Monday Poetry Train #5

Sounding Central Truth 

by Joy Renee

What do you mean by denying a
Truth that is right before your eyes? 

Just because a neighbor neighs a lie 

And it seems easier to agree than to 

Say the emperor has no clothes? 

It is the naked truth that we must see 

And we must say what we have seen. 

We must retrieve the words from that 

Place where they reside, where they 

Are not yet hide-bound, where they 

Abound in unsounded musings. And 

Tell it from the crazy place where truth is. 

Write it from the dark place where light burns 

So hot it consumes itself. Where the weight 

Of reality draws real things into the 

Hole of no escape--the Event Horizon-- 

Where abide the convent of Graces 

Hidden from those who know their places, 

Who scorn play for duty, who know they are 

Safe only where none can accuse them 

Of abusing their faces by exposure 

To pleasure and beauty. Beware of 

Safety if you mean to defy the 

Word of the herd and speak from the place 

Where none worship the face. Decry the 

Lie that others live by and live to 

Conspire with Creation’s desire for 

Passion and wonder. 

Embrace the All. 

Consummate the meaning.
Sing the secret from your center.

(c) 1998-2007 Joy Renee

I wrote early versions of this poem in the late nineties as the half-decade of intensive reading in comparative religion, mythology and cosmology began to coalesce for me into the faint outlines of a new spiritual path which I could give my assent to. The early nineties had seen my painful break with the fundamentalist doctrines of my upbringing coupled with the startling realization that I had never learned to think for myself.

As I set out to learn how to think, I discovered that it wasn't only the sect I was born into that was guilty of spoon-feeding thought. The phenomena of group-think and herd mentality was everywhere from the peer-pressure at school and church to team-spirit, school spirit, patriotism, product commercials and corporate conformity. In the work-place, on the air-waves at home, church and school, and even in the halls of academia where some of the most meticulous thinking about thought was achieved, the attempt to impose boundaries on what was permissible to think and to enforce those boundaries with tactics both subtle and blatant was everywhere two or more people gathered.

This poem was rooted in my contemplation of the the complex interrelationship between conformity and creativity, between form and freedom, between composition and concept, and between the medium, the message and the mind. And let's not forget, the meeting of the minds, for the conundrum is that creativity involves bringing something new into being, which requires thinking outside the box but the only way to communicate between two minds is via a preordained (previously established and agreed upon) formula whether a language, a ritual, a culture, or a composition. And to further complicate things, these forms are constrained by the physical construct of our bodies and brains.

The title of the poem is the closest I've yet come to naming my spiritual path. Sounding central truth is my discipline for it is both passion and compass. My medium of choice is story and its components of grammar, word, rhetoric, character, conflict, climax and resolution. I seek always the epiphanic moment.

Note that all of the meanings of the word, sounding, are fully intended in the meaning of the title and the poem. Sounding as in making a noise. Sounding as in measuring depth. Sounding as in diving deep. Sounding as in touching bottom. Sounding as in testing receptiveness or comprehension. And the connotations in the word sound are here as well--sound mind and body, sound principles, sound thought, audible sound.

Thus the choice of the accompanying video of a diver swimming with whales and dolphins. Not all of the meanings of the word, sound, are reflected in there but many are and the evocative nature of its composition informs and deepens the meanings in my poem. What if your muse is like a whale that must measure the depths of Being's sea, to plunge to it's floor to feed, to rise again to breathe? How far down are you willing to follow? Past the point where the light of the known reaches and only faith and hope remain? Past the point where the lungs collapse and only the oxygen stored in the tissue remains? When your muse sings of its findings will you hear and respond? Will you find a way to transmute its song into a form that communicates beyond the boundaries in spite of the boundedness of form? If only your muse and you perceive a Truth, is it still true?

Visit more Poetry Train riders:

1. Robin L. Rotham 2. MyUtopia 3. RED GARNIER 4. Rhian / Crowwoman 5. Susan Helene Gottfried 6. Ann 7. julia