Poetry: Once more, Frank Polite

 

to stagger ashore,
free, cured of use;
simply to be, itself, a green bottle,
a message delivered,
a sailor, like me

Beloved Poems are, to me, like precious gems I keep in my memory box.  Sometimes I bring them out at need, to wear for a while, sometimes they are more like butterflies, mysterious creatures that seem to flitter across my inner landscape, messengers from the  Other Lands, asking me to remember, taste, touch............... For some reason, the words of  Frank Polite , words that  I've been hauling around in my box of literary treasures for some 40 years, did that today.  

I met him at the Cafe Med in Berkeley back in 1975.  Funny how something that happened so long ago can be so vivid.  I can almost taste the coffee, hear the espresso machine, the drone of voices at scattered tables, Frank looking up at me as I sat down at a communal table, a stranger with cup in hand. Our aquaintance was just that day, a conversation about poetry and art with a mild flirtation thrown in.  When Frank left he  gave me a book of poems, "Letters of Transit".   He never could have known that that little book was a friend, the poems travelling companions over the years, among my own restless "letters of transit".  Maybe he did, as we all seem to know things without knowing them.  I suspect he would have a good laugh about that one.

"The Last House On Luna Pier" was one of those jewels in the box, or perhaps I should better say "suitcase", as my own life has had much transit.   13 years later in 1989 I was an artist with my first residency at the Cummington Community, a wonderful artist colony no longer in existence.  I saw that Frank had been there, and wondered if he had perhaps eve worked on his poems in the room I was in.  All I knew of him was that he had moved to Toledo, and much later, I learned that he passed away in 2005.  I never got the chance to thank him for what he gave me...........

In 2009 I was crossing the country again, and on the interstate from Michigan to Toledo, I saw the turnout for Luna Pier, made wholly mythical in my mind and heart for decades by Frank's poem "The Last House on Luna Pier".  I never even knew it really existed,  a misty window of silent blue herons, the brooding presence of Frank's "Lake Goddess Erie", the liminal moment a poem arises from.  

Did I turn off? No.......I knew that the Luna Pier Frank seeded my imagination with was something I would never want to change.

Frank's writings have been published in The New Yorker, Harper's, Poetry, The Nation, Yankee, Exquisite Corpse, The North American Review and Denver Quarterly.   His Collection Letters of Transit can be found on Amazon.   Thank you Frank.

GOOD ADVICE

1

Do not rush to be disappointed with yourself.
Rather, make a world drag you to it
behind 24 mules of irrefutable proof, and you
still digging in your heels all the way
before you say, "I'm disappointed with myself."

2

Trust only inauspicious beginnings,
the modest seed. What comes
dancing toward you tossing flowers,
soon perishes.

3

It is the weed of life
that grips the garden to your need,
that roots you deep into its soil
which is immortal.

Photograph by Brian Comeau

LUNA PIER  (8)

A sea change leans against the pier
in tumult. I know why I'm here.
Cold streams, contending with the warm
grip the rocks as never before
in my life, and hurl up salt at my door.
What drifts in now is mine, cut loose,
thrown overboard, or drowned:
a wooden spar, a beached bone, a yard
of torn sail like an indecipherable
parchment. Even a shoe drifts in, kicked
around out there God knows how long.

I listen now. I witness. I do not
touch or twist at the integrity of each
survival. It is enough to have arrived
at all, embodying sea changes;
to stagger ashore, free, cured of use;

simply to be, itself, a green bottle,
a message delivered,
a sailor, like me.

 LUNA PIER (9)

I promise a poem to a blue heron.

Every morning, for a week or so, it stood
in the marsh grasses outside  my window,
perfectly still,
one leg poised in the air
as if it were about to kneel, or dip
its quill into a blue pool,  or disappear.

I never saw it move.

And when I turned elsewhere, to poems,
or coffee, or pacing the room,
the heron would be gone.

That last morning...
solitude of the blue heron.
Black branches of trees,
a light snow falling
through eaves of Heaven.

LANTERN

Next year I'm forty years old.
I don't know what hump I'm over.
To have made it this far, what
does that mean? Where am I?

Where have I been? Like you,
I've been places, New York, Asia,
Great fields uncut by wire
or river, mountains leaping up.

