About Michael D. O’Kelly
Welcome to my World. The above symbol represents dotting one’s own — i—-midst the contraries & resonances of existence. The dotting becomes one’s FLAMING AFFLATUS and under one’s own care an ASPIRANT AFFLATUS ARIA– as in hitting a Pavarotti high C and holding it. So, Putting your toe in my open door is not to “buy,” but to “engage” a quest as old as when consciousness first envisioned Odyssean style a future and its self-active-operatic role in the outcome. So, come to gobble or nibble, this site serves my thoughts-experiences about being free, breathing deep, holding hands, and singing-hollering at the top of y(our) voice as we strive for speakings of living’s most throbbing lucidity: SHOALS —Shining Holds of Angelic Legacies. At the end of this Dot-Com is a designated space for comments: particularly about ANSWeR — A New Spirituality We Are. A new FLAMING AFFLATUS. Indeed, some blazes of new inspiration. (If you need to cross T’s as dot I’s — then Afflatus Wave Yoga is for you page 203 of AUGURIES.)
As you grasp the gist of this directive as it unfolds, I trust it will generate “your” new insights to the quest, which you will share on this site. As such responses accrue, I’ll periodically summarize and take the discussion forward. After all, this voyage is on the sea of language and we must maintain control or AI will just take over. Who knows?! We might just cause some trustful disruptive ripples on the Pond, veritas vibrations in the Stone, and classy chorales in the Wind: momentums that steady-steer our craft to home on some “sounder” ground-of-being that rarifies the meaning of our existence and clarifies our future. ICYMI: many things about people, ideas and this Earth aren’t like they used to be.( Just look at what’s displayed in 9 out of 10 movies on Netflix or Presidential tweetings.) And still, we know not why we are here; even as we add day by day to our knowledge and utterances from/of the uttermost strangeness of this place we call the Universe. Some old things we must learn to live without. Some new things we must comprehend to live with — to insure/inspire our future. –. I’m not a bot or about to drop-out because the bots are coming. However, it’s amazing I’m still around to continue being a my-me-mine (as you’re your you) as an Earthling Suchness that will never happen again. EVER! FOREVER A DONE DEAL. So, we sing our ASPIRANT AFFLATUS ARIA ……now as we march forward.
Introduction
I call myself a Poet, since the poetic voice best holds and incants my “AUM- afflatus spirituality.” I used to be a corporate speech writer, UU Minister, Family Therapist., Thespian ( acting in many plays), seller of “stuff.” At age 70, those behind me, I decided to get my writings in order on my word-processor. So, I began ALTARPIECES — as the significant “pieces” collected from the altar of my life. I soon realized I was into something more than a collection of poems and a theory of poetry. I began to envision other books — offspring, as it were. Thus, early one morning, Spring 2004, coffee in hand on my front porch — and Lo & Behold as the dawn was breaking a group of fireflies were flying in front of me towards the dawn. AFIRADAPO — A Fireflies At Dawn Poiesis— was born and here’s the soon composed poem’s conclusion:
Fireflies at dawn
Bellow their night poems through nag-heat day,
Pulse codes like lovers tangled on the reel —
Casting flashy lures at suns that must sink:
Winged essences, charred bodies still on fire.
A few years later, my wife, Marilyn, was diagnosed with leukemia. ALTARPIECES went on hold as there were two-and-a-half years ahead of intensive pursuit of procedures to prolong her life. The ordeal was constant from local hospital clinics to Cleveland to Baltimore: transfusions, surgeries, chemotherapies. Marilyn, my lovely artist wife-mother-of-three, died, age 74, May 25, 2009. Soon, I began a memorial book dedicated to her. I’m now on a computer. GLISTENINGS–“Till Death Do Us Part,” was published April 2010. ALTARPIECES- “Structures of Poetry and Spiritual Thinking” was published 2011: two years later I added a preface — “Origins of an Opus.” I was now conceiving a trilogy –OPUS TIPARTIUM TOTUS TUUS/Utterances from/or the Uttermost.” And a trilogy (APE) had formed within a trilogy. This was APE–Autobiography-Poetry-Essay. Think of poetry&essays beating on the chest of autobiography to sound a unison tasked to make sense of a life expressed in words — and a few pictures here and there. Book II — SYMPATHIES –“The Aoide Protocol” — was published June 2014. Book III — AUGURIES — “Augural Recrescendoes of Covenantal Kairos” was published October 2017.
