Seeding Abraxas

[rowens]

Seeds of Abraxas

“There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection.”

I salute spring each morning of that season,
the things I do for love, I do alone;
cruelty and indifference I spread as the scythe 
one with its blade.

When my hands clasp in autumn,
deeds and words incubate eccentrically 
for upcoming seasons. 

[thewilderhen]

Since this is short form, experiment with cutting modifier/relational phrases. One that “springs” to mind is “of that season”. Then, look for words you can cut. Are you doing the equivalent of “pencil of my aunt” instead of “my aunt’s pencil” anywhere? You can always add back in if it changes the poem.

One thing I notice: incubate eccentrically. The stop of the t in incubate happens toward the front of the mouth, and that makes it harder for the voice to pick up with the mid-mouth k sound in the beginning of eccentrically. But maybe that is just hard for my accent.

Not sure eccentric is the word to use here, your imagery in the poem elsewhere seems steady, dependable, a bit ruthlessly so.

I jam with your sentiment expressed in this poem. I take it to mean, you do what you love and you do it for free (in the sense you’re not beholden to others’ consumption or reaction - not in the sense of it not being valued or valuable).

[rowens]

I salute the sun at dawn in spring, and I clasp my hands at dusk in fall. I used to do all four stations of the sun each day. Now only what is appropriate to each season.
In myth-making mode, I spread through poems fragments of a whole. Sometimes pushing the fragments as far as can be without breaking.

Same with each season, and mood, laying store what's out of season for what will be in season.

Putting in seed here, which may seem eccentric and out of place, may, if successful, make sense later, or have had made sense before.

That's the spirit of the poem.

With short poems, rather than actual length on the page, I look at how the spirit of a short poem allows for a raw or at least spontaneous aesthetic, if aesthetic at all. Otherwise, more prosy or unnecessary words, in an aesthetic sense, as you say, would be a hindrance.


So, two things: Your instincts are legitimate, as you know. And I don't salute each morning, only in spring; which makes sense if you allow for the fragmented nature, though it weaken the poem, and its place in them apparently absent whole.

Sometimes, much of the time, poems, for me, are more valuable as excuses to give these prose "explanations".

[thewilderhen]

You do the wheel of the year. For me, spring is so messy. I have not stopped thinking about the idea of your salute, it is striking.

spring of my seventeenth year
Persephone came to me
and I rose a salute
from a metal folding chair
hollow clanking
a salute nonethesame
a flower cylindrical spiral
a closing-down of the city
every morning in spring
I made
a rose

(I made your scythe into Persephone, but the I is me) (fan art from me to you)

[rowens]

17 is a potent number for me. 1 and 7 is 8, and 8 is Infinity, but it's not Infinity, it's 17. And oh, aren't they all, like a white-winged dove . . .

Steel-folding chairs are also sacred to me.


Spring is new and novel for me. I like to go to stores and find shiny plastic things, and get into things I've never been into through aggressively casual on-site browsing.

There's a hill I walk up before noon each day, most days, and when I close my eyes and stare at the protection between me and the light, and breathe from the walk, I see golden dust rising toward the sun. It looks like the Dust in that show and movie about His Dark Materials. I take off my hat, and the sun takes all that Dust from me, until the brightest Light in the center takes the shape of an Eye or Hexagram Star or Cross or Golden or other Colored Orb.

As a devotee of Dionysos, messy is good, and the toads at the nearby pond and other sounds of things brushing grass and twigs, along with the climate and conditioned "springtime feeling" that I have, with all its loric and other associations, a variety of sensations that I've always wondered, and attempted, to find for sure if anyone else shares precisely, and enjoy the frustrated disappointment that no one may and I may never know or feel I know either way, is good.


Until then, as Narcissus Nemo, I'll dump myself everywhere I go, for the sake of shared selfishness with the Others.