When Pan is on Vacation

Pan needs a vacation, because when he is with you he works harder than ever… and it shows in your inspirational poems.

I agree with Mark. Pan is a busy fella K :)) When he is with you he outdoes himself :)))
OMG though this if friggin brilliant and I LOVE so many of these lines. That whole first verse its rockin awesome :D
Love you lady KickassK xoxo

Found: one flute, a bit beaten up but plays like new…once you shake the sand out of it.
my tounge is on fire
with spirits desire
my hairs blowing winded pearls
the futher I sink
in my cranial drink
the futher the dream unfurls...just beautiful dear oxox

everyone needs a vacation,,,and as you already know others may think so but Pan is not dead but traveling…..:P

I had to smile at first of the idea..clever writing and so darn good..now I am thinking about my muse and what it is doing..don’t know the gender yet of this creature that talks to me daily…I wonder where it vacations?....things that make you go…hmmmmmm

Pan is sipping Manhattans
from my eyes (shaken…
not stirred…)
while sifting the beach
through his fingers –
his flute
lay at
his side,
buried beneath ghost-poems
handwritten
on loose pages,
copy written by
his faceless host.

Some wonderful images throughout this (yet again) incredible work of literary art. I truly love the line about sipping Manhattans through your eyes. Can take on so many meanings really.

So if your muse is Pan…I can say that mine is Pan too…Peter Pan. Think anyone noticed?

xoxo

Hola love,
My tongue is on fire
with spirit’s desire,
my hair’s blowing winded pearls;
the further I sink in
my cranial drink,
the faster the dream
unfurls.

Until my fingers grab his flute,
that is,

I absolutely love it, though I did notice one implication that bothered me-a purely logical concern, which some may argue have nothing to do with poetry, but that I think must apply to this piece by virtue of the conceptual apparatus of the piece. Precisely the fact that you grab his flute. Now this is not an issue of jealously; I do not see Pan’s flute as representing a significant threat to me. It is rather an issue of mastery, for by grasping his flute, you claim his power to inspire. Thus, it would seem that Pan may find himself;rather chagrined at not having more carefully protected his flute; you essentially castrate him. As you claim his organ of inspiration, and by implication, all of the repressed poetry of yours that he holds within his power to release or frustrate, you have rendered your-and my—muse impotent.

Otherwise, I love the metaphors and imagery, as always. I must admit to loving you, too. Rusty

My dear, dear, flute-grabber,
The brilliance of psychoanalysis is that for one to deny one or another particular premise opens one up immediately to the objection that, “If only you had the benefits of this particular type of understanding, you would know that things are far from being so simple.”

Indeed, the neurotic always has a transferential relationship to the object/symptom of her-in this case-psychic trauma. Pan and his flute are you ego ideals, on this model. Of course, it is all a joke; there is a great deal to be said about _Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious_to borrow a title directly from one of Freud’s texts. You see, this idea of your special relationship with a god, your priviliged position in regard to we other poets-who have no such divine ride as do you-is a clear indication that what we are dealing with here is a dream.

After all, according to Freud, all dreams are nothing more than wish fulfillments. Your neurosis leads you to seek esteem in this special relationship with Pan. Indeed, your neurosis could be interpreted as being dangerously close to psychosis, insofar as your delusion includes an all but explicit claim to being the mother of a god, thus a goddess yourself. I could continue here, but you sit in the other room complaining about my failure to terminate this pseudo-analysis.

Allow me to simply say this in closing:I am grateful to Pan, insofar as your fundamental fantasy-manifested to the rest of us as the symptom—is a positive, even constructive one. (It is essential to understand that there are none amongst us who can claim with any authority to be free of neurotic relations. It is the inevitable result of the existence of the unconscious, which mandates every human’s fundamentally conflictually relation to him/herself.) I only hope that you will remain on this side of the abyss, knowing that a flute is just a flute, and that my name is not Pan, i.e., I am the cat who laughs with you in the morning as you write your smart asses replies, which I so love.

You are my infinitely dear neurotic poetess, and I do love you,
Rusty

Look here, Freud’s butt-monkey…say what you will about my damn psychosis and neurosis…all I have to say is Pan’s da man, and if you wish to keep your damn flute, you best be backing off, O’ wise smartypants.
Got it, Homes
yes, I said Homes, and I mant homes not holmes.
so there.

