A cosmic jazz-club comedy battle between Beat Generation legends Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, debating Carl Jung's concept of the continuous, non-dualistic Self. What begins as a philosophical showdown transforms into enlightened harmony, revealing that two competing voices were always one consciousness dancing on the twisted surface of Being. Featuring live comedy club atmosphere, dueling vocals, extended jazz instrumental solos, and spontaneous hecklers - cosmic wisdom delivered through Beat Generation swagger and sophisticated nu-jazz grooves. From my upcoming book "Breakfast with Jung" Chapter 8 The Self


Möbius Strip of Being  (Lyrics)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Cosmic Comedy Club
Tonight's philosophical throwdown
Two Beat Generation legends walk into a Möbius strip
Jack Kerouac claims he's the center everywhere
Allen Ginsberg swears he's nowhere at all
Let's see who can prove the Self is continuous, non-dualistic, and utterly hilarious
Round one, fight

I am the circle whose center is everywhere
My consciousness loops like a quantum serpent
Swallowing its tail in a feast of forever

And nowhere, geometry has a sense of humor
In my eye's pupil, galaxies are born and die
While microbes hold parliament in my cells

I'm smaller than a mustard seed of doubt
Yet my dreams need multiple universes for storage
Reality keeps leaving its brass keys in my pockets

Prove it, Jack

The mirror shows infinity wrapped in skin
Each reflection containing all reflections
Like those shampoo commercials where mirrors multiply endlessly

But instead of hair products, they're selling enlightenment at discount prices

Watch now as I pour oceans from this teacup
While eternities dance on my fingertips

Plot twist, the dance floor is also my palm
And time itself is taking lessons in continuity from the space between my thoughts

Now you're just showing off

Here's the cosmic joke, written in DNA
I am both the laughing Buddha and the laugh itself

Rolling like thunder through the endless hallways of being
Where laughter echoes off eternity's walls

My neurons are touring the comedy circuit
While karma works the door and destiny tends bar
Even my cells are practicing their routines
Though enlightenment's two-drink minimum is steep

And now folks, the moment of truth
What happens when two Beat legends become one on the Möbius strip

On the surface of time's twisted ribbon
Morning light bends into evening shadow
While truth loops endlessly between being and becoming
Each moment both origin and destination

Walking this twisted path
I meet myself coming and going
Every ending flows into beginning
Being and becoming dance on a single surface

Ladies and gentlemen, you just witnessed it
Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg proving the Self is continuous and non-dualistic
Thank you, thank you, tip your cosmic waitstaff

by Stephen Francis Hollins

Möbius Strip of Being

BREAKFAST WITH JUNG - When Morning Becomes Portal

What if your morning coffee ritual was actually communion with eternity?

At dawn's ragged edge, an ordinary kitchen transforms into a temple where the Collective Unconscious speaks through steam rising from tea, through faces rippling in chrome, through your grandmother's hands weaving histories into your cup.

This is Jung's most profound insight made tangible: we are never truly
alone. "In this kitchen, we are all time travellers, breaking bread with
our unborn children, while the dead pour tea with trembling hands." The ancestors lean in, hungry for one more taste of morning. The tui's song harmonizes with languages lost when Eden's gates swung shut. Even the sugar bowl holds crystals of compressed eternities.

The Collective Unconscious isn't abstract theory—it's the moment when time pools honey-thick between dreaming and day, when you realize every breakfast is simultaneously the first and the last, when eternity reveals itself as simply this: a kitchen full of ghosts at morning, passing cream across time's borders.

The beautiful female folk voice carries both depth and lightness,
making the mystical feel utterly domestic—the sacred hiding in the ordinary, the eternal folded into a cup of tea.

Tell me then, you who breakfast alone—do you see them in your morning mirror? All the faces time has worn and will wear, gathering like moths around your light?

"The collective unconscious contains the whole spiritual heritage of
mankind's evolution, born anew in the brain structure of every individual."
- Carl Jung 





Breakfast with Jung   ( Lyrics )

At dawn’s ragged edge, my kitchen becomes
A temple of ordinary prophecies
Coffee grounds like black diviner’s sand
Messages from the dead burned into toast

My grandmother’s hands emerge from steam
Weaving histories into my cup, while outside
Bougainvillaea bleeds its crimson alphabet
Across windows thin as memory’s skin

In the toaster’s chrome, faces ripple:
Great-aunts with eyes of burning coal,
Cousins carrying unborn stars in their teeth,
Children who might bloom from my bones.

