Hooddom

[rowens]

Hooddom

A dead leaf is alive,
I throw it aside
and it does what it has to do.

If I stand to one side
as business goes through,
count to the amount of a hive,

is desire broken?
Mastery denied?
A dream like a leaf on a tree?

[adagio]

This is good – I like it a lot!
I would probably tweak the last line. It feels too simplistic. Maybe change the last stanza? I was expecting a catharsis.

[rowens]

I could be blinded by my own light.

Deconstructing the Tree of Life.
The last stanza being below Harmony/Beauty, it broke with the rhymes, but kept with the Tree scheme, symbolically.

And the whole poem being the kingDOM, the Crown being the dead leaf of the first line.

But that's just me. I'm learning to not know what my writing means.

---

The dead leaf of the first line is actually the happy part. Being dead in relation to the lower paths.

[adagio]

Ugh, allow me to explain myself a little more... the usual disclaimers apply (it's just me etc., etc. If that is too much criticism, I apologize profusely!!!)

The first two stanzas really work. And it's not just rhymes. It is a great opening. The imagery is there – I really see everything that happens.

With all that, one sort of hopes to come to some kind of higher truth at the end, right? I think that's fair

What I get reads (to me!) like complaints about the futility of life... and paired with a comparison to a leaf (in the wind) that feels rather worn...

Anyway, that's one person's way of looking at it. I hope you can find it useful.

[rowens]

Nothing is too much. The Mods seem on holiday and people always are best when they say whatever comes into their head. That's what I do.

The problem is that the leaf is still on the tree, still part of the same -hood or -dom.

Descending, the leaf is stuck. Ascending, the leaf is free from the Selfhood and all other hoods. Except maybe leaf-dom.

The Descending Path becomes more and more solidified and stuck in hoodness.

The Creation is the Fall. And the Tree is the stodgy system. The bottom a shadow version of the top. An Adverse Reflection.

That's the intention. My intention doesn't make any difference. Nevertheless, it was there.

Poems come right out. After that, I don't know much about how to do anything with them. I only know how other people write their poems when I critique them. I don't think about how I write my poems. I used to, and they were pretty much the same. So I got rid of the middleman. It's like an atmosphere-sensitive affect-quality churning-out device.

I don't know how my poems work. They do or they don't. That's how it's always been.

Besides, the Tree is supposed to be Blasted. The Blasted Tree is the last poem of a book I haven't finished, because it takes place in Danmark.

[adagio]

Oh I see. Yes, it makes sense – the leaf is still on the tree, so it can't do what it has to do.
I wish this intention could be made a bit more clear. Maybe you could add an adjective? A dream is lifeless? latent?
Why is Mastery denied though? eventually the leaf comes down. Yes, it has to die for that, and that's when it comes alive as well – that's a very interesting duality of being, but it doesn't quite fit the verdict of "denied" for me.

[rowens]

There are nine lines. There are Ten Spheres on the Tree. As I was writing, it occurred to me that the poem itself was the Tenth, I didn't think about why, but it seems to work.

The first line is the whole poem. The Ninth Sphere is the so-called Unconscious. The Eighth is Intellect, and the Third Sphere, which is Mastery, which is Understanding above Knowledge, is reflected in that lower Sphere adversely. The Seventh corresponds with Passion and Desire. Since these are below the Sixth Sphere of Harmony, they are harmonized but in adverse sense.


The dead leaf is free from the Tree, and reflected in the Tenth Sphere, the Kingdom, the whole poem, is the whole tree. The second line/sphere is raw energy throwing aside, the third is taking force into form, the fourth is Mercy and stepping aside, the fifth is Severity solidifying the Hood.


This is the Fool's Journey into maturity and a consensus reality. The Path back to the Fool and beyond is or could be a higher truth.

So the last stanza is a sort of complaining or lamenting from the point of view of those lower Spheres, seeing the Higher Spheres as impossible and experiencing their position as failure.
The poem is that Hooddom. The Higher Spheres are nevertheless available and no less real.


The Middleman is Thinking, and speaks in prose. 

I don't have an intention of being clear or making sense of all the time. Obscurantism and even Flaw are part of my toolbox. That makes me a Romantic.