He dances thick from the bottle Dazed as a pollenated bee in spring Losing brain cells like coins dropping Out of pockets full of holes. He trickles honey down the tree of life Consumed like a cinnamon cookie. College taught him nothing Schmoozing pig-like by the trough Meeting no scholars just other dudes From towns like his own, blinded By mud monkeys beating out tunes In gigs that roll like jelly off A ballroom floor deep in cloth That smears the night as he concocts Stories to throw into his folder—then He’s another year older.
Image: Original photo by Linda Sue Grimes, text added by Grok
A Prose Commentary on My Original Poem “Buzzed”
In my poem “Buzzed,” I present a speaker who observes, with a mixture of irony and quiet lament, the spectacle of a man dissolving himself into intoxication, social ritual, and intellectual stagnation.
The poem unfolds as a single, breathless unit on the page, mirroring the blurred continuity of the speaker’s subject—yet beneath this apparent formlessness, the poem separates itself into distinct movements, each tracing a stage in the erosion of vitality, intellect, and self-possession.
My speaker’s language deliberately oscillates between the sensuous and the grotesque, blending sweetness with decay, animation with depletion. The speaker maintains a controlled tone, allowing the imagery—rather than overt judgment—to carry the philosophical weight.
First Movement: Intoxication and the Illusion of Vitality
He dances thick from the bottle Dazed as a pollenated bee in spring Losing brain cells like coins dropping Out of pockets full of holes.
In these opening lines, the speaker presents a figure whose apparent liveliness is immediately compromised by its source. “He dances thick from the bottle” suggests not fluid grace but a dulled, heavy motion governed by intoxication. The body moves, but the mind lags behind.
The simile “Dazed as a pollenated bee in spring” initially invokes natural vitality; however, my speaker then distorts this expectation. The bee, ordinarily purposeful and generative, becomes disoriented—its instinctive industry replaced by confusion. What should signal life instead reveals imbalance.
The final two lines sharpen the critique. “Losing brain cells like coins dropping / Out of pockets full of holes” frames intellectual decline as both careless and continuous. The metaphor of currency emphasizes squandered value: the loss is incremental, unnoticed in the moment, yet cumulatively devastating. The subject does not guard what is precious; he leaks it.
Second Movement: Consumption, Sweetness, and Self-Reduction
He trickles honey down the tree of life Consumed like a cinnamon cookie.
Here, my speaker compresses the imagery into a brief but dense meditation on appetite and reversal. “He trickles honey down the tree of life” invokes a traditionally sacred symbol, yet the action is diminished—“trickles” suggests waste rather than nourishment, a careless spilling of sweetness.
The following line, “Consumed like a cinnamon cookie,” completes the inversion. The man shifts from agent to object; he is no longer the one who consumes but the one being consumed.
The image is intentionally domestic and trivial. A cookie is pleasant but disposable, easily devoured and forgotten. The speaker reduces the subject to something momentarily enjoyable but ultimately insignificant.
Third Movement: Failed Institutions and Social Degradation
College taught him nothing Schmoozing pig-like by the trough Meeting no scholars just other dudes From towns like his own, blinded By mud monkeys beating out tunes
With “College taught him nothing,” the speaker introduces a blunt evaluative statement, stripping away metaphor to expose a failure of development. This line functions as a hinge, moving the poem from private dissipation to social critique.
The imagery quickly reverts to the animalistic: “Schmoozing pig-like by the trough.” The trough suggests communal feeding without refinement, reducing social interaction to appetite and noise. The subject’s environment reinforces his stagnation.
“Meeting no scholars just other dudes / From towns like his own” emphasizes circularity—no expansion of thought, only repetition of the familiar. The phrase “blinded / By mud monkeys beating out tunes” introduces chaotic, degraded performance. “Mud” evokes both earthiness and filth, while “monkeys” suggests mimicry devoid of understanding. Music, rather than elevating, becomes mechanical rhythm—sound without substance.
