second breath.” After the grotesque, the carnival, the absurdity, the poem exhales. The framing- both in punctuation and recurring structural patterns makes that exhale feel earned. It’s as if the poem has guided you through its wild machinery only to leave you with a quiet, almost meditative clarity.
This piece doesn’t just ask to be read, it asks to be inhabited. The punctuation is the pulse, the words are the current, and by the end you realize the poem has been moving you long before you noticed.
This is a world-class comment, Dipti! It has been incredible getting to know you a bit, and I deeply look forward to combing through poems for meaning with you, for a long time to come. I can't wait to check out more of yours.
You are precisely correct, about the poem as a progression of associations. It's a bit of a trick, as it scratches the same parts of the brain as wit and irony, but is quite a bit easier to keep up for long stretches.
I also suspect that your masterful treatment of Meera at the laundromat may have played some subconscious role, in my decision to dust this off and revise it for publication. I don't really know the Vedic lore and its teachings precisely, but believe it shares in common with deconstruction the idea of "opposition as illusion." In case you haven't already been told enough times, you're a very inspirational person. 😊
Thank you for carefully reading this, and providing your thoughts. It is a true honor.
Rafa, thank you for such a generous response. I’m genuinely glad the comment resonated with you. Reading the poem, that opening pattern immediately felt like an entry point into its inner rhythm, so it was a pleasure to sit with it and follow where the associations wanted to go.
Your note about the poem working through associative progression really makes sense, it explains why the piece feels so fluid even while it leaps wildly between images and references. There’s a kind of intelligence in that looseness, like the poem trusts the reader’s intuition to travel the current rather than forcing a straight path.
And I’m touched that you mentioned Meera at the Laundromat. That poem came from a very similar place of letting symbols and voices overlap until something clearer surfaced through the motion. Sometimes the mind understands things in circles and echoes long before it understands them in statements.
As for the Vedic thread you mentioned, you’re right that there’s a long tradition there of dissolving oppositions, seeing the apparent divides of the world as part of a deeper unity. It’s fascinating to see that impulse appear in such different intellectual and poetic traditions. Your closing line about “second breath” lands beautifully in that space.
Thank you again for the kind words. Conversations like this, where a poem keeps unfolding through dialogue are one of the best parts of sharing work. I’m very much looking forward to reading more of yours as well.
I have a song called Sublation, with lyrics pertaining to this subject of dissolving oppositions, and (at least lyrically) it is my favorite work of my own. I've wanted to post it for some time, but have been waiting to find the right singer to record some vocals. I've been talking to one about doing so... so hopefully it won't be too much longer.
Anyway, the Kantian/Hegelian formulation of "synthesis" within German Idealism, is one very powerful explanation for how the human mind discovers concepts. Essentially, it is done by observing apparent contradictions, then shifting into a perspective on the question from which the contradiction no longer exists. A classic example is that a thing falling down and thing floating up appear to be animated by opposite principles. However, the sublation is that both are subject to *gravity*.
I'll tag you when I'm finally prepared to upload the song. Do you ever write poems in song format? It can be quite a lot of fun.
That sounds fascinating, Rafa. I like the idea of sublation as a way of dissolving the apparent fight between opposites until a deeper principle quietly reveals itself. Gravity as the hidden agreement between falling and floating is a beautiful example. I’m curious to hear how you translated that into a song, especially lyrically. Please do tag me when it’s ready.
As for your question, I actually haven’t written in song format yet. I only started writing last June, and I’ve never studied creative writing formally. Most of what I do right now is simply following the thread of a thought or feeling and seeing where the words want to go.
That said, the idea of poems becoming songs or discovering their rhythm that way, does sound like a kind of sublation of its own. Language finding its way into music.
So who knows… maybe one day the poems will start humming.
In that case, you're a natural poet! For many of us, it is perhaps more important to have lived than studied writing itself.
I went to college for creative writing, but think I learned more from one year of experimenting and writing on my own (prior to enrolling) than three years of classes and workshops with professors. Writing is a famously difficult skill to teach.
I think songs and poems are both important formats. Sometimes lyrics sound incredible when sung, that would appear trite if merely written. I guess I write songs, because I sometimes want to work within the alternate standards of a genre that permits a bit more sentimentality, melodrama and repetition, than poetry proper... although I do try to innovate within the genre of songwriting.