And O yes, oceans. I felt my way
deeply into each, into the mind
shafts permitted me, into
a flower (perfect on mescaline,

I laughed and wept for hours)
into the tenderness of people...
I've loved, worshipped stones,
written poems to moon and stars,

and depending on the deep and dark
of my downheartedness, I lit
a flame in my forehead like a toad,
imagining myself, at various

times, Lord of Earth, Light in
the forest, even...God.
Down the road with my lantern, I
lifted up the broken, the poor,

the ignorant, the hopeless, only
to come down to this: to be all of
them myself, at once. So what's
it all about? I don't ask anymore:

I am one with the insect and cloud.
I beg my life to lay me down at last
gently if possible, or fast, the way
a horse, plunging into darkness

kicks a stone out of its path. 

THE BLACK BUTTERFLIES

The black butterflies of night
Clipped for sleep to nightshade and widow grief,
Or in shaking luminous flight
On paired and silver wings, are rare,
And rarely seen by human sight.

Yet, they are there, surfacing
Out of range of neons and streetlights,
Preferring underleaf
And the dark offshores of air
To man and moth-maddening glare of things.
Tonight, As crisis after crisis
Cracks our skies like lightning,
I think of death,
Of different ways of dying,
And of Egypt and the myth
That once held black butterflies
Sacred to Isis.

They lived forever in flight
In her private groves, compelled like
Flickering minutes
Never to touch leaf nor stone,
Never to rest, except upon her nakedness
When she turned to love.
And here is death to be envied;
To be crushed to a personal breast
Between goddess
And whatever bird, beast, lover
Fell to her lips.
We are something else. . .

Myth and love will miss us
When the night is suddenly turned on,
Turned blank white,
And the black butterflies
Appear against that vellum sky
As far, flitting, burnt-out stars.
 

 

My face inside

my cupped hands

my fingertips 

at my hairline

like soft pods

tapping the earth.

What is alive

at such times?

The night, the

silence of thought

wrapped in itself.

My skull is

a shell tuned

to emptiness, like

Love itself

before desire

created all things.

Black Butterflies.....Frank Polite

to stagger ashore,

free, cured of use;

simply to be, itself,

a green bottle:

a message delivered,

a sailor, like me

I don't know why this post from 2009 gets so many hits, but it does.......for some reason, lots of people seem to google "Black Butterflies".  So i felt like re-posting it.  And I still wish Frank was around to tell us more about the Black Butterflies.

9/2009

Frank Polite 1936-2005

Today I looked up a poem by Frank Polite that I've been hauling around in my box of literary treasures for some 30 years. I met Frank at the Cafe Med in Berkeley back in 1975, and he gave me the poem in person, signed even. I've hauled out his little book, "Luna Pier" many times since......."Lantern", "The Last House on Luna Pier" are old friends, travelling companions he introduced me to that day. So I was sad to learn that he died in 2005, and I never knew.  What I remember, is vividly seeing his face over a cappuchino, while on the interstate from Michigan to Toledo in 2007. I saw the turnout for Luna Pier, mythical in my mind and heart now for decades, a misty place of silent blue herons, the wounded presence of Lake Goddess Erie. Did I turn off? No.......I knew that the Luna Pier Frank seeded my imagination with was something I would never want to change.

Frank's writings have been published in The New Yorker, Harper's, Poetry, The Nation, Yankee, Exquisite Corpse, The North American Review and Denver Quarterly. He lived in Ohio, and for more information or to purchase some of his books, visit: FALLEN CITY WRITERS.

THE BLACK BUTTERFLIES

The black butterflies of night
Clipped for sleep to nightshade and widow grief,
Or in shaking luminous flight
On paired and silver wings, are rare,
And rarely seen by human sight.

Yet, they are there, surfacing
Out of range of neons and streetlights,
Preferring underleaf
And the dark offshores of air
To man and moth-maddening glare of things.
Tonight, As crisis after crisis
Cracks our skies like lightning,
I think of death,
Of different ways of dying,
And of Egypt and the myth
That once held black butterflies
Sacred to Isis.

