A man was once Jung at heart
His dreams set him apart
He tapped the collective unconscious
People thought him preposterous
So he channelled his visions through art.
("Contagion", 2020, original oil)
Contaminated
Everything we taste, see, hear, think and feel
Is taken in as a layer
Upon layers within our mind
Adding to the library of imaginary things
Which makes us distinctly human
All too human.
This world of the collective unconscious
Is worse than any one imagination
Could imagine
A world of angels and demons
Morphing in real time
As we, the collective
Write our novels, make our movies
Indulge silent fantasies and forbidden fruits
In the dark web of Mind.
Everything so consumed
Adds to this web
And adds to the collective weight
Of being human
The stuff of dreams
That end up nightmares.
This is the world our children inherit
The real world
Beneath the one we see
A world as old as time
Mythical in proportion
Dwarfing the fragile balance
Of what little we can handle
With all we know.
(12/29/23)
Dawn, like a curious child,
peeks through my window.
She calls directions–
“Be thankful! The air is filled
with pages of a cookbook!
“Be still! Your mind waltzes
at a ballroom pace, your
blood pumps fast as bad news.”
I stuff my ears with the wool of shorn
desires–wiry fingers itch my ear drums.
The velvet door opens in a gust, the late
winter air catches in my throat.
Dawn’s caress moors on my skin,
like crows gossiping on the eaves
of a landlord’s house.
Zephyrs of the collective unconscious
tickle my throat & I manage to whisper
“Blessed are those who rise each day &
breathe.”
Anyone can find the luster,
the perennial ecstasy of so many rites.
We may access luminosity with
mindful meditation, reflection, or prayer.
Call it God, Allah, or immutable purity,
Call it Christ, Yahweh, or satori,
Call it nirvana, moksha, or inward light.
Selfless actuality,
perfect radiant quietude,
rapturous awakening or salvation.
In every creed a different lexicon,
every culture has a unique vocabulary for
our common humanity,
our universal mystical window.
STILL LIFE
Life – a gathering of things
Life – with warmth of movement
consciousness of being
sound color touch
aroma sight
for fun
I tap my collective unconscious
and
Nospace is filled with pebbles, pennies, nickels
dimes hammers chisels
hard stuffs
They all come clattering down on my kitchen
table
and
wanting to come together
take on a life of their own
Dave Austin
I'm still here, for you
beat my fear, for you
all I did, for you
I'm still here
Fell on dark days
now they're all I know
you came out of nowhere
like a miracle
broke me out of my stoney phase
you penetrate me like microwaves
slow at first, but a rolling tide
at the peak, I'm frozen in your eyes
snapped a photo in my mind
for then I knew, I'd found the find
of a lifetime
burned into me, an image of a warm embrace
as both our sorrow saturated your face
a single shiny, tiny tear
rolled peacefully astray
I remember your pain
as I wished it all upon me,
yours faded away
This just the start, of a descending, trending madness
falling down the steps of enchantment
weightlessness makes me feel nauseous
I gracefully graze the collective unconscious
I know my own sweet bitter stream
exactly as designed, by me
I see my place, through tight closed eyes
I feel the fall of face
you were by me in your familiar place
there in the dark forgotten
marked time and space I call the bottom
its now autumn, hereafter fall
with you bound inside, I climb for all
Post-modern society i’m feelin’ afflicted,
confined a predestined identity – i’m restricted,
what I preach and practice – contradicted,
due to the confines I mimic and pick, waiting for what the Mayan’s predicted,
the revealing, the coming clean, tell us what the hieroglyphs depicted,
we’re all looking for direction, collective unconscious became misted,
many hearts and minds twisted, our souls blistered,
instead of caring and sharing, we’re all tight fisted,
people starve, people are killed, people are tortured and it’s as if we all personally wished it,
maybe i’m just a mis-fit,
maybe my points fleeting and you missed it....
wake up
wake up
wake up.
As a poet I am told
I am a "maker" in Greek
I am a "seer" in Latin
taking words and plucking them
from the primordial void
plucking from the infinite fields
grazing in the tall lush grass
sucking on succulent peaches
in the golden brown sun
I take these words, images from
the Collective Unconscious Soup
and plug, upload them to the
constant I-Pod on playlist repeat
seeing the images which none
but myself can comprehend
I take those images
bringing them down
to the workshop
the smithy
the red-hot volcano
I set about to work
to craft
to make these thoughts and
expressions tangible
understandable to all
set up and ingrained in
the senses of the mind
permeating from above and now
reflected and palatable to everyone
Alone
atop a high tower of gargantuan
rock face terrain, standing alone
working and changing
swaying the elements
Earth under my feet
Wind caressing my hair
Fire in my heart
Water dripping into my soul
Maker, Seer, Artist
the poet takes each breath
and exhales the colossal creation
Freudian Slip
Don't take this as a flippant quip
But you know what's showing?
Your Freudian Slip
You may think you're ultra hip
But your subconscious speaks
Through the words that slip
When you're flustered, try to get a grip
But you only make it worse
Over your tongue you trip
Don't bother trying to zip your lip
Let it all hang out from under
Your Freudian Slip
**************************
Jungian Drawers
This is no mere jest or hype
But you're my kind of archetype
Cast upon Plutonian shores
What showing? It's my Jungian Drawers
The Collective Unconscious is how I know
That you love me, and boy, it shows
Freud and Adler are such wretched bores
To you, I'll toss my Jungian Drawers
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