Nepenthe

This is wonderful, John. I think a lot of people can relate to these words. They really hit home with me. Those last eight lines reflect a place I often find myself. The good part is, there is always that place where I continue on.....in the direction of my dreams, being the best self I can be for that particular moment.

Thank you so much, Cheryl. I figured you would relate to this one, you have done so much courageous self-examination to trace your own traumas (the German word TRAUM means dream); face them with new insights; and replace the displacements of compulsive behavior that you were set up to repeat.

Nepenthe is always available in our world. But is it ever any good for our souls?

Excellent, John, but then I've come to expect that from you. Blurred lines of reality and self induced fuzzy dreams. It's a vicious cycle.

I must confess, I don't understand much of what you write, But that is not your fault but mine

Dear Lost Soul, dean (and doyen) of Gather poets, I wrote this poem in a sudden nervous fit, after having to physically detox for a week from the fentanyl--synthetic heroin-- I've been taking in transdermal patches for months following my surgery and during my final treatment. The doctors told me the withdrawal would be a little rough, downsizing from 50mcg an hour to 25; I made it worse going cold turkey (the only way I ever got off stuff years ago when I was displacing into addiction instead of facing my true being and its aims. I thought of Ludolf's recent series on Modigliani, a classic compulsive romantic artist, and decided to dedicate the poem to him. I sent it to him, and he sent me back this photoshop wonder.

Thank you Laurie for intuiting the "fuzziness" or ambiguity that this poem treats as the limits of the self in its coming back like an ouroboros.

Amy, thank you so much for your opinion on displacements and not dealing with one's feelings, goals, past regrets or disappointments, and finally greater purpose in life: I am completely in agreement with you, but it took me many more years than you, my dear bright friend, to finally "get" this fundamental principle.
Ludolf's work is wonderful and complementary here, you are so right. He has superimposed our faces to make a statement on identity and author-to-author compassion, and probably much more beyond my aesthetic awareness.

This lovely poem makes me remember how fragile and overpowering the human psyche can be. Only this morning I was talking to a student who was worried that he has a crazy side that might come out on him, and I tried to reassure him that we all share that kind of fear from time to time, and we hide out from our own eyes fearing what we might find. I did not know this word and I feel like I was able to grok it quite naturally. Thanks!

John, perhaps it is the reference to the trainers I made--by which I mean Neuro Linguistic Programming trainers, who along with the Est people and other hypnotic approaches out there, have claimed that they can transform one's painful memories by subliminally replaying them almost as movies and making edits: Instead of repression or numbing out (Nepenthe's aid for forgetfulness), one literally regrafts the self. Then there are the scientists who invoke neural "plasticity", claiming we can change ourselves from primordial patterns because the neurons are capable of it. This poem is an interrogation of those themes, as well as why we displace into behaviors and feeling annihilating substances when we feel made powerless by an emotional echo from a troubled past.

Gerry, I so appreciate your comment on the fragility of the self, and our own way of hiding out from ourselves. You tuned right in. Thanks!

sorry-- I find this scary
"udden nervous fit, after having to physically detox for a week from the fentanyl--synthetic heroin-- "


wuldna wish anyone through that


but cold shakes under a blanket-- sorry is normal life over here without the drugs--just that much trauma and anxiety.

dun need no drugs, life is harsh enough.

John your poem seems as multi-leveled as its art work companion. It is a bit scary, for those of us who feel the need to always be in complete control.

I've watched for years as my step-daughter struggles to regain her power from ghosts of the past, and try to help where I can.
She has her own version of nepenthe. When it gets to be to much for her, she falls into hours of television.

Excellent, John, and a very powerful ending.

John, I was struck by your reference to NLP in the comment thread. That illuminates the poem so much and I presume that you have some experience with NLP that didn't work out. Would you be so kind as to expand on that a bit? It's a subject that interests me a lot and I'm curious about your opinion. Thanks!