Their reflections overlap like hungry ghosts,
All pressing against morning’s fragile glass.
The kettle screams with a thousand voices—
Every cup of tea ever poured flowing backwards

Through time’s copper throat. Even Jung himself
Pauses mid-bite, startled by its prophecy.
A tui splits the sky’s yolk with her song,
Harmonising with languages lost when

Eden’s gates swung shut. Her notes scatter
Like black pearls across my breakfast plate.
Time pools honey-thick in this hour
Between dreaming and day, sweet

With the marrow of memory. My spoon
Stirs ripples in the universe’s coffee cup.
The morning news bleeds through dimensions—
Every headline ever printed rising like smoke

From my coffee: wars, loves, births, extinctions
Spiral into one eternal moment of toast and tea.
Through the window, the bougainvillea
Drops petals red as birth-blood, each one

Carrying messages from the collective heart—
Semaphores from gardens of remembered light.
Watch now—as my ancestors lean in, hungry
For one more taste of morning, their shadows

Drinking light from my cup. Even the sugar bowl
Holds crystals of compressed eternities.
In this kitchen, we are all time travellers,
Breaking bread with our unborn children,

While the dead pour tea with trembling hands
And tomorrow whispers in our marrow.
Tell me then, you who breakfast alone,
Do you see them in your morning mirror—

All the faces time has worn and will wear,
Gathering like moths around your light?
Here at dawn’s clean slate,
Where every breakfast is the last breakfast,

And also the first, we drink our coffee
Black as memory, sweet as prophecy,
While Jung smiles from the doorway,
Knowing that eternity was always this:

A kitchen full of ghosts at morning,
Passing cream across time’s borders.
 
By Stephen Francis Hollins

11/October 2025

Breakfast with Jung

FOOTPATH SILHOUETTE - Shadow in Daily Life

Your shadow follows you through the city at noon, reaching for what you've 
disowned. Shadow recognition doesn't happen in dramatic confrontations—it 
happens while you walk. From concrete hot enough to brand memories through 
twilight when "borders blur like tea leaves in prophecy." By dusk, you're 
speaking in shadow-tongue, tasting truth's copper tang.

From "Breakfast with Jung: Chapter 2 - The Shadow"
🎵 Full depth: sfhmusic.bandcamp.com

Footpath Silhouette  (Lyrics)

On the sun-bleached footpath at noon,
my shadow throws itself before me—
not so much a darkness as a truth
etched in light’s negative space,
concrete hot enough to brand memories.

It reaches for what I’ve disowned:
yesterday’s coffee cup lipstick traces,
that unanswered letter’s torn edges,
my mother’s antique locket I pawned—
each regret a crack in the sidewalk’s spine.

We dance this midday geometry,
my darker twin and I,
each step a negotiation of edges—
while beneath our feet, cicadas pulse
summer’s code of buried confessions.

My shadow wears my unlived lives
like shed snake skins in sunlight,
each one a door I never opened,
a phone call I never returned,
safety’s price paid in missing chapters.

Through city canyons we track,
getting bolder with each block passed,
until at dusk, when streetlights start
their slow orange confession,
borders blur like tea leaves in prophecy—
I catch myself speaking in shadow-tongue,
tasting truth’s copper tang on my teeth.

Watch now: how darkness learns to dance
while light holds its breath, waiting
for tomorrow’s footsteps to begin again
Watch now: how darkness learns to dance
while light holds its breath, waiting
for tomorrow’s footsteps to begin again



Footpath Silhouette

THE SHADOW IN THE LONG WHITE CLOUD - Collective Shadow / Aotearoa

Aotearoa dreams on a bed of smouldering stones, where Taupo's caldera holds 
its ancient breath. Collective shadow explores how nations deny historical 
trauma—"pohutukawa roots crack colonial foundations, each broken stone a 
small death of indigenous dreams." Volcanic imagery as psychological 
diagnosis. When Ruaumoko stirs with unspoken rage, denied collective 
trauma demands reckoning.

Psychedelic punk-folk with Māori ceremonial elements. Rebellious and sacred.

From "Breakfast with Jung: Chapter 2 - The Shadow"
🎵 Full exploration: sfhmusic.bandcamp.com
💿 Support the work      📖 Geology meets psychology

The Shadow in the Long White Cloud   (Lyrics)

Aotearoa dreams on a bed of smouldering stones,
where Taupo's caldera holds its ancient breath -
its heart a pounamu of unspoken truths,
black and gleaming with night-sweat confessions.
In Rotorua's steaming pools, guilt rises like mist,
where Whakarewarewa's breath scalds the conscience clean.
Māori guides, their faces mapped with moko,
sing histories that bleed into the sulphurous air.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd
to avoid facing their own souls.