I'm still finding it a bit hard to believe that you've gotten so good at poetry within less than a year. I'd hate to be forced to show any of the poems I wrote within my first year's worth of serious attempts.
Thank you, Rafa. I really appreciate that. I can’t honestly say I’m “so good,” though; most of what I write is tied to prompts, and I can’t write fiction at all. Almost everything comes from personal experience, which makes it easier to start, but also very limiting.
Still, hearing you say that means a lot. And I completely agree: lived experience seems far more useful than any classroom when it comes to finding your voice.
I’d love to see some of your early work one day, if only to remind myself that every poet starts somewhere messy.
I really enjoyed this! I don’t think I completely understand it at parts but I don’t think that is the point- it definitely reads as a hidden language you are speaking to yourself- it almost goes into the realm of absurdism that is very intentional- especially when seeing the two poems together :)
Hey, Cipher! Thanks so much for hearkening to my tag, and coming to check this one out. 😊
I like poems that make some sense, but are unclear about how some of the lines fit into the scheme of things. I think of this as a single poem with two sections, but instead of being labeled as cantos they're simply divided by some ASCII "waves." If it gets obscure in places, it's because we're rowing "far out".
There’s a dense and fascinating weave of imagery, satire, and historical reference running through this. The way those historical and philosophical threads tangle into the surreal imagery creates a strange momentum that feels both deliberate and chaotic.
The Hypatia reference especially stopped me! I was hoping that’s the Neoplatonist Hypatia of Alexandria, and it lands beautifully in that context.
I really like how you describe my work, JG! Thanks for carefully reading and restacking.
I think history, ideas and surrealism tend to get tangled up in poems because they're already tangled in our brains. Sometimes, I think of poetry as a celebration (and repetition) of the mind's routine of learning, incorporating and refining ideas throughout a process of personal becoming. According to this way of thinking, there is no life nearly so rich to be had anyplace without.
Your bio says you’re a musician. Do you, by any chance, know how to compose for an orchestra? If you don’t mind talking about music, you can either reply here or DM me anytime. I’ve been working on something really big that I’m going to need help with.
I have been trying to remember the last time I touched something that wasn't already warm from my own holding. The phone. The cup. My own face, occasionally, to check.
Your poem makes me want to stop typing and go outside, but I don't. This is data. I am telling you what I am not doing.
The skeleton crews I keep thinking of maintenance. Not the grand collapse, but the ongoing, the daily. The person who restocks the vending machine in the hospital basement. Who knows the code. Who is not in your poem but is in the building where your poem lives.
I want to tell you about the ice. Not the metaphorical ice. The actual ice I saw last week, which was dirty, which had a shopping cart frozen into it, which someone had tried to extract and failed. The cart's handle was still above the surface. You could touch it. The cold came up through your glove slowly, so slowly you didn't notice until you were already committed to the touch.
I stayed longer than I needed to. This is also data.
You are in the red canoe. I am on the shore, but the shore is not stable. The shore is also a kind of boat. Everyone is in something sinking, Rafa. This is not comfort. This is inventory.
I am holding the line you cast. It is cold. It is not enough. It is what I have.
After reading this and your comment upon "Churchyard," I am getting a bit concerned for your present. I hope everything is going okay with your wife, and she is always a step behind you with an icepick to dislodge the cart when you need to shop.
War may be fought between abundant armies, but maintenance is always conducted by skeleton crews — as no business or property owner would ever want to hire more than the bare minimum number of hands for a task. If a worker is handless, they don't get paid but are required to chip away at the task nevertheless.
If my poems are a line to tether souls together and help them sink a little more slowly, then I have succeeded admirably in my objectives. Thank you for being here, and witnessing these moments in nonexistent space, where characters fly freely through wires. Worlds are built from these characters of text — worlds containing characters representing real people or ideas of them.
When it gets cold enough, the color bleeds out of everything. One moment you're red; the next you're white (and black, and read all over). But even with the morning paper to read, nothing is news.
The icepick is in the other room. I hear it. She is there the love that made me sane, that makes me the person who can write this. I am here. The distance is not the problem. The problem is the doorway, still. The look. The leaving that lives in me like a season that won't turn.