They lived forever in flight
In her private groves, compelled like
Flickering minutes
Never to touch leaf nor stone,
Never to rest, except upon her nakedness
When she turned to love.
And here is death to be envied;
To be crushed to a personal breast
Between goddess
And whatever bird, beast, lover
Fell to her lips.
We are something else. . .

Myth and love will miss us
When the night is suddenly turned on,
Turned blank white,
And the black butterflies
Appear against that vellum sky
As far, flitting, burnt-out stars.

GOOD ADVICE

1

Do not rush to be disappointed with yourself.
Rather, make a world drag you to it
behind 24 mules of irrefutable proof, & you
still digging in your heels all the way
before you say, "I'm disappointed with myself."

2

Trust only inauspicious beginnings,
the modest seed. What comes
dancing toward you tossing flowers,
soon perishes.

3

It is the weed of life
that grips the garden to your need,
that roots you deep into its soil
which is immortal.


LUNA PIER

A sea change leans against the pier
in tumult. I know why I'm here.
Cold streams, contending with the warm
grip the rocks as never before
in my life, and hurl up salt at my door.
What drifts in now is mine, cut loose,
thrown overboard, or drowned:
a wooden spar, a beached bone, a yard
of torn sail like an indecipherable
parchment. Even a shoe drifts in, kicked
around out there God knows how long.

I listen now. I witness. I do not
touch or twist at the integrity of each
survival. It is enough to have arrived
at all, embodying sea changes;
to stagger ashore, free, cured of use;

simply to be, itself, a green bottle,
a message delivered,
a sailor, like me.


LANTERN

Next year I'm forty years old.
I don't know what hump I'm over.
To have made it this far, what
does that mean? Where am I?

Where have I been? Like you,
I've been places, New York, Asia,
Great fields uncut by wire
or river, mountains leaping up.

And O yes, oceans. I felt my way
deeply into each, into the mind
shafts permitted me, into
a flower (perfect on mescaline,

I laughed and wept for hours)
into the tenderness of people...
I've loved, worshipped stones,
written poems to moon and stars,

and depending on the deep and dark
of my downheartedness, I lit
a flame in my forehead like a toad,
imagining myself, at various

times, Lord of Earth, Light in
the forest, even...God.
Down the road with my lantern, I
lifted up the broken, the poor,

the ignorant, the hopeless, only
to come down to this: to be all of
them myself, at once. So what's
it all about? I don't ask anymore:

I am one with the insect and cloud.
I beg my life to lay me down at last
gently if possible, or fast, the way
a horse, plunging into darkness

kicks a stone out of its path.

Strange Stats....."Caterpillars and Black Butterflies'

"The caterpillar spins or weaves the cocoon, and in that cocoon, what the caterpillar is creating is his own tomb. We don’t know if he knows that or not. And he crawls into it, and his body liquefies. Complete disintegration of caterpillar. But in that caterpillar soup are these cells that have been in the caterpillar’s body all along, called imaginal cells. Isn’t that a fabulous word? Imaginal cells. It’s called imaginal by botanists because the adult form of that creature, the butterfly, is called imago. So these are imaginal cells, but to me those cells are ‘imagining’ flight. And these imaginal cells know how to take the soup and reconfigure  that into a butterfly, an adult. I believe nature has designed us humans to go through a similar experience."

Imagine your Imago - Liberating the Imaginal Cells of the Human Psyche
Bill Plotkin

When I began this blog in 2007 to document my project "Spider Woman's Hands" as an Alden Dow Creativity Fellow I never really expected anyone to read my journal.  I've been delighted ever since to meet many kindred and inspiring souls through Blogger - thank you!

"la Mariposa"

I've also sometimes wondered at the statistics Google presents me on its stat page.  What is surprising are the posts that month after month attract the most attention.  Number one is always one I wrote about purple Jacaronda trees, and after that, consistently, a post about a "Green Caterpillar Synchronicity"(2010),  "Black Butterflies"(2011), and several posts about "The Butterfly Man".

I noticed these were at the top of the list today, which is especially funny, since I'm currently doing paintings about butterflies. 

