M.K. Hancock

Words Good

[mkhancock]

“The Gravity of Yearning”

By M.K. Hancock

Night, a steadfast show

of the cosmic unknown

Dark air and emptiness yet

Space for things to shine

The moon itself glows

From seeing the sun

Shine so brightly

Mystical untouchable

Celestial bodies rotating and

Revolutioning in cycles

Romancing Earth’s fields and tides in turns

Waves licking the horizon

The gravity of Earth’s yearning

Soft fractal clouds

Find lost water new forms in

Dew on wheat, mist on wind

Which greets the world

Reborn again alive

Anew yet ancient

[wishbzne-deactivated20210526]

emily dickinson [ID: “Oh the Earth was made for lovers,” end ID]

[mkhancock]

Eurydice’s Memory

by M.K. Hancock

I’ve been through 

Meaningful connections

Among life’s mysteries

A cycling and unorthodox

Series of complexities

Misery in memories

Unresolved grief

My moments

Fragmented to bits

I decode to know

And over the years

With learning and tears

I’ve found them whole again

French Philosopher

Jacques Derrida suggested 

deconstruction

As a manner of viewing

Signs and Sign Processes

(What Semiotics calls

Communication)

Deconstruction

Is a form of Semiotic Analysis

AKA a way to see

What’s deep underneath

Communication

Disassembling

Something as

Significant

As the abrupt

Quiet

Behind Orpheus

Who misses

Eurydice

With every shadow 

He sees

But his heart

Learns to love

Her memory

Always incomplete

But there in his mind

In each moment

He recalls as a

Widower Twice

To one woman

The day is different

And so is he and

Traces of her linger

However incomplete

The memories

Guide his heart

Her words

His mind

Their love

He takes the grief

As a sign it happened

That his loss, as mysterious

As it was, was truly

Real

That one day

He may hold her again

When it is his turn

To cross the Styx

A final time

Until then

The stones may weep

To hear his grieving

Soul release through

Music

His sweetest songs

Gone with her

[flowerytale]

Kate Chopin, from The Awakening

[mkhancock]

An Artist’s Strategy

By M.K. Hancock

Fear is a simulator

A painful illusion

It doesn’t tell the truth

Only possible outcomes

Aim for where you want to go

Don’t brace for pain

Embrace your journey

This life

An adventure

When you dive in

Choose the deep

Explore and search

Free, open, and focused

Grace is a given

[half-a-corpse-half-a-poet]

-Clarice Lispector

[mkhancock]

“The greatest thing you can achieve is to love yourself because it is the foundation of all other achievements.”

From “Human, All Too Human”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”

From “Faust”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.”

From “Letters to a Young Poet”

Rainer Maria Rilke

“I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.”

From Rilke’s Letters

Rainer Maria Rilke

“No man is happy who does not think himself so.”

From “Epistulae ex Ponto”

Ovid

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

From “Hamlet”

William Shakespeare

[mkhancock]

Rilke posting for sentimental living

[bruspringsteen]

“And at certain moments time is obliterated in the presence of somebody you love; there seems to be a transcendence of time in love. Or I believe that there is. I carry a lot of people with me that aren’t here anymore. And so love transcends time. The normal markers of the day, the month, the year, as you get older those very fearsome markers… in the presence of love - they lose some of their power. But it also deals with the deterioration of your physical body. It drifts away, it’s just a part of your life. But beauty remains. It’s about two people and you visit that place in each other’s face. Not just the past and today, but you visit the tomorrows in that person’s face now. And everybody knows what that holds.”

— Bruce Springsteen explains the line “I don’t see the summer as it wanes, just the subtle change of light upon your face.” in his song Kingdom of Days. (via bruspringsteen)

[mkhancock]

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

“Letters to a Young Poet”

[flowerytale]

Edgar Allan Poe, from a letter to Mrs. Maria Clemm, July 1849

[mkhancock]

“A Life on Paper”

By M.K. Hancock

We start so small,

Charming zygotes, ganglions, cells

Sparks of electrical communication

Joining together and making new

Formations that bind us together

We live if we’re lucky

We grow tall or short, until we stop

And then we begin to shrink

The space between most

Currently living skeleton’s discs

Disintegrates little by little

If we don’t care for our bodies

They shrink rapidly, with our backs and necks

Curled downward to our core

As though ready to leave at a moment’s notice

Snuffing out the light inside so

The soul can join again with

The electric Earth,

The body to the soil,

Warm in the sun

Soon to grow

New life

[metamorphesque]

No one has taken anything away, Marina Tsvetaeva (translated by Elaine Feinstein)

[mkhancock]

#poetry #romantic #intimacy #love

[nobrashfestivity]

Felix Vallotton, Intimacy, early 1900s

Woodcuts

more

[mkhancock]

“Il n'y a pas de hors-texte.”

[“There is no outside-text.”]

- Jacques Derrida, "Of Grammatology"

Différance (for Derrida)

by M.K. Hancock

Everything is nothing

Nothing is everything

Everything is everything

Nothing is nothing

Everything in nothing

is

Nothing is everything

Everything is nothing

Everything is everything