Your skeleton crews work unpaid. I know this work. The line tethers, measures, slows. I hold it without knowing which.
She is real. The memories fly anyway. Nonexistent space is habitable because she is in the other room, chipping at the cart, keeping the ice from claiming everything. The characters fly parent-shaped, mine, hers. I don't need them real. I need them flying, and I need her real, and I have both, which is the condition.
Color bled out last week. The paper arrives. Not news. Just ongoing.
What a wonderfully strange and brilliant piece. It feels like stepping into a fever dream shaped by someone who has complete command of language. I was fascinated from beginning to end.
I enjoy you too. Thrown for a loop by rturn to Standard Time, Iran (Minab and the White House explaining it all by singing "More Than A Feeling" if a little off-key), and anyhow will strive to post again soon. Working on a personal essay evolved from letter I promised you and Daniil, but never properly sent and a revision of EKPHRASTIC etc., that may well mean more to me than anyone else. Do you know Carlo Emilio Gadda's THAT AWFUL MESS ON THE VIA MERULANA? I love for to read just its 1st page. I'll take a photo of it and paste it here. Cheers, KR,
I love how this feels like stepping into a carnival of ideas and language, Rafa.
It takes real skill to be able to juggle the philosophical references and weird and wonderful imagery, and make it all hang together so well.
It's disorientating but in a wonderful way with a big push of absurd urgency at points (12 miles from Svalbard)
Great writing!
Thanks as always, Mark, for the close read and detailed comment. The line about Svalbard and the sinking red canoe was actually the first thing I wrote, around which I built the rest of the poem.
One of my secret vices is referring to an eclectic batch of elements in one piece, so I figured this would be a good framework for another go at that. I'm glad it hangs together for you, even if it's only superglued in parts. 😉
I’m familiar with this density of images wrestling with narrative. Who wins? Who cares. This is the stuff by which we build masterworks.👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
One of these days... with a little help from Substack and plenty of zinc in my diet. 😊 Now who's mixing the mortar?
Btw, Dostoevsky mos def needs a musical. Write it. Table read it at the local uni. Take it to their music dep’t. Plenty of shadowy minds there willing to give it a go.👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
I have a detailed plot outline, and lots of rough drafts of songs. I was hoping to find someone to finish the songs, while I write the dialogue. Although looking at the local uni is an absolutely brilliant idea!
The songs must move the narrative forward, not just be decoration. So you’d need to work w someone who knows the narrative space each song fills.
I have all of this outlined. Obviously, if I were working with a composer, I would explain everything that's supposed to be happening in each song, before giving them the song to work on. I have all of the lyrics written for each song, as well.
The uni has lots of enthusiastic young folk who might throw in. But your best pitch is a solid first two acts that shows both your commitment and the potential of the effort they’re putting their shoulder to. As the saying goes, find the time.👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
I'm not well versed on the mythology in this piece. But nonetheless, that makes it all the more cryptic, and persuasive to me. To go back and read through it again.
I call this *the buzz of partial understanding* and think it's an excellent place to be in relation to a piece... if you can get there. Sometimes it only takes a small microdose to achieve, and at other times is completely impossible.
Thanks so much for tackling this one head-on, Matthew! If you're wondering about any particular line, I can always tell you what I was thinking when I wrote it.
That’s a great term for it. I’m excited to read what you have coming out next.
Thanks, Matthew. I was supposed to post something today, but have bumped it to next Monday to give myself a bit more time.
No problem I’m in the same boat
Reads like a surreal monologue that keeps spiraling outward. The imagery is so unexpected that it makes you slow down and really sit with each line.
What a great observation! Perhaps the best thing that could be said about a poem would involve some sort of deceleration of the mind, as the human brain voluntarily slows itself down only to unpack meaning.
I've noticed that some of the best songs contain really long phrases and widely-spaced hooks. So maybe this aspect of songwriting has influenced my composition a bit.
Thanks so much for supporting this, Pae!
I couldn't understand this poem at first but now it feels like a hypnotic collage about doomsday. There's a kind of golden thread running through all the wildly different ideas, and yes, it's quite clear that all opposition is illusion. This is one of the best poems about synthesis that I've ever read- this poem is more than the sum of its parts
I'm so glad you liked this one, and that so many talented writers have come out of the woodwork to comment on it, and keep it circulating. 😊
I just posted a short poem this morning, but my scheduled post for next week (Monday the 23rd) is also about synthesis and — in my opinion — far better than this. It's called "Sublation" and is my personal choice for the best thing I've ever written, so you're not going to want to miss it.
