ThisWeek the Springs presents a six part epic poem featuring the billigits as the knights of orgone (for persons unfamiliar with the orange flying fellows about a foot and a half tall, they eschew capital letters and most punctuation marks).
Orgone energy is called a pseudo science that often involves rain making. The great Kate Bush wrote a song about it and starred in a video with the equally great Donald Sutherland about, amazingly, forty years ago.
In the poem our Apprentice Witch to the Great HeXopatha Eira Lysbyrd performs as Eira Borgia (she chose the name for reasons she hasn’t shared). Still a Witch in the poem, Eira (perhaps a bit of a pill) has been let down by love and summons the four knights of orgone (the billigits) to find her a trustworthy soulmate.
On earth Orgone boxes attract and store Orgone energy fields. In Saragun Springs a telephone booth (pictured above) holds the Orgone of the realm in which, along with occasional rainmaking, is under the short but effective arms of the billigits.
Eira believes the billies and the magic phone booth will find her love or at least get her a date with someone she won’t change into a Toad, as was the case with the guy who jilted her in the poem.
For those of you already confused, please relax and remember that most epic poem writers do not try to explain the content of their masterpieces. Moreover, poetry does not have to make sense. It gives smart people a riddle to solve.
Leila
Now we begin the journey…..
i
Silence your lips and snarls begone
Hear this tale of heroes orgone
Energy booth warriors foretold in myth
Who stand no insult sprayed by lisp
ii
Four billigit soldiers in orgone armor
Flew forth in antique square honor
“i say four dynamic red mars are we
i, myself, and of course you three”
iii
They knew not the cause of the tussle
Except inside every castle is the same cold hustle
“Tenderness of heart started the Buddha on his journey to awakening.”
– an anonymous sage from his mountain cave
Benevolent-hearted Reader,
(Parenthetical opening salvo: Beware. A column has a right to be an essay and an essay has a right to be a meandering thing (like the mind of the writer), going from point to point for 1,100 words seemingly almost without direct connections. In this case, the Reader can assume that this essay has a destination like a river reaching the sea; and all the parts along the way needed to be there even if for sometimes mysterious (or veiled, hidden) reasons.)
For three decades, ever since I first heard it, one of my favorite quotations about writing, and life, comes from the US writer Harry Crews: “Walking the wire is everything. The rest is just waiting.”
It’s been so long since I first heard the quote that I don’t even know if I have it exactly any more. I do feel that I know the spirit of it.
For pondering purposes, life can be broken down into two aspects, or halves.
One is where we feel “on;” where we’re “in the zone;” where we feel life intensely, and beautifully; where all the connections are understood and there is relevance and meaning aplenty, even an overflowing of this for some of us. This is the higher side of life.
The other side of life is the low side. This is where the meaning and faith disappear. It’s where the doubts come in, and the serious questioning starts to happen. This is when the drudgery returns. Call it a test of faith. Think of the ancient Jews wandering in the desert for forty years – and never giving in – although they were driven to despair and various kinds of starvation many times.
The first half of life is Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount, where he couldn’t make a mistake even if he tried to.
The second half is him in the Garden of Gethsemane. As all his friends sleep comfortably, he knows very clearly what will happen tomorrow. “Let this cup be taken from my lips.” But the cup of blood was not taken from his lips. He had to drink it all the way, and then some. Even him – the one and only son of God.
Edgar Allan Poe said that he wanted to write a very short book that would say it all. The title would be MY HEART LAID BARE. He never wrote the book because he didn’t have it in him while he yet lived, and he was dead after. Charles Baudelaire, the Frenchman who became Edgar Allan Poe’s most brilliant and universal disciple, said he wished to write the same book with the same title. He did write it and left it unfinished (because he died, in his mother’s arms).
Nietzsche, the German philosopher, wrote, “Of all writing, I love only that which is written in blood.”
Nietzsche also said that the true artist needs to combine both Dionysus and Apollo within her or himself. This is the part that Jim Morrison knew best about Nietzsche (he surely would have learned more had he lived longer).
Dionysus stands for nature, wildness, energy, anarchy, the wind, the waves, pushing the boundaries, breaking the limits, being wild and free, having agency and vast willingness to break the rules.
Apollo stands for Reason (that term has many meanings, including a-reason-for-being, motive), order, focus, unity of purpose, control, form, shaping, sculpting, selecting, leaving out, knowing what to bring in.
If an artist can’t channel the Dionysus aspect of their personality, their work will be dry, boring, tame, cheerless, conventional.
And if they can’t channel the spirit of Apollo at the same time, the work will not be Art; it will be a formless mess, a pile of something lying lifelessly on the floor of the hapless would-be artist.
It’s like the tightrope walker of Harry Crews, doing something utterly wild that calls for the utmost in self-discipline.
And the poem appended to the end of this essay is my example of all this.