Wellington's wind howls through Thorndon's graves,
carrying the cries of forgotten chiefs across Te Aro.
The Beehive hums, a hive of shadow-bees
making bitter honey from the flowers of discontent,
while beneath Lambton Quay, old bones shift
in their concrete tombs, restless with remembering.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd
to avoid facing their own souls.

Auckland's glass towers pierce Queen Street's sky,
their obsidian teeth gnawing at ancestral clouds.
In Britomart's chrome cafes, executives sip flat whites
bitter with memory, while pohutukawa roots
crack colonial foundations - each broken stone
a small death of indigenous dreams.
From Maungakiekie's scarred summit,
the long white cloud darkens to indigo,
pregnant with the weight of silenced voices.


People will do anything, no matter how absurd
to avoid facing their own souls.

When will this land birth its hidden self,
screaming its pain to the Matariki stars,
their seven lights piercing our collective night?
A tremor grows beneath motorway and marae,
a people's voice rising through concrete canyons.

Ruaumoko, god of earthquakes,
stirs in his earthen cradle,
fault lines crackling with unspoken rage,
ready to dance our spirits into new shapes.

From Maungakiekie's scarred summit,
the long white cloud darkens to indigo,
pregnant with the weight of silenced voices.

In the gloaming, Tui sing laments in Titirangi,
while in city parks, kereru drop purple tears
on the graves of trees we forgot to mourn.

Listen—beneath Te-Moana-nui-a-Kiwa,
Tangaroa's heart drums like a war party,
each beat a prophecy of rising seas.
While we sleep in our concrete dreams,
all our shadows turn to salt.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd
to avoid facing their own souls.

Listen—beneath Te-Moana-nui-a-Kiwa,
Tangaroa's heart drums like a war party,
each beat a prophecy of rising seas.
While we sleep in our concrete dreams,
all our shadows turn to salt.
 


The Shadow in the Long White Cloud

DIGITAL SHADOWS - Shadow in the Online World

In the black mirror of our devices, even our shadows learn to wear masks. 
Modern shadow work requires examining how we project and fragment ourselves 
online. "We feed our hungry ghosts with likes, building crystal castles 
that shimmer and dissolve." What do you say online that you'd never say 
face-to-face? The final question haunts: "Who's updating my status now—
and which version of me is more real?"
Dark electronic jazz. F# minor. Digital trance meets shadow projection.

From "Breakfast with Jung: Chapter 2 - The Shadow"
🎵 Full analysis: sfhmusic.bandcamp.com
💿 Support - name your price     📖 Shadow work for the digital age

Digital Shadows   (Lyrics)

In Ponsonby's blue-lit morning,
faces glow like deep-sea creatures,
each scroll and swipe leaving
phosphorescent trails across glass.
Something's different today—
notifications pulse faster,
algorithms whisper darker songs.

Can we become conscious 
of what rises from within
In the black mirror of our devices 
even our shadows learn to wear masks

We feed our hungry ghosts with likes,
building crystal castles of connection
that shimmer and dissolve.
I scroll deeper, chasing digital breadcrumbs
through comment-thread labyrinths
where trolls spawn in darkness,
each post a small death of kindness.

Can we become conscious 
of what rises from within
In the black mirror of our devices 
even our shadows learn to wear masks

The power trembles—once, twice.
Faces rise from devices, startled
as sleepwalkers mid-dream.
In that suspended moment,
our shadows step through screens,
wearing our deleted histories
like wedding clothes, while we sit
stunned in our newfound nakedness.

Can we become conscious 
of what rises from within
In the black mirror of our devices 
even our shadows learn to wear masks

Already my fingers itch
for phantom keyboards,
for the comfort of crafted light.
But who's updating my status now—
and which version of me
is more real?

Already my fingers itch
for phantom keyboards,
for the comfort of crafted light.
But who's updating my status now—
and which version of me
is more real?
 


Digital Shadows

"I am the light and the dark, the face I show and the one I hide." Visual 
poem as audio meditation—words spiraling inward toward true Self, 
fragmenting into shadow components, then reassembling. Individuation isn't 
linear but spiral. "Light casts dark / Dark define light"—not opposition 
but collaboration. Returning to old patterns isn't failure; it's how 
growth happens, with neo-soul and Sufi mystical depth. Brooklyn meets 
ancient wisdom.

