leonardcohenforum.com

In fact, that may be the way they came up with the name of it, Jimmy. Makes perfect sense when it comes to selecting brand names.

I like your interpretation much better, Cate. It follows MUCH more consistently, with no need to zig or zag, than mine did. I might could've come up with other thoughts on that one stanza, but I literally couldn't come up with a single other thing. As soon as I read it, I saw Bush and that was the end of it.

I think you're far closer, if not right on, with your interpretation, Cate. Good job. I'd like to think that fatigue was the culprit in my not seeing it that way. Who knows? Too late now. I think I'll go with yours, if you don't mind.


~ Lizzy

First of all, I want to apologize to every one who has ever
private-messaged me, or e-mailed me, or just plain posted
a response to something I posted, --and never gotten a
response back from me. Whatever you must think of me
for that (-and I know it can't be good, because I feel the same way)
-please, at least, don't read into it any kind of implicit response.
Because it's never that. It's always just plain old writer's block.

As of this moment I have written a 20 page essay
explaining what I mean by "writer's block". And it's
no where near finished. And it's nowhere near
getting close to having even a single a point to make.

But it just now occurred to me that that in itself makes it
an excellent example of exactly what my problem really is.
And so I should leave it at that. Which is just what I'll do.

And that feels really good.
It always feels good to cut out reams of crap from my writing.

Which goes back to something my father said when I was a kid.
He used to read out loud at the table. And one day he read
an article from Time magazine. But he had to keep stopping
because something about it was puzzling him. There was
something about the article that reminded him of something,
and he couldn't put his finger on it. You could almost feel
his frustration as he tore the magazine into molecular sized
pieces and filled the air with it, until you couldn't see two
feet in front of you.

It came to him a few days later. And it was that Time
Magazine's always exasperatingly convoluted way
of getting to the point had reminded him, he said,
of the beauty and grandeur and great literary qualities
of the King James Bible.

And as an example of that he next proceeded to read, out loud,
and very slowly, straight through, one of the longer "begat"
genealogies in the Bible.

Which was very funny. I mean the way he did it.
Or so I thought. But perhaps only because I was his kid.

In any case, that, and some other things, were no doubt
what's responsible for the great value I have always placed on
getting right to the point.

Which creates a real problem for me. Because it seems
one needs a point to get to, before one can even begin
to think about getting to it.

If you have a point, of course, you can always get right to it.
(And I so very much admire that quality.
"mdidier" for example has that magic touch.)

Or, if you have a point to make, you can always
take the long way around to get to it.
It's entirely up to you what you what you do with it.

But if, on the other hand, you don't have a point to make,
then where can you even begin?

And that, my friends, is where I always am.

Moreover, to have a point to make, you need to know
who you are talking to. And why. Which requires at
the very least that you have previously exchanged
some points with them, or with people like them.
So that it becomes a "pulling yourself up by the boot-straps"
kind of thing. Like Venus in Furs. Moreover, you
need to wonder if your point is really for their benefit.
Or is it just to show off?

Considerations like that drive me up a wall.
Where they stall. And then I fall off the wall.
And if I had a rock, and literary pretensions,
then I'd have to mention Sisyphus at this juncture.
So it's probably fortunate that I have neither.

~~~

Cate asked me something in private that I want to answer in public.

She asked me if, when I post a poem, do I want people to just read it,
and perhaps gag, or orgasm, or whatever they do when they read a poem?
Or do I want them to take it to hell and tear it to pieces?

But that's really two different questions:

1) What kind of response do I want?
2) And how well do I take criticism?

The answer to 2) is clear and definite.
Criticism never bothers me. At all.
It simply merges seamlessly with the fabric of my own thinking.

(I do worry about people who have strong and persistent
negative emotions about anything that anybody ever says
in a public forum. I mean, I'm human too. When pricked,
I bleed. But, due to the mega dosages of vitamin C that I
used to take due to Linus Pauling, I heal in less than half a second.
(If you draw and quarter me, it takes a little longer,
- about 2 seconds --to pull myself together.)
I quite enjoy watching it happen in me. It's quicker
than thought. However, I have to be honest about this.
This trick of of seeing everything as water, and myself as
a duck's back, probably has something to do with
Gurdjieffiean training. And my own natural inclinations.
And I have noticed that some people are quite naturally
even better at it than me. But also that some others
never seem to get the hang of it, even when they try hard.)

~~

As for 1), - what kind of response am I looking for?
- I haven't the slightest idea. I don't think I have
any preconceived hopes or expectations about it.
I'm really just happy to start something - anything
- and even when it immediately goes wild.
Or especially when it goes wild afield.

(Which I mention because there was somebody
who got very angry when the conversation
drifted from "the topic" of one of his poem threads.
Which attitude boggled me.)

