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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. 5891. anomie - 8/2/2007 8:46:51 PM Arky, Looks like they're planning something for 12 Aug. If I go, it will be as you say to show support for my other cousins and his kids. Thanks again for your thoughts. 5892. Seamus - 8/3/2007 7:21:20 PM Thank you arky, wonk and anomie. I appreciate that from each of you.
I've reworked it slightly, a bit of resorting or reordering and I'm going to post the revision next, but after that I won't continue to subject you to every change I make to it.
And I know arky knows this of me, but it bears repeating. This has never changed for me one jot: I am always quite open to all comments, suggestions, emendations and whatever you want to say about anything I post here. I cannot tell you how much I have learned from the things said here about my work.
Again, many thanks for your kind comments. 5893. Seamus - 8/3/2007 7:27:45 PM 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;
I was listening to the silence,
in the wan, round cheeses of light
the feeble lamp beams made,
when they cut you down
from the dying chestnut
in the grey snow
across the wet lane from the refectory.
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 5894. alistairConnor - 8/3/2007 9:47:00 PM I like it more and more, Seamus. The re-ordering is pertinent. No suggestions.
Round cheeses of light indeed! 5895. Ulgine Barrows - 8/4/2007 9:43:45 AM I could walk like Brando right into the sun, then dance just like a Casanova
~Bruce Springsteen
my brother is so cute, he can always find a woman. I just can't take him anymore, maybe when my own kid is gone and grownup. I've met no less than 8 live-in girlfriends of his in the past two years.
I get their names wrong. I get his character wrong.
Please take care of him, because I won't. I won't clean up after him. I don't make that $10 extra per hour.
And I didn't deliver him, our mom did.
Christ, I love him, but I wish someone else would take care if him, and his Tens Years After trash. 5896. Ulgine Barrows - 8/4/2007 9:48:55 AM He will find another woman to take care of him.
Let's hope she never learns my phone number. 5897. Ulgine Barrows - 8/4/2007 10:07:17 AM Sorry, I put this in the wrong place. They made me say it. 5898. Seamus - 8/4/2007 6:45:19 PM Thank you, alistair. I am grateful. 5899. NuPlanetOne - 8/6/2007 4:26:16 PM It could be said that poetry is most deservedly a finest of fine arts. It embodies everything that can be wrung from imagination by evoking the more ancient perceptions and depictions that preceded stand alone literature. Good poetry, in my opinion, will leave someone mulling the imagery long before it becomes necessary to interpret the meaning. If you hold the reader in that pose, enthralled, whether in wonder or disdain just for a few moments, an understanding of the intent then becomes a worthwhile endeavor. Even if, at best, the author has no clear message nor a worthwhile meaning, you recognize, at least, an ability to project and portray pathos the way an excellent aged wine develops pleasantly across the palate. You want more. Ha! Bad poetry and bad wine. A most excellent analogy.
Seamus, that is very good poetry, that Sursum, there.
5900. alistairconnor - 8/7/2007 8:41:26 AM And that is a most succinct and powerful evocation of the soul of poetry, Nu. The oldest of the arts? It undoubtedly preceded cave wall painting, and perhaps even language. 5901. NuPlanetOne - 8/7/2007 4:23:35 PM alistair…
That is an interesting chronology, actually, if one were to ponder it. That poetry preceded even language. Yet, since I do now ponder it, I suppose early humanoids before the aliens landed, (that is, prior to alleged interactions with beings not of this planet, divine or otherwise), must have developed the ability to recognize the wonderful symmetries and rhythmic consistencies in the natural world about them. As well, contrarily, as being fascinated by the chaos and apparently random occurrances that surrounded just about everything else. Or is symmetrical consistency as it perpetuates down the river of Time just the best of all possible worlds to exist in, and the only one where life can take hold. I’ve always felt that mathematics and its complicated derivatives are possible because we are what I like to call Time-aware®. Beings able to appreciate and observe the incalculable fluctuations and perturbations of a trillion gazillion phases of matter with various faces, that are quite observable, providing there is an able observer. A stasis point, if you will, where one can actually comprehend the organized and unobservable natural state of chaos. Or, more simply put, we exist outside the gazillion phases and see in the blur, a face, as if the ripples finally stopped on a pond, as reality. And as such, can observe it, and count and calculate our estrangement. Hence, see it as moving on and on. And, being outside of it, we can look back as well as imagine its forward progress. Yet, because it might be impossible to observe other faces of these grand chaotic systems, life will remain a mystery. Wow! That is heavy!
I could be wrong. And you all know I’m a fringe thinker. But mice don’t ponder this shit, nor bacteria, nor giraffes. Why us? Anyway, there is a downside to this caffeine induced rant. Or as Frank Zappa put it, ‘it don’t mean shit to a tree.’ I hope not. Because some of our fellow creatures, as well as flora, seem quite happy with their conclusions about their snapshot of reality. But damn it! We do seem to exist outside of time. And we know it! And then we die. But first we write some poetry. Which, to get back to the actual question here, or suggestion, is poetry the oldest of the arts? I agree with you alistair, it just might probably be.
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