From "Breakfast with Jung: Chapter 2 - The Shadow"
🎵 Full meditation: sfhmusic.bandcamp.com
📖 The spiral of becoming

The Shadow in Visual Meditation   (Lyrics)

I am the light
and 	the dark
the 	 face I
show and the
one I 	hide My
shadow 	 stretches
long in 	 the sun
of self 	 -aware
-ness A dance of
duality 	 Light
casts 	 dark
Dark 	define
light 	We are
both the
sil 	hou
et 	te
an 	d
i 	t
s 	s
h 	 h
a 	  a
d 	    d
o 	        o
w	            w
 




The Shadow In Meditation

THE GOLDEN SHADOW'S EDGE - Hidden Gifts & Denied Light

Like pāua shells scattered on Ocean's Beach, my hidden gifts lie face down, 
concealing galaxies. The "golden shadow" names talents and brilliance we've 
buried under "not good enough." What if your crooked heart is exactly what's 
needed? "I've spent years praising others' brightness while mine sleeps like 
glow-worms." Sometimes shadow depth reveals how we all carry constellations 
inside. Folk ballad with Female vocalist and three-octave range.

From "Breakfast with Jung: Chapter 2 - The Shadow"
🎵 Full depth: sfhmusic.bandcamp.com
📖 Discovering your hidden light

The Golden Shadows’ Edge   (Lyrics)

Like pāua shells scattered on Oceans Beach,
my hidden gifts lie face down in sand,
their dull grey backs concealing
galaxies of blue and green, post golden
threads that run under my skin.

I’ve spent years walking past my own light,
praising others’ brilliance while mine
sleeps beneath ordinary stone,
waiting for recognition’s tide.

Tonight, as shadows stretch past Rangitoto,
something shifts in twilight’s alchemy—
picking through storm-tossed offerings,
my fingers find what they weren’t seeking:
a stone smooth as forgiveness, cold
as yesterday’s certainties, but when I turn it,
green light pools in my palm like prophecy.

I’ve spent years praising others’ brightness,
while mine sleeps in darkness like glow-worms,
each small light a truth I’ve kept unspoken.
Sometimes it takes shadow depth to see
how we all carry constellations inside.

Now I understand what the tides have taught:
I must love my crooked neighbour
with my own crooked heart, must learn
to trust the gold that runs beneath
my doubtful skin. Even hesitation
holds its hidden pearl, even fear
conceals its own fierce grace.

Look—sunrise spills over Waiheke Island,
and everything ordinary turns luminous.
My shadow stretches toward morning,
no longer dark but shot through
with threads of living light,
finally learning to shine.


The Golden Shadows Edge

THE OTHER'S FACE - Shadow Projection

We paint our hidden selves thick on strangers' skin, tattooing our fears on 
their flesh. Jung's most unsettling insight: what you hate most intensely 
in others is often your own disowned quality reflected back. In the ballroom 
of projection, we tango with demons dressed as strangers. "Look how perfectly 
their flaws match our deepest wounds." Next time someone repulses you, ask: 
what part of ME am I seeing in them?

Dark cabaret with tango influences. Theatrical, haunting, revelatory.

From "Breakfast with Jung: Chapter 2 - The Shadow"
🎵 Full exploration: sfhmusic.bandcamp.com
📖 The mirror of projection

The Other’s Face   (Lyrics)

We paint
our hidden selves thick
on strangers’ skin,
while shame-dark tears collect
behind their eyes like bitter mirrors—
each reflection shows back
what we refuse to own.

The dance hall pulses with shadow-ghosts,
their heavy feet drumming up
rhythms of recognition and blame.
Every face we hate holds our truth.

Each gesture reveals another self-denied:
that wild laugh we swallowed,
that rage we buried deep,
those hungers we dare not name.

In the ballroom of projection,
we tango with our demons dressed as strangers,
tattooing our fears on their flesh
until their features twist
into monsters of our making.

What gargoyles we chisel from denial’s stone—
our own face emerging
in each grotesque grin.

Our hatred spins through mirror-halls,
ricochets off walls of who-we-think-we-are,
until it nests beneath our ribs, a dark bird
feeding on everything we claim not to be.

Look how perfectly their flaws
match our deepest wounds—
these strangers wearing our discarded parts
like borrowed coats.

We hunt ourselves in others’ faces
while truth waits behind their eyes,
patient as a new moon,
for us to recognise 
recognise our own reflection. 




