Dennis A. Zelazny

Chicago, Illinois, USA

Dennis is an advertising art director for Montgomery Ward and Co. He has had his poetry published by The National Library of Poetry and in poetry magazines such as Water & Light. Dennis believes that the artist in this age of declining religious and moral institutions has a responsibility to use his art for the spiritual benefit of mankind. His poetry is inspired by gnostic and esoteric principles that exemplify the contrasting and complementary elements of nature and human thought.

The Darkness

The darkness. The darkness at noon.
Prometheus, filled with compassion,
Filled with regret for the lost souls of the earth,
Is brooding above the gloom.
He knows that nature is blind,
An unrelenting dark force,
Proliferating endless species.
His will wants to cry halt;
His imagination wants to bring forth
The light of the transformative day.
Men, stupid and brutish, once dwelt in caves,
Fearing and worshipping darkness.
Prometheus stole fire from heaven,
Stole the flame of genius,
And with it kindled the human will.
The torch, passed down through the generations
To the present, has grown
Rather than diminished in brightness.

Truth Is Like Fire

Truth is like fire; few wish to be burned.
To be burned by one's truth, to allow truth to sear one's soul:
Here is the meaning and purpose of existence.
But ordinary life is the more attractive, easier alternative:
With family, friends, and the commitments they engender,
One may safely avoid the quest all one's life long.
We are asleep in the coolness of ordinary life.
But truth's fire may yet awaken us with the sting of its licks,
Compelling us to live our lives in its heat and light,
Helping us walk through its fire and not be burned.

Plato's Myth Of The Androgyne

Plato's myth of the androgyne:
The original unity;
The union of the sexes in one individual,
Cleaved asunder, divided.
Our sexual quests and forays are
Our pathetic attempts to regain this original unity.
Adam was androgynous, the original androgyne;
Eve, his opposite self, was taken out of him.
He and Eve, now incomplete and unhappy,
Sin against God's will and are driven out of the garden.
Condemned to search the world over,
They never suspect that they are
Unconsciously searching for each other.
We are condemned to search, too:
In sexual conquests, food, money, power, status;
But never in the right places - within ourselves.
The legacy of our fallen parents.