a poet animate in anima poetæ
TRANSCRIPT
by Mike Ferguson
a poet animate in anima poetæ
© Mike Ferguson, 2020
Gazebo Gravy Press
Devon
The Idea
I necessarily
think of the idea
and the thinking.
Whatever it be,
dim or
deep feeling,
we make things
from it, like a
distinct image
of the thinking
about our life,
ourselves
being, and this is
what we mean by
the idea becomes.
Griefs
Relating sorrow
to a friend, the relicts of
our unspoken griefs.
Farewell to Small Poems
How a little conception deifies attention and
feelings to its most reductive reefing and
unreefing – sailing onwards within a wind
of bravado. Or famine. Every fourteen lines of
this steady poetry’s breeze devotes itself to ropes
holding all in. At the helm of sails, small poems
are imprisoned by that wind, steered to their
corrections – those temple-walls. And in this
sectarian spirit, the difference of opinion devotes
to a chance of what might happen within; what
might be. There is an open ocean of hauling
beyond, disentangling lines onwards as bidden
not hidden – the farewell to such remedy – and
elevated for this devotion to a little irony.
Chymical
What must be must be as with this spelling of chymical.
In the case of a positive god, it is the duel of imagination
and questions. There is no essence of the divine but new,
spicy hot necessity. The mind feels like a balloon.
Sophism of the harmonious. Celestial bodies called a
system might be disorderly and irrational with whatever
evil is in them. Just a chemical reaction, no matter its
spelling. Someone’s lofty shun of dread. There is no riddle
in the contradiction of the world. Assertion of the mind
that feels: intellect by order. Whether the new in it is as
old as elementary nature, beauty is the essence.
Ipse Dixit
Likes to principle
the habit of being wiser
dislikes the man
who is
who will dis
another
who in their own point
of carrying a certain
truth and
believes it
because he is utter
performance
is, in short,
the sum total of, at best, a
conscious self-love.
Strong Enough
Vinegar to the discerning person is not bitter but
concentrated in re-action. Did Paracelsus, not using his
full name, assuage an inclination as boaster? Primâ facie
cum would seem to evidence excitement in the use of
Latin. Feeling and thinking are empirical. Re-acting, the
egotist is offensive in the habit of egotism. Dr Writing has
written What now? What now? Observe, his prose works
are made up of contempt for conversation. Though not
however much and however personally is still strong
enough to be troublesome to us.
Transforming
A love
so vast
as woe
makes us
mourn the
virtue we
buoy up
in sorrow
to soothe.
Not Engendered
Now this,
the moment it happens,
must be taken up
not without some sense
of between,
not created,
but feels it at
the moment
it shapes thoughts
into the mind
of itself. Perhaps the
moment it happens
the thought of which
it leaves
is simply indifferent
and now this is
not engendered.
In Tint
Where magnitude is smaller in tint, diminished like a
pyramid peak shadowed in difference. How the half-moon
is whole. A mountain ridge fleecy in cloud. The
indistinguishable star unseen. If what shapes is by evening
alone there is a segment unspoken for. When the rich
slowly sunk, their shapes grew paler.
on rises
what blends the whole
travels across light
not coloured things
and no unbroken
singing in the tender
of a softest
vaporous autumn
shapeless at long intervals
and a shade deeper
yet through the hues
with sadness
rest on rises of summits
pen-place
fretted on
my ears
hum / haw
tick / tock
haw / hum
tock / tick
humming
hawing
ticking
tocking
tocking
ticking
hawing
humming
my ears
fretted by
ticking of
the hawing
tocking of
the humming
wrote it down
wrote
it
down
an effort
to recollect
modification
of ideas
in the
pen-place ear
Smile
The soul’s reason
a smile after sickness,
light dropped
by glow-worms
stretching after stars.
Sickness smiles, then,
half-willingly,
half by system
and the other
whirling for joy.
This is the system
for reasoning,
light at an end
through looking-glass
the reason it displays.
A prayer
of the human species,
a force of the gust,
kissing itself in
tales of continuance.
Falling
things
sinking
drop
down
fall
fall
dreaming
expecting
sink
down
all
things
sinking
sinking
asleep
sleeping
lie
down
wishing
dropping
sleeping
asleep
all
things
lie
dreaming
lie
lie
Desuetude
Disinterestedness in its pool. An island of foam. Listen to
the instance of a dim sameness anywhere it is knowingly
a philosophical word. Desire not to give. The intensest or
absolute as plurality and betwixt. By infinite change there
is nothing of novelty. To excite or gratify as intolerable.
Dark with not pleasure. Where it is in the degree of being
clear, chosen through desuetude.
Writing
Indifference of place
in sunset and
from there supported
by immediate impression.
And noise of stops on
damp paper,
these stains on white
of black.
Sound of the unseen.
The unaffected spreads
like a full passenger
in the sky.
Impulses of sullen white
lighted the sky
and black clouds
are writing.
sent breath
breath sent
with the mind
into dissimilar
as the same
shall the same
from the pre-imaged
be the nature
of its being
but being
intensely similar
requires another
for its support
must that
same force
the same
other be
breath sent
as the same
into dissimilar
with the mind
The Word It Illuminated
What I am writing
I am writing
so illuminates the word
before it yet is.
Now at the pencil-point,
a stream of associations
are shadow, but luminous
and beautiful.
I am writing what
I am writing
so the word is illuminated
before it is yet it.
A Mundane Cause
Without consciousness, and not physically, the closest
approach to a mundane cause is in its sense of resistance.
Time to form space. Whatever resists limits. Action fits
presence arising from the interruption of motion. So of the
soul and in the soul, life is unlimited. Cause may be. Not
what is supposed as it is in us. The fits of synthesis.
Motion is the feeling, and the infinite that is unlimited, as
absence exists continuously in and whatever is limited.
Going forth. Whatever.
Former Friend
It is as it is, even as has been, that never more can you be
or have been
as close as formerly, in my heart and no more there, and
how once near.
A friend, because you have been, you experience as a
former friend
close to my soul as through a fault near to my being
though now no more.
Been, therefore, never more, it is natural you were near
to what formally
was and close to my heart and soul to have been thrashed
out as a friend.
Recollection of Duty
All duty is felt a corroboration of myself. Associative
common sense. The command from without. Sophistry of
this solution from shallowness. I awoke this morning at
disruption. That interruption of itself. Would eye of the
merest naturally call up the effect wholly? Our pleasures
and pleasant self-chosen disease. And thus without any
after I have observed. Duty, therefore, by more as it is and
as soon as recollection.
having
having figured
for emotion
in a way /
having remained
in a breeze
of may be /
having figured
hours will
come them selves /
having remained
when men
are a sleep
maybe away in
themselves this
time