I am currently “working” three children-family stories to publish soon. Also, a collection of poems in a volume slightly larger than a cellphone. Those of us — “A vanishing species?”– who have lived long in the hold of books filled with “markings” from one’s own hand, find it less than satisfying to read from electronic screens. I’ve tried to structure my books so that the “hand” of the human-creator is graspable — even unavoidable. I stamp all my books To Have And To Hold! Not just a cell-phone, please! Hands on the Helm! A little book of poetries for purse and pocket. Or as one friend says — “under the pillow.” And an audible version — perhaps.
I’m not really a “Numerologist,” though I’ve studied the “magicals of sympathies” enough to have seen interesting navigations of coordinates. So it is that, I became aware of some personal coordinates taking shape in 2018. I was born 02/18/1934. Therefore, the date 02/18/2018 caught my attention along with the fact I’d begin my 85th year at that pivotal moment in the timings of existence. Howsoever it plays out, that date and year will be my coming-out party (Hello World!) and this site should be up by then. (There will be many invitations to many who can’t come. The sacred valuations of 18, from the Hebrew tradition, I expect to activate with Irish resolve. I’ll take up golf when I retire.) I intend a productive year of some “flyable” undones waiting in the wings — the major “wing-span” is this “going public.” Raising my own Flag. I don’t expect popularity — just a “solid” seat on the bus that’s taking us to where we must go as Eartharians. In the burgeoning AI world with it’s “identity theft-fake-news” multitudes, robotic-take-overs, and machine-to-machine weaponings of destiny — we are being-taken-for-a-ride. Like the poets of all ages and challenges, I’ll actively join my contemporaries with this constant call — Let’s Not Forget To Hold Hands & Each Dot One’s Own “i” by hand. Sound aloud the chorus! Sense the feel of fingers turning pages in the mind. Find a quatrain to grasp between your teeth.
ARISE! –Plead your moonshine to pace the rabid tide,
Rhyme clockings between give and take of face;
Breakfasts stirred with hummings deep in the choir:
Your bared teats grasped by the mouths of rainbows.
Below, I briefly document my writings and future intentions as the year 2017 closes and I’m still ONE WHO LIVES. One of the reasons I’ve adopted the OWL as signature creature along with the FIREFLY and my little dog DAISYDEW. When I say POET– (one who tinctures-time-breathes-deep-hunts-the-night-protects-the-vine-hailer-of-the-dawn, etc.), I’m saying PASSAGE OWL OF EPIPHANTIC TANG: a working-concept that holds the umbrella of my OPUS-OEUVRE, namely A FIREFLIES AT DAWN POIESIS — AFIRADAPO. I am an ‘APO’KSTROPHES’ of AFIRADAPO. Since most I’ve to say is “tanged” by this “origin,” I best introduce my “opus-oeuvre” with this “nom de poiesis.”– Take your seat on the Bus! Mount our Galloping Gaia. Fire-the-Hearth. Join hands. The Passage of tang spins with bite, clang, and bark! Epochal Epiphanies need Livable Litanies. Poetries keep trying! Sciences keeps spying. Dogmas keep dying. Knowledge keeps growing! And, my OPUS WONTSUNODION LIFE keeps on hooting and hailing the hunt of the dawn. Mozart’s music keeps playing. My eager PERSISTORY ( as yours ) persists to be ever-freed from The Tree of Life so OUR WISEST LEGACIES keep awakening & winging & singing & coming home.
THE BIRTH OF ‘APO’KSTROPHES’— It took some unexpected resolve to commit to this birthing. It was almost (use your imagination) like the spiritually impregnating Angel that visited Mary. Out of nowhere this universal poet’s identity was suddenly a conception. Like Mary, I was a natural carrier from whom such was deliverable. Here’s how it happened. Start with the “apostrophe” best known as ONE’S own possession.( No Joseph contractions “should’st” be required.) As in O’K, it was mine as a natural carrier. I was, of course, well versed by the poetical-address concept of “Apostrophe” — namely, a “turning away” (the Greek meaning) from some normal audience-theme-pursuit — to “address” some personage-idea-reality as if it were present and newly alive. Wordsworth’s “Milton! thou should’st be living at this hour” is a classic line. The “Apostrophe” is a call-exposition of something that should be lively-considered –addressed!– at this now of one’s own time. I call it the releasing (See the Ariel-Prospero story in my work.) of a legacy ( a WONTSUNDION — wonder that should not die ) from the Tree of Life for a new flight. Old wings in w sunlight. In brief, an address to some somethings which should be alive and poignant at this hour. I put many of my poems/addresses in this category. “Fireflies At Dawn” is an Apostrophe. Alas, an Apostrophe can become an Ode (an extended song to squeeze the juice of complexity) and an Ode become an Apostrophe. There is no song without structured memory or structures of memory without song. AHA! An Apostrophode!!
