Best Dionysian Poems
The concepts of the Apollonian and Dionysian are famously linked to the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. In Greek mythology, Apollo and Dionysus are both sons of Zeus. Apollo is the god of reason and the rational, while Dionysus is the god of the irrational and chaos. The content of all artistic creation is based on the tension created by the interplay between these two.
Dionysian passion fills my soul
With a stream of life that knows no restraint,
Your frantic current defies all control-
Awakens the devil within the saint.
Injected with life, I'm lost in your force
As waves of strange visions rend me apart,
For purpose that has no ending, no source-
Oh, come to my rescue, creative art.
Apollo, come harness this raging stream,
With power of reason, channel the surge,
Reshape my voluptuous, savage dream-
Transmute its horror to aesthetic urge.
Bring order to chaos—hold tight your rein-
Come, challenge this frenzy of energy!
You both are needed—the crazy, the sane-
Dionysus! Apollo! Balance me!
Dominica
Gawaine Caldwater Ross
We share melons and papayas
beneath a sun benevolent.
A salty breeze, the river is cool,
and the passion flower blossoms
are fragile but rich. We stroke
their fragrance and sip intoxication -
we slip a little further and
I find myself afraid of love.
Papaya trees are many breasted,
the flesh of mangoes, exquisite.
My restlessness is like the surf
seeking coral lagoons.
You speak in certitudes,
I dream of them.
Beyond the coconuts shining
in your eyes
I see gazelles outrunning lions -
you laugh,
I recall November sleet.
Your stainlessness and artless joviality
are in contrast to my venery.
But in honor of your being
I play Schumann on the flute.
You respond with a noble clarinet,
Royal, but so voluptuous.
You think love means saying “Yes,”
I think love means bleeding.
You say, “That's a grim thought.”
I say, “Life is grief.”
We are divided by that which attracts us -
even as you speak of trust
I see the void behind the stars.
You speak of freedom,
possibilities, and taking risks;
but I have been to prison:
Saturn has bound me with rings of lead,
the acid rain has stained my face.
We lay our cards out on the purple silk:
today they say I am the Hanged Man.
Are you the Queen of Swords,
or the Priestess holding
nine bright cups of Dionysian wine?
You smile and ask,
“Where, oh Where, is the
void in ecstasy?”
We strip and go against the current.
The water here is swift and cold,
the sunlight revels on your
scintillating buttocks.
I follow towards the cataract
and drink the water that has caressed your thighs.
You shriek, the monkeys leap,
and I wrestle with a jaguar.
You summon me to join you
high up on the rocks
where the moss is a foot thick.
I manage half a fervent laugh
And watch you diving into pools.
Opals ripple on the water.
We gather oleander, orchids,
Lilies and lotuses
and weave them into garlands
and in the falls we
linger in the timeless spray.
chipping and hacking
sawing and sanding
this is the life of a creator
these are his sounds
a cacophony of hustle and bustle
a primal link to the past and an eye on the future
ever striving for a land bridge between the two
like ancient explorers of the human condition
back and forth
to and fro
sweeping arm movements packed with energy
eye's steady and intense gaze resting on the immediate
standing on the precipice, the gateway of creativity
ready to push the boundaries of the possible one more time
forging potentials in the foundry of insight
molten heat emanating from the source of inspiration
leaving trails across le atelier in vibrant, living color
once more into the fray.....
a chance to become something more
a demigod, replete with all the powers
to cast off these earthly shackles and take one's rightful place
amongst the Apollonian and Dionysian pantheon
standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Giacometti, Rodin and Michelangelo
basking in their eternal aurora of shimmering crystalline streaks of productivity
leaving traces of ocular delight along the way
but always leaving something to be desired
just out of reach and unattainable, alluding to greater grandeur
scaling the philosophical peaks and traversing the political spectrum
to unify the scattered, to join the fragmented, to give voice to the oppressed
saying something with nothing
directing the viewer's eye with subtleties
emphasizing silence with space and void
painting and glazing
soldering and welding
hands steadily guiding and grinding
unearthing the inert qualities laying dormant, waiting to be revealed
commanding that the materials speak and be known
this is a life worth living
this is the life of a creator
Yesterday for my birthday,
I started off
with a bottle of wine...
I took the train
into town...
I had half a bitter
at the Cafe de Piaf
in Waterloo...
I went to work
for a couple of hours or so;
I had a pint after work;
I went for an audition;
after the audition,
I had another pint
and a half;
I had another half,
before meeting my mates,
for my b'day celebrations;
we had a pint together;
we went into
the night club,
where we had champagne
(I had three glasses);
I had a further
glass of vino,
by which time,
I was so gone
that I drew an audience
of about thirty
by performing a solo
dancing spot
in the middle
of the disco floor...
We all piled off to the pub
after that,
where I had another drink
(I can't remember
what it was)...
I then made my way home,
took the bus from Surbiton,
but ended up
in the wilds of Surrey;
I took another bus home,
and watched some telly,
and had something to eat
before crashing out...
I really, really enjoyed
the eve, but today,
I've been walking around
like a zomb;
I've had only one drink today,
an early morning
restorative effort;
I spent the day working,
then I went to a bookshop,
where, like a monk,
I go for a day's
drying out session...
Drying out is really awful;
you jump at every shadow;
you feel dizzy,
you notice everything;
very often,
I don't follow through.
(There's a twilight mood to "Lone Birthday Boy Dancing" - almost certainly drafted in diary form on 8 October 1992, or perhaps a year earlier - with the birthday boy performing his Dionysian solo dance in defiance of the wholesale ruin of mind, body and soul he's so obviously invoking.)