I think often of sychronicities as spirit contact, affirmation, and sometimes as "living metaphors", as dreams made visible and hence open to interpretation on a multitude of levels.  Dreams and sychroncities are personal.....but they also reflect what is collective and archetypal. So I've pulled up again these two posts out of sheer curiosity,  this strange clustering of butterflies that is going on in my life these days, and apparently, in the life of the internet as well. Which, come to think of it, is one of Spider Woman's latest appearances.

-------------------------------------------------

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Green Caterpillar Synchronicity

(it looked kind of like this)

This morning I went to my mother's house to prepare her breakfast, and beside the door, on a "cat rug", was a strange looking fat green thing, curled into a little spiral. At first I thought it was a bit of plastic the cat had dragged home, but then it moved! Keep in mind that I live in Southern Arizona, where it is currently about 102 degrees, and there are very few leafy trees. I've never seen a caterpillar like this here, although obviously they are around.

I put it on a potted plant, the only thing I could find it might like to eat, although, sadly, the poor thing looks none too well for its encounter with a cat. Can't get over the fact that just yesterday I was writing about, and reading about, Phillip Slater's book  "The Chrysalis Effect"** in my previous post!


I think caterpillars represent, to me, what we are as a global humanity, adolescent, trying to mature, to transform. We're presently, like a caterpillar on a leaf, mindlessly gobbling up our world, eating up everything in sight. The hopeful thought is that there is an impulse, a greater force, within our collective instinct that will lead us into, and eventually through, the Chrysalis, the "imaginal" stage. So that we might become, at last, "winged, whole". Pollinators.......

"Butterfly Man" Netherlands, August 2009

 

**The Chrysalis Effect: The Metamorphosis of Global Culture

by Philip Elliot Slater

"The Chrysalis Effect shows that the chaos and conflict experienced worldwide today are the result of a global cultural metamorphosis, one which has accelerated so rapidly in recent decades as to provoke fierce resistance. Many of the changes that have taken place in the last fifty years - the feminist movement, the rapid spread of democracy, the global economy, quantum physics, minority movements, the peace movement, the sexual revolution - are part of this cultural transformation. Contrary to accepted opinion, the conflict it engenders is not a struggle between Left and Right, or between the West and Islam, but one taking place within the Left, within the Right, within the West, within Islam, within everyone and every institution." "Currently, the world is in the middle of an adaptive process, moving toward a cultural ethos more appropriate to a species living in a shrinking world and in danger of destroying its habitat - a world that increasingly demands for its survival integrative thinking, unlimited communication, and global cooperation." Today our world is caught in the middle of this disturbing transformative process - a process that creates confusion over values, loss of ethical certainty, and a bewildering lack of consensus about almost everything. The Chrysalis Effect provides an answer to the question: Why is the world in such a mess?"

Paperback, 242 pages

Published November 1st 2008 by Sussex Academic Press

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Black Butterflies

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

"The Ancient Greek word for “butterfly” is “psuché/psyché”(ψυχή, 1st.declension) which is used in the meaning of ‘butterfly’/ ‘moth’ by Aristotle and Theophrastus, though its usual meanings are :  breath, spirit, life, soul, departed spirit, ghost, living being, person."  In Ancient Greece the butterfly was a symbol of the soul, because it changes from caterpillar to a beautiful winged creature. Plus it has a shape of a double ax which was an Minoan symbol of the Great Goddess. Greek paintings often showed a 
small butterfly - "soul" - flying free from the mouth of the dead."

Yahoo Answers.com

What I'm trying to approach with my capture net of words is the magical butterfly, a black one at that, a creature that clearly exists on such an elusive multitude of dimensions and metaphors........that it's impossible to consider her mysterious flight without a "holographic" approach. Butterfly is a creature that flies right into the Dreamtime as she so chooses. So, I'll begin by slipping, momentarily and gratefully, back into mythic time and mythic place, the life-renewing, fluid land of the Fey, the imaginal.

I've spoken with many people over the years who have had mystical Butterfly stories, among them my friend Fahrusha (her name, in Arabic, actually means Butterfly), who recounts an amazing synchronicity with a black butterfly in her blog.  Out of curiousity, I looked up "Black Butterfly" on Amazon.com recently, and was stunned to find there were 27 books with that title. I think a black butterfly is about the transformation that happens when the Shadow, in Jungian terms, is also given wings, transmuted.  It is a perfect symbol of integral consciousness.

