I see you've already forgotten...

"... he showed me a copper door in the pavement, saying, "Here, if you please, we may go further down." We descended the steps, where it was exceeding dark, but the Page immediately opened a little chest in which stood a small ever-burning taper, wherefrom he kindled one of the many torches that lay by. I was mightily terrified ...
...Herewith I espied a rich bed ready made, hung about with curious curtains, one of which he drew, and I saw the Lady Venus stark naked...
... "Now, behold," said the Page, "when the tree shall be quite melted down, then shall Lady Venus awake and be the mother of a King."
   -The Hermetic Romance: or The Chymical Wedding. Written in High Dutch by Christian Rosencreutz. Translated by E. Foxcroft

"No sooner than she had thus given me her blessing by sprinkling and annointing me with sea-dew than I immediately found my mind clarified and my intelligence returning."
  -Francesco Colonna: Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, translated by Joscelyn Godwin

"Love rules the world, and typical of man's intensest, holiest love, I, Etidorhpa, stand the Soul of Love Supreme."
   -John Uri Lloyd: Etidorhpa

"Everything comes from you; you have yoked the world and you control all three realms.
You give birth to all, to everything in heaven, upon fruitful earth,
And in the depths of the sea..."
   - from Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite, translation by Apostolos N. Athanassakis

"'Tis thine the world with harmony to join, for all things spring from thee, O pow'r divine."
     - - from Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite, translation by Thomas Taylor

"The highest wisdom is to know nothing."
  -Brother Christian Rosenkreutz, Knight of the Golden Stone A.D. 1459.

To Aphrodite

            I.

Sublime Disquiet

O, that the shade of life should slip
flower fall, rainbow rip
that tide should turn from shore the ship
Beauty's ebb from truth
destiny erased from youth, and afterall
the all in all, aloof

far from certain, the sure revertin'
garbed behind a curtain
confounded by barbaric emblems and
bardic symbol, bounded
was it but a curse cast on current everturnings
whose high sign She sought
in the Library of Anthropological Yearnings?

entropy itself but ebb
eludes securing final debt
this
unlettr'd headstone on deluge swept
alone
for Her teargas lingerie I wept

                     II

               Undermind

Which of the muses would admit a claim?
fool's gold/false unicorn
priz'd from torpid ores
this silence unsought.
Amateur. Pallbearer.
Let these lines be
undermined

Daughter of the skyfallen father
sire scythed
the Celestial Ocean's
Cytherean meerschaum
unmanned & holy
imbue the bone in water
the ardour'd sustenance of your star

To cavort with Her verses
I've fallen
coffin clothed
sewn Her oats
into my apron
and drawn the rapture in Her sinews
through odes not mine alone to moan

Mount me, She demanded
untapped veins
shaft unshook
sleeping slopes
never reaching the peak/peek

intervene
sure & supple star froth'd lips
rhyme w/in the chalice grips
while wave on waving furrow laps
here may all recollection lapse

                III

            Ourania

there's a tremor in the blood
a seismic etching
whispering portents
a calligraphy of subtleties
to thirst after finer things

Thee unguttered cup!
Your April'd slipper of lilac dew infused
old undone dandelion sun
rejuvenate! resume pellucid overview

willow-the-whips
that I should violate my rhyme
with useless cant
wont to work my will & why not
swoon neath
my apostrophe

the trope of Love's apostle
no swollen apostate
proctored!
gibbous Thee gland
of delight
illume

-John Meador, Beltane 2014

This Haunted Land

"When the last red man has become a myth among the white men, when your childrens' children think themselves alone in the field, upon the highway or in the silence paths of the woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities are silent, and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land."
-Chief Seattle, 1786-1866

The Ghost of Sheremetyevo

"By Natalia Gevorkyan , Translated By John Amor
July 15, 2013Gazeta - Russia - Original Article (Russian)

Russian spy Anna Chapman: After a Chapman imposter tweeted a marriage proposal to Snowden last week, the global media found it worthy of headlines. But would the real Chapman turn down a starring role in 'The Ghost of Sheremetyevo'? As of today, we have had 53 days of Snowden. Boy, would Sydney Pollock be excited if he still lived. The script of a thriller is there to be had, and I'm sure it is already being written. We haven’t seen bugging like this since the war criminal Nazis. Isn't that so? I can’t remember another worldwide manhunt on this scale. If you try telling me the guy brought this on himself, I won’t put up much of an argument. But following this to its logical conclusion, I’m not sure where I stand toward him personally, less so toward what he has done.

