John Rhodes
John Rhodes has published 3 books. One of them is in the process of being published. His first book was a poetry book called: “Spirits of Bondage and Inherent Transcendence”, his second was an avant-garde textual/podcast novel called: “Little Bird Told Me”, about the tragedy and triumph of a hip couple. His third book is a complicated mystical poetry book entitled: “Mystic Babylon Revisited”. He also runs a public access TV show which he also runs as a podcast. He has many web sites, but his ring web site is: http://rhodespoetry.com. The first poem in his new poetry book is dedicated to Jan Kerouac, the daughter of Jack Kerouac, who he lived next to, when they both were runaways and lived on the beach in Yelapa, Mexico, in the 60′s. All the papers read: “Jan Kerouac disappears and is nowhere to be found!”
Here is the poem:
The Ghost of Jan Kerouac
(Haunting divinity or random order)
Just as the truth is cloaked in mystery, you are a mystery Jan.
You are a mysterious query into tangled beauty.
You, that delicate jigsaw piece of the “One Mind”, have seen through the glass darkly, yet astutely.
Our brains, even though separate, are one in mirror mind.
Shattered glass doesn’t keep us from seeing our own symmetry beyond the, ego’s material bind.
We swept the broken glass under the rug…we kept our transient selves in our hats.
The clown mirrors that our fathers look at us with, reflect the delusions of an older generation.
We are to them like clowns who suffer indignation.
I can still see you in your peasant hippie dress.
My mind touches your mind… there is no need to confess your frustrations to your breast.
I feel your love, even as the memory of you blurs.
I can still see your demure face…and when your mind
desperately whirs, I can see in your eyes the connection between us in our rapport, as conversation manifested, and heated debates about life occur.
Why does the ego sever direct connection to the “One”, why is the “One” so glaringly pure?
We know the significance of us being a piece of the big puzzle but we don’t see all the pieces together melded as one demur picture…we seem so separate, but so cock-sure.
“Things slip by,” don’t they Jan?
My memory is flashing…this wheel is on fire!
I trusted you more this time around, a little less afraid of the distant look in your eyes.
I wasn’t afraid of you because in your eyes I could see the home-fires there that burn away the lies that burn so bravely as we both beseech one another for truth, while our small egos are judged and tried. Om.
“Don’t Ask Why is the Sun Yellow!”
It was one single ray, on that bright day of indescribable
beatific beauty…that left my fragile mind-body sense-less and my connections withered.
The voice of my soul became mute, because of the stark reality of the magnificence of that day, and the insignificance of my small and minute self.
On that day, private youthful feelings of extroverted expression of enjoyment were censored by vacant senior stares that were ominously acute as these elders gazed with a type of comprehension that was indecisive and dilute.
Sometimes I stared at that Yellow Sun above in fear, because I wasn’t permitted the intuition to know why things were the way they were, and the nihilistic searing of the Yellow of the Sun, was overwhelmingly awesome, and something beyond comprehension; it was something I could not compute.
There was no reasoning in that Orb, which was sometimes morbidly foreboding in its silent omniscience…foreboding it was, much like an unfeeling adult.
Persons posing as coy friends shared with me breathlessly, but without intimacy, as I tried to remain graceful.
I had a mysterious Picasso smile on my face, that I tried to erase, because I thought it lacked grace.
I don’t know what unknown authority we saluted in the form of that burning indolent Sun; it was as if there was a silent coup to cover up truths, and keep the young ignorant of what the wicked had sown, as muted horns stifled our consciences making us murmur half-cowering in seared obedience, to a strange hymn, that we didn’t really know the meaning of.
The double negative of the denial of social blindness, to the beatific one, was the denial of the body itself and the denial of even the rays of that unthinking Sun, as if life was itself an insignificant beatitude, and the blessing of the poor in spirit was a delusion of passion; a forbidden fruit.
