There Is Somethng Poem by Daniel Brick
There Is Somethng
There is something I must tell you.
When I think of it - its urgency,
its length - I stifle it. It sinks deep,
deeper, almost out of reach of thought
and feeling... You must know
there is a wide corridor in our minds
that runs past brain's daily tasks
into a cerebral gutter packed with
diverse thoughts, random feelings,
dreams, broken pieces of things.
They jostle against each other,
vying for attention, each one declaring
its superior worth, its individual
rights, that sort of thing. The gutter
gets clogged and nothing moves for weeks
until a brain-bolt surges the whole length
of the corridor and crushes anything
stagnant. Then the pure waters of the mind
flow freely, forging their course. For a time.
No, I haven't forgotten you, my friend.
Nor what must be said, what you - Look!
Over there at that delta of the mind's
great river, the interior Mississippi!
It is a feature of our human glory:
thought that never flags, thinking
that generates itself again and again,
a spontaneous flow of mind-stuff
doing nothing other than declaring
its existence... And so it goes.
Philosophers who see the whole
pattern caution us: Mind-Flow
does nothing for us, nothing
that nurtures flora and fauna,
nothing for the world at large.
It displays propulsive energy.
Some call it energy wasting
its needed components that might
otherwise serve a purpose. It
wracks my mind how all this activity
just circles itself in perfect
curving propulsion. Is that not
sufficient? To play at being
the inner Ouroborus, enclosing
energy in its circling concentration.
All this mental energy, ceaseless,
unpaced, eternal. Perhaps it is meant
to exist simply to shine over all
other existent beings: TO SHINE!
Oh, there was something I must
tell you, something that gathers
momentum, speeds up, races recklessly
toward no discernible goal. Wherever
we look - in the vast exterior world
or in the vast interior world -
we are its agonized witnesses...
Let us sit here, side by side,
on your blue plaid blanket and
watch the river flow into the sea.
And eventually we will see the stars
descend into the sea, and fire and water,
once at odds, will be reconciled.
By then, we will be asleep, locked
in a tangle of limbs, with those huge
currents of sea and stars flowing
within our deep psyches, alternating
at rest or in motion. Let be.
Eureka! I finally have a clue to what Walt Whitman meant when he said: Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes. Your poem mentions philosophers, who want to put everything into logical diagrams with letters and arrows, but poetry is beauty out of chaos, isn't it?
I read Summer Highlands first and liked the image of fire and water reconciled and the alternating movements of the entwined bodies. Then I found this one, and at first I thought I liked Summer Highlands better. But that was yesterday and the images of the interior Mississippi and thoughts jostling in the gutter has stayed with me. I think this will be a poem I come back to again and again!
Daniel, with its description of the mind’s landcape—vivid and recognizable—this for me is one of your best poems. The something of the title and mentioned at the beginning of the first and third stanzas is never named—unless I missed it. But as I understand it, that is not the most important thing if we accept the mind as the Ouroborus. The friendship as we witness and share together the outer and inner worlds—that is a something we need. - Glen
DANIEL, this is brilliant work! ! ! many myths are laced with truths either in concrete facts or established principles that use the myth as a vehicle to carry its point, there are really wide corridors as well as narrow paths in the subconscious..backing up for whatever purpose, then the sweet release that brings focus! , this poem is absolutely superb in every sense my friend! ! !
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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4/18/2024 9:05:23 PM # 1.0.0.1119
Brilliant! ! By then, we will be asleep, locked in a tangle of limbs, with those huge currents of sea and stars flowing within our deep psyches, alternating at rest or in motion. Let be....is excellent.