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5871. Ulgine Barrows - 7/25/2007 8:40:17 AM They took me down the grading station
And they classified me zed
'Cause of over population
They told me that I would soon be dead
But I slipped out of the force field
And hid beneath the monorail
But the automatic blood hounds
Lord, they're soon hot along my trail
Now if I had been a scholar
With computer working hard
Then my molecular structure
Would not be on the grader's card
So, I know that they will get me
Put my index in the brain
Then, the atoms of my body
Will be disposed of, Lordy, down the drain
They took me down the grading station
And they classified me zed
'Cause of over population
They told me that I would soon be dead 5872. Ulgine Barrows - 7/25/2007 8:42:59 AM More 10 Years After, after what?
I almost went into a diatribe, but no, it is not the time nor place. 5873. Seamus - 7/27/2007 8:45:28 PM Ulgine,
Thank you for Ten Years After.
I quite like that lyric, particularly this:
Can you hear me from a thousand miles
When you're screaming at the stars?
Can you pull me up to Jupiter
When I'm all hung up on Mars? I don't think I've encountered Alvin Lee before. I appreciate the introduction.5874. Seamus - 7/27/2007 9:01:14 PM And wabbit, I liked that site as well. Thank you. 5875. Ulgine Barrows - 7/30/2007 9:57:44 AM Lies, Lies 5876. arkymalarky - 7/30/2007 5:24:34 PM Seamus, Jex linked a YouTube of him here: Message # 19785 in thread 155 5877. Macnas - 7/31/2007 8:56:42 AM Seamus
Your Sister Agnes poem is deceptive. There's a lot of work in that I'd wager, I see Clarke in the structure.
Very pleasing to re-read, always the sign of a good one. 5878. Seamus - 8/1/2007 3:20:17 AM Mac! Go raibh maith agat, a chara. I am honoured.
AC-like structure to it then?
I have been known to immediately think of "And O she was the Sunday in every week" upon seeing a beautiful woman pass by. Well, that, and other things anyway.
5879. Seamus - 8/1/2007 3:21:36 AM arky, thanks for the link.
I'm with you on the lyric there, though. 5880. anomie - 8/1/2007 3:45:53 AM A cousin just five years younger than me...he was 50 blew his brains out with a gun in the mouth. I guess there was a big clean up job.
I didn't now him well, but I knew about him, and I knew his sisters, my other cousins. He was a verytalentedperformer. He sang and played dirivative top 40 music. But to us he was a stunner. He could play "Blackbird" like you'd think it was John Lennon.
He had groupies. Can you believe, 50 year old groupies?
Pussy galore...from 30 to 50 year old pussy. Excuse me. But he had groupies.
50 years old, with groupies...blew his brains out.
His daughters are pissed. No life insurence for suicide. His sisters are bewildered, and wonder how much this is going to cost them.
I'm thinking....how rude. How f-ing inconsiderate! Use a bathtub fir Christ sake. Who pays for brains being swiped up from the car interior....or truck as ot were.
Pleae rednecks....put your guns up and use poisen or something.
I won't be going to the funeral. I like a lot more notice when someone makes a mess of himself. 5881. anomie - 8/1/2007 3:49:03 AM I could not put those thoughts on our "family" web site. But I know there is a lot of anger. It's hard to feel sad about somene you're pissed at,even if its your dad. 5882. arkymalarky - 8/1/2007 5:16:10 PM Every situation is different. But it's hard to judge, as Alistair put it, the hell in someone's head. I have two good friends who lost a parent to suicide (both friends were adults when it occurred). Both were tortured and suffering, one from chronic severe pain and debilitation and the other from profound depression. I knew the latter man well, and his end was incredibly tragic. He shot himself twice in the head with a shotgun (using his feet to fire it). All I could think was how much he must have suffered in death and how much he wanted to die. He left a mess his daughters had to clean up. And his wife, who was diabetic, had to have both legs amputated not long afterward. She died in a nursing home. These were not elderly people. She was in her early 60s. No one in the family was angry; they knew he was in a serious depression, and there was some guilt. They didn't know what to do and depended on their family physician, whom I blame more than anyone. He was not qualified to treat depression and didn't refer the family to someone who was. It was a downward spiral, not a condition of his life as a whole. In fact, he'd been a happy man when his daughter and I were young. They taught me to waterski.
There needs to be more care for mentally ill people. No one would think about not monitoring a diabetic or heart patient using specialists, but many mentally or emotionally ill patients are treated by general physicians using dangerous medicines that need to be monitored by specialists, and many health care plans don't even pay the same percent for mental illness, if it's covered at all. It's like if it's in your head, you really can help it and it's not legitimate illness, which is bullshit that costs lives and hurts countless people in addition to those who are ill.
