Best Maps Poems
Professor Hapgood’s studies on ancient maps were fixed
Einstein said his theories should be added to history’s mix
Perhaps it proved too big a leap for other minds to take
But his ancient culture findings, Hapgood would not forsake
6000 BC, before Egypt’s pyramids were built
Millennia before Pompeii’s lava had been spilled
Or small fishing boats hugged the Mediterranean Coast
And Columbus’s “daring” voyage was not even close
Ancient seafarers drew with astounding accuracy
Maps of the world they once knew, the fishermen’s legacy
Antarctica sans ice and closer to the equator
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge once an above-sea sky scraper
Siberia touching Alaska with no Bering Strait
(Palin could have seen Russia without snow from her back gate)
Cuba, England, Sweden, too, on these maps appear clearly
But Sweden’s fully glacial; England’s blanket an ice sheet
If we believe Hapgood, a civilization once thrived
Thousands of years before language; maps keep memories alive
Technology to chart the seas was lost in ancient times
With latitude and longitude measurements quite refined
Sea kings’ cities may have succumbed during the last Ice Age
Surviving nations lost their skill when history turned a page
Geography to be found again when the Earth had healed
“Discoverers” reinvented the forgotten ship’s wheel
Magellan, perhaps not the first to sail around the globe
Admiral Byrd not the first man to visit the South Pole
Spirits from a colony of seafarers can be found
From deep beneath Antarctic ice, they try to spread the word
But laugh they must as scientists forecast global warming
And man attempts to alter life and heed their dire warning
Shifting poles? Natural cycles! Men would be well advised
To study the maps Hapgood found and open their closed minds
To learn more about Professor Charles Hapgood’s map studies and the comments made by
Albert Einstein, you can visit http://www.crystalinks.com/crustal.html.
This map has grown lines,
deep creases, curled corners,
since you've been gone.
Tear-stains and fingerprints
mar its wrinkled pages like scars,
mocking markers
of where you've gone.
Mum's face has grown lines
around her mouth and eyes
since you've been gone.
And each sunrise tallies the days,
fading the map's mosaic of colours
as time fades the memory
of your silly smile.
This map is a liar:
It tells me you're nearby,
only a page-length away.
But an entire world separates us.
Cities and countries and continents.
Rivers and lakes and oceans.
Land and sea
have taken you from me.
And I want you back.
I
Veins blue as death but they flow,
tributaries in a returning system.
They fork only when the mind
rides a lightly sleeping cycle
to a venous river
and there sinks within seeking a source
for it must be replenished, made to
travel on richer currents of air.
In such a reverie
blue threads splay, spread themselves
traveling to a nexus of stars on byways
stripped of any anatomy.
II
The girls and boys ride to school
ever faster,
a teacher fills blue inkwells
from a drip in his arm.
The children peddle swiftly along;
for on every desk
there's an apple for each of them.
In that fruit
a slow wriggling hex, a pishogue
sheds one desiccated skin after another
expanding its continuance,
but not so soon, not so fast,
not as speedily as the blue river runs
for it is the stream that feeds into itself.
III
That indigo atlas furrows a mounting gravity
through a chambered pump
for it has miles yet to cycle,
it surges and swells unhindered,
it crests and syphons
through transforming bellows,
around it pounds
unless that dark spell grows too large
and dams its onward course
then it may cease upon the morrow
or worse.
At times, Spanish becomes
An incomprehensible
Tangle of strange words
Like strange woods
And unfamiliar sounds
That roll like hills
And confuse my senses-
English is my natural
Habitat, but to my lover,
English is a new land
Which still feels altogether
Unfamiliar under his feet...
So in the moments
We cannot find enough
Common ground to
Communicate with
Spoken words,
We've learned to
Read eachother
Like maps-
He doesn't need labels
To recognize the shape
Of my expression;
He uses the curve of
My lips as a landmark-
He has studied the course
Of my tears like inlets
And the sigh of my breath
Like waves against
The coastline, since
I swore that my arms
Would always be
His harbor-
He has traced the planes
Of my face with his fingers
Until he knows them like
The back of his hand...
His hands are as familiar
To me now as
As my own backyard...