~~~

I'll cut to the quick now.

The responses that my "poem" here got
go way beyond anything I expected.
And they "tickle me pink" - as my aunts used to say.
I am very pleased.

And everybody was right-on!
Even Jimmy -- with his spam criticism.
(Which is very interesting, for a reason that should become clear in a moment.)

All except for Lizzy's interpretation of "hiding out in the open."

I wish I had meant it that way.
But the truth is that that would be attributing far
more contemporary social conscience to me than I have.

~~

My poem was an exercise in "de-slutting".
I used the artificial-deadline trick to get me over
that writer's block thing I was talking about.
I've used it before a few times.
I think that everyone knows or can guess how it works.

I told myself to write a complete poem in 10 minutes,
after which, whatever state it was in, -good bad or ugly,
- I would post it and never look back. Which is what I did.

I'm not saying that as some kind of excuse for it's low quality.
I did try hard to make it as good as I could.
I am saying that just to show to what extremes
I have to go to, to overcome that "writer's block" thing.
If I don't trick myself that way, I might never post anything.

~~~~

The whole thing evolved out of the "reborn stillborn" phrase.
Which I used once before in a very personal poem,
(which I can't talk about here). I like the phrase, a lot,
and some day I hope to make a good home for it.
(The current "poem" rather follows the current
housing market in that respect.)

~~
I also had the first two lines from before.
They occurred to me while watching "This Old House".

~~

And now, for what it's worth,
nobody seems to have gotten the Leonard Cohen quote -

My friends of that year
were all trying to go queer.
Me? - I was just trying to get even.
---Chelsea Hotel #1

~~~

Incidentally, the word "penis" does not make me think of V iagra.
(and THIS IS WIERD!)
Quite the contrary. It makes me think of my mother.
But allow me to explain.

My mother was a registered nurse. And therefore she
subscribed to the theory that it's best for kids to learn
and to use the correct terminology for everything.
Such as "penis" for ding-dong.

(The net effect on me, in this case, was that I
developed a neurotic fear of being sent to a "penal colony".)

~~

And I did mean the title as a spam-like hook.
To be in contrast, specifically, to "Ish-ra-el's Repy".

Because I myself judge --- not whether a poem is good or bad,
--but whether it's likely to be worth my reading it carefully or not,
- strictly by the title and the first two lines.

Which is, as often as not, the wrong thing to do.
However, it is a fact that everybody on earth, and everybody
who has ever been on earth, has written at least a dozen poems,
so there are literally billions and billions and billions, plus one,
of them lying around. And so therefore some kind of triage
is absolutely necessary. .

~~

I'm not criticizing Jimmy's poetry.
But his titles of late, -- eg ---
--- Ish-ra-el’s Reply
--- Heideggeresque in D Minor
--- Colleville-Sur-Mer, Normandy
--- Samhain*
--- Winter - Fort de Soto, Florida.
--etc.

have probably grabbed me the opposite way he intended.

"Ish-ra-el's Reply" in particular bothered me.

As a matter of fact "The Penis that Sticks Out"
was directly inspired by "Ish-ra-el's Reply".

(Peniel -> penis)

~~

And I did look up "Ish-ra-el", - with that spelling, - but I am none the wiser for it.
I think the least Jimmy could have done was to put one of his '*' footnotes on it,
and explain it.