Fourth Movement: Dissolution into Performance and Fabrication
In gigs that roll like jelly off A ballroom floor deep in cloth That smears the night as he concocts Stories to throw into his folder—
In this movement, the speaker allows the environment itself to become unstable. “Gigs that roll like jelly off / A ballroom floor” collapses what should be structured and elegant into something formless and viscous. The simile of jelly signals a lack of coherence; experience cannot hold its shape.
“A ballroom floor deep in cloth” introduces a suffocating softness, as though the very ground of social ritual is padded, unreal, incapable of supporting anything firm. The line “That smears the night” further dissolves clarity—time and perception blur into indistinction.
The act of “concoct[ing] / Stories to throw into his folder” marks a turn toward fabrication. Experience is no longer lived authentically but manufactured, then stored away. The “folder” suggests accumulation without reflection, a hollow archive of moments that fail to transform the self.
Fifth Movement: Time, Repetition, and the Quiet Erosion of Self
then He’s another year older.
The final lines arrive stripped of metaphor, almost austere in their simplicity. After the density and excess of the preceding imagery, this statement functions as a collapse into fact.
“Then / He’s another year older” offers no resolution, no gained wisdom—only the passage of time. The enjambment isolates “then,” emphasizing inevitability, as though all that precedes leads mechanically to this outcome.
Aging here is not maturation but accumulation without growth. The subject advances in years while remaining fixed in pattern. The poem closes not with revelation but with quiet depletion, underscoring my central concern: that a life filled with motion, indulgence, and noise may still amount to stasis when it lacks awareness and discipline.
In “Buzzed,” through my speaker, I am ultimately examining the subtle tragedy of self-dissolution through habit and environment. The speaker refrains from overt condemnation, instead presenting a sequence of images that reveal, with increasing clarity, the cost of living without intellectual intention or spiritual purpose.
Image: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning – 1852. Portraits painted by Thomas Buchanan Read
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 10 “Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed”
The speaker of sonnet 10 is beginning to reason that despite her flaws, the transformative power of love can change her negative, dismissive attitude.
Introduction and Text of Sonnet 10 “Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet 10 from Sonnets from the Portuguese finds the speaker’s attitude slowly but surely evolving. She is now allowing herself to reason that if God can love his lowliest creatures, surely a man can love a flawed woman. Thus, through that magic power, those flaws may be overcome.
Sonnet 10 “Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed”
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: And love is fire. And when I say at need I love thee … mark! … I love thee—in thy sight I stand transfigured, glorified aright, With conscience of the new rays that proceed Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing low In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures Who love God, God accepts while loving so. And what I feel, across the inferior features Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show How that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.
Reading
Commentary on Sonnet 10 “Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed”
The speaker of sonnet 10 is beginning to reason that despite her flaws, the transformative power of love can change her negative, dismissive attitude. As she begins to turn her negativity around, she puts on a brighter glow of enthusiasm.
First Quatrain: The Value of Love
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:
The speaker begins to focus on the value of love, finding that emotion to be “beautiful” and even “worthy of acceptation.” She likens love to fire and finds love to be “bright” as love is also a flame in the heart and mind. She contends that the power of fire and the light it emits remains the same force regardless of the fuel that feeds it—whether it is “from cedar-plank” or even if it is from “weed.”
Thus, the melancholy speaker is beginning to believe that her suitor’s love can burn as bright even if she is the motivation, although she metaphorically considers herself to be the weed rather than the cedar-plank.
Second Quatrain: Fire and Love
And love is fire. And when I say at need I love thee … mark! … I love thee—in thy sight I stand transfigured, glorified aright, With conscience of the new rays that proceed
The speaker continues the metaphorical comparison of love to fire and boldly states that love is, indeed, fire. She audaciously proclaims her love for her suitor and contends that by saying she loves him, she transforms her lowly self, and thereby she can arise transformed and even reflect an honest kind of glory. The awareness of the vibrations of love that exude from her being causes her to be magnified and made better than she normally believes herself to be.
First Tercet: God’s Love
Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing low In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures Who love God, God accepts while loving so.
The speaker avers that there is nothing about love that is “low.” God loves all of his creatures, even the lowliest. The speaker is evolving toward true acceptance of her suitor’s attention and affection, but she has to convince her doubting mind that there exist sufficiently good reasons for her to change her negative outlook.
