(Mostly) Anonymous in Inner Space

All of the ancestors have returned and are living quiet lives in Inner Space.  

Choirs will fall silent, money will be thrown into the streets, and everywhere people will wonder what this dream was all about.

I was not cut out for childhood, I was already living part-time in Inner Space.

How can poets write anything without going down the spiral staircase to the darkness below?

I needed so many years to accomplish so little.

I'm back living at the Yew Tree Inn; nothing has changed, there is a Yew tree outside my window and children playing by the old wishing well.

There were some people dressed in colourful outfits, meditating and praying in Inner Space; we threw them out.

I no longer care what poets have to say, not if it's just more of the same old avoidance of Inner Space.

None of this was invented by me. It is what I found in Inner Space.

I was absorbed into the universe by cosmic energy; there's no playing around in Inner Space.

And now I'm a broken wheel going nowhere.

It's not bleak here in Inner Space, it's just a habit of mind to say that life is meaningless.

I liked poets but when I arrived in Inner Space I found few had joined me there, they were too busy trying to make names for themselves.

Most poets have nothing I want or need, they are not crowbars prying open the unconscious mind. Poets need to be crowbars.

  

If a poet can't be a crowbar he can at least be a hammer. 

                                                                       

Believe Nothing

When did I become a nihilist? I was born this way.

Inner Space is a hinterland of cosmic waste; here, everyone is either a nihilist, a poet, or both.

My defense is suited to one whose motto is "Believe nothing".

Poets used to be referred to as "ground breaking" or "visionary"; now they want to be referred to as "award winning poets", the visionaries are gone. 

I am well known in the territory of Inner Space.

About what am I incredulous? On most days, just about everything.

A whole new cohort of poets has arrived,  they are ambitious, self-conscious, and dedicated to self-promotion; in other words, younger versions of older poets.

The opposition of nihilists to all forms of censorship is famous in the history of Inner Space.

I am not the Pope's nose but I can still smell shit when it's all around me.

As we cross the green archetypal fields of poetry we reach the borders of Inner Space.

I have lived the nihilist's life: anonymous, introverted, and appalled.


Mister, in Inner Space we don't have room for anybody but poets and nihilists, so you'd better high tail it outta here before you're discovered.

Most religious and political beliefs offend my sense of nothingness.

A poet's apprenticeship can never be replaced with sitting in a classroom workshopping someone's poems.

Believing anything makes people stupid.

Photo taken at the Montreal Botanical Gardens, 2009

Poems are Reports from Inner Space

   Yew Tree Inn, 1 Beardwood, Blackburn, Lancs,
owned by my great great grandfather Thomas Parker, 1881 

There is no consensus of intelligence anymore, but there is Inner Space.

The first experience we have of Inner Space: our dreams.

Of course, if we censor our reports from Inner Space we end up with poetry that lacks authenticity.

I come from a dark place—I know that it will always be dark—I have spent too long in Inner Space.

Poetry has its own archaeology: it's what we excavate in Inner Space.

Did you follow your vision? Did you hear the voice calling you from Inner Space?

We fear the unconscious; it is a portal to Inner Space.

It was not a part of my repertoire of emotions; I was trapped in Inner Space.

Poems are reports from Inner Space.

November is "Inner Space Month".

Artifacts and the detritus of Inner Space wash up on the shores of consciousness.

One day everything you said from Inner Space will be used against you.

All artists are nihilists; they destroy the old in the act of reporting from Inner Space.  

The poet's journey in Inner Space is the shaman's journey. 

I live at the inn of Inner Space, the inn on the road through a forest; few come this way, few visit the inn, the Yew Tree Inn.

Where we live, those outposts of Inner Space.

I am sending out probes into Inner Space.

Someone emerges, one born from the genetic debris of Inner Space.

                                                                                                            2015

First Published: Urban Graffitti, http://urbgraffiti.com/writing/poems-are-reports-from-inner-space-by-stephen-morrissey/#more-6185, Edmonton, November 2015.

NOTE: A year after this was published I posted it on this blog, today I see that it is no longer online where it was originally published at Urban Graffitti. This is what is seriously wrong with online publishing and digital archives, they are subject to change without the author's notice: they can be deleted, altered, rewritten, removed, gone... Mark McCawley published this essay in good faith that it would stay online; after his passing his web zine, Urban Graffitti, was eventually taken offline. Losing UG we lost all the graphics, short stories, essays, etc., that were online. If Mark had these archived at LAC then I stand corrected.  

SM

11/05/2018