“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.”
― Jack Kerouac
Another trip beckons
A journey of the heart
in which my heart gets left behind
Pain in leaving
but the travel as always is good.
Old friends, old habits
learned a lifetime ago.
The laughter of innocence
amid the heaviness of today.
Still there is awe in the voyage
and my heart will remain
upon my return.
— G A Rosenberg
“Dear God, I want it all: the depths, the heights.”
— Theodore Roethke
Prayers to shell games
deific masques wishing for the extremes
and gaining them only
for the middle to drop out
I thought if I had the highs and the lows
I’d have it all
yet it is in the mid-ranges I thrive
Striving to understand
striving to learn
Striving to live
and missing the plot
that my life is scattered around me
the discarded and discarnate pieces
waiting to be picked up.
the wide ranges are great
agony and ecstasy
yet so easy to lose the plot
the context in which they all make sense
I want the colours and the greys
foreground and background to
and the key to make them fit.
Not out of a sense of greed
but of commitment to knowing the all
One eternity or another will be just time enough
— G A Rosenberg
“The poet…is the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signs…the poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds.”
— Jacques Derrida
Use my words
to find their meaning
play with their tone
to find their truth
concepts, shadowy but obscure
may only come from images
reflected in the mind’s eye
I use my meaning
to find my words
rolling from tongue to song
to ear to hear
what resonates
and is returned
Sense the tense
in words and truth
Release it
and it changes.
— G A Rosenberg
To me, all creativity is magic. Ideas start out in the empty void of your head – and they end up as a material thing, like a book you can hold in your hand. That is the magical process. It’s an alchemical thing. Yes, we do get the gold out of it but that’s not the most important thing. It’s the work itself.”
— Alan Moore
Process creation
within and without
something from nothing
but a spark and a seed
mixing and breathing
my will into being
with each colour and word
I continue
Manifestation
reaction and change
texture and pattern
and rearrange
Completion never
yet this piece is done
Another one starts
the void’s gift again.
— G A Rosenberg
Blessings, G
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Through Spirit Chambers to the Mountains by G A Rosenberg
“I earnestly confronted my devil and behaved with him as with a real person. This I learned in the Mysterium: to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because they are effectual.”
— Carl Jung
Gods and Demons walk among me
wearing each other’s drag
often in the same being
They speak with heroes
and hold debates
each one illuminates my process in some way
Archetypal imaginings
more real in some ways
than those I meet
outside my head
As I get to know them
they teach me
elements of being
they then move on
to be replaced
by talking space dogs and the like
Parts of me not yet realized
New shadows yet to cast.
— G A Rosenberg
“I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him… The land of tears is so mysterious.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
You watched in silence
your old home torn apart
not one word spoken
I didn’t know what to say
and you
you showed nothing
one tear washed down your cheek
and it was over
I would have saved that tear
like a precious gem
or kissed it away
The tears we shed in silence
the blood of emotion escapes
and it is gone
leaving only echoes
somewhere in our soul
Tho you cried
somehow it was shared
tho I couldn’t touch you
and the release
like the memory
is gone.
— G A Rosenberg
“Come from forever, and you will go everywhere.”
― Arthur Rimbaud
Beyond forever
lies the infinite
where anything conceived may be formed
We play there in imagination’s memories
as we construct sea foam realities
that live outside our dreams.
We enter through being’s void
and in dissolution we create
Next door a universe exists
for we dreamed it into being
and we straddle both
and so many more
through the hole
through beyond
— G A Rosenberg
“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”
~ Patrick Rothfuss
Words like daggers
aimed towards my heart
We war with our tongues and minds
each dying the death of a thousand cuts
tares in the flesh
and tears in the eyes
and it all seems to lose meaning
as the love bleeds out
Words of healing
a balm for the soul
We comfort and seek to mend the pain
each grieving what has been lost through war
wiping the tears
bandaging the tares
we seek to find the meaning
and relight the flame.
— G A Rosenberg
“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
— C.G. Jung
I drop a penny into my well
and wait for the landing echo.
There is much to see and hear inside
The sound of changing dreams
and compromise
The sad song of loneliness
playing at odds with the din of companionship
The anguish of uncertainty and doubt
with a counterpoint of hope
yet still the penny drops.
I find gods and demons exchanging masques
shifting belief structures in runed circles
hymns and dirges, invocational chants
and still the penny drops
It may never land
yet with each layer I come closer to the centre
of my soul’s heart awakening.
— G A Rosenberg
“Nothing is lost, nothing is created, all is transformed.”
— Antoine Lavoisier
You’ve drifted into memory
our love once present
now defined by absence
yet neither it nor
all I’ve learned from
the us that was is lost
I can revisit it
and make it better
with fewer mistakes
that we made
that I made.
Nothing is lost
My anger is transformed to regret
My tears to acceptance
and my love
well that still burns
a memory and definition of home
a collection of mental photographs
of joy I will feel again
— G A Rosenberg
In the Details by G A Rosenberg