I wish to write another song
to show my soul some dignity
which trodden was for ages long
by demons of antipathy
that all its joy 'pends not on queens
but on the mind that shapes machines
which liberate humanity
from worldly bales and misery.
Aye I say a woman is mirth
in whose sweet bosom we rejoice
whose harvest is an infant's birth.
Sex nature's inexorable voice
calls peremptorily all men
whose fleshy urges have no end.
It enslaves by invocation
our souls to its convocation
in Dionysian sacrifice.
Shooting star
With a quicksilver mind,
You deserve to go so far,
Can't someone stop you
Before you ruin your soul
With irreversible harm?
Drinking all day,
Every single day,
Out of your head on booze,
Is this the life,
Is this the way,
A gifted child should choose?
Your beautiful lethal life
My friend,
Has sent you around the bend,
Your foolish defiant
Dionysian dance
Could soon be at an end.
But you don't care
Do you, shooting star?
As you drift in your blissful dream.
Let us take you up then
Where litanies of darkness mount the sun
Rest us on the magic night, bleakest evil oars
Arid pair of sleepy rebels float, limbs and root
Pretending what we are, reversed dreams of fields
Open as the window that is life, or so it seems
Hear the whish of mindful trees and zombie bark
Let us take you down, in dionysian diction
Where reality fluffs it’s cranberry tendrils
Where “real” is just a latin undulation of noise
Whilst I hover here
wondering if i'll be sick
The hazy details of the nights debauchery
Become clearer with every retch,
And nothing.
Who took that photo with the silly face?
I really thought id be able to pace
Myself this time;
But its shouldnt's and never agains
all morning in the loo.
The bad techno and overplayed hits
Still echop through my pounding head,
Recently obliterated by that dionysian nectar.
The midday sun now pours through my iris
Ill adjusted to to anything mut multicoloured strobes.
Another hopeful attempt to spew hits me,
Only to be met with dissapointment.
Cralwing from the linoleum jail,
I call a friend to reminisce
And hes the same as me, only he pulled and barely rememebers.
And so i enter the platic prison
for a last attempt to purge, but nothings there.
Looking in the mirror telles me to pull myself together,
A sparkling alka-seltzer cocktail takes the edge off
And I remember that hangovers only last a day,
whilst forgotten memories lie in obscurity forever.
Form:
We each have that early spring
post-matriarchal
un-hibernating
emerging from EarthMother moment,
An awareness memory
of late winter's pregnant demands
to cramp and thrust forward
patriarchally over-powering
in full summer's fertile august strength.
We each have this great green climate moment
of silent anticipation
bringing all our ancients gathered
and returning reborn music
danced in-between winter
and spring's wild awakening
win winning together
seamlessly
All climates marched before
with all moods augustly septumbering behind
health/wealth bicamerally reiterating after
We each share one Great Matriarchal Transition
early springing out all over memory metaphors
of EarthMother's first heart-felt song
sung inside late winter's last hibernating
passive moments of bipolar unconsciousness
Marching into win/lose political
and economic
and personal
and natural/spiritual dipolar climates
and metaphoric moods,
conflicted/restricted voices
heard in slow-jazzed magic soul
As Pisces twins float midway
between healthy swimming heaven
and pathological hell
bi-fractally fifth-dimension
Aquarian EarthClimate ascendent
Emerging pregnant with creative nondual tension
as a regenerating inside/outside new mom moon
Transitional integrity's annual fullness
reborn win-win EarthPatriotic power
of a liberating Virgo's
august appolonian/dionysian
yang/yin
east/west LeftDominant
south/north RightRecessive revolutionary prominent
march toward democratic health/wealth
EarthCentric promise
with 2020 reverse-hierarchical ReVision.
Reborn of FatherNorth
and MotherSouth soils
and ancient DNA fractal regenerations
Zero ZenZone bicameral souls
of jazz dance left springing up and out
with gospel soul sung winter force/source right
Marching reborn
Matriarchal/Patriarch restoring justice,
Non-violent communicating embodied co-passions,
Pisces twins swim-dance immersed
with spiritual gospel win/win Virgin muses
east with west
right early spring left late winter
in grateful green anticipation.
courage in cat form
strolls solemn serene stately---
Dionysian pet
11 April 2022
Apollonian days, Dionysian nights,
Over the favors of females, they fight.
Estrogen’s wiles avoid testosterone’s might,
Until the wild birds of lust take flight.
Limbic Liminality:
Souls expand
Like bones crack
Thunder through the circuitry
My mind
Pine needles aflame
Death rolling circles through life
Some strange dimension in an eye-lash
Killing time like a synapse
The void folding in like a spider web
Love cannibalized
Something more profound
Twilight madness
Dionysian dances
Snow white eats Eris's golden apple
Drinks her own beauty
A third eye pops right out of her skull
Something vampirically visceral
Like a wandering pentacle
Stitches of fate
Giving in to Entropy
Dissolution elates the universal sense
Pain crimson in a sea of Nothing
Dancing in spite of everything
I dive right into this quantum space in me
Limbic Liminality
(“Loyalty Merit Badge”, 2010, original oil)
Religion of Dog
Religions come in all shapes and sizes
Some good, some not so much.
But what would a religion of dog be like?
Kind, devoted and loyal, willing to please
And to defend, and be happily conditioned.
These would be the attributes of its followers
But what of the essence of its theological tenants?
Love, eternal vigilance, situational awareness
And of course joy
In a long walk or good play of tug or frisbee.
A religion of dog after all would be grounded
With it’s main focus the here and now,
Maybe not a zen focus
Maybe even more Dionysian,
But certainly within this
The values of family and pack
Would be supreme,
And this after all is not much different
Than all the human religions.
The difference which would make all the difference
Would have more to do with the wag.
(9/8/25)