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| Fuxi and Nuwa by Anonymous |
"Mythopoeisis is the act of shaping a myth into a new form, of making it anew; now I believe each of us does this poetic act daily, only we are not conscious of it, but myths, if alive, are always being renegotiated; we cosign them once more each day we wake up and go about our lives; but the action is unconscious. Poetry makes these processes conscious."
"...the individual psyche cannot, much as often it would like to, to be separated from the collective. Understanding the archetypal nature of our waking life and of our dream life would go a long way to revealing this truth."
-
Dennis P. Slattery, from an
Interview with Archetype in Action
________
“I have never traveled through West Africa! I have only seen
East Africa.” I shout to the unconcerned on a bus through mud flats on the
outskirts of town in Ghana. “It’s more industrialized here.” Suburban homes,
colorful and well-roofed lie interspersed atop the unstable ground. Nothing
grows here.
The plains shake off their sanded winds out onto a horizon
as flat and majestic as any under a dim gorge of sky above. We approach an
underprivileged village. The beams of their homes show with skeletal fright, a
ghost of a shelter buries the inhabitants under a schema of incongruous monetary
divisiveness. I am let out here with a group of excitable travelers. After a
few bitter hours gazing into the masked poverty, the rest saunter off, straight
into the shale-thin horizon, across the plain desert, leaving me behind to my
shameful enjoyment.
The first unusual occurrence I notice is an old man, an
elder, conducting witchcraft rites from a burlap, animal hid covered hut,
half-emerging from a height of wires in the modern town center. He presses his
hand up against a carved, convex piece of bone and wood overhead, pressed into
the ceiling of his dusty keep. With that, the town comes alive. Animate
devotion is surpassed unto grandiose might through communal dance, a powerful
music enticing all to couple and find happiness in group intercommunication
through a thankful greeting of sprites.
Then, chaos breaks loose from the fire. I disentangle the
group of its emotional stability. I use a dull knife, a metal shard from their
central structure. Cutting off hands and brazenly ambushing in an intoxicated
insanity, bloodthirsty, I drive the community from their healthy nest. Only a
few bodies remain, hanging onto life with the remaining ligaments and tendons
still connecting their pulse, vibrating with accepted fate, a spiritual murder.
I flee. Following what I had learned in the village, I begin
to collect seeds in the wilderness, these are jujus of flight. I need a new
identity. I received wind of another African meeting, in the next town. Before
I can get there, the Red Cross identifies me, soon to be incarcerated, deadened
with madness I swallow the seeds. My flesh speaks of me, it says, “I am
guilty.”
________
Murder
"If you commit murder, it signifies that you are engaging in some dishonourable adventure, which will leave a stigma upon your name...If you have a dream of murdering another, this is a warning that you must keep in control of your temper and emotions at all times and not get enraged to the point of murderous intent...You may also have some repressed anger at yourself or at others." (iDream)
________
clockwork porridge
spread over an island tongue
marauding, blasphemous
across seven oceans
timely
with education's pandemic drug:
the book
compromising home speech
on the First People's sand-quipped names
harboring love in their own unique hearts
with a history untold,
forgotten and enslaved to foreign grammar
to safekeep continued histories
of colonial struggle
in the vault of young minds
playing sound asleep
in the therapeutic mud
of their own beautiful creation.
March 7, 2011
Chinatown Calgary