It's very affected. Particularly when the syllables are broken up like that.
What's the point of that? And who is the poem for?

But what really bothered me was his explanation --

Matj and Boss, thanks for your reflections.
This poem came to me as I reflected on the relationship I have with clients, mostly adolescents, who are in trouble, troubled, or who are slipping into dependency/addiction. There comes a point in the process between us, that I hope and pray that they have a 'Jacob' experience; in other words, that they fight with their inner selves and meet the man who will tame them, or break them in. I can only point them towards Peniel, I can't fight for them. I can encourage them to confront 'the man', I can't be the man that 'maims' them.
For boys especially, but for girls as well, I'm sure, it is important that they meet the man who will make a Man of them.

I don't know what Jimmy does, but it apparently it involves some kind of counseling.
And since I don't do anything nearly that good, I shouldn't criticize too cavalierly.

But it bothered me that he refers to the people he says he hopes to help
--as being his "clients". Which may just be an accurate word for what they are.
But it's cold.

When I was a kid in trouble - troubled -and slipping into dependency/addiction,
there were some who tried to push the religious solution on me.
And others who tried to push the Weather Underground solution,
or the Arian nation, or Mexican brown. And I didn't take kindly to any of them.

But there are lots of kids who do, like Konrad Lorenz's geese,
take to the first thing that looks like a mother to them,
- Charles Manson, David Koresh, Osama bin Laden. Leonard Cohen.
And I have a thing against all such pushers. Because they are only in it
for themselves. And their advice is useless.

When all of your advisers heave their plastic
At your feet to convince you of your pain
Trying to prove that your conclusions should be more drastic,
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Anyway, that's what motivated my poem.
Trying to see the kids as people, with legitimate problems,
--and not as 'clients'.

Any adult ought to be able to help any kid.
Because we've all been there.

But we forget. We become blind.

Or that, anyway, was what I meant by them
"hiding out in the open."

Before I settled on the LC quote ("trying to get even")
that was the line I worked on the hardest, because I wanted
it to say that I know how important these Kleenex problems
- which are just jokes to adults - are to kids.
In fact, in the scheme of things, they are really probably
more important in absolute terms than anything else.
But we forget.

Something happens to adults. It usually begins when they
have to work for a living. They acquire an agenda vis-v-vis kids
-and everyone else. They become pushers, of one thing or another.

And so the kind of advice that I was recommending to give kids
- instead of things like wrestling with imaginary men (-like a man?)
like in the Bible, (- practical advice?)
-was the kind of really practical advice that my aunts used to give.

And the most practical advice I know of to combat depression,
- which I implicitly use almost every day myself,
- is that, no matter how bad things are going for you,
- just remember that there are lots of other people
in the world who are having a much worse time than you.

So yes, I guess that was an "eat your broccoli" kind of thing.
Silly and trivial. But useful. Or that, anyway, was the idea
I was after. Something practical. Vs Peniel.

(Curiously, when I was growing up, it was always
"kids starving in China". So it's "Ethiopia" now?
How about "starving on the Prada runway"?
Would that work better with some kids today?)

(Note: it isn't about being somewhere on the relative-misery scale.
If that was the case then there would have to be the most miserable
person in the world. And who wouldn't think it's them? So it's really rather
that there are an awful lot of very different kinds of misery
in the world. And that nobody can have them all at once. So that
there's always somebody worse off than you, at least in some
respect. Eg, right now would be a great time to have toilet
plumbing problems, if you must. Because all you have to do
is think about what's going on in the space station right now.
Then you can't help but smile.)

Again -- I don't mean to criticize Jimmy's poem.
Just think of mine as a 1950's "answer song" to it.

Eg, The Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack",
-- was "answered" by
The Detergent's "Leader of the Laundromat".

It was Ethiopia when I was a kid
and btw - writing a 20 page essay on writers block is a very funny joke.

Manna wrote:It was Ethiopia when I was a kid
and btw - writing a 20 page essay on writers block is a very funny joke.