Obviously, the speaker has no intention of changing her beliefs in her own low station in life. She carries her past in the heart and mind, and all of her tears and sorrows have permanently tainted her own view of herself. But she can turn toward acceptance and allow herself to be loved, and through that love, she can, at least, bask in its joy as a chilled person would bask in sunshine.
Second Tercet: The Transformative Powers of Love
And what I feel, across the inferior features Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show How that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.
The speaker will continue to think of herself as inferior, but because she can now believe that one as illustrious as her suitor can love her, she is opening her heart and mind to the possibility of the transformative powers of love. She still insists on her inferiority, asserting that she possesses “inferior features.”
And she must “feel” her way across such ingrained realities. But she also can now affirm that the power of love is so great that it can enhance the qualities and feature of Nature itself. Such a power demands respect, and the speaker is awakening to that reality.
Image:The Pacific Ocean – Encinitas, CA – Photo by Ron Grimes
Without the Waves
I exist without the cosmic shadow, But it could not live bereft of me; As the sea exists without the waves, But they breathe not without the sea.
—from “Samadhi” by Paramahansa Yogananda
“Be still, and know that I am God.” — from Psalm 46:10
In Memoriam: Bill Craig August 8, 1954 — February 6, 2025
Without the waves——I exist only as boundless sea. God’s boundless love has stemmed the tide. God’s bliss is mine——deep, wide, eternally free.
No more hemmed round in time, space, and memory, My soul will now and always in sacred Light abide. Without the waves——I exist only as boundless sea.
Satan’s veil is shed——my soul’s eye now can see Only holy Light no shadow can ever hide. God’s bliss is mine——deep, wide, eternally free.
My soul unborn of flesh, not changed through history— Like Christ I stand up to the trial that would divide. Without the waves——I exist only as boundless sea.
I listen only to angelic voices singing to me. Lesser music has vanished——noise has died. God’s bliss is mine——deep, wide, eternally free.
I take no thought for I live in celestial unity—— From former failures no need to hide. Without the waves——I exist only as boundless sea. God’s bliss is mine——deep, wide, eternally free.
Through joyous mists, through shadow tears, We weave our bond upon a veil of Love. In twilight’s glow, our souls now learning To seek the Eternal for which we are yearning.
On childlike dreams, we rise and roam, Where starlit paths lead to our home. Guided by whispers from the Divine, Guarded by Love’s mystic shrine.
Our dawn prayers— like embers—soar Gathering light from realms before. On sacred beams, our spirits stand In Love’s enchanted land.
From cosmic sparks, Love’s brilliance gleams Creation’s birth in silver thought streams. Our searching minds—our souls entwined— The Love our hearts so need to find.
Image: Emily Dickinson – Amherst College – Daguerrotype of the poet at age 17, circa 1847 – likely the only authentic, extant likeness of the poet
Emily Dickinson’s “He touched me, so I live to know”
Emily Dickinson’s “He touched me, so I live to know” dramatizes an experience in mystical union with the Divine Reality. Often interpreted and examined as madness, Dickinson’s mystical proclivities more easily and thoroughly explain her elliptical writings.
Introduction with Text of “He touched me, so I live to know”
Emily Dickinson’s many experiences in mystical union [1] with the Divine Spiritual Reality reveal that the poet was working from an extraordinary state of awareness. Often interpreted and examined as madness or extreme idiosyncrasy, Dickinson’s mystical proclivities more easily and thoroughly explain her elliptical writings than total reliance on the physical and mental levels of being.
While Dickinson must be perceived primarily as an accomplished poet and not an avatar of perfect knowledge, her mystical proclivities are difficult to deny. For example, superficial observers of this poem are wont to report that the speaker is describing her happy experience of engaging in a physical tryst with a lover.
But the “lover” trope is often used by those who experience the mystical union with the Divine, for example, Saint Terese of Ávila’s ecstasy is metaphorically expressed as similar to “erotic intensity [2].
Instead of physical bodies uniting, however, the mystical experience is the uniting of the individual soul and the Divine Creator or God. Because the physical union offers intense pleasure, it makes a useful metaphor for the even more intense pleasure experienced during mystical union.
