the revisionist

In this age of blossom, age of Bloom, reflecting,

Always astonished how it is between

The acts under Western eyes: 

The good soldier to the lighthouse; or

The good apprentice waiting for godot (in paranthesis); or 

The burning oracle… But O nothing, nothing like

The sun, loving the wheel of fire, the sense

Of an ending, is this fool-- a son saved! 

For it’s my homecoming, Amerika, 

Like the sleepwalker (a man without qualities) 

In the last days of mankind, in the storm of roses. 

O illuminations! parables! fragments! aphorisms! 

O the trial! the unbearable lightness of being

Guide to the underworld-- the cancer ward, the gulag 

Archipelago, the foundation pit, shadow lands… 

And during this visit a part of speech, hunger,

Tremor, guilt, exile …until 

The prophesied return later? …much later, the nightingale 

Perched on nothing’s branch, 

At war with the newts…

…A slow homecoming, yes, to

What I love in the past continuous, in traveling 

In my fathers’ court—(Barabas? his daughter?), 

In the fountain and tomb—a dress of fire 

At the stone of losses, a perfect peace 

Like the future in the present  (see under: love),

Or like the lost steps, labyrinths, the music

Of human flesh, dreamtigers, men 

Of maize, Paradiso! (the obscene bird of night) 

Or Like a change 

Of skin… O on and on! Traveling

In the family, now at a bend in the river,  

Now a dance in the forest. …Yet… No longer

At ease… For the harder they come 

--Arrows of god!— so come the

Casualties, things falling apart… 

Didn’t you know? …My foe 

My ‘brilliant career,’ an imaginary life

Now the professor’s house, the necessary 

Angel surfacing under the volcano 

With midnight’s children (in heat and dust…), 

My fables of identity a fringe of leaves,

Tender buttons (spring and all!).

An American tragedy? It can’t happen

Here, here in the palm at the end

Of the mind, here at the house of

Mirth—three lives (Lazarus laughed!). 

The garden of Eden? (Call it sleep).

In other words, world enough and

Time, time for the ponder heart working a vein of iron… 

Barren ground? a rhetoric of motives? or 

A cool million in cold blood? The price 

Of the ticket-- Seasons 

Of earth while bending the bow…

O seize the day invisible man! 

Make straw for the fire (pale fire), 

For wise blood, ancient evenings, for the second skin where

I’m calling from-- advertisements for myself

As the fixer, writing by the left hand of

Darkness, by my life as a man, as 

The moviegoer, child of god, a running dog 

In love and sleep-- with dog soldiers 

The central motion, the counterlife of 

My mumbo jumbo, of the little disturbances of man.

Time remaining? On wings of song the form

Of a motion, the dead father (speed-the-plow),

And the stars (were) shining, living together from

The first, findings, as the one day dimensions of 

History. Still, the continuous life, streamers

In the world of ten thousand things. Westward!

-- No nature?—River writing 

The rest of the way (earthly measures), a call 

In the midst of the crowd. The old and new 

Dark harbor.






Botsford, Alan. A Book of Shadows. Katydid Books, 2003.

a mamaist dive

In over your head remembering the dead? 

Fear is not an option plunging to the limits and 

Putting legacy on the line for big payday.

In order to sound the depths (no chance to cash in

On these angels), you must go 

To the verge of identity all your own, raising risk 

Of pressure (could mean trouble). But when disheartened, hang on. 

You’re not trying to invent utopias. 

Rather, “It’s a test to see how far you can go, 

If you grow on the earth in different ways.” 

These are great depths of yours, currently 

Being plumbed, whose proceeds will go 

To fund growth…until reaching bottom, 

Where the dead tell you:

Don’t damn the old money before ensuring

There exists sufficient supplies of the new.

But time now to come back up for air, for a crowded world,

As you make a beeline for the surface

To (scientifically) determine which states of being

Truly belong, knowing as you do now

There are mysteries you’ll never know,

Mysteries that stay hidden in nature’s darkness,

Like a light.

Botsford, Alan. A Book of Shadows. Katydid Books, 2003.

a mamaist I-sight

Star vehicle keeps rolling on, enjoying new

Freedoms with double vision opening up the past 

And seeing violence through the eyes of a child, how 

It takes the world by storm, irreversibly, like a sky 

Falling, shaking--deeply and thoroughly—the pillars 

Of one’s future all the way down to the ground. 

Can the pieces be put back together again? Is the fallout 

Like a looming catastrophe that you feel from head to toe, 

Which you can’t come out from under, like a shadow, unless 

Paradox’s vital presence (or is it wishful thinking?) 