His palms are traced
With lines that wind like
The rivers of Guatemala
That he swam in as a child,
Or like borders,
But they are always
Open since his hands
Are like a compass-
When being lost feels
Like loneliness,
They lead me into
His arms-
When the world keeps
Sliding around like
Fault lines, they
Lead me back onto
Solid ground-
When a storm blows me
Off-course, they lead me
Back home...
It's funny how
Being with him
Is like reading a map
Of a foreign country,
And yet...
Will still lead me
Home.
in daylight’s grace, a casteless sphere revolves
poignant maps emerge at night
the wealthy shine like stars
kimo (10-7-6) syllables
I have drawn the maps of my sorrow, with borders of ochre and ash,
rivers of longing winding like silver snakes toward the empty seas of unfulfilled dreams,
the valley of abandoned thoughts, a cemetery of withered promises,
and the desert of sighs, its sand made of words
that shatter like glass under the weight of silence.
In the center, a mausoleum of dreams sculpted in marble,
they shine enclosed in the amber of memory,
the winds erode them like a silent sculptor,
the inevitability of forgetting etched into stone,
a dance of time drawing spirals over memories.
I wander through this landscape like a drifting shadow,
traveling through tunnels of the soul,
where every corner hides an echo
of a lost love, a whisper of yearning.
When night draws its curtain over thoughts,
everything becomes a tomb of silence,
and in that darkness, only I remain,
a guardian of dreams that hide their brilliance,
a sentinel of a universe that will no longer bloom.
Thus, I continue to carve my path,
through a universe of melancholy and falling stars,
seeking light among the dense shadows,
in a never-ending journey,
through the uncharted maps of my soul.
Positive mental map messages
contain no more sacred information
than appositional negatives not
not yet space/time body/mind
mediating organic territories.
Linear language 2D maps referee
spacetime's not not 4D-embodied referents
4D ecosystems
of organic co-binary living relationships
loving and leaving sunny days
and dark moist times
and pleasing peaceful co-passionate territories
Win/Win thriving
and Win/Lose surviving
dialectically changing re-collective DNA-fractal maps
as synergetic minds
re-experience dreams
re-ligioning
re-connecting
re-weaving
re-generating
re-creatively crowning neurosystemic 2D map ego-minds
and rootsystemic 4D territorial eco-bodies
Curiously exploring
for a more engaging
healthier
richer sacred song
and organic dance liturgy
Flash mob sacred hopes
resonantly thriving not
not fending off worst mass killing surviving
organically dis-organizing fears
dissonant
dissipating angers
triggering past hate crime win/lose rituals
unfolding Earth's dark and stormy
patriarchally misogynistic
too crown-capitalistic
not not dissonantly degenerative
dissociative memories.
Dark divine messages
neurosystemically passed down
through all Noah Arking maps
flowing through rivers
of fertile blood
and fevered crowning brains
Neural root systems
re-connecting ecosystemic pleasure's passion
for therapeutic win/win sacred mystery
de-connecting ego-organic displeasure's dispassioning
win/lose territorial trauma history
reweaving every divinely mapped polynomial thing
as also not
not any humanely co-relational polypathic territory,
every sacred co-binary referee
2D linear mind,
every organic co-relational referent
4D roundly dialectical body
Our territorial relationship history to love
not EitherWin/Or Lose survival
not mapping Both/And thrival mystery's
win/win re-ligious re-dis-cover.