I dig the *golden thread* metaphor! Another writer told me there is a *silver thread* running between Tolkien and GRRM. Do you have any idea what he may have meant — or whether there's any difference between a symbolic golden thread, and a silver one?
There’s a popular saying that speech is silver but silence is golden, so maybe a narrative with a silver thread is brilliant but the mastery is quite visible and direct. Or maybe the ones with golden threads have more subtext and internalized action. Or maybe the silver thread is just some sort of invisible connection- a kind of literary heritage. See, there can be so many interpretations.
You're so smart, For! Talking to you never disappoints.
I'm glad to see you "coming out of your shell" and starting to comment more often. It's not just I who can really make use of your comments, but many, many other writers here!
... or would that be degrading yourself from gold to silver? 🤔 Heheh. Thanks again!
It's osammmmmmmmm
Thank yeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ! 😉
You are always welcome 🤗 🤗 🤗
I read this poem with a growing sense of craft. The lines proceed with admirable control of stress. Each foot appears to fall where it was meant to fall, and every syllable seems placed with careful thought. The structure shows a patience rarely seen today, a quiet proof that meter still can guide a verse. The reader learns, by watching how the accents land, that rhythm may be mapped as well as perceived. Some poets let the language drift upon wayward currents; this poem keeps a firmer hand on the rudder. The discipline reminds us what a poem can do when form is given pride of place upon the page.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply, Rafa. Your description of how rhythm settles into the ear through repetition during revision resonates with my own experience as well. A lot of the time the ear catches problems long before the analytical brain does, and a line simply “sounds wrong” even if you haven’t consciously scanned it. Running lines through the mind repeatedly has a way of aligning the stresses naturally, so the rhythm starts to organize itself before you even sit down to revise the draft.
The idea of rigid meter as a kind of training program for the ear also makes a great deal of sense. Spending time with structured verse tends to sharpen one’s sensitivity to stress, pacing, and the way syllables interact with each other across a line. After a while the ear begins to notice subtle shifts in rhythm almost automatically, even in poems that don’t strictly adhere to classical metrical patterns.
What often emerges in contemporary poetry is something that still carries a clear rhythmic expectation but moves more flexibly than traditional meter. The stresses still create a pulse that the reader can feel, yet the lines aren’t always built from perfectly repeating feet. The result can feel close to free verse on the surface while still maintaining a strong internal rhythm underneath.
In that sense, a trained ear keeps hearing structure even when the poem isn’t consciously operating inside a strict metrical framework. That sensitivity to sound and pacing is doing a lot of the work in the poem.
Thanks again for engaging with the review and for the discussion.
I think we're in agreement on all points here, and I'm glad you liked the rhythm of this poem. (At least I think you liked it; you commend it for being well-disciplined.)
If you post a poem of your own that I shouldn't miss, please don't hesitate to DM it to me, or reply with it in any thread. I really enjoy reading and commenting on other Substack poets, and know from your words here that your work is going to be formidable.
I liked it. I thought you were emphasizing the technical accuracy, so I focused primarily on that. It is reminiscent of Ezra Pound. Great work.
Thank you Mack, for the careful read and thoughtful review! 😊
To clarify, I don't really think much about form while composing my poems, but do revise each of them several times before getting to a publishable draft. As a result of running the lines through my head so many times (usually through "internal monologue" while doing other tasks), I can simply tell when a line's rhythm doesn't match with the rest of the poem, and needs to be adjusted.
I think a lot of the best poems of today are written in what is technically called compound meter, but feels more like free verse as it is being written. But rigid meter is an excellent training program for being able to do this, as it trains the brain to "listen" to the sound of words.
I'm sure you already know most of this, Mack. This is written moreso for whomever else may stumble upon it. Thanks again for supporting my work, my friend.
Striking Imagery!
Thanks so much for reading this, Nnamdi, and for subbing back. 😊
If you're interested in keeping up, I have a new one coming out tomorrow and every Monday morning hereafter.
