Maps of Mind

 

Painting by Antonio Dias

 

his sins made his map

vivid stains like so many

unlovely small continents

upthrust impertinent

blots upon blessed

blue oceans of grace

mental landmasses

shaped by intemperate

memories marked by

impetuous footprints

his telltale of days

as a prisoner of

personal credos

caught up in the

secular worship of self

egocentric religion

exposed disavowed

by the wisdom of time

all those ill-conceived

places abandoned

in late-rising shame

when a touch from his

newly lit elderly torch

put his map to the flame

all those badly made

journeys consigned to

a past best forgotten

no need to revisit

re-find nor remind

those locations befouled

by such utter contempt

from an ignorant heart

maps of mind

seek and serve

to guide souls unaware

of the virtuous path

no small irony that

it’s within the gray smoke

of this burned

graybeard conscience

in willful destruction

in guilt-driven

self-immolation

inside of that map-smoke

lay the path to the truth

God’s conviction for man

now plainly revealed

Skyfall

 

“Geopoliticus Child Watching Birth of the New Man” by Salvador Dali

(Originally posted February 2014)
 

pulsing like the blood of a star
our imperfect symmetries
map out an atlas of eggshells
broken in the fall from a sky rope
ambition tried climbing with
gloved moody hands till shocked
by a sound that concussed the
thin air lost their promising grip
the great noise came from mouths
of swarmed murderous microbes
unleashed by indifference they
screamed with malignance of hunger
and now in calamitous aftermath
pieces of eggshells lay rocking
with insult on curved broken backs
staring up at lost destiny even as
they became slowly devoured and
changed all the maps of the world

Atlas of Clouds

“Blue Sky” by Julia Swartz

gazing skyward
a lifetime of clouds
mapping shapes
of the places I’ve been
softly evident
privilege and pride
banked beside
hard and harrowing
circumstance
enclaves of childhood
youth middle age
and seniority fixed
within nation states
founded to foster
the phases of
living and learning
of loving and leaving
discrete in their purpose
inhabiting change
as I multiplied roles
tandem tenants of time

gazing skyward
a scud of locations
whose borderlines
backlit by sunlight
give sharpened relief to
their gleaming identities
unknown to any
two eyes but my own
an ethereal octavo
printed with cumulus
memories passing
beneath a vast virgin
untraveled blue region
of precious few places
however imagined but
not yet experienced
singing themselves
in a flutter of folio
endpages calling me
voiced in the whispers
of soft summer winds

Vectors

“Instinct”
Painting by Bobbi Pearce
From pinterest.com

this map is broken
its routes leading
nowhere worth going

dead reckoning
path integration
should prove better option

vestibular memory
cuing an idiothetic
approach to new destiny

animals use what
the mapmaker doesn’t
the vectors of instinct

and man is an animal
no less equipped for
an organic progress

putting ear to the
inner voice opens the path
that enlightens the eye

intellectual journeys
have speed to commend them
and swift is arrival

accept no excuse
as an obstacle minds
cannot live standing still