Author Archives: kenrei24

Poetry from Wisdom

This harsh exhale soothes me as gently as a summer breeze
As does this loving inhale chill me to the bone

These two are imperative to one another’s well being

I admit my foolishness now
I have not been listening

I’ve been smiling up at the sun while trying not to step on the thorns beneath my feet

These thorns that dot the ground grow by that same suns light
And the food that I nourish this vesicle with grows from the bows of these thorns

Lately, I’ve been running
Running to the sun
and my feet had grown bloody
So I tried to run faster
and faster
and faster
Till I was running on stumps ground down to the bone

Now I see with new eyes there is no thorns without sun
And no life without thorns

I can no more step over the pricks and prickles
Than I can stomp out the sun

This I have learned from persisting in foolishness
Which, I guess, was a blessing all
along

Poetry From the Forest

Insidious One(your best friend and enemy)

I know you, I have known you, I will you know you

Cruel Black Dragon

You slayer of kings

You sinker of ships

ride me low

till the tide breaks

and I am forced to flow

 

The longest journey With every footfall I’m learning to walk again I’m learning to talk again I’m learning to be silent…

 

Kno me?

Know one, can know me

unless they get to know me

unless they get close to me

so these judgments

I toss them out.

These words are fables

Spoken to attack me

I am the one who must know me

 

(re)relapse

Frozen defense mechanism

striped me bear

learning to flow

taught me to repair

growing out

not turning it

Shadows now rise to try and take me back again

 

\Growing Wings/

Arrogant Adolesence find pride in what they can

To build up

little egos.

To Block out the sky

Afraid to fly.

Its to high! they say, but they will pay with their blood

should they stay on the ground

for this is where the tigers stalk the living

already dying

weeping sores hidden under ragged clothes

punctuate the verbage

Arrogant Adolescence shake the youth from your eyes

your wings hide under layers of old flesh

Learn the struggle and the joy that is flight


W o r k

My job

My duty

is to accept

the un
expected

which so
defines                                                                         my      reality without

thesetethers

 

The Shaman Way

trance states, dance and drumming

transmutation: the mundane into the magical

surreality as true reality

Feeling is the most important compass

Playing with the moment

 

Exercises in Flow

Summon  a fire breathing pit demon

and ask it for dancing lessons

Playing with your future

like an REI switcheroo

make like a kangaroo

and bounce

watch, listen, learn

words to shift by

driving yourself crazy

with haze

its only a phaze

if your react to your plight

don’t fight, if you don’t want a snake bite

that slither in stomach

needs your to speak

Parsletongue

 

New Beginnings

Caterpillar crawling on a leaf

cant see past its next bite

wants desperately to melt away

so it consumes its weight in words

till it unfurls

from its cocoon, now a tomb

…and flies away

to a bright and sunny day

 

Siren Calls

I refuse to be drawn off course by the sirens calls.

They taunt me and tempt with false incantations

So that I may smash myself upon their rocky shores.

Stop. Wait. Listen.

Do you hear my soul?

Its beat is heard just below the surface

Where the waves cant reach.

 

Cult-aural Paradigm

Cultural Scion guard the keys to society

dictating what can leave and enter that tall keep.

Look down on those with fleeted feet not walking in lock step’s wake

and the meek shall inherit the dust

 

These fleeting moments

Wise words exchanged on backs of birds

We tie our minds and

Weave our wills

to common goals

we reach

at priceless artifacts to make sense of

our internal landscapes

 

Pen as my feet, feet as my pen

My feet make marks upon the ground

A whispering willow does not make a sound

Moonlight trickles between the leaves

A breeze brushes the land shaping it

                                                          by its hand

 

shackled———-totheshackled

Rigidity is death

Nature can attest to that

she teaches with the hand of experience

gentle at first

but with increasing fervor

till all is laid low

before her mighty breath

she speaks words of power

resonating with those who will listen

sending children to do the work

we pile the weight of ages on the back of the youth

with breaking back we pick up the pieces, but do we have time

to unravel this tattered tapestry of glitz and gold

 

N – Week 7 Log

This week I’ve been examining the relationship that nature has with shamanism while using the technique of the Siberian Ulchi people to reach deep states of being called trance states, these states of being are a meshing of waking and sleeping where the lines become blurred  and the subconscious rises to the surface in this way one can examine thoughts that would usually be pushed down out of fear.  This observation of the what we would call the shadow in western society allows for a decompression like effect to take place, bringing the shadow into the light allows for a reintegration of the world to heal the natural fragmenting process of undisciplined minds.  While doing this I have also been reading about and applying the Geothean method to everyday activities such as going on walks in nature, rock climbing, and more consciously using it in conversations with people.

Note: An easy trap to fall into during this process is once the unconscious mind is tapped to try and examine what might arise, this actually is highly counter productive to the goal of the activity and will have the effect of actively pulling one out of the trance, it is best to do this after one has come back from the trance

May 12th

2 hours – meditating in nature and writing poetry intermitenly

Meditation in the style of Siberian Shamanism using a method of swaying and total acceptance to enter a trance like state.

