by Mike Ferguson

a poet animate in anima poetæ

© Mike Ferguson, 2020

Gazebo Gravy Press

Devon

The Idea

I necessarily

think of the idea

and the thinking.

Whatever it be,

dim or

deep feeling,

we make things

from it, like a

distinct image

of the thinking

about our life,

ourselves

being, and this is

what we mean by

the idea becomes.

Griefs

Relating sorrow

to a friend, the relicts of

our unspoken griefs.

Farewell to Small Poems

How a little conception deifies attention and

feelings to its most reductive reefing and

unreefing – sailing onwards within a wind

of bravado. Or famine. Every fourteen lines of

this steady poetry’s breeze devotes itself to ropes

holding all in. At the helm of sails, small poems

are imprisoned by that wind, steered to their

corrections – those temple-walls. And in this

sectarian spirit, the difference of opinion devotes

to a chance of what might happen within; what

might be. There is an open ocean of hauling

beyond, disentangling lines onwards as bidden

not hidden – the farewell to such remedy – and

elevated for this devotion to a little irony.

Chymical

What must be must be as with this spelling of chymical.

In the case of a positive god, it is the duel of imagination

and questions. There is no essence of the divine but new,

spicy hot necessity. The mind feels like a balloon.

Sophism of the harmonious. Celestial bodies called a

system might be disorderly and irrational with whatever

evil is in them. Just a chemical reaction, no matter its

spelling. Someone’s lofty shun of dread. There is no riddle

in the contradiction of the world. Assertion of the mind

that feels: intellect by order. Whether the new in it is as

old as elementary nature, beauty is the essence.

Ipse Dixit

Likes to principle

the habit of being wiser

dislikes the man

who is

who will dis

another

who in their own point

of carrying a certain

truth and

believes it

because he is utter

performance

is, in short,

the sum total of, at best, a

conscious self-love.

Strong Enough

Vinegar to the discerning person is not bitter but

concentrated in re-action. Did Paracelsus, not using his

full name, assuage an inclination as boaster? Primâ facie

cum would seem to evidence excitement in the use of

Latin. Feeling and thinking are empirical. Re-acting, the

egotist is offensive in the habit of egotism. Dr Writing has

written What now? What now? Observe, his prose works

are made up of contempt for conversation. Though not

however much and however personally is still strong

enough to be troublesome to us.

Transforming

A love

so vast

as woe

makes us

mourn the

virtue we

buoy up

in sorrow

to soothe.

Not Engendered

Now this,

the moment it happens,

must be taken up

not without some sense

of between,

not created,

but feels it at

the moment

it shapes thoughts

into the mind

of itself. Perhaps the

moment it happens

the thought of which

it leaves

is simply indifferent

and now this is

not engendered.

In Tint

Where magnitude is smaller in tint, diminished like a

pyramid peak shadowed in difference. How the half-moon

is whole. A mountain ridge fleecy in cloud. The

indistinguishable star unseen. If what shapes is by evening

alone there is a segment unspoken for. When the rich

slowly sunk, their shapes grew paler.

on rises

what blends the whole

travels across light

not coloured things

and no unbroken

singing in the tender

of a softest

vaporous autumn

shapeless at long intervals

and a shade deeper

yet through the hues

with sadness

rest on rises of summits

pen-place

fretted on

my ears

hum / haw

tick / tock

haw / hum

tock / tick

humming

hawing

ticking

tocking

tocking

ticking

hawing

humming

my ears

fretted by

ticking of

the hawing

tocking of

the humming

wrote it down

wrote

it

down

an effort

to recollect

modification

of ideas

in the

pen-place ear

Smile

The soul’s reason

a smile after sickness,

light dropped

by glow-worms

stretching after stars.

Sickness smiles, then,

half-willingly,

half by system

and the other

whirling for joy.

This is the system

for reasoning,

light at an end

through looking-glass

the reason it displays.

A prayer

of the human species,

a force of the gust,

kissing itself in

tales of continuance.

Falling

things

sinking

drop

down

fall

fall

dreaming

expecting

sink

down

all

things

sinking

sinking

asleep

sleeping

lie

down

wishing

dropping

sleeping

asleep

all

things

lie

dreaming

lie

lie

Desuetude

Disinterestedness in its pool. An island of foam. Listen to

the instance of a dim sameness anywhere it is knowingly

a philosophical word. Desire not to give. The intensest or

absolute as plurality and betwixt. By infinite change there

is nothing of novelty. To excite or gratify as intolerable.

Dark with not pleasure. Where it is in the degree of being

clear, chosen through desuetude.

Writing

Indifference of place

in sunset and

from there supported

by immediate impression.

And noise of stops on

damp paper,

these stains on white

of black.

Sound of the unseen.

The unaffected spreads

like a full passenger

in the sky.

Impulses of sullen white

lighted the sky

and black clouds

are writing.

sent breath

breath sent

with the mind

into dissimilar

as the same

shall the same

from the pre-imaged

be the nature

of its being

but being

intensely similar

requires another

for its support

must that

same force

the same

other be

breath sent

as the same

into dissimilar

with the mind

The Word It Illuminated

What I am writing

I am writing

so illuminates the word

before it yet is.

Now at the pencil-point,

a stream of associations

are shadow, but luminous

and beautiful.

I am writing what

I am writing

so the word is illuminated

before it is yet it.

A Mundane Cause

Without consciousness, and not physically, the closest

approach to a mundane cause is in its sense of resistance.

Time to form space. Whatever resists limits. Action fits

presence arising from the interruption of motion. So of the

soul and in the soul, life is unlimited. Cause may be. Not

what is supposed as it is in us. The fits of synthesis.

Motion is the feeling, and the infinite that is unlimited, as

absence exists continuously in and whatever is limited.

Going forth. Whatever.

Former Friend

It is as it is, even as has been, that never more can you be

or have been

as close as formerly, in my heart and no more there, and

how once near.

A friend, because you have been, you experience as a

former friend

close to my soul as through a fault near to my being

though now no more.

Been, therefore, never more, it is natural you were near

to what formally

was and close to my heart and soul to have been thrashed

out as a friend.

Recollection of Duty

All duty is felt a corroboration of myself. Associative

common sense. The command from without. Sophistry of

this solution from shallowness. I awoke this morning at

disruption. That interruption of itself. Would eye of the

merest naturally call up the effect wholly? Our pleasures

and pleasant self-chosen disease. And thus without any

after I have observed. Duty, therefore, by more as it is and

as soon as recollection.

having

having figured

for emotion

in a way /

having remained

in a breeze

of may be /

having figured

hours will

come them selves /

having remained

when men

are a sleep

maybe away in

themselves this

time