Has its part to play, until when feeling freer to speak 

(As well as to act) the words needed to be said get your 

Wheels turning, and with the familiar now new, you 

See beyond the horrors to where cash is flowing on 

Unlimited credit, to where the bottom line’s ultimate 

Way of doing business (hyping this shaky terrain?) 

Is the story of your life without you, the toll paid 

For the troubled waters the road of excess has led you through, 

Though with room--like a loop--to move back 

(And on) as you roll upward into the eye of the storm.

Botsford, Alan. A Book of Shadows. Katydid Books, 2003.

a mamaist abyss revisited

The spooky art at heaven’s edge,

Diving deeper into shadow without moving a step,

The mind set free into the familiar

All over and over again, newly swung

Into action, for a truth once uncovered

Never stops being true, running on

Its own steam. But now catching wind

As a feeling, you go deeper, eavesdropping

On yourself, and the mind you hear you would

Compare to others, to otherness, resonating

In the fathomless depths where you hear

A voice calmly saying, I link, therefore I am

Dancing on the edge, on the edge between.

Botsford, Alan. A Book of Shadows. Katydid Books, 2003.

a mamaist pact

The dark is raising questions from the dead 

Among us, for justice done 

To the pain of the living, their spirit none 

The wiser or quickened by 

The answering stars in the sky… 

For darkness does its deed 

Out of need 

Of silence, whose desire-quelled heat limns-- 

Shimmering off the rock of the moon, round 

And round the earth-- and swims 

In the bath of space, then 

Plunges past all human time toward globes 

Where, emerging in the other world, earth disrobes

In unexpected tenderness, and shines there,

All eyes upon her, 

Before stepping back in the warm

Shadows where sleep, like a friend, will accompany 

Her for the duration, until personally

Summoned by dawn for the day’s intricate details 

(there are too many), there to form 

A new pact, honored in the making, between 

Tracks left in the road and the imagined journey

Made, true and awful, in obeyance as if to charms, 

From solemn start to joyous finish, that the dead, 

In having crossed this world,

Would be alive and well in the living’s 

Outstretched and welcoming arms.

Botsford, Alan. A Book of Shadows. Katydid Books, 2003.

a mamaist quick study

I’ve dug deep to bring light to the surface

But am no shining example myself.

Natural beauty casts its spell over me

Like a kindred spirit, while each artifice

I make makes short-lived eternal, seemingly.

I’ve sought milk from stone and half

Of me has thought, What if I poured

Shadows through a sieve? Could I hoard

The flow and pattern of its coherence?

But true to life my nirvana eyed

Its reflection like a tiger of nonchalance,

And what I could behold (before it died),

I would, and did--immortal as a glance.

Botsford, Alan. A Book of Shadows. Katydid Books, 2003.

a mamaist confession

how can one be proud of one's need of recognition?

yet one must needs recognize this need

and be proud of it, that it may lead 

eventually to a deeper recognition, to where recognition

is authorized, to where one might grow beyond the light, in luminous signs of the unrecognized

                                  *

daily we mix and mingle, and nightly our dreams yield up

semblances, resemblances, reassembled as

the flow of what we truly would want..., or need..., or are?

                                  *

the sneeze coming out of me, the nose running, the blessed

event, tells me with a shout I am released! so I run

off into the distance, and, from where I sit seeing my spirit come up short against the body, would, like a gust of wind, make

a true inroad of myself, a self on its knees to joy

                                  *           

sure our sentence is a long one--punctuated with sighs, sorrows, situated in a larger paragraph of time passing, surprising in periods, while always given, or seeking after, an even wider context of meaning, where meaningful attains to fullness; but 

when facing up to death I get tongue-tied; when falling in love, my syntax gets strained--your place or mine?--either way, this currency'll be restamped, superscribed as it is with the markings of a lovesick scribbler, by way of an ennobled cliche that has, yes, a mean and hungry look

                                  *

fodder for hell is what Rumi calls those

    who are heedless of beginnings & ends--

heeding the end, you achieve power & greatness, he says,

    by dwelling on results.

heeding the beginning (more rare), you achieve ambiguity,

    by dwelling on process. 

while our paradise simply would be pretext 

    of a 'shadowless shadow,'

in which is held accountable 

    the origin of the world






Botsford, Alan. A Book of Shadows. Katydid Books, 2003.

a mamaist ars poetica

     In my black sleep a voice says, "Change your feet."
    
                       　 And I do.
                           
     Then it says, "Change your hands."