I have met many people who have told me about butterflies appearing in connection with the loss of a loved one, or at times of personal despair. I list below a site that is devoted exclusively to "miraculous butterfly experiences". **To me,  butterflies wonderfully participate in the interface between dream and waking life, flickering on the wings of synchronicity with their multi-dimensional messages, disappearing into the field of dreams just as mysteriously. A "Butterfly Experience" can be  intimate in the meanings they bear, and equally, universal and impersonal. 

Perhaps the most dramatic "butterfly experience" I had occured more than 10 years ago. Since this experience had to do with both dream and synchronicity, I don't know if I can tell it very cohesively, but I'll try.

It began with a disturbing dream. I dreamed I was on a ship, and on the deck many people sat in deck chairs, all of them playing with masks, taking them on and off. I seemed, in the dream, to be two people at once. I knew that there was, down in the lower decks of the boat, a demon. One of the women that "I" was was a kind of priestess or missionary - she was about to descend into the depths of the boat, where the demon below would torture and kill her. She thought that if she did so, offering herself as sacrificial victim, she could save the people above.

The other "me" was a cynical observer who thought she was a ridiculous martyr, and knew everyone, especially her, was doomed. I woke up as the "martyr self" began her descent.

Without going into the circumstantial and psychological meanings of this important dream, I'll skip ahead in real time. About 6 months after having this dream, I actually found myself, with a lot of actors, and a few masks, on an old decommissioned ocean liner (the "art ship"), which was anchored in the industrial harbor of Oakland. I was acting in a movie, TRAGOS, written and directed by  Antero Alli,  and he had decided to do some of  his filming in the very bottom of this 5 level boat; the old, cold, dark, dank, cargo bay.

Descending into the bottom of the boat brought my dream back vividly, and every superstitious notion of prophetic dreams I ever had came right to the fore.  I was going to die in some way! I didn't like it there!

Between shoots, the cast hung out in what must have once been the crew's cafeteria - located in a middle deck, it had round portholes, all of which were closed because it was a cold day in March. As we waited, the Director offered everyone a card from his own fascinating deck of oracular cards (with his artist wife, Sylvie Alli), and there was lively interest as each person contemplated his or her card.  I took a card from Antero with trepidation, and sure enough, damn if it wasn't the "DEATH" card.

Not five minutes later, as I stood with the card of doom in hand, a small orange butterfly landed on my shoulder.

There was absolutely no explanation for how that butterfly could have gotten into that closed room. I had lots of witnesses - and after the miracle revealed itself, several of them helped to catch the butterfly and get it upstairs where it could be released.
 

As a kind of synchronistic post-script, in 2005 I was back in the Bay Area for a two-person show (with Rye Hudak) at Turn of the Century Gallery, in Berkeley. The movie "Mirror Mask" was premiering, and I remembered how, when I opened my gallery in  Berkeley in 1998, the first thing I was inspired to do was create a mask made of a mirror.  I was also surprised that, of all the works in the show, the gallery owner chose to put on the card announcing the show  "The Butterfly Woman". 

When I arrived in Berkeley to hang the show, I went to nearby Cafe Trieste for a cup of coffee. Two stacks of cards were on the table there, side by side.  One was the card for my show with the image above. 

The flyer next to it was an announcement of the premiere of a new movie by Antero Alli called "The Greater Circulation" (inspired by the life of poet Rainier Maria Rilke). The image on his announcement was a face encased in a skull - a Death's Head.

  

Frank Polite 1936-2005

to stagger ashore, free, cured of use;

simply to be, itself, a green bottle,

a message delivered, a sailor,

 like me

Today I looked up a poem by Frank Polite that I've been hauling around in my box of literary treasures for some 30 years. I met Frank at the Cafe Med in Berkeley back in 1975, and he gave me the poem in person, signed even. I've hauled out his little book, "Letters of Transit" many times since......."Lantern", "The Last House on Luna Pier" are old friends, travelling companions he introduced me to that day.  Now, so many years later, perhaps I even better understand them, I have become larger, or more transparent, and can see into them a bit more.  I'm glad of that.