While understanding the union metaphorically is perfectly acceptable and logical, it is absurd to misunderstand and think those two very different experiences are identical. It is helpful to remember that a metaphor is useful in that it likens two very different entities.
The purpose of the physical, sexual union exists for procreation, that is, the continuation of the generations of humanity, while the mystical union remains the true goal of each human soul.
Paramahansa Yogananda and the avatars all of faiths have taught that the true purpose of life [3] is to find and unite the individual soul with the Over-Soul, Divine Reality, or God.
As the spiritual scientist, Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj, has elucidated [4], “It is important to recognize that this human existence has a purpose, that we are here to grow spiritually, to know God, and to merge back in God.”
He touched me, so I live to know
He touched me, so I live to know That such a day, permitted so, I groped upon his breast – It was a boundless place to me And silenced, as the awful sea Puts minor streams to rest.
And now, I’m different from before, As if I breathed superior air – Or brushed a Royal Gown – My feet, too, that had wandered so – My Gypsy face – transfigured now – To tenderer Renown –
Into this Port, if I might come, Rebecca, to Jerusalem, Would not so ravished turn – Nor Persian, baffled at her shrine Lift such a sign To her imperial Sun.
Reading
Commentary on “He touched me, so I live to know”
The speaker is describing the mystical experience that has transfigured her mind, her heart, even her entire life. Likely, this poem was the poet’s first attempt to delve into that particular theme that had such a profound influence on her ability to compose poetry.
First Stanza: The Visitation
He touched me, so I live to know That such a day, permitted so, I groped upon his breast – It was a boundless place to me And silenced, as the awful sea Puts minor streams to rest.
The speaker begins by announcing that she has been visited by the Divine Reality. Her union with the Mystical Creative Force caused her to feel that her living is now more intense and vital than it had ever been before this momentous realization.
The speaker now is aware that such a soul-realizing event can actually happen to mere mortals. The reality of His presence makes her feel that during this visitation she was “groping” upon an enormous entity. Her consciousness has become unbounded by her heretofore mental and physicals encasements.
Because God’s body remains inside and outside of creation, that Entity in human terms is a vast area of space and matter, and as the individual human soul unites with that Entity it experiences the enormity of that Form.
The speaker then likens the experience to a “minor stream” such as a river that flows into the ocean. Paramahansa Yogananda likens the little human body to a “bubble” and the God to the ocean, and in his chant he commands the Divine Reality: “I am the bubble, make me the sea” [5].
The speaker in Dickinson’s “He touched me, so I live to know” is experiencing a time that God had made her the sea; she was a tiny bubble, and for a time, she experienced being the sea.
Second Stanza: The Transformation
And now, I’m different from before, As if I breathed superior air – Or brushed a Royal Gown – My feet, too, that had wandered so – My Gypsy face – transfigured now – To tenderer Renown –
After her mystical experience, the speaker now realizes that she is “different”; she has been transformed and feels that now even her breathing has been clarified and elevated. She also likens her new awareness to touching a “Royal Gown.”
The speaker is describing an event that, in fact, cannot be translated into language; thus, she must metaphorically compare the ineffable to physical things and experiences that come closest to expressing her experience.
She then reports that her feet now seem more firmly planted, as before they had remained roaming in delusion. Her face also has been transformed from a roaming, inquisitive face of to something kind, pleasant, and staid.
Third Stanza: The Reality of Permanence
Into this Port, if I might come, Rebecca, to Jerusalem, Would not so ravished turn – Nor Persian, baffled at her shrine Lift such a sign To her imperial Sun.
The speaker then contrasts her journey along with its destination to the biblical character, Rebekah, who traveled to the home of Isaac to become his wife, and to some nameless “Persian” whose prayerful pleadings remained somewhat superficial.
Instead of such worldly experiences, this speaker insists that she has become aware of the permanence bestowed by this amazing event that has captured her. Her port, if she understands if correctly, leads to the immortality upon which she has long mused and upon which she strongly insists is a reality.
Her mystical experience has now confirmed for her that the Afterlife is real and that she has visited and now knows in her soul that the Creator of the Cosmos is directing and guarding her.
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