 On May 20, he flies from Hawaii to Hong Kong; on June 23, to Moscow. Moscow of all places. It’s pure cinema: The Ghost of Sheremetyevo.One minute it’s the transit zone, the next it’s a capsule hotel, then ABC’s latest "secret location." Anna Chapman, heroically prepared to marry the guy, provides the obligatory touch of eroticism. Obviously this should be set at transit zone E, the newest and therefore best suited to filming, right there on the floor, no hotels or beds, just pure hardcore. His passport is revoked, Cuba is tense, and a couple of countries south of Cuba are deep in meditation. A number of brooding presidents demand a plane flying over Europe be brought down when they think he's on it. Western journalists are provided Cuban visas and take every flight from Moscow to Havana - just on the off-chance. Their colleagues monitor the paths of these flights, which suddenly deviate from the north so as to avoid U.S.-controlled airspace.

Meanwhile, Snowden remains on the neutral territory of Sheremtyevo, escorts Brad Pitt and meets Johnny Depp, and is now himself a star. Either of them, incidentally, could play him in the upcoming film. Our compassionate Russian gals feed the former foreign agent in the business class lounge, where there are showers and free Internet all night long. Russian leaders gives the former foreign agent an opportunity to meet and explain himself to Russia’s present-day foreign agents, whom it is now fashionable to call human rights activists. The latter, in their turn, demand that rather than creating competition in this already-crowded field, the former should be sent home, to a court, to prison. Snowden immediately seeks political asylum in five countries, and meanwhile, to the displeasure of many, is prepared to live in Russia, with or without Chapman. 

Here, documentation is prepared for his future life in Venezuela, where he will likely have to be transported on the president’s aircraft (one of them, at least), via an indirect, hard to track route.The intelligence services of a world struck dumb by Snowden, starting with Russia's, promptly uncover their dust-covered typewriters and go unequivocally offline, back to record keeping on paper. No more virtual toys, no more gadgets, and no more Internet-enabled phones, either. Just dependable, tried and true old stuff. Terrorists recruit the well-connected: dedicated, preferably dumb, and most importantly with no experience working with computers. There is no more e-mail, no more social or any other online networks, or Skype. The world changes before our eyes.

Snowden begins to enjoy buckwheat porridge and piroshki with cabbage. Bouts of epilepsy give way to attacks of panic. But he’s at his computer the whole time all the same. He keeps going, although he takes up smoking on the sly. He spends long Moscow nights dreaming of his native home in Maryland, hacking school, cherry blossoms, Hawaiian women, and a car ambling slowly behind him, and he knows what will happen next: A press conference in Washington D.C., and (for reasons that remain unclear) unencrypted files, which he transfers over and over again. Close by, behind a wall, on their own home turf, Russian intelligence officers sit reading information again and again extracted long ago from his computer. Far off in China, countless hours are spent at the same work by Chinese intelligence officers. And from time to time, they gently whisper in their own language: "what the fuck!

"Meanwhile, France has unearthed its own Big Brother with which it outright illegally monitors, if not the content of conversations, at least the details of conversations.Aaron Sorkin hurriedly writes and films one more episode for the new season of Newsroom, which starts literally the day after tomorrow, because he simply must delve into the Snowden affair. Barack Obama in his heart of hearts is just glad people have temporarily forgotten about Guantanamo.Vladimir Putin, with mixed joy and disgust, flies to his Sochi dacha, taking with him a package of pre-translated transcripts. He loathes traitors, but he adores top secret material. 

Robert Redford for the first time laments that age has taken its toll. Snowden’s lonesome girl shoots sandy landscapes, drinks cocktails with umbrellas and sends encoded SMS messages (as opposed to files). Microsoft justifies itself thus: yes, we gave away information, but only in accordance with court orders. Google and the rest quickly dismiss agents planted at the NSA who it knows by name. Life carries on, but will never be the same.

The Ghost of Hunter S. Thompson

There is nothing weird or wrong with doom. In fact, in a country of used car salesman, steered by bankers and drone pilots, doom is the only answer. Without doom we are truly lost as a nation. Doom is the final wake up from that awfully wonderful American Dream. And there is plenty of doom to go around for now, but if we aren’t careful, one day we’ll find that even doom isn’t free anymore. You don’t want to find yourself alone in a sweating basement, bashed by monster weather, burning your furniture for warmth and paying out the ass for doom, so take it while it’s still hanging from trees and full of seeds. You’ll thank yourself for making it too late before it becomes too late. “Another doom is possible”, and “Collectivize Doom” must not only the watchwords screamed from the mouths of Maoist hipsters, anarchists, rednecks and wackos of all breeds, but also from their extended families and their psychiatrists.

