Polymorphic Emptiness

Form is emptyness. Emptyness is form (Heart Sutra) good poem MAX

So very very true. Fortunately, we are such easliy distractable creatures that something else soon comes along and refuels us...(hopefully.) I think there is even a kind of cozy "peace" when we give up on something. To me, the most horrendous agony in the world is regret, because then we have only our own selves to answer to, and we can be quite mercilous with ourselves.

The wan knowing voice that takes us through these realms of emptiness is the star attraction for me in this poem: Sophisticated, a connoisseur as it were of the different states of oncoming or receding feelings when perceived with the fullness of life as a backdrop, this voice has gone through despair's devouring maw and back again.
You make us think and reflect on our own jagged moments of nonbeing so well, here, Max, when we have veiled the One with our own disappointment, a terrible well into which we all fall, some without even being aware of it.
A poet's embrace from Andalucia, my wali who wails so that we might see.

amazing max you keen eye for the minutia of life and its grandiose prevails here

...and hope loses steam. I got a little chuckle here Max as I pictured the Little Engine that Could at the base of the big hill saying.... i ... think.... .. I ... can...
I....think........I .......can......
Pissa poem, Max. An alleyway most have wandered down.

that sounds like me and my dream story............
max

The last stanza hit me pretty hard, probably because that's the world I live in.

Thank you dear friends, and especially you John dear Andelusian sage!
I really get a 'high' when I see you guys identify yourselves with some element or the other in one of my poems.
John's erudite analysis always drags out a hydra-headed lump of inspiration forcing me to take a fresh look at despair which turns out to be an opportunity to visualize a new world, and even indifference concealing the inner tumult which cooks up new intellectual storms.
Keep reading friends - exciting ideas are bubbling over.
cheerz!

Max, you bad man, you made me cry. This is a wonderful poem.

I loved these linezs: There's an emptiness one feels

after a tumultous maelstrom when emotions have

deserted us like prodigal sons.

The only thing that jarred was the repition of another emptiness, one more emptiness....perhaps some other way to present it. The thought, of course, is moving.

Max you did it again, wonderful poem. The lines 'empty universe when dreams desert us, and hope loses steam' touched my heart. Missed meeting you this time. Cherio

Shalu,

Tks for 'surfacing' -yes, this is a poem designed to jar.

There's certainly an another way, may be many ways to present it e.g. I could write three poems by extending each stanza. May be three slim volumes of poetry on each if perceptive readers like you all will goad me towards it.

Depression has accompanied me like a shadow.
I've had no less than 42 near-death experiences, and this last one was a whammy of a blow... which produced a cry from within. It was a cry without any regard to the keys and scales, nor a sense of rhythm nor rhyme. It was a cry from the primordial depths of humanity. For more, read John Walter's comments. I have failed to find an answer as to why the Almighty throws you untrained in the rink called Life... there are lessons I am not learning.

These are then, no poems. These are sounds I heard from a time when Man was discovering what he was, with the universe in turmoil.

Thanks for reading, more so for commenting.

Cheerz!

Max, what an explosion of pure light. This is a wonderful poem, one that I can identify intimately. You have captured in words the very feeling of the most hopeless despair, when purpose and meaning flee. Ah... how the physical realm can torment, yet it need not rule our passion and intent.

Thanks a lot Ed, I always value your input very highly.
Your comment is a pithy poem in itself.
May be in my current state of heightened awareness, I could expand it.

No, the physical realm usually fails to rule our passion and intent -those remain unconnected, but this separation in our mind is not easy as John the Sufi thinker will vouch for. I continually feel the physical realms is a boxing ring where you are beaten to a pulp to raise your senses to a new level of heightened awareness. Thus it becomes a mere procedure. Not an end by itself. Those who take insulin injections would know what I am hinting at... habit reduces even deepest agony into a mere procedure


Cheerz!

Emptiness sometime comes (or becomes) nearer to the vast zero or say universal zero, in which one has to fly or flow what ever capacity he / she has but has to be there! This is one kind of spiritual destiny, Max! Why? is the another way to look upon, but question is not really necessary if one can wait there with depressions and pains, then new possibilities open up! Perhaps one can say this is an assumption or prelude of another act!

This poem has certain possibility regarding that:

'But the colossus amongst them all, / is the empty universe when dreams desert us, / and hope loses steam.'

Poems are poems, but some time poetic process suggests us that still something is hidden behind your depression and felt emptiness! I feel this poem as a platform of such opening! THANKS!

Music

Take me by the hand;
it's so easy for you, Angel,
for you are the road
even while being immobile.

You see, I'm scared no one
here will look for me again;
I couldn't make use of
whatever was given,

so they abandoned me.
At first the solitude
charmed me like a prelude,
but so much music wounded me.


Translated by A. Poulin

Rainer Maria Rilke

What a poem, it just so happens to have captured my very thoughts of the day. I liked the momentum your words built, and the contrast that came through your restraint in describing dramatic emotions.

I see a different Max here. I think your poetry is becoming honed and pure.

Thanks Barin and thanks Ajay, especially for the Rilke poem (whom my powerful mentor Dr. Suresh Joshi used to nearly worship, Valery and Rilke would be recalled by him every few minutes, every day!).

Bridget and Barbary, your well-thought out comments I shall treasure. Pain has been the grinding stone on which thousands of poets have sharpened their tools unfeelingly because the grinding stone must grind... 'honing' is a very apt description too, because lately I have begun to feel that this thought-honing process is as natural as a timeless river honing the surface of seemingly immobile and immune stones on its banks. Attrition takes place at the nano-technology level!
But it does... like I said before, all that matters for us poets is a 'heightened awareness' on which my Sufi friend John A. Walter made comments some months ago.

Cheerz!