                           And I do.
                           
     Then it says, "Change your legs."

                           And I do so.
                           
     Then, "Change what is small. Change what is big."

                           And I do that too.
                           
     Then, "Change what is near. Change what is far."

                          And without hesitation I do.
                           
     And when at last the voice says, "Change your heart."

                           in that moment it's as if I hear 

     a 'click' and suddenly everything is falling 

                           into place at the same time as







Botsford, Alan. mamaist: learning a new language. Kamakura, Japan, Minato No Hito, 2002.

a mamaist home

One day upon returning home I said,
    Is anybody there? 
    Does anybody care?
And I heard a voice calling back to me, saying:
    Voyager, welcome!
    Settle down in these depths--
    Make yourself at home. 
    But know also that your reservation
    further on down the road 
    is already booked. 
    We're expecting you.
And home for me after that wasn't what it used to be...

Another day when I came home I said:
    Don't they know what's mine Mine MINE
    is not theirs Theirs THEIRS!
    The difference is nothing to sneeze at!
And I heard the voice say:
      Hardships prepare you 
     for the work ahead.
And home for me after that wasn't what it used to be...

Another day on arriving home I said,
    Hey! I wanna join the club of bards!
    Who's holding all the cards?
And the voice said to me:
    Down in the dumps? 
    Taking your lumps?
    Why, it's more than you can bear?
    Time to learn the ropes, and beware.
    This isn't everyone's cup of tea,
    nor should it be.
And home for me after that wasn't what it used to be...

Not long ago I returned home and said:
    What in God's name is going on?!
And the voice said to me:
    Drifter, settle down!
    How many times are you 
    going to burst today?
    Put a lid on it! Pipe down! 
    What goes unspoken
    goes golden.
And home for me after that wasn't what it used to be
 as I went on falling into the openness of the world--




Botsford, Alan. mamaist: learning a new language. Kamakura, Japan, Minato No Hito, 2002.

a mamaist gloss

     




     The title says, Listen to the noise love's been making...
     The first line says, Anybody can speak these lines. (And since 
            I'm anybody, I am.)
     The next line says, I was raised as a parody, a patchwork.
     The next line says, Our town was famous for spreading
            hollowness.
     The next line says, My name was rejection. I was called
            "No-tie, No-two-me." But who could live like that?
     The next line says, When the mirror commands, "Reverse
            everything!" then is the homecoming you seek perceived.
            For here, beneath the beatific dream, is Buddha.
     The next line says, Yes, you're a wild cool lazy poet who can  
            paint the moon a delirious egg and is crazy friend for life.       
            But to achieve true identity you must make a name for your 
            Self! Love has to recognize this distinction.
     The next line says, Now go ahead! Untext the load. All art can   
            heal by helping us recall who we are... For out of these    
            cleansing waters the snake emerges an eagle.
     The next line says, Swimming out in the deep: it takes a lot 
            of concentration...
     The next line says, Remember, this is a sacred process--a   
            human being is being formed here. If you're afraid, others  
            will be afraid too.
     The next line says, Stop trying to be with the moment that's  
            just passed. The point of our trip is that we love each other.  
            We gotta live our dying!
     The next line says, Now, let's go down and see the light...
     The next line says, In trying to unify the threads of a disturbed   
            psyche, everything happens in the same instant as you're     
            letting go.
     The next line says, It's a kind of surrender to the moment, and 
            a deep deep listening...
     The next line says, Here walls have ears... money talks...
            time flies... opportunity knocks... and ideas catch fire.
     The next line says, Facing your pain may at times be 
            overwhelming, but by a leap of faith you realize you are     
            connected to others.     
     The next line says, For deep down we are all brothers and  
            sisters. The aim, for the mind not yet prepared, is to live    
            this reality.
     The next line says, Yes, you may think you die and that's 
            the end. But it's just the beginning. The moment that you 
            die is the moment you are reborn.
     The next line says, And, yes, it's true--everyone should know    
            they'll be going out the same way they came in--in a  
            blinding flash of light!

    
    The next line says, But not too deep now, not too deep...
           You see how it's all connected--how the writer's life and   
           the writer's light are converging? how going home is the   
           waking up from all your dreams?
    The next line says, Now entering a new phase--acceptance
           and tolerance of these depths and all its contents.
    The next line says, O isn't it wonderful to know something you 
           can't see but know is there? Be glad you saw it so others 
           could see it.
    The next line says, Yes, you thought you were hearing a story of 
           your Muse,  but what you've been hearing is the Muse of 
           your story.
    The next line says, Now rest your weary bones, so you can fight 
           another day. What's in store is a brightening of your life.
    The next line says, In the meantime, given an opportunity
           to reflect your moral self you will be trying to give others 
           what you got. But you'd be better off just walking naked 
           through the world.
    The next-to-last line says, Be not afraid: Mistakes will have a    
           way of pointing you in the right direction.
    The last line says, And, remember--placid placid lifts the 
           mind up.





