This poetry series, The Seven Basic Plots, ideates the Jungian theory that there are only a few archetypal themes that recur throughout storytelling across different cultures and time periods…
by: Thomas Belton
1.The Quest
The mountain came and went in the rain like
an ellipsis with no ending
The goats climbing into the mist a mirage-
filled memory of their seeking
On the tree limbs thrusting from the crags a
bird murmurs its sweet song
As the halo of the sun pierces through the
clouds and a golden ram appears
Argonauts are we all; seeking that utmost
ledge where knowledge resides
Where Medea peeks from the bushes
craving his passion for the fleece.
2. Vanquishing the Monster
The labyrinth folds and fools in the swampy
darkness as the creatures come and go
The spindle of fate spinning in the arc of a
decision before a forked passage in time
Sinistra - Dextra the vortex whirls as the
stones of chance spill through the tunnels
Bellowing echoing the bludgeoning sounds
of despair trapped within the cave
The Minotaur gasping its last under the curse
of nothingness and transmogrification
Who the monster, who the hero, whose
corrupt desire leads him down these stairs.
3. Rags to Riches
The vagrant stranger passing amongst the
ivy and the bracken
The shrill voice in the darkness filled with
phlegmatic bile and ironic glee
“Who walks on four at dawn, two at noon,
three at night”
The answer a pointless joke or a portrait of
a man about to fall into a trap
Murder and incest, the comedy of a fool
cursed by a lion with a woman’s face
The beggar becomes a prince, the father
a corpse, and the mother a crow
On the branch where Harpies laugh and the
Fates cackle at the base of a hangman’s tree.
4. Voyage and Return
The sea rolls like a glaucous carpet under
a beaming sun.
The skiff bobbing like a mystery waiting
for a monster to appear.
Then transitive creatures come like a dream
dropped through a furious mist.
As an island explodes from the sea with a
starlight crown on a goddess floating.
Come Circe, sea nymph, followed by a litter
of pigs desperately squealing.
Come sailor drink this sanguine wine and
touch the teardrops of sleep.
Where memory creeps on spider’s feet and
the need to flee is lost.
Yet still the vagrant wanderer floats away
on the home-bound sea filled with
Angry ghosts sleeping on the abyssal sands
and warriors burned on their funeral pyres.
Hail Hero! tell us your tale of a fallen city
and the one-eyed giant who ate your friends.
5. Comedy
The Pied Piper took the rats
but kept the children
Hah!
Jack traded his mother’s cow
for a handful of beans
Giggles!
But the giant had a goose
laying golden eggs
Hmff!
Aladdin rubbed a lamp in
the Jinn’s cave
Shazzam!
Long John Silver
was a pirate and a
Cook!
Rumpelstiltskin was
quite the
Crook!
Bilbo’s sting
and Gollum’s
Ring!
From rags to riches
Beggar to
King!
6. Tragedy
The aggrieved wife stands by the bath
dreaming of a perfect revenge.
The furies in her head spinning dangerously
in volcanic wrath as images of a child,
Perfect in every way, climbs to an altar to
marry her prince while the gods look away.
The wind! The wind! They wanted a breath
of wind to push their ships on a bloody sea.
Now the recompense as the father returns
covered with the filth of a thousand deaths.
Come Hero! Come!
Your bath awaits with the sweet kiss
of your long dead child to condemn you.
7. Rebirth
Metamorphic mindless
Descent through valleys
Of amaranths and clover
Clematis and elk-horn coral
Creatures spin in a vortex
Of regenerative spume
As iridescent flames
Cross into shapes of
Fallen warriors on the
Elysian Fields, running,
Forever running in
Pursuit of lost fame
Narcissus and honeysuckle
Bloom in the spring with the
Cloying smell of humus and
Moss-covered bodies below
Spill upwards you seeds of
Lost children in ancient hills
Bring myth, bring sadness,
Bring forth the sleeping dead.
Thomas Belton is an author with extensive publications in fiction, poetry, non-fiction, magazine feature writing, science writing, and journalism. His professional memoir, Protecting New Jersey’s Environment: From Cancer Alley to the New Garden State (Rutgers University Press) won “Best Book in Science Writing for the General Public” by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.
