#my-poems — Public Fediverse posts

My Final Hurrah!

Just published on Amazon my 20th book (I hope this will be my last book) “Summa Iru: My Formal Renunciation and Farewell to the World“. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H87DDNRM)

Just a few hours back I published on Amazon another book “Advaita Vedanta through Name-and-Form Analysis”, which was written largely with the help of Claude. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H84F82HS)

About the Book: “Summa Iru: My Formal Renunciation and Farewell to the World“

“It is time I ended the ignorance in myself.”

With these words, a writer, poet, and lifelong student of Advaita Vedanta announces his formal withdrawal from the world — effective July 16, 2026, his 62nd birthday. Not a retreat from failure, nor a flight from grief, but the logical terminus of a life spent reading, thinking, debating, and writing about one thing: the ending of ignorance, which is the ending of the seeker himself.

Summa Iru is the author’s twentieth and, by its own declaration, final book — a parting document composed in the months before silence. It gathers the last poems (“Without Her By My Side,” “The Me Time,” “I The Stranger,” “The Last Act”), the last aphorisms (“Even God disappears when you are silent”), and the last philosophical exchanges of a man tying up loose ends before going incommunicado.

Between the poems runs a sustained meditation in the tradition of Ramana Maharshi and the Ashtavakra Gita: Why does psychoanalysis fail where self-enquiry succeeds? Why is renouncing desires mere symptom-treatment while the disease of ignorance festers? What did Ramana mean when he said the future is already fixed — and that the best course is to remain silent? How does summa iru — “just be still” — dissolve the questioner along with the question?

The book also records something rarer: the texture of leave-taking itself. Letters declined. Friendships gently closed. A reply to a friend asking for a small favour: “Sorry dear, I have retired from all work and all relationships.” The ache of unrequited love examined without flinching and traced back to its root — the unworthiness we feel sitting alone with ourselves, forever seeking the other who will transport us away from our own insignificance.

Drawing on Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, the Ashtavakra Gita, J. Krishnamurti, Buber, Kant, Camus, and the ghazal tradition, this is comparative philosophy written not from the armchair but from the departure gate.

For readers of Advaita Vedanta, spiritual memoir, and contemplative poetry — and for anyone who has wondered what it would actually take to stop.

The author will not be available for comment. That is rather the point.

My poem ‘Eric’s Trip’ published in THE YELLING CONTINUES

As I’m sure you, whoever you are, already know, Sonic Youth are my official standard answer to ‘What’s your favourite band?’, a question I think we should ask more as adults because it’s much more fun and informative than ‘What do you do for work?’, which is all adults ever ask each other.

A little while back I read a poetry collection, the author of which I’ve completely forgotten, where there were several ekphrastic poems – poems inspired by a work of art – about songs by Bob Marley. Naturally, I thought, I could do that, but for Sonic Youth, so I went back to my favourite SY song, ‘Eric’s Trip’, from Daydream Nation (the Greatest Album Of All Time). Funny thing about ‘Eric’s Trip’ is that it’s already ekphrastic, which makes my poem doubly so. The song was inspired by The Trip, a film by Andy Warhol in which Eric Emerson, musician, dancer, actor and general Warhol hanger-on, takes acid and talks for a long time. A really long time. He really does go on. I actually transcribed the whole thing in order to write the poem and it took ages.

Anyway, my poem being an ekphrastic ekphrastic poem actually fits into a long tradition. Probably the most famous ekphrastic poem is WH Auden’s ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’, which was inspired by Pieter Brughel’s Landscape with Fall of Icarus, which was itself inspired by the myth of Icarus, most famously told by Ovid in the Metamorphoses. Here’s the painting:

Apparently this painting also inspired William Carlos Williams to write a poem of the same name.

Somewhere in the world, someone must’ve written a triply ekphrastic poem. I look forward to reading it. You can read my merely doubly ekphrastic poem on Procrastinating Writers United. Fans of SY will note that I piled in references to their other songs and even a particularly cool guitar of theirs, as well as to some other works by Warhol. Enjoy!

#art #auden #ekphrasticPoems #literature #music #myPoems #pieterBrueghel #poems #poetry #sonicYouth #wcWilliams #williamCarlosWilliams #words

Moving poems over from Substack (too cluttered with Nazis) to Medium. Here's one: https://medium.com/@witheredstumpsoftime/here-sit-i-0ecc379dc294 #poetry #tsellliot #poems #mypoems

Three of my most favoritest #poems that I've composed. https://open.substack.com/pub/witheredstumpsoftime/p/a-mustache-fruit-salad-and-an-old?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
#poetry #poemsofmastodon #poem #poems #mypoems