The Other’s Face

PRUNED - Shadow Formation Through Social Conditioning

In the wild garden of self, shadows grow like morning glory choking social 
graces while mother's voice whispers "ladies don't..." Shadow formation 
isn't mysterious—it's systematic pruning. "Anger sculpted into 'professional 
development,' desire trimmed to 'appropriate networking.'" Notice the 
generational transmission: grandmother's silences feeding underground streams, 
father's stunted dreams tangling with yours. But unexpected blossoms open 
in corners where society's shears cannot reach.

Psychedelic punk-folk with Māori ceremonial elements. Defiant and sacred.

From "Breakfast with Jung: Chapter 2 - The Shadow"
🎵 Full depth: sfhmusic.bandcamp.com
💿 Support the wild growth
📖 Where shadows are cultivated

Pruned   (Lyrics)

In the wild garden of self, shadows grow
like morning glory choking social graces,
while mother’s voice whispers, “ladies don’t . . .”
through thorny stems of inherited shame.
I grip grandfather’s pruning shears, half-afraid—
the same ones he used to shape his rage
into neat hospital corners and pressed shirts,
his garden brutally ordered, painfully trim.

The blades know their business: snip
anger sculpted into “professional development,”
desire trimmed to “appropriate networking,”
wildness boxed into “showing initiative.”
Each cut releases copper-scented memory:
playground taunts, teacher’s frowns, lover’s sighs.
Some shoots spring back, defiant as weeds
between sidewalk cracks of conformity.

That laugh too loud, that truth too raw,
those wants that refuse to wear politeness.
In boardrooms, they peek through blazer sleeves—
tendrils of authentic self, untamed.
Deep beneath, grandmother’s root system spreads,
her silences feeding underground streams,
while dad’s stunted dreams tangle with mine,
growing strange fruit in darkness.

What bitter nectar, what sweet poison
flows through this family tree?
Each season brings its own hard choices:
Spring’s wild shoots marked for taming,
Summer’s unruly growth demanding scissors,
Autumn’s stark reveal of what we’ve sacrificed,
Winter’s bare truth of what remains.

The pruned parts compose their own dark mulch.
Yet in these shadowed corners of the soul,
where society’s shears cannot reach,
unexpected blossoms open their throats:
midnight orchids of forbidden joy,
passion vines heavy with might-have-beens,
butterflies birthed from chrysalis of shame.

My hands still grip these inherited blades,
but now I notice: between the cuts,
how shadows dance with light, how pruned stems
weep sweetness, how each small act
of necessary savagery makes space
for both the tended and the wild.



Prunded

TANGO IN TWILIGHT - Shadow Dance Between Two

In the half-light of Kiwi dusk, we dance with our shadows—four dark partners 
on the kitchen wall. Intimate relationships become shadow laboratories. Your 
anger hooks into my guilt, my fear strikes at your pride. "Your shadow grabs 
my throat, my darkness claws your back." The tango captures shadow dynamics 
perfectly—controlled passion, partners mirroring and resisting. We thought 
we were learning to waltz with demons, but instead "we're falling through 
layers of who we thought we were."

Dark ambient folk tango. Intimate, confrontational, transformative.

From "Breakfast with Jung: Chapter 2 - The Shadow"

🎵 Full depth: sfhmusic.bandcamp.com
💿 Support the dance
📖 Shadow dynamics in relationship

[Jung smiles gently]

Tango in Twilight

In the half-light of a Kiwi dusk,
we dance, you and I, with our shadows—
four dark partners on the kitchen wall,
each one hungry for what we deny.

Your anger, a pohutukawa flame,
licks at the edges of my guilt.
My fear, coiled like a black snake,
strikes at the throat of your pride.

We’ve locked them in bone-closets,
fed them scraps of our pretending,
but tonight they break their locks,
demanding their turn to lead.

Your shadow grabs my throat,
my darkness claws your back.
In this twilight tango, we bleed
truths we’ve tried to forget.

The dance floor tilts with secrets—
your jealousy and my shame
whirl like ravens through the room,
their wings slick with knowing.

Then something shifts: we surrender
to the Shadow music, our darkness
leading us through its ancient steps
until the dance floor starts to burn.

We thought we were learning to waltz
with our demons, to make peace
with our darker selves, but watch—
as my shadow swallows your light,
as your darkness drinks my dawn,
we’re not dancing anymore but falling
through layers of who we thought we were,
our bones remembering older rhythms.

Come morning, we’ll find our clothes
empty on the floor, our skins shed
like snake years, while our shadows
dance on without us, wearing our names
like borrowed jewellery, teaching us
how little we knew of darkness,
how much of us was twilight all along


Tango in Twilight

Poet • Performer • Composer • Lyricist

New tracks tagged #Breakfast with Jung