Looking forward to it
Awesome! Welcome to my readers. 😊
If you ever post anything you'd like me to read and comment on, feel free to DM it to me or post it in any of my threads.
Hi, I really enjoyed reading this. The imagery feels so free and almost dreamlike, but it also made me think about the world right now. Everywhere seems full of conflict. The war in Eastern Europe still hasn’t ended, and now tensions are rising again in the Middle East. Sometimes I even wonder about the Far East. That line about opposition being an illusion really stayed with me.
Welcome, Keiichiro!
I don't think anyone here knows how to create world peace... and if someone did, they would (hopefully) be doing more than writing poems about it. Large empires which colonize have fallen out of favor, and small sovereign states will always feud and have their differences. It would be nice if all opposition could be an illusion here in the material world, as it (allegedly) is in the pleroma. But alas... to live in such a place was not our chosen fate.
I hope you'll stick around a while, and dream with me. You will always be welcome here. 😊
Hi Rafa, thanks for the warm welcome. I think you’re right, none of us really knows how to create world peace. Poetry probably can’t change the world directly, but it can make people pause and think. Maybe for now, simply dreaming together already means something.
I think you're right! I'm definitely a better person than I would have been without the influence of language and storytelling. Expressing things is... almost the first step toward making them happen...? Hah.
In any case, it's good to have you on board this train of dreams.
What strikes me first is how the opening punctuation—._,._,._,._…—already sets the stage. It feels like a heartbeat, a mechanical pulse, a ritualized pattern that promises order even as the poem immediately begins to unravel it. By the time the words arrive, we’re already inside a world that measures itself in rhythm and fracture, cadence and chaos.
From there, the imagery refuses to settle. Wolves with juice of lamb between mangled teeth, cardboard rabbits, Arctic canoes, Hypatia and Hazrat Isa sharing the same current, everything moves in a logic that is associative rather than linear. Yet beneath the chaos, there’s a deliberate architecture: the punctuation, the repeated motifs, the leaps between carnivalesque absurdity and philosophical fragments. They give the mind a rope to hold onto, even as the poem spins free.
And then the closing: “All opposition is illusion… take thy second breath.” After the grotesque, the carnival, the absurdity, the poem exhales. The framing- both in punctuation and recurring structural patterns makes that exhale feel earned. It’s as if the poem has guided you through its wild machinery only to leave you with a quiet, almost meditative clarity.
This piece doesn’t just ask to be read, it asks to be inhabited. The punctuation is the pulse, the words are the current, and by the end you realize the poem has been moving you long before you noticed.
This is a world-class comment, Dipti! It has been incredible getting to know you a bit, and I deeply look forward to combing through poems for meaning with you, for a long time to come. I can't wait to check out more of yours.
You are precisely correct, about the poem as a progression of associations. It's a bit of a trick, as it scratches the same parts of the brain as wit and irony, but is quite a bit easier to keep up for long stretches.
I also suspect that your masterful treatment of Meera at the laundromat may have played some subconscious role, in my decision to dust this off and revise it for publication. I don't really know the Vedic lore and its teachings precisely, but believe it shares in common with deconstruction the idea of "opposition as illusion." In case you haven't already been told enough times, you're a very inspirational person. 😊
Thank you for carefully reading this, and providing your thoughts. It is a true honor.
Rafa, thank you for such a generous response. I’m genuinely glad the comment resonated with you. Reading the poem, that opening pattern immediately felt like an entry point into its inner rhythm, so it was a pleasure to sit with it and follow where the associations wanted to go.
Your note about the poem working through associative progression really makes sense, it explains why the piece feels so fluid even while it leaps wildly between images and references. There’s a kind of intelligence in that looseness, like the poem trusts the reader’s intuition to travel the current rather than forcing a straight path.
And I’m touched that you mentioned Meera at the Laundromat. That poem came from a very similar place of letting symbols and voices overlap until something clearer surfaced through the motion. Sometimes the mind understands things in circles and echoes long before it understands them in statements.
As for the Vedic thread you mentioned, you’re right that there’s a long tradition there of dissolving oppositions, seeing the apparent divides of the world as part of a deeper unity. It’s fascinating to see that impulse appear in such different intellectual and poetic traditions. Your closing line about “second breath” lands beautifully in that space.