HA! lol I’m logged in to your account. hardy-har-har, you just called yourself Freud’s butt-monkey. wonder what he’d have to say about that?

Oh, you slay me. Do you understand that what you have committed here is one of the more egregious examples in the history of psychoanalytical literature of a “slip of the computer ‘tongue’.” The fact that you are so insistent upon the ultimately self-referential accusation of being “Freud’s butt-monkey” is more than just a little disturbing. Really, I am going to force myself to avoid the implications of this desire of your’s to be someone’s “butt-monkey.” After all, Freud insists that one of the major psychic defenses, both in the dream world and in the workings of consciousness, in general, is displacement: the other being condensation. What exactly do you envision when you think of one being a “butt-monkey?” You see, I can only imagine and would like to know whether or not this may be a role for you that would be adventageous for you to assume.

In general, however, since I have a strong desire to retain my flute, along with other things, I will back off. Let me simply recognize your poem as yet another example of fantastic imagery and transcendent imagination. Neurotic as you may be, I wouldn’t trade you in for all the “well-adjusted normal” women in the world. After all, then you would not be my dancing star. Love, Id-man

THIS IS WONDERFUL…IF HE IS ON HOLIDAY, THEN HE LEFT YOU WITH LOTS OF INSPIRATIONAL GEMS TO PLAY WITH!! BELLISSIMO KRISTIN!! XOXO

He called you though right? While sipping those Manhattens and fingering the sand he has inspired you to brilliance. Well written indeed.

oh my lord, i laughed so hard i almost peed at Pan’s specially woven hammock,
vibrating to the totality of the infinite octaves! and you with pearls in your hair – a true vision that was – pearls from mount analogue’s slopes no doubt (and i would believe it too, friend of my essence). goddamn it, i need a hammock like that! but time speeds up and slows down and i am standing on my head the whole time, inexpertly made leather shoes flapping at the passing birds. you are a genius my dear!

where do i get me one o’ dem butt monkey books?

The book, incidentally, is about (never claimed not to be a nerd) Wallace Stevens and “ahmmm” the interpretative back and forth between he, William James, andMichel Foucault, my critico-butt monkey skills, or lack thereof-the term having been your coinage-notwithstanding.

As to my muse, I must at least warn you of what you already know; you are once again coming very close to having your comment become self-referential, given your not inconsiderable role as she who so often stirs Pan from his leisure amongst the palms. Also, did we not wonder long ago at our shared reliance on that trickster god, who can still pull a good one as our discursive flatulence has so manifestly shown. Moreover, I put the butt-monkey book down, just as soon as you finished your last jab and joined me, did I not?

Thus, if somewhat retrospectively, I officially retire the terms of one of the greatest creative writers of the former century, so that you can get off of the computer couch and join me on the equally uncomfortable one in the den. Freud’s speculation on artists were, after all, notoriously bad. He could have been no more wrong about Dostoyevsky than I have been terribly unfair to you. I would be willing to bet, however, that he did not have half of the fun on the topic of Dostoyevsky’s Parricide or his gross misreading of the artistic impetus of Michelangelo, as I have on this irreverant journey the beginning of which I fail to recall and am too lazy to scroll up to investigate.

To be proper, I must say: get that bastard stirring, and send him my way when you are done with him. Though as Ray and JR note, he has already spent a disproportinate amount of his artistic energies with you. Hell, now I am the one in need of a couch so as to deal with the fact that Pan prefers you to me: not that I blame him one bit.

Kristin, you have to love an artist who doesn’t take themselves too dogdamn seriously. You slay me more than I slay you. Love, RBG

Chica,
If I recall correctly, it is I who pronounced the prankster as my muse, at which time you commented upon the serendipity of this situatiuon. Moreover, this can be verified, because I did so in a poem, and your response included the coincidence. Incidentally, you can have him leave a bit of booze in your eyes; I’ll be happy to finish it off and get “verrah, verrah keen meself.”
Besides, this bourgeoise notion that you somehow possess ownership over Pan-implied in your attempt to be sardonic in issuing the order that I get my “own” muse-must be nothing but offensive to such a free being as my man Pan, who may take umbrage and decide to drink from another’s ocular fluids.
As to stealing my hand to page without mercy, never letting me rest, I just love my muse’s metaphors. You always find a way to nail it exactly. There are benefits to having multiple sources of inspiration, poetic and, well, all poetic in the final analysis, merciless home girl.