Joy surges through you
after a winter of brokenness,
when you thought such emotion had dissipated.

It was waiting within you, hibernating –
in the sacrum, in the hips, in the core –
ready to roar.

Society, technology and Elon Musk cannot defeat it;
nor Trump descending his golden escalator.

It arises here and now,
within and beyond your flesh,
outshining sorrow and suffering

I’ve been the underground man for too long
Trapped in consciousness
Wrapping every experience and memory up in thought and deconstruction

You must move. Energy wants to express itself outwards, not congeal inwards

Is this jouissance? Perhaps so:
an energy beyond pain and pleasure,
borne in the charnel ground.

Spontaneous eruptions of jouissance are rare.

For the most part, I cannot rely on jouissance,
nor any emotion –
the emotional realm is too unreliable.

What I can rely on is mindfulness:
the ability to hold what is present in awareness.
Intentionality; will.

But I am grateful for tonight’s grace

My pale face fills with colour.

A fusion of mind and body (samadhi).

Romantic love may be a supernova,
but the red dwarf of electric joy
exists within each of us, self-sustaining.

We are made of sunlight.
The star’s old fire lives in our blood.
Let it keep burning.

Will the drug addict on the sidewalk in Berlin
witness the luminosity beneath his trauma?

Kali waits, ready to wound,
to destroy, to create, to love.

The above sounds a little like *elan vital*;
shout out to Bergson and Deleuze

What’s the difference between elan vital and jouissance?
(oh no! too much philosophical jargon!)

Is elan vital, as Deleuze’s posited essential process of reality (vitality of difference)
too simplistic, positive, expressive and eternalist?
Too good to be true?
Ray Brassier thinks so.

Too hot, too life-affirming; no entropy, no decay.
Perhaps – but I will stick with Deleuze and Bergson.

This is the energy I trust.

this poem has too many ;s