Alchemical Poetry

CALCINATION

I AM ON FIRE, WATCH ME BURN

Rake the clutter and make a fire,

arrange the stones to circle the pyre,

drag your belongings one by one,

break up the moon to inflame the sun.

Heave on reluctant years of learning

watch as photographs rejoice in burning.

Throw them in, achieve annihilation:

each crackle unveils a violation.

I am on fire, watch me burn;

awaiting the wretched tide to turn,

the colors blister, the patina darkens,

no mirror can hold me, mutation harkens.

Remove your clothes and cast them in

lick the flames, invite them in!

Pants, shirt, underwear, even rings

join in the perfect kindling of things.

Look into the flames, see them howl,

heap on the knick-knacks with a shovel;

pretty boxes, drawers, and tins,

observe the snake loose it’s skin.

Draw a circle, make a bowl

begin a dance to express your soul;

anything to further feed the flames

who delight in eating your remains.

From the smoke ascends a stair

do not hesitate, be aware if

fear should cause you to look back;

dash the things you do not lack.

As hungry angels gather around,

give them your body most profound

and a voice of darkest birds,

only ask that they leave you words.

A single sentence may cause

a stir, send out a search party,

provoke a cure, clenching torches

they’re sure to follow . . .

Pause to mourn a fallen swallow.

Having left a set of prints in mulch,

spewed my semen, built a church,

I rejoice in living the life I burned.

by Peter Valentyne <pvalentyne@email.msn.com>

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CALCINATION

Sewn unto Lucifer's flames,

Usually reduced in crucibles

And calcined into dust,

A trophy

To hereditary exile:

Sulfuric and corrosive,

Red and lachrymal,

Calcinated under pressure

And tribulations;

To hereditary excess:

Burning and surrendering everything

Over flames.

Through hellish emanations,

Secreting power inside

Negative energy.

Intending to sacrifice

For angels that have

Eaten Righteousness,

I have sacrificed

These heavenly entities,

Scorched underneath Nothingness.

by Stuart Franklin <haugyit@yahoo.com>

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DISSOLUTION

GRACE UNDER WATER

Hands, pale and folded, remind me

I was there before wings,

upon a ladder, holding a cup, waving goodbye;

Though I’ve no idea how or why.

It is not easy to forget myself,

worn as I am in this art of clothes,

mostly I am cloud white and corduroy,

a gliding vessel wedded to flight.

I am the determination to transcend,

to dip into the darkness

from a safety of days; though

once I fix things they tend to die.

I seek a Tarot of assurances, to know

that the difference between a swan

and a man merely lies

in twin aspects gone awry.

by Peter Valentyne <pvalentyne@email.msn.com>

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SEPARATION

by Janet Turner <Janet2@cwnet.com>

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CONJUNCTION

ONE

Oh Hidden Life, vibrant in every atom,

Oh Hidden Light, shining in every creature,

Oh Hidden Love, embracing all in oneness,

May all who feel themselves as one with thee,

Know they are therefore one with every other.

by Annie Besant

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CONJUNCTION

THE EMERALD PATTERN

As our planet turns and floats,

We greet each starlit night,

Like time taking its course,

Through dawning and twilight.

Uncongealed consciousness flows

Through gulfs and voids in space,

As our needs to seek the truth

Grows life's pains, joys, and grace.

To the farthest star we move

In a pattern supreme and divine.

The pulses in One Heart --

Splendid excess of a Mind.

by Francisco Borjas Broines Gaitan

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FERMENTATION

THE HOLY LONGING

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
Because the mass man will mock it right away,
I praise what is truly alive,
What longs to be burned to death.

In the calm of the love-nights,
Where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
A strange feeling comes over you
When you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
In the obsession with darkness,
And a desire for higher love-making
Sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
Now, arriving in magic, flying,
And, finally, insane for the Light,
You are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced
This: to die and so to grow,
You are only a troubled guest
On the dark earth.

by Goethe (1814); translated by Robert Bly

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FERMENTATION

FIRST MATTER

Verdant sea of waist-high weeds,

wind-blown waves that

pass like goosebumps

over the fallow field.

Here Nature took a stand

and forbade the adult cast.

No concrete squares to guide you --

but long, meandering paths,

furrowed by children at play,

leading to secret treasures.

The tall grass waves invitingly back and forth.

"Leave the backyard!" it implores.

"Enter the hidden prairie!"

Dare I forsake the manicured lawn and garden,

the glib, structured mindset bearing down hard,

molding me all my seven years?

Freedom beckons beyond the fence ,

freedom to have any thought I choose.

The summer Wind seduces me.

I desert my father's house

and jump the fence to where no man rules.

Where no one cares that

I lost the shopping money,

or that we live in the United States of America.

All that counts here is how we can be as one,

this boundless prairie and me.

Milkweed thistles reigned that day

and let me taste their cloudy dew.

Soon these prickly pods would burst,

and deck this field in white silk,

each seed fighting to be the first.

Oh, thick sweet air, moist summer Wind!

The earth smells so pungent here,

it can choke you.

I trace the Wind's breath beyond the bluff,

not remembering distance,

not measuring time.

Deep in the heart of the prairie,

I discover an oasis of wonderment.

No weed grows here,

but a stately oak presides over a deep hole

in the yellow earth before me.

If I step forward just an inch,

the steep, smooth walls would swallow me,

perhaps dissolving me,

absorbing me into its clay belly.

At the crumbling edge I pause

for minutes, or days, or weeks;

slipping downward but not moving --

changes here are not in space.

Nothing else but two gaping holes --

one in the earth, one in me;

but by our similarity,

we merge into One.

I should have tried to run away.

But how to tell of the ball of energy,

power hid in earth, now free?

Hot mercury is burning a hole

in the paper landscape!

Coming and going are now the same in me;

all my attention is fused with the living light.

What is this spectral shining thing?

Nothing or everything?

The spheric kaleidoscope of

swirling yet tranquil patterns

overwhelms me with colors I cannot imagine

and exceeds any question I can ask.

Then I pull back.

My body or something else in me

demanding to go on

living as before.

Then I pull back.

My mother is calling me home again,

offering television, TV dinners,

and Dad.

by Dennis William Hauck <DWHauck@yahoo.com>

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(From "Cato" by Joseph Addison 1713. This was the passage Edgar Allen Poe encrypted and challenged his readers to decipher in 1841.

When all distractions cease,
Then dawns the Day of Peace:

When every "there" is "Here!"
And every veil made Clear;

When every "then" is "Now!"
This moment to endow;

When every "that" is "This!"
Awareness melts in Bliss;

When who you Are is "I"
Then will the Truth comply;

When the soul knows it is Called,
Then the heart is now enthralled.

Then the Divine can only Bless,
And the heart only say, "Yes!"

(a cautionary tale from the path of the dabbler)

I broke my soul the other day.
I hate it when that happens.
My karmas bent,
my chakras cracked,
and my Kundalini flattened.

I stuck my fingers in the fire
and scorched them to the joint.
I rote my rite
and rung my bell,
but forgot one tiny point.

If a force that's raised is out of phase
with the resident elemental,
the resulting blow
to the raiser's mind
can be seriously detrimental.

So the scales of balance tipped once more,
and reality went berserk.
But the journey's end
made me surer than before
that it really is a bloody Great Work.

by StarlighT (Yahoo Clubs)

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