Manna, I told you, I bloody told you- now someone has written a poem about a penis! Well, bugger me..

michael

N iagra Falls
V iagra rises

Any way you cut it, it seems to me you have these reversed.

N iagra Falls
V iagra rises

When reversed, they can work on still another level.


~ Lizzy

... the great value I have always placed on
getting right to the point.

Which creates a real problem for me. Because it seems
one needs a point to get to, before one can even begin
to think about getting to it.

If you have a point, of course, you can always get right to it.

Hi Greg.
As a girl from Ithaca
I find it necessary that this message comes to you from me.
The point is the journey.
You can let yourself think that the point is the point, whatever that point is,
may it involve Niagara Falls or not.
And sometimes it is. But don't forget to love the road.

Living is the meaning of life. It's no big secret.
You don't even have to be enlightened to know this.

(Oooooooooooooh, now ain't I the wise old sage?)


and for this:

First of all, I want to apologize to every one who has ever
private-messaged me, or e-mailed me, or just plain posted
a response to something I posted, --and never gotten a
response back from me. Whatever you must think of me
for that (-and I know it can't be good, because I feel the same way)
-please, at least, don't read into it any kind of implicit response.
Because it's never that. It's always just plain old writer's block.

I do wonder, but you are forgiven every time.
I still like what makes you Approximately Greg.

Cate asked me something in private that I want to answer in public.

She asked me if, when I post a poem, do I want people to just read it,
and perhaps gag, or orgasm, or whatever they do when they read a poem?
Or do I want them to take it to hell and tear it to pieces?

grrr…That’s not what I said cheeky. Hey where did that gorilla picture go?
Gag… orgasm – if you want readers to have that kind of fun with your poem you’ll have to do better then simply mentioning the word penis.
Gagging might be alright, depending on you intended audience, if you want to appeal to a more general group though you might want to go with a softer approach. You could try putting your penis in interesting locations or have him engage in some kind of action or adventure. More characters usually help. Perhaps you could lose the hammer (again I’m sure there’s an audience for that sort of umm specialized type of thing – it just might be limited) …
Sorry lost my train of thought I was just thinking I should check out this old house – it might be a different type of show then I thought.
What was I saying – oh yes a friend – you might want to give your penis a friend – male, female a banana peel it doesn’t really matter it’s just good to have a little romance in that type of poem.

All the best

Cate

Greg: A Response:

Just to give context here and a few explanations... by way of clarification:
The poem Ish-ra-el's Reply is a respnse to what I believe is a central moment in a man's life, that man being Jacob. The story is told in Genesis 32. 23 -32. The story of Jacob's struggle with the angel or god. Another rheading is: Jacob wrestles with God. The name Israel in my poem is rendered Ish-ra-el, to bring out the meaning of Jacob's new name:
Ish = man; Ra= struggle; el= god.
Peniel is, again, mentioned in Genesis 32.32 "Jacon named the place Peniel, 'Because I have seen God face to face, and I survived.'
El = god. Peniel, I am presuming, means a place where one meets God face to face.

The word client, as I used in my note of explanation to the poem is the 'proper' or 'professional' term used for a patient. I don't see my "clients" as patients, but I use the term in its professional sense as a mark of respect to them.