The alterations of self awareness and measured presence are maneuvered through poetic displacement in this incisive piece. The awareness tuning what one is feeling about what one "normally" feels and the subsequent retrospective reconfigurations of the past through more than one mind set, leave a mood of discomforting fragility. But the core identity seems to surface in times of healing to finely tune every new breath with as much clarity as can be mustered and there is often a heightened sense of renewal. But the de-tox from the mind-mushing drugs that disturb in their unfamiliar re-scripting while muffling the other disturbances, is frightening, and the value of silencing the suffering, even when necessary, as in your case for treatment, is accompanied by often jarring fragmentation. The self-aware facets we experience in different experiential guises, somehow assign a guide author voice to take charge of the others. This is a fascinating poem, My Poet, with its deflected sub-voices coagulating a transitory claim to wholeness, questioning all claims to identity we so firmly take hold of, especially when isolated from supportive contacts, of which to hold most true. I have numbed myself in the past for both medical treatment and recreational choices, and have experienced the benefits that have contributed to my ability to time the pains that seemed to extreme to live with until I could handle them better later. But I always miss "myself" and the return to clarity , even with the often accompanying discomfort always feels like a return to a necessary and treasured familiar essence that I call Laura.

I am pained for your suffering and so look forward to your emergence from the healing blankets that you have endured with courage and shared with an amazing heart generosity, in allowing us to hold you close through your poems. I send you warm lavender mists and accolades for this fine poem.

Laura, that was a wonderful personal reading of the poem with a sense of the fragility of the self in all its guises throughout. Thank you, dearest Muse.

Paul, thanks for stopping by and responding generously. I'm glad this resonated with you.

Dawn, I truly liked the way you generalized the 'nepenthe' idea. It can be any displacement into compulsion, from sex to love to cleaning the floor to excessive drink or oblivion in hashish.....TV is a huge one in today's world. The distraction from being distracted.

Mary, I thank you for your empathy, and only wish your life in Czecha were better at the moment in "normalcy" as you put it. You are right--life is hard, even if we follow a true path and keep growing and learning. But we can always find way to make it lighter, more bearable, and perhaps joyous.

Gerry, actually I have been impressed by a lot of the work by first Milton Ericson, the great intuitive genius of 'instant therapy', and then Bander et al with their extracted and systematized insights in NLP from the master. But there are only so many Ericsons out there, and perhaps that is the problem, because what I've seen twice from NLP trainers seemed too scripted, the improvisation and spontaneity that Milton shows in his teaching stories is meticulously adapted, but without flair. I work in theatre, and I've seen more significant change in actors from living a character than I ever did with people replaying their life movies. On the other hand, I'm not dismissing the possibility here, just drawing attention to it, as with all other psychological or psychoanalytical 'cures' for the dis-united self. Self-integrity, and integration, is it even possible in a world of multiplying possibilities for alter-egos, both in reality and online, false selves....that is the question. Otherwise we are forever displacing, never getting back to our set points, our sense of "the feeling of our own story."

This chilling poem is the naked embodiment of slavery to addiction and the dark and loathsome TASK of serving a chemical god, that asks nothing in return but subjection, ownership and the abbrogation of self. John's powerful verse hammers home in its blood-letted totality the fall into dream state as the sentence for medicating pain, a sentence, beyond the jurisdiction of doctors and counselors, a lonely room that cycles and recycles unto itself. What I like about this piece is how soft and delicate the words are, yet portray the hardness of something he's seen and felt and lived through, and can now relate on another plane... The key here in this brilliant poem is, "so you try to get back being more you..." the universal quest for identity, being played out in the crapshoot of nepenthe. Exhortative? Uh, yes..... (said in valley girl pink!)

You know, John, you could make me cry with sadness and empathy here, for love of you.

Modiglliani, one of my favorites, Ludolf...a nice tribute for you.

john, this poem strikes straight at my heart ... oh the anguish it unleashes. am one-handed today. pecking this out on the keys and thanking you.

Esteemed friend - this piece did not merely touch my heart; it wrenched violently at my soul, not only the sheer beauty of the whole, but the genius of the individual components; Poe and nepenthe, the shadows cast over my memories of the lost Lenore (and the lost Poe himself), the perfection in describing the shifting states of those afflicted / addicted ones, and I admit that until it was mentioned in an earlier comment, it had not occurred to me that the "trainers" would be NLP'ers and ESTers but then it made perfect sense. (The only NLP introduction I had was via Nelson Zink, who also makes a superb PVC shakuhachi with tones to stir your spirit! ) the rewinding and replaying... the wracking emotional vision of shivering under the blanket... all of it is overwhelming. Then - as if this masterpiece was insufficient alone - the exquisite image by Sir Ludolf, perfectly illustrating the not-quite-able-to-focus aura, the feeling of floating, not joyfully but uncontrollably, drifting and helpless... and then an earthy phrase from our dear Amy which will be lodged in my brain for a while - " Like a dog that walks away from vomited memories, we come back to it eventually." Whew! What an evening! Thank you one and all!

