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March 28, 2026
Writing like an adolescent again, serving the archetypes
By Gary Lindorff
Writing for imaginary deadlines sent out by the doomsday clock. / Life feels like that again: volatile, important, miraculous, / Worth defending,
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My poems are coming out sounding more and more adolescent,
Bombastic, self-conscious, champing at the bit,
Like when I was holed up in my room
Writing for imaginary deadlines sent out by the doomsday clock.
Life feels like that again: volatile, important, miraculous,
Worth defending,
With the enemies of life threatening to bust in and neutralize me
With an injection of mediocrity that will leave me slumped in my chair
Staring at my iPhone.
When I was an adolescent I was outraged, full of fire and spice.
I felt like I had something worth protecting - the Truth!
And that I was surrounded by people who (well-intentioned or not)
Sapped me of my life force, chalking off my vision
To youthful excess, which it was, but it was also way more than that.
I was seeing clearly. I just wasn't seeing what "they" were seeing.
And it was driving me crazy because it was in danger.
When I was adolescent I was more alive than it was possible to live
Under the circumstances of my life.
And I sensed that it couldn't last, and it didn't.
My adolescence was a little like orbiting, it was often ecstatic
And I knew that growing up would require coming down eventually,
And combusting on re-entry.
When you're out there, orbiting, you see everything!
But you see it all at once, not scaled down but up-scaled.
There was Day. And there was Night.
All wars were one War, all suffering, one Suffering,
All love, one Love.
Everything was capitalized. Everything was an archetype!
The times I was growing up in were the perfect time
For being a precocious inflated poet.
It was, after all, the Age of Aquarius.
Now, what I am saying is, that vibe has returned.
I've come full circle to seeing things archetypally and trusting that.
Trusting there is a reason for that.
We are living in archetypal times once more.
I am back to feeling that I have something worth protecting and
That I am surrounded by people whose sole purpose
Is to sap me of my life force and write off my vision.
Only now I'm not orbiting.
I'm right where I belong, grounded in a Creation in peril.
(Article changed on Mar 28, 2026 at 7:47 AM EDT)
(Article changed on Mar 29, 2026 at 8:57 AM EDT)
Authors Website: https://garylindorff.wordpress.com
Authors Bio:
Gary Lindorff is a poet, writer, blogger and author of five nonfiction books, three collections of poetry, "Children to the Mountain", "The Last recurrent Dream" (Two Plum Press), "Conversations with Poetry (coauthored with Tom Cowan), and a memoir, "Finding Myself in Time: Facing the Music". Lindorff calls himself an activist poet, channeling his activism through poetic voice. He also writes with other voices in other poetic styles: ecstatic, experimental and performance and a new genre, sand-blasted poems where he randomly picks sentence fragments from books drawn from his library, lists them, divides them into stanzas and looks for patterns. Sand-blasted poems are meant to be performed aloud with musical accompaniment.
He is a practicing dream worker(with a strong, Jungian background) and a shamanic practitioner. His shamanic work is continually deepening his partnership with the land. This work can assume many forms, solo and communal, among them: prayer, vision questing, ritual sweating, and sharing stories by the fire. He is a born-pacifist and attempts to walk the path of non-violence believing that no war is necessary or inevitable.