In one of my many cross country rambles I was sad to learn that he had died in 2005, and I never knew him in those intervening years.  Yet I vividly remember  seeing his face over a cappuchino and the smoke from the espresso machines, defying both time and space, while driving on the  interstate from Michigan to Toledo.  

I saw the turnout for Luna Pier, made mythical in my mind and heart  for decades, a misty place of silent blue herons, standing like silent sentinals before the  the wounded presence of Lake Goddess Erie. 

Did I turn off? No.......I knew that the Luna Pier Frank seeded my imagination with was something I would never want to change. 

Thank you Frank, wherever you are now.  

Frank's writings have been published in The New Yorker, Harper's, Poetry, The Nation, Yankee, Exquisite Corpse, The North American Review and Denver Quarterly. He lived in Ohio, and for more information or to purchase some of his books, visit: FALLEN CITY WRITERS. 

THE BLACK BUTTERFLIES 

The black butterflies of night 

Clipped for sleep to nightshade and widow grief, 

Or in shaking luminous flight 

On paired and silver wings, are rare, 

And rarely seen by human sight. 

Yet, they are there, surfacing

Out of range of neons and streetlights,

Preferring under leaf

And the dark offshores of air 

To man and moth-maddening glare of things. 

Tonight, 

As crisis after crisis

Cracks our skies like lightning, 

I think of death, 

Of different ways of dying, 

And of Egypt and the myth 

That once held black butterflies 

Sacred to Isis.

They lived forever in flight

In her private groves, 

compelled like 

Flickering minutes 

Never to touch leaf nor stone, 

Never to rest, except upon her nakedness

When she turned to love.

And here is death to be envied; 

To be crushed to a personal breast 

Between goddess 

And whatever bird, beast, lover

Fell to her lips. 

We are something else. . . 

Myth and love will miss us 

When the night is suddenly turned on, 

Turned blank white, 

And the black butterflies 

Appear against that vellum sky 

As far, flitting, burnt-out stars.

GOOD ADVICE

1.

Do not rush to be disappointed with yourself. 

Rather, make a world drag you to it behind 24 mules of irrefutable proof,

& you still digging in your heels all the way before you say, 

"I'm disappointed with myself."

2.

 Trust only inauspicious beginnings, the modest seed. 

What comes dancing toward you tossing flowers, soon perishes.

3.

It is the weed of life that grips the garden to your need, 

that roots you deep into its soil 

which is immortal.

LUNA PIER 

A sea change leans against the pier in tumult. 

I know why I'm here. 

Cold streams, 

contending with the warm grip the rocks as never before in my life,

and hurl up salt at my door.

What drifts in now is mine, 

cut loose, thrown overboard,

or drowned: a wooden spar, a beached bone, 

a yard of torn sail like an indecipherable parchment. 

Even a shoe drifts in, 

kicked around out there God knows how long.

I listen now. I witness.

I do not touch or twist at the integrity of each survival.

It is enough to have arrived at all, 

embodying sea changes; 

to stagger ashore, free, cured of use;

simply to be, itself, 

a green bottle, 

a message delivered,

 a sailor, like me. 

LANTERN 

Next year I'm forty years old.

I don't know what hump I'm over. 

To have made it this far, 

what does that mean? 

Where am I? Where have I been? 

Like you, I've been places, 

New York, Asia,

Great fields uncut by wire or river,

mountains leaping up.

And O yes, oceans.

I felt my way deeply into each,

into the mind shafts permitted me, 

into a flower 

(perfect on mescaline, I laughed and wept for hours) 

into the tenderness of people... 

I've loved, worshipped stones, 

written poems to moon and stars, 

and depending on the deep and dark 

of my downheartedness, 

I lit a flame in my forehead like a toad, 

imagining myself, at various times, 

Lord of Earth, Light in the forest, 

even...God.

Down the road with my lantern, 

I lifted up the broken, the poor, the ignorant, the hopeless, 

only to come down to this: 

to be all of them myself, at once. 

So what's it all about? 

I don't ask anymore: 

I am one with the insect and cloud.

I beg my life to lay me down at last

gently if possible, or fast,

the way a horse,

plunging into darkness

kicks a stone out of its path.

Frank Polite