Botsford, Alan. mamaist: learning a new language. Kamakura, Japan, Minato No Hito, 2002.

Dadirdydebil

          Now Reader, hold fast--you're in for a crude awakening!
          It's time we got this show underway da udder way
          and were together, you and me, all-one at last:
          for I'm the soldier in an all-out war
          who, upon learning how to read REDRUM
          in the writing on the wall, sees
          what he hadn't seen before--
          how we all get away with murder;
          I'm the once-and-future poet
          who, upon climbing her poet-tree 
          goes out on on a limb, unforks her tongue,
          and tells the whole world her storked story;
          I'm the rabbit in the screen cage
          who, by projecting from reel to real,
          animates the loony New Age,
          then hops out cagily and says,
          THAT'S NOT ALL, FOLKS!;
          I'm the dei-man, the Sissy-fuss Elf,
          the soul's survivor of the Fall 
          (R.I.P., from my p.o.v., is a non-stop R.E.M.
          where every D.O.A. is a V.I.P.);
          I sing and dance this girdy-birdy
          in every un-un's womb-sleep. 
          For I'm Dadirdydebil, don't you know?
          I word the world together by try-all and eros,
          plucking appellations off the Tree of Know-how
          and creating doublebolical meanings everywhere
          -- O to my ear to err is erotic!
          As a born lyre I'm forever being told:
          OH KNOW YOU DON'T! YOU SHOULD NO BETTER                                                         THAN THAT!
          WIPE THAT SIMILE OFF YOUR FACE, RIGHT NOW!
          But that's a rite -- isn't it? -- we all should urn
          (I'd be lying if I said I was lying).
          For with laws as walls,
          and innocence in the sense the allest wall,
          what else is a human being human to do?
          Binary thinking puts us in a bind
          and makes us all pair-annoyed, and 
          unless we lose this chain of thought, 
          we won't have a legacy to stand on.
          As for me, I'm just (pardon the fun) keying on
          where it says, LOCK! DON'T TOUCH!
          And such places, mind you, I'd never break in-two,
          nor would I ever pryde myself in, either
          -- I've got more-roles, after all!
          I prefer, instead, going behind the seen
          where see-sins circle in an endless psychle
                     and every moment's a peek experience.
          And the best way in, I've found, is in-word
          (by the spy-role stare-way) where
          once past the Guard and into the Den
          I spy w/ my mind's I sth beginning w/ Y,
          I spy w/ my mind's I sth beginning w/ O,
          I spy w/ my mind's I sth beginning w/ U --
          beyond the sly-test doubt the greatest show on earth!
          For don't you see? Everyman's a womb-man!
          Just look below your waste... remember how
          Dadadnotsobad, man-nipple-elated by whore-moans,
          got Mamanotsogood oaverly excited?
          Remember how, in a flash, ex-static
          at the thought of being human, you went
          merrily merrily merrily down the tubes
          to catch forty winks in the Waist Land?
          And remember how, bursting at the seems,
          you ex-seeded yourself and finally up-peered,
          ruddy or not, an 8-lb. prime-evil mothersucker?
          You see (anyone can see it's a conceit) how
          I'm always being re-membered for my Body?
          This isn't just idol talk, either:
          bearing the Cross of the Truth-of-fiction,
          I write wrongs based on hysterical fact, 
          make whatever's latent blatent,
          and say what I mean mirrorly by meaning what I say
          (You can, too -- if you say you can't, it's cant).
          For with each syllable both a silly label & a mything link,
          what's a word worth if not a thousand pictures?
          The evidence is in Eve's dance with Adam --
          in which the phallus says, DON'T FAIL US!
          and the uterus says, UTTER US!
          and the fetus says, FEED US!
          and the carrion says, CARRY ON!
          -- and when all's sad and dumb there's no place like OM.