The term “troubadour” in this poem both does and does not mean that which it usually means in the literal sense. Since both of the main characters in this poem are and think of themselves as troubadours the definition/s of the term throw light over the whole work.
The first eight words of this poem summarize a period of years, as does the entire poem.
The phrase “ragged at the unemployment office” in the poem stands for a single moment and an entire way of being that is both chosen and forced upon one at the same time, as does the action “frowned and fled fast.” It’s this kind of reach and doubleness in the speech of this poem which give this poem whatever value it has.
The phrase “she, she, she” means her continuous changing.
Her monologue, in this poem, is the single most important thing she ever said. This verse/stanza changes its meaning every single time one reads it, as it should.
This poem, “Oklahoma Homeless 2015,” is the entire story of a relationship, beginning, middle, and end.
The casual nature of the narration in the poem (if it is casual) arises from its after-the-fact nature (which is called here: distance, or an escape from an overload of desperate-hearted emotion).
This kind of poem is best read aloud (even if that means silently in the mind) very, very, very, very SLOWLY. (Ideally many times, over years, after the first few readings, and thinkings.)
A writer, an artist, a poet, can say whatever they want to about their own work. They are entitled to at least that much in this world of painfully little rewards.
There have been famous cases where a writer belittled their own masterpiece and readers believed them for decades, only to discover later that the writer had been wrong about their own work all along (or had been being too humble probably in the aftermath of another high).
I say that this poem is my “Tangled Up in Blue.”
It is written in blood; it is my heart laid bare; and it is a place where Dionysus and Apollo come to a beautiful truce, holding hands and complimenting each other.
…
Oklahoma Homeless 2015
We were two troubadours for quite some
Time and i, i was ragged at the unemploy-
Ment office again when i
Frowned and fled fast
And she, she, she was a piano player in
Kansas fading on the line, a cowgirl
We rise, she said, if at all, only slowly,
And lonely, and only
One at a time…
Later we were cruise ship stowaways.
And always two troubadours,
Night and Day.
…
END NOTE: The Drifter wishes to here thank Irene Leila Allison for rescuing this ten-year-old poem by the writer who called himself Dale Williams Barrigar from dusty obscurity.
(The image is the remnant of a Good Idea of yore; we aim to be around for awhile as well)
In Citizen Kane the mythical Philadelphia Inquirer (founded by callow Charlie with his inheritance) published a high minded Declaration of Principles which were quite inspiring until Joseph Cotton mailed them to Kane’s fireplace. So it goes with the objects of thirty-plus word sentences, but, mostly, it is the thought that counts.
So in the spirit of aiming high and hitting, well, something, Saragun Springs will become an official publication in two months. Co-Editor Dr Dale Barrigar Williams and I have decided that even though there is much in the way of writing in the world, little of it is meant and most of it appears to be founded in avarice instead of honesty. Therefore terms such as “good” and “bad” are found only in the scorched souls of the failed angels and have zero meaning in the Human Spirit. Sincerity is the dream even if one struggles to spell it or any other word correctly.
I will continue to be an Editor with Literally Stories UK unless they fire me. I once founded a band named Saragun and was voted out of it seven years later, so one must remain philosophical. The Springs acceptance rates will not be very high, but one should take heart in such a thing. You see, we will run nothing unless it is up to the standard of art.
In days to come submission guidelines will be made available and I will be going from virtual door to pretend door to get us listed on duotrope and other such high places of information.
We will run various features Monday through Saturday. Short stories, poetry, photography, essays, plays, novel excerpts and such creative things that can possibly be published will fill those days while Sundays still belong to The Drifter.
How different we will be greatly depends on the contributors. Since there is no money to be made in this adventure, the effort and response will be the hire and salary. But these things do matter, the rest swings from a rope.
Leila Allison, Co-Editor of Saragun Springs
And now a few words from Co-Editor DWB
SARAGUN SPRINGS is totally unlike any other literary magazine or site being published in the world today. Whoever doesn’t believe me hasn’t read or looked at any of it yet.
At the same time, it exists within the long tradition of American independent literary publishing. From Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns, put out by Charles Bukowski and Neeli Cherkovski as part of the Mimeo Revolution in the 1960s, to The Stylus of Edgar Allan Poe, which Poe called, at the very end of his life, “my one great literary purpose,” independent magazines and independent publishing have been the backbone of American Literature from the beginning.
Now, in the very near future, SARAGUN SPRINGS is throwing open its doors to global submissions in English.
The goal is to create a new and lasting forum for the best literature and photography being created in the world today.
We invite, and ask, you to send us the best of your work (or things that are among the best) for our consideration.
Writers’ Guidelines available on December 3.
First Issue will be posted on January 3, 2025: the birthday of Founding Editor, Irene – Leila – Allison.
Don’t let them tell you that the fine arts are dead in America.
We are here to prove them wrong. And we want you to join us.
Saragun Springs 