The poem is "about" many things other than my surface explanation of it being about my clients. It is about me, my self also. It's about what most of us adults go through on the way towards maturity, growth, development, change ect etc etc etc etc ... the "etc" is important here. Greg the poem is not meant to be pushing any solution especially a religious one on anybody... BUT I DO BELIEVE the BIBLE can be a source of inspirational mythology about who we are as man/woman.
I see Genesis's Jacob as important as, say, Dante's Virgil, Joyces Bloom, Eliot's Prufrock, in that these figures offer us a model/myth or emblem/symbol of our humanity.
In Jacob's case, and this is what I am trying to explore in the poem Ish-Ra-El's Reply, is my belief that in order for us to claim our deepest humanity, personhood, or Ego (in Freudian/Analytical tradition) or Self, we need to do battle with our inner demons/angels/god. It's an old and revered tradition. In the case of Jacob, after he struggled with God, God changed his name to Israel. The changing of one's name is a religious tradition... it is symbolic of a person being reborn, renewed, a new man... women not excluded...
I belief the therapeutic relationship, not a cold relationship,Greg, is an opportunity for the Therapist/Counsellor ( or morew accurately, fellow traveller)to seize the moment of challenge and guide the person towards taking on their demons/gods/angels, only when they are ready to do so. Again, as one would hope, after the therapy/counselling, one sees oneself as renewed, reborn... the name changing symbolises this change... Therapy/counselling is about effecting change in a person's life...
You are right, Greg, these things cannot be imposed on anyone. It is a sacred thing. If the "client" (for want of a better term) is not ready, unwilling, or won't or can't, then the the individual's freedom to engage or not is sacrosanct.
The poem itself, as a piece of art, was "inspired" by a moment in my relationship with a particular seventeen year old male who was going through such a struggle with his addiction. I saw it in "biblical" terms, (please note the small "b"); but I saw it only in biblical terms because I knew the story of Jacob and could see his struggle as an emblem/symbol of what this particular seventeen year old was going through. I did not push any agenda, religious or otherwise... It was merely, my way of understanding another man's struggle with himSelf.
The "Reply" in the title "Ish-Ra-El's Reply", is MY response or my reply to what this particular seventeen year old was and is going through. It is a poem more about my Self than about anything else, really.

I'm not sure what you mean, Greg, about my other poems and their titles, but briefly:
Heidegger-esque in D Minor is a response to one of that Existential philosopher's passages about Being and beings...
Collevile-Sur-Mer is the military graveyard in Normandy... I believe it is the one depicted in the film Saving Private Ryan...
Samhain is the Irish word for Hallow-E'en.....
Fort De Sota is an actual fort in the Fort De Sota National Park. Gen Robert E. Lee was commander there before the Civil War...

Thank you for your deep reading of my poem... I hope I have sufficiently clarified what was intended...

Jimmy

It's better to have never been born
Than to be reborn, still-born time and time again.

This little stitch sticks to me too. It makes me sad, but it's a sadness I can bear. I threw in a comma, hope you don't mind.

Jimmy wrote:The story is told in Genesis 32. 23 -32.
The story of Jacob's struggle with the angel or god.
Another reading is: Jacob wrestles with God.
The name Israel in my poem is rendered Ish-ra-el,
to bring out the meaning of Jacob's new name:
Ish = man; Ra= struggle; el= god.

What I meant was, I don't recall ever seeing it
split up like that before, --as Ish-ra-el. And with the 'h'.
And I have not been able to find it anywhere. The closest
I could find was in Mark Smith's book, "The Early History of God",
where he mentions that

...Eshbaal ("man[?] of Baal/Lord")
and Meribbaal ("Baal/lord is advocate/my master")
in 1 Chronicles 8-9 were altered to
Ishboshet ("man[?] of shame")
and Mephiboshet (from *mippiboset, "from the mouth[?] of shame")
in 2 Samuel 2-4. The changes in these names reflect
the supposition that these names witnessed to
an acceptance of Baal. However, ...

So Smith considers it arguable whether "Ish"
means "man" ("[?]") --or not. (At least in "Ishboshet".)

And "Ish" certainly doesn't mean "man" in "Ishtar".

Although it doesn't occur in the Bible, "Ishtar" is semitic,
-cognate to "Astarte". (The Sumerian was "Inanna")

And "Ashtart" is usually interpreted as "Star",
or "She of the Womb", and has nothing to do with "man".

Other names in the Bible related to "Ishtar" are
Ashtoreth, Anath, Asherah, and Esther.
Which are related to "the religious items collectively called the asherim."

"The asherah was a wooden object symbolizing a tree."