          Now there are some who say, IT'S SATANIC!
          But I say, IT'S A TONIC...
          For I make a conscious Joyce
          to demonstrate my demon's trait:
          I enjoy pulling off the tab -- boo! --
          and letting the hole thing come
          (the pleasure's all mine, and what's mine is yours)
          out into the open where (O, pun it!)
          pubic hair goes public.
                     -- For not having anything to hide
          is one's greatest treasure!
          But be aware -- a new sense 
          can be a real nuisance
          (if Saul can turn Paul, warrior
          may turn worrier, or therapist the rapist).
          For in order to get from HA-HA!
          to UH-OH!
          to A-HA!,
          one has to go through an awe-full "ache."
          Then once your I's grow Y's, you stop
          asking the reason why -- you just
          mind your own peace and cues.
          Ha-ha! The yoke's on you!
          This motherlode's been unloaded!
          Do you God it now?






          _______________________________________
          The power of the Word is brought to heal
          only by a daring feet of the Imagination.
          But remember -- toeing somebody else's line
          is self-defeeting, unless it tickles your fancy
          or touches the depths of your sole.
          Reader, kneel thyself.

Botsford, Alan. mamaist: learning a new language. Kamakura, Japan, Minato No Hito, 2002.

mamaist reconciliations

rivals turn partners in a soul's wink
there are nobody's shoes to fill anymore
we like to look at it and leave it,
for in taking, there will be nothing left,
in leaving--look, no footprints!

*

I am a sick animal too
releasing this energy, pushing it
through, makes me feel better too

*

songs of surrender in this big sleep
the secret scroll we're all learning to read
walking a dark trail, approaching unseen
time to face each other out in the open
this adversary and me-- 
we both need translating

*

you'd think we would've learned by now
these missing bits and pieces
is the old secret
of brothers and sisters
coming together to offer 
the world a new skin,
that says, That's who I am!
to old habitual ways of being--

karate expert, huge sumo wrestler,
wise sensei, silent ninja,
robotic salaryman, submissive geisha --
these stereotypes would put us -- yes, us --
out of action...
Mr. Smith versus Mr. Muto, punch! versus chop!
Say it ain't so!  versus Ah, so!
you want to get in on the act, 
worm, after fertilizing this soil, 
then keep burrowing till you reach
the other end of the earth...

...you are now entering the City
welcome to the Soul's bedrock


*

here's what it's like:
a bird released from its cage
makes its way to wide open spaces,
only there's a huge window
between the bird and the wide open spaces

until the window can be opened,
there's no getting anywhere

so stop beating your wings and making
such a fuss
if you stay still long enough 
you might even see your reflection in the pane

*

yes, we keep coming back to meet ourselves
shadow puppetry is one of the oldest forms
of entertainment,
what did you think this silhouette was made of
--words?


*

every time you reach a crossroads it's time
to open the doors again
the rich/poor divide inside you,
the one always asking if the price is right,
makes the flow possible,
while negotiating the price makes
the world outside habitable

*

all this coming and going
in our dreams 
cannot be contained by words,
feelings run too deep
in the stillness--
 the way I'm dancing this dance I don't even have to get up 

*

re-creating moments, you think, is some kind of homage?
to what?
in loving memory of my mother
or in loving memory of my father
is your brokenness speaking
which, in being spoken
as a voice saying, Welcome to the Great Outdoors, Nature Boy!
makes your being whole, and your whole being
worthwhile

Botsford, Alan. mamaist: learning a new language. Kamakura, Japan, Minato No Hito, 2002.

a mamaist b-ing

it gets so you start worrying 
things would start falling
away from you, if their being
other than they are were to start getting 
more intense, but focusing
for a moment on feeling
the tension rising 
in you is a way, you realize, of not forgetting 
how one thing
as much as another thing
(or anything
else) can be a wellspring
of imagining
in which everything
--from what you're not seeing and hearing
to what you're not thinking and feeling--
can be a seeming plaything,
and if at times it's like hanging
by a shoestring
over the abyss's deepening, you keep from worrying
too much on account of the painstaking
way the branching world has of reminding
you that, with all things being
equal, our living
through the suffering
of these infrequent raptures pales when considering
what might be lurking
behind, or beyond, say, a painting or a piece of writing
that didn't itself have an inkling,
an innerspring
of desire for everything
else, including 
what it's trying
to become, as in something
of a process, an indispensable, indisposable 'othering'
of the world through being
itself  (with you or without you), and what it's like, like a human 
being
on the wing,
capable of being
imagined, as in conceiving
oneself without uttering
a thing, 
as simply being,
in itself rewarding,
a rewording,
not by relating, not by identifying,
but by fascinating, entrancing,
like the action and the fact of a swing,
oscillating




Botsford, Alan. mamaist: learning a new language. Kamakura, Japan, Minato No Hito, 2002.