I wondered why these words brought on such a chilling sensation.....I read them several times to see if I was actually understanding what I was reading ... the aha! moment came when I read Ed N's comment.......... Fortunately, I have not experienced nepenthe......but have witnessed it and it was not something I would like to live through..........

This is a true poetry that calls us to be true to ourselves and our spirit. There is so much in life that can tug and pull us into areas not of our own choosing. Refusing to go can be harder than it appears since the easy path is often cleared for our next step. The best dreams cannot be bartered, but must stem from our own reflections. The honest quest for identity creates the joy in the journey.

The lines, "for the dreams won't go away / that weren't yours in the first place" , hit home the most. There are so many dreams revolving in the head in our formative years from parents, counselors, mentors, and even society. Trying to walk up the seemingly better gradients of life thru the prodding and cheering of all. Then to get to the top and find it was not the place for you at all. Better to have put a halt to the maddening rush that years later would find you "numb under a blanket" and " hiding out from your own eyes".

John, a moving poetry that I must confess has caused a few tears since I spent so many years getting to a place I ultimately didn't want to go. Thankfully, that is behind me. This is what the poem meant to me, although by the others' comments, I see I have diverted somewhat from most interpretations.

This poem is so naked, open, vulnerable, honest, or you, the poet, are in this poem. I hold my breath. I see 'you,' the narrator of the poem, suffering on the bed, under the covers, in the room in which we meet to share at Gather, the light is clear but a little dim, it's natural light, and the day outside is cloudy but bright, the air seems a bit cool, and re-running the inner narratives, changing them, creating new pathways, for it is a new life, a new unfolding, blossoms, but it's not easy, the mind entangles in the bedsheets, and relief, oh relief, a break, something easy needed. What offers relief is untrustworthy, though. It seeks to insinuate itself in the chemical structures that create the bonds, for it wants to live through the person, the poet, the man. And now there is a double edge, wrestling free of the 'jumble' and of the burden 'holding it together,' when it's impossible, what's asked is impossible in the terms that are asked, and wrestling free of the addiction, which didn't help anyhow, not in the long run, but became yet another subset of the difficulties.

Raw life.

I asked someone who has an addictive personality this just last weekend. What's wrong with raw life? Drugs push us to the edges, yes, but life can push us further.

And then I rolled out my theories of repressed creativity. Ah, I sigh. And yet I do truly believe that when we wrestle free of our addictions, and we all have them, by other names, we are faced not only with the loneliness of life, its unutterableness, and our incapacity to love fully, speaking of the shadows here, not all-the-time, but the need to create from our conflicted, paradoxical, searingly painfulbeautiful depths.

Called into being, I guess. You are already a flowering Renaissance man. You can write a poem like this that is light a shaft of sharp light.

I will share it with my young friend. Thank you.... xo

Great work, my great friend. Deep and moving. The path for any living thing on this soil is to struggle and fight a way out in the war of time. Nepenthe is always there but it cannot be the solution. Reality cannot be denied but has to be encountered with grace and dauntlessness. I am taken to these and similar thoughts by these words, the simplicity of which I appreciate and respect. The gentle words boil inside you, revealing a world of truth.

'so you take it when you're not yourself
to try to get back to being more you
only to find yourself further away
numb under a blanket.'

I bow to the inimitable skill of creativity evident on these pulsating words of art and wisdom.
Magnificent poem.

"you don't ever get straight"
Ending the first line is your first point – we never "get" that true deflawed character we so desire. Is it a gift of grace or do we… strive on for the truth? "in spite of the jumble"
As if by "forgetting hard" such efforts could add up to something by subtracting; a subtle suicide the attempt to destroy the history that has constructed you.

The trainers of hapenstance that shaped your minds into dreams, that are not you or of you, and "the dreams won't go away".

So we try to get it straight, to rewrite our own minds, attempting to redo to "re-edit" with the only force we are deluded in believing is ours (by those same trainers), that is to forget – such wishful thinking!