If you interpret "ish" (or "ash") as "man, then you'd
probably want to think of this tree as representing "man"
or "mankind", for standing upright. However it was
actually more like what we sometimes mean by "bush"
these days. Or, at any rate, it symbolized fecundity ---

Various pieces of iconography indicate that
the tree was the Canaanite symbol of the goddess
and represented her presence. K. Galling compared
the asherah to a stylized tree on a clay model
of a cultic scene from Cyprus. O. Negbi has published
drawings of several pieces of Canaanite female figures,
often considered divine, with trees or branches
etched between their navels and pubic triangle.
--Mark Smith, "The Early History of God"

~~

Like I say, I don't recall ever seening "Israel" split up
as "Ish-ra-el" before. But I have, very often, seen it
split up as "Isra-El", in which case it is, usually,
said to mean "man-god", or "god-man".

Here's what Barbara Walker says about it in
"The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" ---

Isra-El
Philo said Isra-El was a Jewish king in Phoenicia, who dressed
his only-begotten son Jeud in royal robes and sacrificed him as
a surrogate for himself. {Frazer, 'The Golden Bough'}

The Bible said Isra-El was the royal name taken by Jacob
after he battled all night with a man who was God (Genesis 32)
- which meant not an angel, as the story is usually interpreted,
but an incumbent sacred king embodying the divinity.
Jacob was the "suplanter" who next took the name
of the same divinity. The suffix El meant "a deity,"
male or female - though Bible translators invariably rendered it
"God" - and Is-Ra may have originated as an androgynous combination
of Isis and Ra, or else a father-and-son combination of Osiris and Ra.
In any event, it was a god-name much older than the story of Jacob.

~~~

Apart from that, I don't know what kind of addiction you were referring to.
But they are all comparable. And from personal experience I can confirm
that the attempt to kick a heroin habit does sometimes turn out to be
a bit of a struggle. (But sometimes not, eg, when it was a purely physical
pain it was covering up, - or a psychological pain that is completely
resolved by other means.) But the struggle isn't with any kind of god.
Or god-man. It is definitely with a monkey. A monkey on PCP.

The struggle in breaking addiction is purely physical. Not spiritual.
Not mental. It has nothing to do with the mythical concept
of "will-power". Or "jihad". And you can no more help an addict
get through it by talking in metaphores about God and Jacob,
than you can help a dog forget its fleas that way.

The only way anyone gets over addiction is by surviving
the few weeks it takes to withdraw. Things like
methadone and nicarette seem to help, but at the
expense of making it take longer, which increases
the chance of failure. Time, really, is the only solution.
So you might think it helps an addict to remind him that
it takes a long time, but it's a finite amount of time,
and there is a great reward at the end. However,
the addict isn't really able to think about anything
like that, or about anything. And the only way you can
really help them get through it is to help them occupy
their time, with trivial pursuits and mindless distractions.
Things like Backgammon are probably ideal. Or you
can "teach them to dance", if you can. Whereas
if you try to make them think deep thoughts, then
you only induce frustration, which just increases
their chance of failure. And if you try to make them think
about great heroes, such as Jacob, you're only reminding
them of their own failures, which makes them feel inferior,
which therefore increases their chance of failure.

Jimmy wrote:The poem is "about" many things other than my surface explanation of it being
about my clients. It is about me, my self also. It's about what most of us adults go through
on the way towards maturity, growth, development, change etc etc etc etc etc ...
the "etc" is important here. Greg the poem is not meant to be pushing any solution
especially a religious one on anybody... BUT I DO BELIEVE the BIBLE can be a source
of inspirational mythology about who we are as man/woman.

When an addict gets over a physical addiction, then, yes,
he is in the same position as everyone else is in , only more so.
That is to say, everyone has dozens of essentially interchangeable ways
of indulging themselves when they're feeling down. But, obviously,
the ex-addict has to find different and more effective ways of rewarding himself,
than the ways he's used to using.

And everyone needs to be interested in something outside themselves
in order to feel that life has meaning. (Poets, such as LC, being no
exception, in so far as they regard their lives objectively.)

