A brush dipping into a hot spring
Painting pictures
Of the unconscious
Bringing forth ancient elixir
Colled waters, golden words,
Words beyond thoughts once dormant
In their aboriginal form
Now spawning in the caverns and canyons
Of the Psyche
Poetry, poetry, the robust tail of memory
With a heavy mane.
Ms. Dickinson sat alone in her room in her wicker chair by the window. Whenever she wanted to leave — whenever she wanted to write a poem — she stepped into her own world of poetry and love. She stepped naked into her soul, her being, and brought back bits and pieces, poems that were whole psychically.
How to read poetry? Read it with your eyes closed and body open. Let the poem seep naked into the soul like raindrops into dark rich soil. Ancient years ago, before the age of reading, poems weren’t passed on paper, but were sung and told by traveling bards. If the poems withstood the ear test, they lasted.
One must let go of the mind and listen to the lines, the poetry, the wind. How to read a poem with your head blown off? Let go of the mind’s robotic thoughts. Listen with ancient ears to the soul’s song. Listen as one does to a lovely sunset and what’s heard under chirping birds. Don’t ponder a poem with the mind-phone on unless you are seeking form and meter, the outer surface of the poem.
Read poetry with the soul’s mind and body open, listen with the soul’s ears to the waves of rhythm and sound. Read without thinking, without syntax, grammar, and punctuation. Read without preconceived notions of mystic and mystery, without expectation.
Read poetry without thinking, to find what Emily Dickinson craved: a poem that blows the top of your head off. This way you allow the poem to start and simmer at your soles and toes, trickle up and touch your heart that does not beat or pump blood, and echo throughout your being.