"so you take it when you're not yourself
to try to get back to being more you"

And so you are deluded in this pursuit. I think, what is the alternative to being crushed beneath the truth? When my legs have not yet grown strong my recovery from the last tragic script you have written with your life, and even the breeze might break you at our weakest point, and your friends and lover have abandoned you in my frailty?

Is there no respit, no cover from the onslaught of what is not a dream, no night into which I can sleep and just let the dreams have their way, and succom, if not only to my wrestless spinning over and over in your sweat soaked bed?

Have you been there? Where the choices have dwindled, and you are so decieved as to believe, and do belive. And your belief is your truth and reality; that there is nothing left to make it thrugh the night – but to take the pill - or your life, and draw that eternal blanket over your head; as if there were respit in the nothingness of our eternal forgetfullness, where not even rest exists in the void of the self destroyed.

And I have no regrets, because I am still alive to make that choice, to regret or not, to feel or try to forget. I took "it", instead of the entire bottle, and I am alive to make that choice again.

How can I regret it, but only go on to understand, that it was the truth when I believed it, having become ignorant in my emotions, it was still the better choice; to choose to go to sleep and subject myself to the dreams one-more-time; decieved in the face of just the one – or the entire bottle. At least I wake to face the truth in the end, at the bottom of this slippery hill.

Sometimes, even in the midst of the deception we are tricked by the mumbling in the "jumble" we have created, we chose the pill and life in our decieved state, because there is a certain change of rules that result in life – like a pill to dull the pain that has now become the disease, and threatens my life.

It is there I have learned that it is my direction is what matters, not the pill, not the blankets, but that in bed I have rolled away from the wall to the side of the bed that faces the room, and into the muted light, even though I am still doped and beneath the covers – I have turned to face the muted light, and the life before me.

Leave it to me to take it to such extreems, into my own reality, to use such tiny measures, when I have learned to relish so little, to find pleasure even in light's mere reflections.

At such times as that, I have been grateful to have survived the spinning of the night. I have made it till morning, and I have the courage to roll - and face the open room, and find it is a wonderful thing to breath.

Dear John - it was a privilege to be able to work with you once again. Your work never ceases to amaze me and I find this dedication most flattering - Thank you. With regard to the work itself, I find it speaks volumes on the surface but even more so below.
I am glad you are recovering and that this dreadul experience is almost at an end.
Looking forward to meeting with you in Boston or New York - next month and perhaps travelling on together to the West Coast.
"L"

bravo, john!

Good morning John,
Right now when I am reading your short burst of your soul, the sun is shinning and my heart is bleeding reading your words. I want you to be a worrier and not give up. For a long time I felt the need to enter the silence and find the balance and answers to so many questions, plus the inner divine inspiration to know what I am supposed to do from now on.
The essence is that I am feeling very challenged lately. I have struggled with other people's reaction to happiness, sorrow, positive and negative way of seeing life. My spirit has been very tired lately and I am taking steps to enliven myself with positive thoughts, prayers, laughter and kindness and during this silence period I am thinking of all of you dear to me.
I am going myself through difficult times and perhaps this is karma helping me to grow as well. I have been on the island of Crete for the last 10 days and meditated a lot. I can feel you are still very scared and If I may suggest please use this prayer:
"I ask for the highest Divine
Healing, the highest Divine Protection, and the highest Divine
Guidance", and just sit and allow the Divine Light to bath you in Grace
and healing -- my feeling is that it will be very powerful for you.
And if it's all right with you, I'd like to include you in my prayers
and meditations for healing, guidance, and protection. You know the old
Wisdom - Where two or more are gathered. :)
Love and light to you my dear friend

Believe me, I do not try to be last or even late in commenting.
Lately it seems like you publish just when I am NOT looking.
I have read all the comments and am impressed at what this poem has flushed out of your avid eloquent fans.
Nepenthe is a disconnect from Tao. Many of us find ways to temporarily or permanently distract ourselves from what we cannot face. TV, drugs, alcohol, and other addictions and obsessions serve the purpose but they detain us from the ultimate goal of returning to our primal, unsullied soul and that clear acute awareness that we had when we arrived on this plane.
While I have agonized over the physical and mental pain I know you have experienced, I view this staggeringly vivid scene as coming from the unemotional voice of that pure witness within your soul ~ the voice that in spite of the nether landscape of pain medication and trauma, was able to deftly put into words what you recently experienced.
You continue to rise on my great poet pedestal Senor Walter.
The first and the third stanzas are the craziest /making sense bits I have ever seen.
How did you do that?
I echo jesse voigts, bravo John!