And I DO BELIEVE that there is no reason why the BIBLE can't be
such an outside interest. I have long been interested in it myself
(althought not in quite the same way many others are.)
But in any case, what I'm saying is that I DO BELIEVE
that the benefit that many people obviously do derive from
the Bible has very little to do with anything about the Bible itself,
It's far more to do with it simply being a interest in something
outside themselves. Wheras for someone else a fascination
with collecting bubble gum wrappers, say, could just as well
give their life meaning as some others say the Bible gives them.

Everybody feels that whatever they love,
would be loved by everybody else, if they only knew.
( "If you knew Susie, like I know Susie - Oh! Oh! Oh! What a girl")
And everybody proselytizes. I mean, what greater pleasure
can there possibly be than pinching, and rubbing, between the
thumb and forefinger, a shinny new colorful waxed bubble gum
wrapper, smooth as a baby's bottom? Or working out the details
of a Clifford algebra? Or thinking about Jacob -> Israel?

Or that's what I BELIEVE. And I also BELIEVE that the proven
benefit of councilors, psychiatrists, ministers of the catholic
sacrament of penance (the confession), and bar-tenders,
and so on, such as it is, is 99% due to the simple human
contact of it, and only 1% due to the esoteric knowledge
of human nature they are supposed to have.

However, I just re-read this --

Jimmy wrote:I can only point them towards Peniel, I can't fight for them.
I can encourage them to confront 'the man', I can't be the man that 'maims' them.

In other words, as I see it now,
we have been saying exactly the same thing!

~~

That happens sometimes.

~~

I, however, would have written your poem more like this --

To journey to Penis you must first
cross a river, step into the arid
sands and stay where scorpions sting.

There you must wait for the little man
to come. If he arrives he may
taunt you into a confrontation

that you must not avoid and
you must not be overcome, even
after you have been maimed.

This little man will then sue for peace but
still you must not let go until
you demand, and have been granted,

a blessing. There is a story told
by women who never have journeyed,
that the penis does not really exist.

There is truth in what they say.
For they have not met the little man nor
been maimed on the plains of Penis.

or something like that.

Greg:
And I DO BELIEVE that there is no reason why the BIBLE can't be
such an outside interest. I have long been interested in it myself
(althought not in quite the same way many others are.)
But in any case, what I'm saying is that I DO BELIEVE
that the benefit that many people obviously do derive from
the Bible has very little to do with anything about the Bible itself,
It's far more to do with it simply being a interest in something
outside themselves. Wheras for someone else a fascination
with collecting bubble gum wrappers, say, could just as well
give their life meaning as some others say the Bible gives them.

Yes, Greg, whatever floats the mythical/symbolic boat... even bubble gum wrappers... if it works...

In other words, as I see it now,
we have been saying exactly the same thing!

~~

That happens sometimes.

~~
At the end of the long night of the soul that indeed does sometimes happen...

I, however, would have written your poem more like this --

To journey to Penis you must first
cross a river, step into the arid
sands and stay where scorpions sting.

There you must wait for the little man
to come. If he arrives he may
taunt you into a confrontation

that you must not avoid and
you must not be overcome, even
after you have been maimed.

This little man will then sue for peace but
still you must not let go until
you demand, and have been granted,

a blessing. There is a story told
by women who never have journeyed,
that the penis does not really exist.

There is truth in what they say.
For they have not met the little man nor
been maimed on the plains of Penis.


or something like that.

I love this poem, Greg.... great stuff...

Thanks again....
Jimmy

I love this poem, Greg.... great stuff...

no it isn't.
it's stupid mechanical satire.

but it is interesting how changing a single word like that
can result in something, if not quite meaningful,
potentially meaning something so very different.

so, if i had to criticize your poem, i might say
that its sensitivity to such a small change
- ie, its total dependence on esoteria like that
- is a weakness, not a strength.

but it may just be a matter of personal taste.

A poem about esoteria is in order

but....
I'm not even going to 'tempt it...

Right, Greg... it's probably a matter of taste...

Jimmy