London is bewildered by its roads
The Circular, the North,the South, the Codes
The Morse and the Enigma Turing broke
So now we have new bicycles with spokes
Once we had the A to Z in hand
Turn it upside down and you’ll be grand
New technology has made great strides
Carrying us to Eden ,what a ride
The motorways are empty for tonight
God decided we had too much Light
He taught the bare cheeked Moon on Jesus’ mount
To turn the other side when love’s about
I liked to use a compass and a map
But now, my dear, most everything’s on tap
I crouch beneath my sister as she drives
In the dark on the M 25
But if it’s closed, we are completely foxed
We left the old Road Atlas in a box
Along with all my ex’s underpants
And naturally his principles of Kant
We may be in Watford or in Bucks
I often wonder what will rhyme with luck
We may be near St Alban’s, we can’t see
The car ran up the trunk of this oak tree
We rang 999 and they are here
A fire engine filled up with Kentish beer
A ladder for the ladies to climb down
Now they are just women on the town
London won’t exist ,destroyed by cars
Angry men who cannot find a bar
Topography- embrace its meaning
Open roadways- visually gleaning
State boundaries- further we'd proceed
Connect-the-dots- we'd follow their lead
Deepened creases- a wider landscape
Artful tearing- revived with clear tape
Thumbprint dirt stained- unplanned souvenirs
Revisited- discovered frontiers
3-10-2021
out of sorts like something's missing
seems everything in life is preordained
vaguely sense today's unfilled blessing
maybe that's why life feels estranged
once, not enough, maybe all that we get
to glean from fields, our fruit and wheat
satiate our bellies, taste little regret
life's experiences that to us, taste sweet
if all of my days have been prearranged
then, that just begs the next question
must I antlike, walk a path without change
can't I wander life with self-expression
there's a price to be paid for stayin'
there's a price to be paid just to go
nothin' we don't know, I'm just sayin'
every goodbye is rebalanced with hello
roads there are many, fulfillment ahead
the road not taken, the one less traveled
makes a difference, stitching this thread
before our days on Earth come unraveled
so we're back to fork at current crossroad
and look down each, as far as can be seen
before we pick a path, next to be followed
to drive through life in our timeless machine
© Goode Guy 2011-12-15
** THE GLORIES NEAR **
Here! The Glories have arrived from
afar..as far as east from west.
The Glories come riding mists
To lead us leaping over our discontent;
over waves lost from their beaches,
their glimmers grayed,and moon sunken.
The Glories bring our maps to
The Exquisite: our longing, our desire.
But, the routes, so hard to decipher…
We are slow pioneers of the holy-All!
May the Glories set aflame our spines,
Running currents to thrill us up from
Our sleeping, our trances, our
Vagaries, so we may again seek and see…
———————————————————————————-
(c)sally young Eslinger 1/5/22.
Glory to God
PASSION FOR MAPS
Like an addict to the cartograph
I can never get enough.
Only maps are the real stuff -
Without them life is tough.
Maps showed me how to find Cuba -
A thrill to see when I discovered such.
It’s possible Columbus enjoyed a
Chance discovery almost as much.
I see shapes of coasts in spaghetti,
In bad roads repaired with tar patches,
Islands in gravy somewhat fatty
Or in mirrors with random scratches.
New Guinea is a dinosaur;
Italy - boot; Kamchatka - kukri knife;
Ireland is a dog with one leg sore.
They always bring my maps to life.
All maps have a problem of distortion,
And I gotta keep my passion under control,
Keep it all in proportion,…………
But god help me, it rules my soul.
DNA maps the way,
there is a very vast
difference in people;
from head to knees,
from nose to toes,
from eyes to thighs,
from arms to palms,
from ears to rears;
DNA maps the way,
it's relied on in Science,
pretty much,everyday!
Copyright McCuen 2009
The kings and their crusaders are forgotten,
No one reads about them anymore,
The flowers that the princess held are rotten,
Crushed beneath her slipper on the floor.
The chivalry of knights-in-armor’s ended,
Fading like a fable into Time,
The castles and the walls are undefended,
Empty like an ancient nursery rhyme.
Let’s you and I be brave, and not surrender,
Keep those dreams of yesterday we knew,
The grown-ups ‘better listen and remember:
Storybooks and treasure maps are true.
The dragons and the demons all are sleeping,
Cinderella’s hair is turning grey,
The witches and the wizards now are weeping,
Pining for those years of yesterday.
So you and I must stand against tomorrow,
Fighting off the fear of growing old,
And dreams aren’t something you can steal or borrow,
You can’t beg them back once they’ve been sold.
Word
Selection is
Apparently the
Map of the
World for the
Individual..
Separation's
Terms from
Struggles of
Daily survival..
Or more settled
Words of science
Religion or
Contemplation..
Searching for
The better word..
All are stories
Maps of separation
Things of beauty
And of horror..
May we speak of
Escape..??