John, this is so much of te harkening back to the Pre-Raphaelites and their use of "nepenthe", as well as a major and heartfelt tribute to Ludo, one of our beloved of Gather.

It is indeed, how interesting that we are so close in theme here between this, your latest, and my "MaryBeth."

Apropos of your explanation on Neural Linguistic Programming, EST, and the brain's neural plasticity - how VERY interesting, as I've been reading along these lines, for years. And, yes, I do believe all of this is very, very possible...

Your recent experience with fentanyl and the withdrawal from it, oh, withdrawal is so very, very difficult, as the body and soul contorts in violent ways, as it tries to de-tach itself from substances...

Incredible, layered piece. I like this very much.

Ludo's artwork is equally incredible.

i adore the absolute honesty of this... it holds nothing back, as with the rest of your work, and this i admire greatly. This is another masterpiece all it's own, perhaps surpassing even the subject matter - you paint with your own words, and your imagery is always fantasic and never ceases to amaze and is never stale... again, John, bravo... a perfect ten.

John,

As you know I'm not really an expert in reading or commenting upon poetry and this state of affairs has caused me to be hesitant on commenting upon your writings, but this poem has affected me so much that I feel no reservations upon contributing my thoughts about it.

I can relate to all the themes running through this piece - suffering, denying things, denying the reality of oneself, living someone else's dreams, thinking over and over about the past, the shallow and trite sloganeering of personal trainers, but the imagery that resonated most strongly with me were the final two lines of the poem:


hiding out from

your own eyes


What an amazing and striking image of not being able to look oneself in the eyes, the accusing eyes that see right through you and know you inside out, eyes that know what lies heavy on one's conscience.

And so one hides one's gaze from one's own eyes; mirrors and any reflecting surfaces become the bane of one's existence, lest the Mirrored Self catches your eye and whispers the Truth to you, reveals what you are hiding from yourself, what you keep denying, suppressing and deluding yourself about.


Thank you John for sharing your truth with us!

Has everything been said? Almost.... My heart goes out to you for the excruciating withdrawls and seperation from self. I disassociate on my own as a coping mechanism ( or so I think ) and have also detoxed from potent pain medication. You write so delicately though the nauseating awareness of the unmasked soul is almost unbearable. When one must face life through naked eyes, paralysis may ensue for the mirror reveals the unedited truth of being. Terrifying I know. My best love...

John,

I do believe so many of us can relate to this on many levels. And you have caused me to go searching, which I love to do, to learn and explore. Through the artwork and references you provided.

for the dreams won't go away

that weren't yours in the first place

even if you could make them your own

as the trainers believe

rewinding the movies

reliving take after take

re-editing footage

I have written many times of this, a freeze frame then fast loop, reel to reel replay of past - haunting present.

helpless, unable to stop the play . . . in which you never wished to take a starring role in. Been in that situation myself, taking it upon myself to detox from something I no longer needed and ended up in a craze for three days on a couch. NEVER doing that again.

Excellent writing.

Ahhhh, yes

Lethe in a bottle

Another wonderful effort....Very nicely done!

John, the images that arise in this story-poem of living with frustrating forgetfulness, are wonderfully exposed by your deft, poetic hand. Your artistic choices propelled me from start to finish.

John., Metaphorical Gestalt path walking. Which Mask I wear today? Reminds me of "The Four Agreements," by Don Miguel Ruiz. John your poem is of a totality to a mind/body slave addiction metered in tinker-bell perfection. My soul bled on this one, friend. The learned pain we encompass in our shroud to the world. I love the cadence down in the last stanza, I step down the staircase with you. A virtuoso crafted work. Be of healing John. Thanks. Namaste.

Ahhh the Dew of Nepenthe - what a delight...John, this is beautiful and inspirational. Salud.

wow way cool! I like this alot more. it reminds of tripping on shrooms one time and finding myself hiding from the world for two days because I felt like everyone could read my mind and that if I got out of bed I would be still in a dream.

I just came across this wonderfully effusive poem. There is an actual place called Nepenthe on Big Sur in California where the clouds embody the human being and it is quite spectacular. I can definitely relate this place to your poem.