Thank you again for the kind words. Conversations like this, where a poem keeps unfolding through dialogue are one of the best parts of sharing work. I’m very much looking forward to reading more of yours as well.
I have a song called Sublation, with lyrics pertaining to this subject of dissolving oppositions, and (at least lyrically) it is my favorite work of my own. I've wanted to post it for some time, but have been waiting to find the right singer to record some vocals. I've been talking to one about doing so... so hopefully it won't be too much longer.
Anyway, the Kantian/Hegelian formulation of "synthesis" within German Idealism, is one very powerful explanation for how the human mind discovers concepts. Essentially, it is done by observing apparent contradictions, then shifting into a perspective on the question from which the contradiction no longer exists. A classic example is that a thing falling down and thing floating up appear to be animated by opposite principles. However, the sublation is that both are subject to *gravity*.
I'll tag you when I'm finally prepared to upload the song. Do you ever write poems in song format? It can be quite a lot of fun.
That sounds fascinating, Rafa. I like the idea of sublation as a way of dissolving the apparent fight between opposites until a deeper principle quietly reveals itself. Gravity as the hidden agreement between falling and floating is a beautiful example. I’m curious to hear how you translated that into a song, especially lyrically. Please do tag me when it’s ready.
As for your question, I actually haven’t written in song format yet. I only started writing last June, and I’ve never studied creative writing formally. Most of what I do right now is simply following the thread of a thought or feeling and seeing where the words want to go.
That said, the idea of poems becoming songs or discovering their rhythm that way, does sound like a kind of sublation of its own. Language finding its way into music.
So who knows… maybe one day the poems will start humming.
In that case, you're a natural poet! For many of us, it is perhaps more important to have lived than studied writing itself.
I went to college for creative writing, but think I learned more from one year of experimenting and writing on my own (prior to enrolling) than three years of classes and workshops with professors. Writing is a famously difficult skill to teach.
I think songs and poems are both important formats. Sometimes lyrics sound incredible when sung, that would appear trite if merely written. I guess I write songs, because I sometimes want to work within the alternate standards of a genre that permits a bit more sentimentality, melodrama and repetition, than poetry proper... although I do try to innovate within the genre of songwriting.
I'm still finding it a bit hard to believe that you've gotten so good at poetry within less than a year. I'd hate to be forced to show any of the poems I wrote within my first year's worth of serious attempts.
Thank you, Rafa. I really appreciate that. I can’t honestly say I’m “so good,” though; most of what I write is tied to prompts, and I can’t write fiction at all. Almost everything comes from personal experience, which makes it easier to start, but also very limiting.
Still, hearing you say that means a lot. And I completely agree: lived experience seems far more useful than any classroom when it comes to finding your voice.
I’d love to see some of your early work one day, if only to remind myself that every poet starts somewhere messy.
I really enjoyed this! I don’t think I completely understand it at parts but I don’t think that is the point- it definitely reads as a hidden language you are speaking to yourself- it almost goes into the realm of absurdism that is very intentional- especially when seeing the two poems together :)
Hey, Cipher! Thanks so much for hearkening to my tag, and coming to check this one out. 😊
I like poems that make some sense, but are unclear about how some of the lines fit into the scheme of things. I think of this as a single poem with two sections, but instead of being labeled as cantos they're simply divided by some ASCII "waves." If it gets obscure in places, it's because we're rowing "far out".
So glad to have you along for the ride!
There’s a dense and fascinating weave of imagery, satire, and historical reference running through this. The way those historical and philosophical threads tangle into the surreal imagery creates a strange momentum that feels both deliberate and chaotic.
The Hypatia reference especially stopped me! I was hoping that’s the Neoplatonist Hypatia of Alexandria, and it lands beautifully in that context.
Compelling work, Rafa.
I really like how you describe my work, JG! Thanks for carefully reading and restacking.
I think history, ideas and surrealism tend to get tangled up in poems because they're already tangled in our brains. Sometimes, I think of poetry as a celebration (and repetition) of the mind's routine of learning, incorporating and refining ideas throughout a process of personal becoming. According to this way of thinking, there is no life nearly so rich to be had anyplace without.
Thank you, Rafa. That’s a beautiful way to describe what poetry does. 💚
This is truly original. For me, it’s like sculpture using words. Powerful stuff.
