An individual's true inner self that in the analytic psychology of Carl Jung reflects archetypal ideals of conduct.

In the story Rappacini's Daughter, the character Aminadab had bad anima. Cute, huh?

Well, OK, all of the above, especially ideath.

In my reading of Carl Jung, anima is that part of the male psyche projected upon a female in the world. This phenomenon becomes the opening of the collective unconscious for the male so aflicted.

Archetypes come flowing out into the world as art, hence muse as actual entities, if not actually real persons.

Historically, one could look to Dante and his Beatrice, or to the notion of agape in Arthurian Mythology.

The girl's two feet are shellfish
pink as lasers from seaburn
she is standing in the shallows
she is whatever I believe her to be

her skin is a pale Krishna-blue
shading to white at the cheekbones
her dress is a crash of rainbows
I am a question that she asks

sunfire behind flowers of cloud
waves running through her
green and pearling colours
crying onto a tilted shore

she stands, the girl is a revenant
she is a condensation of meaning
the sand is the skin of a bass drum
she walks among the beach-snakes

"Who am I?" skylight up above
trapdoor spilling void into the ocean
the blue becomes full of doors
the girl is finding out about sleep

she has found a place
face-to-face with everyone in shortwave
beneath the sea-surface of the universe
a veil that shifts with her breath

absorbed back into her own curves
moon-empty, stiffening with coral
I am a pillar of seeing
with a sea-girl inside my mind


This is original work

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