Preface Introduction To The Poet's Club

I have been a poet of some years under the name raxnae that I self created and seem to be the first to use such a name, and while some read my poems, some understand them to a certain extent, others less so, but rarely if ever am I asked "What is the STORY behind that poem?". Well it is here in the Poet's Club that we are free to share our Poetry with each other, comment and critique, but most of all delve into the deeper meaning and here from the poet themself the story behind their creation, their thoughts and feelings and generally everything leading up to the creation of their work.

You may also feel free to use this as a "philosophers" round table as before I was a Poet I was a Philosopher and good ol' philosophical pondering is always fun.

The Format for Poetry posts should be as follows.

POEM

Author's Comments about Poem (give the story behind your work as well as various interpretations, who knows someone may comment upon it and show you a new way of looking at your work)

 

Shapeshifter​

May 5, 2011 at 3:09am

The sound of the Drum’s
Heartbeat carried me
Down and down
I spiraled
Boom caw boom
Caw
Deeper I fell
Boom caw boom
Boom,
The base
Reverberating inside
The bottom of my skull
There
In the underworld
I met Raven
Standing on a tree stump
Glistening in the Sun
Chest, bared open
Like a wounded pomegranate
Her beating heart
Framed in ebony
Stared at me
Its red wet seed
Pulsing inside
The gaping void
She plucked it out
A tender offering,
“EAT” she said
And I did eat,
My vision blurred
And I fell to my knees
Flung my arms out
To catch myself
But they had become
Monolith wings
I stared down
The length of them into
Infinity
Its cry ripping through
My pointed beak
I cawed and crowed
Quivered and shook
Lunging myself
Upward to the sky
I flew over the land
And I saw all through
Corvid eyes
Black and White
One eye the Sun
The other the Moon
Out of this void
I flew
Rising on thermals
Of my fleeting human
Thoughts
Arching myself like
A steely arrow
Driven to its prey
Toward the eternal
Dark Star
Higher and higher,
Feathers spread wide
Touching the stillness
Where fingers once grew
Until I eclipsed
The whole world
Within my onyx embrace.




©Julienne Alvarez



​

This poem is my attempt to transport the reader into the heart of my shamanic event that occured in the early 80s. I went to a Native American drumming circle and was taken down into the underworld where i met Raven. And so it was there that I was initiated and given Raven's medicine and came to know my totem spirit.​

 

Very nice Raven, I see many correlations between my own Raven experience and yours. Love the Void Imagery. Those Shamanic Journeys can be quite the handful haha.

 

DE MORTUIS NIL NISI BONUM
{Speak Nothing but Good of the Dead}

Out in the graveyard;
inscriptions, words and plaques, all withering away;
like the flowers adorning them, so the dead do lay.
Waiting and waiting for someone to remember them
and not just in photoalbums or on the special days.

Memorials are built, meaningless constructions - lest we forget!
They all are forgotten, given time enough to sigh, to pass away.
The living are so busy preparing for their own demise, to die.
Little do they know, the busy ones, that the dead are still alive.

They watch over the living ones, they do, from a place so far;
yet so near they are, but why would they watch the way they do?
To understand the mystery is the noble thing to do - a gallant quest.
They wish to be remembered, to join in soul and mind , the body's zest.

A marriage betwixt the dimensions, a holy union in heaven with hell.
But can the fearful thoughts of the living see, their lovehearts tell?
The living are like snowflakes, made of water, so unique one by one.
But they melt away, to be fluid again - into the one great ocean, gone!

The dead are all one in the great seas, waiting to crystallise again in two.
To wake up to a new life again, as a snowflake-twin, asking: 'Love me too!'
Eternal life awaits the living, could they only reply to the dead's request.
But the alive ones linger and doubt, in vanity do they live their only quest.

SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI
{Thus passes away the glory of the world}
​

This poem was composed in 2001 in a period of transpersonal realism and it could be said to be co-authored by two states of beingness, rendered as 'Dead Alive Ones' with and complemented by 'Living Dead Ones'.

 

Nice poem Shiloh! I always love a good poem about life and death, and the Dead Alive ones and the Living Dead ones are potent metaphors. I've always wondered why we live as though we are dying and die as though we are living.