Thank you so much for reading this, Nick! 😊
Your bio says you’re a musician. Do you, by any chance, know how to compose for an orchestra? If you don’t mind talking about music, you can either reply here or DM me anytime. I’ve been working on something really big that I’m going to need help with.
Rafa,
I have been trying to remember the last time I touched something that wasn't already warm from my own holding. The phone. The cup. My own face, occasionally, to check.
Your poem makes me want to stop typing and go outside, but I don't. This is data. I am telling you what I am not doing.
The skeleton crews I keep thinking of maintenance. Not the grand collapse, but the ongoing, the daily. The person who restocks the vending machine in the hospital basement. Who knows the code. Who is not in your poem but is in the building where your poem lives.
I want to tell you about the ice. Not the metaphorical ice. The actual ice I saw last week, which was dirty, which had a shopping cart frozen into it, which someone had tried to extract and failed. The cart's handle was still above the surface. You could touch it. The cold came up through your glove slowly, so slowly you didn't notice until you were already committed to the touch.
I stayed longer than I needed to. This is also data.
You are in the red canoe. I am on the shore, but the shore is not stable. The shore is also a kind of boat. Everyone is in something sinking, Rafa. This is not comfort. This is inventory.
I am holding the line you cast. It is cold. It is not enough. It is what I have.
After reading this and your comment upon "Churchyard," I am getting a bit concerned for your present. I hope everything is going okay with your wife, and she is always a step behind you with an icepick to dislodge the cart when you need to shop.
War may be fought between abundant armies, but maintenance is always conducted by skeleton crews — as no business or property owner would ever want to hire more than the bare minimum number of hands for a task. If a worker is handless, they don't get paid but are required to chip away at the task nevertheless.
If my poems are a line to tether souls together and help them sink a little more slowly, then I have succeeded admirably in my objectives. Thank you for being here, and witnessing these moments in nonexistent space, where characters fly freely through wires. Worlds are built from these characters of text — worlds containing characters representing real people or ideas of them.
When it gets cold enough, the color bleeds out of everything. One moment you're red; the next you're white (and black, and read all over). But even with the morning paper to read, nothing is news.
The icepick is in the other room. I hear it. She is there the love that made me sane, that makes me the person who can write this. I am here. The distance is not the problem. The problem is the doorway, still. The look. The leaving that lives in me like a season that won't turn.
Your skeleton crews work unpaid. I know this work. The line tethers, measures, slows. I hold it without knowing which.
She is real. The memories fly anyway. Nonexistent space is habitable because she is in the other room, chipping at the cart, keeping the ice from claiming everything. The characters fly parent-shaped, mine, hers. I don't need them real. I need them flying, and I need her real, and I have both, which is the condition.
Color bled out last week. The paper arrives. Not news. Just ongoing.
Still here. Still sinking slowly. Not alone.
If I didn't know you were a theater fan, I'd be able to tell from these comments. They're saturated in (the good kind of) conceit. Bravo, my friend!
It is just you here who has enabled me to share with such depth and metaphors and thus my love for theater shows out without any shame.
I am truly honored. 🐦🔥
What a wonderfully strange and brilliant piece. It feels like stepping into a fever dream shaped by someone who has complete command of language. I was fascinated from beginning to end.
I'm really glad you liked this, Phoeby.
So far, we have one vote for "awakening from a total lie" and one for "stepping into a fever dream."
I enjoy you too. Thrown for a loop by rturn to Standard Time, Iran (Minab and the White House explaining it all by singing "More Than A Feeling" if a little off-key), and anyhow will strive to post again soon. Working on a personal essay evolved from letter I promised you and Daniil, but never properly sent and a revision of EKPHRASTIC etc., that may well mean more to me than anyone else. Do you know Carlo Emilio Gadda's THAT AWFUL MESS ON THE VIA MERULANA? I love for to read just its 1st page. I'll take a photo of it and paste it here. Cheers, KR,
Thank you for dropping in, KR. I have never heard of Gadda or his book, but look forward to checking it out.
Lots of grrat imagery here and a lot going on. I had to read it a couple of times to take it all in, but I really enjoyed it.
A fantastic piece.
Thank you Gary! This one’s dense, so I hope reading it twice didn’t pull any muscles. I must start reading you more often, my friend.