'poscere fata               45
tempus' ait; 'deus ecce deus!'
‘Are you slow with your vows and prayers, Aeneas of Troy, are you slow?’

'cessas in uota precesque,
Tros' ait 'Aenea? cessas? neque enim ante dehiscent
attonitae magna ora domus.'
‘The great lips of the House of Inspiration will not open without.’

                               -Virgil : The Aeneid Book VI

El Jaleo
                               for Ozma

Sibyl of the fortress fallen
to gain the light I sought
dark ran the dream duende
in whose footsteps she was caught

shadow-flame omega's mate
flowers forth from grief
not golden bough nor pearly gate
the bower of Love's belief

swept away our dance so brief
I thought it was a smile she gave
but it was the rose between her teeth

                        -J.M.

 3/27/13

Keisaku

 shorepound! hit the humerus cartwheel brakes, sensei!

chasing the wild
licketysplickt
apprentice to the butterfly
we sip absinthe champagne
between the sunflowers supine
neath the overheated hummingbird giggles
and the happy-hour yawns of morning glories;
nasturtiums waving their florid hankies at our camp-meeting revival
Halleujah Sister, Halleleujah!
Leggys, Sacha and Prince D'Artagnan
observe their sermon in fur

somehow in the long garden grass of late summer
we caught ourselves on a bodhisattva picnic
lean back into the gentle
cricket breeze
satori
& let this moment of God come forth
escaped from Seasons' hoarde

-8/15/12
j.m.

Aurora

                                           6/17/12 for the Solstice

Most passing fair
She as dark whens shook
Love's summer spun
til leaf in curl of child locks caught
a glimpse thru paned rime overwrought
dropped we windows wide enough
to pawn the night
and encapsulated double-aught
- well after all, how much is a lot?
taste the question mark again
Enough! tho for naught
closed these eyes to splendor
for I yearn Her raptures even yet
lest auld acquaintance be forgot

C’est le bon Pan, le grand pasteur (....) Le temps
concorde avec cette interprétation qui est la mienne, car ce Pan très bon,
très grand, notre unique sauveur, mourut près de Jérusalem, sous le règne
de Tibère César à Rome.
-Rabelais, 1532: Gargantua & Pantagruel; Quart Livre

For Pan himselfe was their inheritaunce,  
And little them served for their mayntenaunce.  
The shepheards God so wel them guided,  
That of nought they were unprovided,  
Butter enough, honye, milke, and whay,          
And their flockes fleeces, them to araye.
[Great Pan is Christ, the very God of all shepheards, which calleth himselfe the greate and good shepherd. The name is most rightly (me thinkes) applyed to him, for Pan signifieth all, or omnipotent, which is onely the Lord Jesus.]
 -Edmund Spenser 1579: The Shepheardes Calender; ÆGLOGA QUINTA Maye

Take thou no scorn to wear the horn
It was the crest ere you were born:
Thy father’s father wore it,
And thy father bore it:
The horn, the horn, the lusty horn
‘Tis not a thing to laugh to scorn.
-Shakespeare, 1599: As You Like It: Act 4, Scene 2

Pan's Rhyton
                                (for A.G.)

Cherub smoke surrounding
lips put to the pipe
wanton shade, charged air
stag breath, beechnut
honeycombing hair
where horn would curl unfashioned
rampant with newborn needs
wandering neath willow
willful for the reeds

Dreadful festive frantic power
force, pheromone & fur
revel in the fingering of figures
& kiss of embouchure

Syrinx serene
ninny haunched old urgings lean
molesting unforgotten Dream
tripping tongues of dogma
to stutter sermons in the stream
By the ambrosial beard of brine & honey mingled!
sweet release & escapade!
shivering cape of sparrows
share prayers & passion's played

Whistling past the Rune
whose veins would poet trace
nymph-sweat alphabet
beneath the shadow of the thrill
the threat
prance cross palimpsest
Echo's thine
O, Thrice Blest!

Wild, the refuge
of rough read Pan's
hours & season's endless dance
stamping hoof at the edge of Dawn
Now's At Last!
All woe, be gone!
5/1/12