My mother has chronic mental illness, but she thrives with good care and has since she was fourteen and my grandmother had the good sense and no embarrassment about sending her to a psychiatrist. Mom has had three nervous breakdowns, but she's now 71 and in good health and very happy. She loves life.
And it's zero of my business, but since you bring it up, if I didn't feel I should go, I wouldn't, but funerals are for the family, not the dead. 5883. anomie - 8/1/2007 7:10:59 PM Yes, it's hard to imagine the kind of despair it takes to pull the trigger. You're right about funerals too I suppose. I think they're having just a non-religious scattering of ashes, and I haven't firmly decided whether to go. Some of the sentiments above are those of relatives to whom I've spoken.
I wish I knew him as 50 year-old. I keep thinking of the little boy I used to know. 5884. Seamus - 8/1/2007 9:20:24 PM I think I know what you mean, anomie, about the anger. You also hint at guilt.
About the despair, I don't think we will ever be able to fathom it in someone else, will we?
This is completely new and still quite raw:
Sursum corda
(for Conall)
Cultivo una rosa blanca
en julio como en enero
(from “Cultivo Una Rosa Blanca” by José Martí)
There’s a memory I am supposed to keep,
white and high,
of vestments of laughter,
of footballs and ewe grass and summer sunlight
and of you, who looked up to me like a brother.
But all my memories ochre over time.
They fall back to earth
until they are true. Here’s one:
We are in a pack-like preening
of brave bobs,
flexing with cigarettes and conceits
outside the sanctuary
of the cinema.
Someone claims an insider’s knowing
how black the furry baz grows
on that one’s growler
and someone else is oh didja catch
the brilliant diddies
on that coppernob?
But when you cried out
from your wounds inside the sacristy,
I chose not to hear you.
And as you grew quiet,
I chose not to understand.
I was planted away in dark Dublin,
where I’d gone to brood over books,
when they cut you down
from the dying chestnut
in the grey snow
across the wet lane from the refectory.
I was listening to the silence
in the wan, round cheeses of light
the feeble lamp beams made.
You chose the same tree under which
I had so often footed a reckless ball to you
and, with a perfect two touch,
you would stop then send it skimming back to me,
passing like our voices
over the green and into the shadows.
It was only after they had told me
you were now another memory I must tend
that you began to speak to me again.
Seamus
5885. Seamus - 8/1/2007 9:30:56 PM I think I know what you mean, anomie, about the anger. You also hint at guilt.
About the despair, I don't think we will ever be able to fathom it in someone else, will we?
This is completely new and still quite raw:
Sursum corda
(for Conall)
Cultivo una rosa blanca
en julio como en enero
(from “Cultivo Una Rosa Blanca” by José Martí)
There’s a memory I am supposed to keep,
white and high,
of vestments of laughter,
of footballs and ewe grass and summer sunlight
and of you, who looked up to me like a brother.
But all my memories ochre over time.
They fall back to earth
until they are true. Here’s one:
We are in a pack-like preening
of brave bobs,
flexing with cigarettes and conceits
outside the sanctuary
of the cinema.
Someone claims an insider’s knowing
how black the furry baz grows
on that one’s growler
and someone else is oh didja catch
the brilliant diddies
on that coppernob?
But when you cried out
from your wounds inside the sacristy,
I chose not to hear you.
And as you grew quiet,
I chose not to understand.
I was planted away in dark Dublin,
where I’d gone to brood over books,
when they cut you down
from the dying chestnut
in the grey snow
across the wet lane from the refectory.
I was listening to the silence
in the wan, round cheeses of light
the feeble lamp beams made.
You chose the same tree under which
I had so often footed a reckless ball to you
and, with a perfect two touch,
you would stop then send it skimming back to me,
passing like our voices
over the green and into the shadows.
It was only after they had told me
you were now another memory I must tend
that you began to speak to me again.
Seamus
5886. Seamus - 8/1/2007 9:31:30 PM Apologies for that. 5887. arkymalarky - 8/2/2007 4:10:52 AM That got to me, Seamus. Life is so beautiful and so so difficult, for almost everyone really. 5888. arkymalarky - 8/2/2007 4:17:05 AM Anomie, whether you decide go or not, I'm really sorry you and your family are having to go through this, and Thoughtful with her brother. It's traumatic for almost everyone. The funeral service for my friend's father was very nice, with few people. I was the only friend of the younger daughter who was there, and I felt like it helped to be there. We spent time visiting and I helped her and her mother a little with things. At the time her mother's feet were black from the diabetes. 5889. wonkers2 - 8/2/2007 12:51:01 PM Very nice poem, Seamus. 5890. anomie - 8/2/2007 8:34:42 PM I second that, Seamus. Very nice indeed.
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