The whole notion of “Featured Page(s)” was initially conceived to bring an historical context to the contents of the chosen page(s) through the prism of the author’s most immediate concerns and obsessions. Thus, for instance, the “Seasons’ Greetings” for the turning of the years at Yuletide, and last week’s lament on inflation resonating with the unemployment report, etc. fit this template to the proverbial “T.”
Having embarked on what I hope to be the concluding phase of a healing process from the ravages of a debilitating traffic accident last summer, the physical and emotional experiences surrounding the minting of the poems highlighted this week were ineluctably brought to the fore from the cobwebs of my mind. It is most appropriate to bring into focus the poems on the Flirting book’s pages 143 and 173 as the website’s new featured pages, this week.
It was during the middle of the first term of the Clinton Presidency. I was then determined to fully recover from the residual paralyzing effects of a stroke suffered on 1-Feb-1993 which put me out of commission for the entire month. Call it karma or just the vagaries of chance, I was fortunate enough to enlist the services of a Licensed Massage Therapist who used modalities which were just what “the doctor ordered.” There would be no use denying, she was definitely all of the object, subject, and inspiration for the excerpted poems.
A bit of historical background may prove instructive. As a school boy I used to perennially suffer severe migraine headaches, in the order of at least three to five days a week. As far as I could remember, the episodes were immune to the traditional headache medications that were available in a farming/fishing village. The only effective remedy was my father’s ministrations of his masterful expertise in amma, a traditional massage modality. He would massage my entire body to locate what he called “the eye or head of the migraine.”
The culprit, in the form of a pulsating almond-shaped migrating gland, could be found anywhere in the body, typically where one traditionally feels for your pulse. Once located, my father would molest the gland with pinching finger pressure for upwards of fifteen minutes until it was rendered “benign,” or annihilated to surrender. The process was excruciatingly painful but at the end of the ordeal, the migraine would be gone and the relief would invariably induce a rejuvenating stupor culminating into a peaceful if not a totally blissful slumber.
It is mainly due to this history that as I alluded to on page 113 of the above referenced book, (which may be ordered
giving and appreciating an effectively healing massage is very much in the DNA of my heritage for at least three generations. So when a massage provider’s methodology resonates with the healing needs of my physical wellbeing, it necessarily affects my emotional impulses and over all demeanor. This, in a nutshell is the emotional backdrop of the featured poems.
As has been my wont, for the benefit of those who cannot be bothered to click the hyperlinks, the featured pages are reproduced in full hereunder:
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(p. 143)
XXXVI Why, or Why Not?
Should the vibrant summer of your blooming
Grace the autumn of my apprehension
And make heaven of indulgent dreaming,
Shades of reality, to obsession?
Suchlike notions born of sordid fear
Bid oblivion build a frail memorial
To the boldness of caprice unbridled
By the frigid fetters of common sense;
Cold sacrifice charging the pedestal
Of calculatingly unprincipled
Surrender to hubrid incompetence
Much taking liberty of blind despair.
To have met you and yet let you alone
Is my soul’s insufferable treason!
(p. 173)
Oh Marie, You're Therapy!
Oh, how I am so sore!
Sore, but I yearn for more
More, of that magic touch
Touch, that I love so much:
Much consternation dwell
Suspended in the spell,
Delicious agony
Of partial therapy —
The which be incomplete
Ere I reciprocate
Your traces magical
With much less clinical
Responses of my own
Unbridled expression
Of this sweet compelling
Hunger for the healing
Promised by your finger
I fondly remember,
To tease eternity
The possibility
To commit my soul
To the incredible!
======== End Excerpts ======
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