1 hour – listening to and repeating vocalizations of the bear dance for shamanic practice

These vocalizations are intended, when able to be repeated by heart, to produce a trance state.

May 13th

1 hour – reading Nuero chapter 7

1 hour – drafting sempass

.5 hour – reading adaptive capacity, a meshing of science and poetry Dr. Ankur Desai and Deanna  Pindell

1 hour – meditating in nature and writing poetry on my musings

1 hour – meditating in the HCC and writing poetry of me observing them observing me

1 hour – meditating in my room to music and writing poetry on what inspired me to write

.5 hour – listening to and repeating vocalizations of the bear dance for shamanic practice

May 14th

2 hour – discussing consciousness studies and origins of metaphor and the basic metaphors which we create our personal worlds from, along with gene expression on the basis of top down creation of action or bottom up creating/changing genes

2 hour – reading article on shamans as they are masters of healing the mind and body

1 hour – writing poetry on the musing of our discussion

2 hours – filling out logs

May 16th

1 hour – meditating in nature

1.5 hours – discussing shamanism with Justin Geere, a shamanism researcher who traveled to Peru to live with the people who practice this specific form of spirituality on his findings associated with Dieta, Ayahuasca, and the nature of the shamans view of the mind (outside of class).

.25 hour – meditating on astroturf as part of an experiment to see if it would dramatically effect my ability to meditate.

May 17th

1 hour – meditating in nature

2 hours – reading and analyzing Holdrege paper

1 hour – reading My Poets

1 hour – applying the Goethean method by applying it to my daily rock climbing

            having a conversation with the climbing route to be able to complete routes previously     unable to do

May 18th

1 hour – practicing shaman vocalizations with drumming rhythm while meditating

1 hour – writing poetry

1.5 hours – reading My Poets

2 hours – formulating poetry anthology

2 hours – using the Goethean method while walking in nature listening to the natural rhythms and flows

May 19th

5 hours – listening to Alan Watts speak about the nature of all wisdom paths, and hearing his synthesis of them all into a coherent image using the motif of duality and non-duality through the symbol of the yin yang

1 hour – filling out logs

1 hour – reading Nigredo on delving into the shadow, the first stages of reconciling the mind with the shadow

.5 hour – mapping my own shadow

1 hour – reading My Poets

1 hour – posting and writing and rewriting poetry

Reading List:

The Four Agreements: The Toltec Book of Wisdom – Ruiz

The Secret Language of Plants – Beher

My Poets – Mclane

Doing Goethean Science – Holdrege

Total Hours: 40.75

Week 7 Sempass

Reid KenKnight

Sempass Wk. 7

Word Count(not quoted): 288

“This is an element in a wider shift in strategies and policies in many societies toward preemption of unwanted incident, including criminal offences.  In criminal justice systems, especially in the English-speaking world, this has focused particularly on certain types of offending behavior involving violence, impulsivity, repeat offences, danger, sexual predation, and the like.  We term the diagram of control taking place ‘screen and intervene.’”

 

Do you ever wonder what it means to be labeled?

The terms used against us like swords bathed in our blood

Used by our loved ones and those we trust

But, should we because every word that would define us draws us further away from our true self

 

But what of the blood of those innocents that are spilled in the cold

Dripping through the cracks of societies weakness

Are we not obligated to protect our families and friends?

 

At what cost?

Would you have me give up my arms?

How about my legs? You may as well take them too

You speak to take from me my freedom

My freedom to change to find happiness free from societies labels which there are so many of already

And set them on a child one so young and youthful full of potential and the will of the wild

These labels last a lifetime they do not fade till they are cast away like so many unwanted worlds

These chains will not break unless I break them, so I say again

Do not put your wordy collar ‘round my neck, but let me be free to live and learn and change

This is my wish for all of humanity

 

Still the blood of the innocent will flow, but the cost of the label will be greater still.  These consequences will be devilish indeed far reaching into unseen hollows and hide away valleys.  There will be no escape except through liberation.  To the dead I offer this libation:  Though you die today from some murderous madman, chosen in the infamous lottery of fate, we could not save you for to forestall your death we would have to take away your life.

N is for Nature

….is for nature

I will be complete the majority of the in class activities (save for the calculated poetics) and studying on Human Nature, Natural Nature, Mental Nature, Nature of my self, Nature of the other and how to heal the wounds created by these worlds crashing together

Field Study proposal excerpt

I will be learning about the healing aspects of nature and how poetry used in concert with nature can be conducive to recovery .  I will be trying to answer this question: what is so healing about nature?   To show my work I will be posting excerpts from my journal that I will be writing in the style of Susan Howe’s The Midnight.  I will also be reading books by Thoreau, Carlos Castaneda, Daniel Quinn, Stephen Harrod Buhner to gain additional view points on Nature from vastly different backgrounds and perspectives, and to formulate a synthesis of my own thoughts on nature with those that I study.

See full proposal and weekly logs

ABCs and 123s – weekly log and field notes

    Bachelardian Reverie

      Poetry

        Poetry Observed

        (embedded youtube or Vimeo video will go here)

        Term Paper Abstract

        Read full term paper