Also, from the Greek Chorus we have the trills of this threesome— strophe-antistrophe-epode: the progenitors of my — CRESCENDO–DECRESCENDO–RECRESCENDO. With these, and many many sources, we have the origin of the three apostrophes in ‘APO’KSTROPHES’. (Don’t forget past-present-future or subject-predicate-object midst the multitudes of triunities: especially the major “ions” explored in AUGURIES– Predation — The Prosperoion — Procreation. ) Alas, there is a lot of “antistrophe-decrescendo-apostrophode” in The Prosperoion. ( See Glossary )
If the above wasn’t enough, research of echoes in my mind took me to these Greek words/concepts, which solidified-confirmed ‘Apo’kstrophes’, and which I detailed in ALTARPIECES. Here they are: APOKATASTASIS–being on track with “refreshed resiliency-resolve” firm in the groove of one’s destiny –APOKALUPTEIN — becomes “apocalypse,” which means to uncover-reveal-disclose major things ——- APOKRYPHOS — becomes “apocrypha,” which refers to what is hidden, secret, unknown. So, the OK preceded me in many ways. All three are functions of the poet-augur-scientist, etc. Ahhh! The exposing of realities to be cast actively in our resolve. Realities to not be missed, to be comprehended as possible, and expressed with authenticity. (History of OK: Greek to Gaelic to A-OK.– with care to not run AMOK.)
So it is, I refer to myself as AN ‘APO’KSTROPHES’. Proud to take it so as my “Nom de Poiesis.” It says what POET means to me and universally since we humans have such a voice. This is explored in SYMPATHIES as the Aoide Protocol. That most primal triunity seeded the Muses Nine: AOIDE-MELETE-MNEME –the voice of songs to be sung, the performance crafted as natural as flowing water, and the magical hold of memory to keep it all in repetitive place. Thus: The Song-The Craft-The Legacy. So, on stage — the voice-presence of the singer as iAM — Inspiration Afflatus Mundi. So, let’s give such performance the name i–ASIGASAM —- AFFFLATUS-SPIRITUS-IMAGO-GLORIA-ANIMA-SALVATOR-AXIS-MUNDI. —This ‘Apo’kstrophes’ from AFIRADAPO performs the iASIGASAM. Briefly: The World’s Song Sung! True as can be as so one hopes. Thus, to Craft Legacies. — Structure! Incantation! Lucidity! Memory! iAM! WeR! GENiUS! Dotting one’s own i — with FLAMING AFFLATUS!
It’s not easy . . .Living with catastrophe each morning,
Forever rethinking with new data,
Being morphed in swirls from glasses darkly:
Steamy mirror wiped to show but this face.
In AUGURIES I created the composite word APOCROAPTIC as the epitome accomplishment of language to have it truest connect to reality–both internally and externally to holistic. These were the three terms: ACRONYM ( as apt abbreviation as ASAP) — APTRONYM ( as a word the was truly most APT such as Nose or Hope) — APOTROPIC ( total sense and sound connect to reality such as Crescendo or Rain).
Putting all three together — APOCROAPTIC emerges as the holistic term describing that which an ‘Apo’kstrophes’ strives to spell-sound-sense-out of awareness to enhance-advance Awareness.
Now, these two sets of Three Word Sets are not my creation. Recall as well the AOIDE PROTOCOL triunity ( Aoide-Melete-Mneme–as Aoidoi -Agonisti-Actori).However these, and other triunes referred to, are the foundations of the APOCROAPTIC – ‘APO’KSTROPHES’( and its three apostrophes) – ALPHA-AXIAL “A” IN PALINDROMES such as MOMAMOM. The primal primacy of such pervasive groupings of “threes” in reality and our consciousness processes is central to my Trilogy. Later, on this site, I’ll discuss this secret to the universe when I contrast it with Tesla’s Nine (9) as primal. Alas, 9 is just three sets of threes. The Muses sing!! Aspirant Afflatus Arias!! Acapella Fortissimo!
mdok