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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.
5902. Seamus - 8/7/2007 8:56:17 PM Thank you, Sir Nu, for your kind words.
And to interject myself unasked into the interesting discussion you and alistair are making...
It is almost certainly true that chanted speech in the vein of the pre-Homeric is poetry (as we seem to be agreeing to loosely define it) as the oldest of the "language" arts, for want of a better term.
I'm guessing, however, that those cave dwellers who painted up patterns and designs and animals in their dark caves would today be hot to hire a solicitor to make dark speech for them should you impugn their work as "not-art".
Even if you consider motive, I think they have us by a notch. Motive meaning "when I created this, did I intend it as art?"
Perhaps the cave painters were merely telling their fellow hunter-gatherers that tomorrow, we shall go for this big, bold fellow with the multi-fork head top and the roan colour. Then later, we came along and called it "art".
But it would be equally so that the chanters were merely hitting upon a wonderful device for memorisation and recall. Once again, we came along later and termed it "art".
I believe the dye guys have the jump on the know-it poets. (But, I'd like to see those cave critters try that kind of internal rime, in colour no less, and have no one end up badly hurt! Feh!)
5903. NuPlanetOne - 8/8/2007 1:13:14 AM Interject, by all means Sir seamus. I have time on my hands this week. I should work on my novel or scribble some fresh rhyme, but my mind is blank and outside the heat index tickled 110/f today. (I am just outside of Savannah Ga. A most remarkable city I must say.) As for the chanters, yes, I agree it would be for memorization, especially as the main thing they might be memorizing would be some sort of cosmology. Primeval scripture, no doubt. Healers with sidelines in shamanism. Severe dudes all jumpy and strict. I bet you some of those cave paintings and privately shared chants were the work of individuals who bucked the establishment and tried to immortalize their own view of things. And, somewhere in the midst as always, a curious watcher, scribbling in his mind a series of thoughts to describe his observations. A poet, that is. 5904. NuPlanetOne - 8/15/2007 1:58:59 AM Please God, Help Them
I am against the notion
Of God,
That is
If
You believe in miracles
Or
Divine intervention
I know women and babies
All females
Are raped, murdered
sold as is for gang
rape, as servants
in the congo
that’s where
and these helpless
souls scream
piercingly
at icons
boiling tears
sparkled in moonlight
please help me
it is happening
now
every day
what exactly
am I praying for
this week
oh, ya
please God
save those trapped
miners
that guy said
in the newspaper
God saved that little
girl
that was thrown from
the bus wreck
can’t we agree
God left town
Can we have
A God
If we can’t imagine
A dialogue
That’s the fucking
Problem
Forget
I mentioned it.
5905. NuPlanetOne - 8/18/2007 6:30:07 PM Funeral Mass Family Picnic
And when the Sacrament was offered
They got right in line
It meant they never questioned
Their faith
Not seriously
Not in a way
That made them
Form an opinion
Had they confessed?
My sister,
What thing could she
Have done?
She has lied, fudged
Swore and ogled
But sinned?
Did my brother
Now gone
Swallowed whole
A huge bubble
Moving down
The serpent’s neck
Ever admit a thing
Yet he was always
In line
And bowed his head
Tongue slowly retracting
The host
Was he hungry?
My other
Siblings, cousins
Uncles, friends
And relatives
All hungry as well?
If I had got in line
I suppose, then
I might be damned
But who would know?
I don’t have one thing
Eligible
For damnation
Yet I am damned
I should eat too.
5906. Jenerator - 8/19/2007 7:37:22 PM Are you okay, Nu? 5907. NuPlanetOne - 8/20/2007 2:09:53 AM Jen,
Oh yes, quite alright, actually. I know, sounds like I’m railing against my Catholic soul. Just the ruminations inspired by a recent death in the family and a cabernet chat with someone close to the nastiness amok in Congo. Bone chilling shit. But, never mind that, I am fine, and, as always, your concern is genuine, sweet really. Besides, I am out of the South and back in Boston, which, in comparison to Savannah, moves most rudely and conspicuously at the correct speed. The South is like playing chess without a clock. All the time in the world to make your next move. I never once heard anyone saying hurry-up. Move it. Lot of pauses. Let me think on it. Anyway, going there occasionally is something I must do. I will be at light speed in no time.
5908. Jenerator - 8/20/2007 3:59:11 AM Thank you for your explanation. I was worried because you seemed disgruntled if not despairing. Sorry to hear of your family's loss. This seems to have been a hard year for a lot of people. I cannot imagine life in the Congo. From what little I have seen and heard, it seems like such a violent and tragic place. Your friend is lucky to have you to share with.
Boston is a beautiful city -- completely different from Savannah for sure. I hope you're enjoying it. 5909. NuPlanetOne - 8/21/2007 1:23:16 PM You are welcome Jen. I could not imagine living anywhere else. It would be wicked hard to stay away completely. Yet, I guess we are all creatures bound to our roots, just some more than others. Home is just a terrible place to visit. It’s best to live there. 5910. NuPlanetOne - 8/21/2007 1:23:53 PM Convenience Store
In line behind the ticket
Scratchers
I just need milk
They buy a handful
And walk scratching
Away
Missing the door
Glance up briefly
Not to crash
Or bump things
The hard of hearing
Senior
Says what
And strains in
Even at nothing said
Two more
Then me
Next one asks
About batteries
Had been trying to
Study them
On the wall
The cashier with
A phone cupped
To its ear says
I gotta go
The milk sweats
This one? That one?
No, we don’t have
The big ones
A scratcher turn abruptly
Says yes you do!
Now the mailman’s turn
As he has a parting
Conversation
About the flashlight
With slowly retreating
Battery guy
Back on the phone
The girl asks
Is that all?
The mailman leaves
The battery guy and
Scratcher
No, stares at the fifty
Scratch choices
The clerk whispers
Into its shoulder
My turn
Can I help you?
No,
But I want this milk
It leaves a wet smudge
On the counter
I go around
Battery talk
Two of them scratching
One holding a flashlight
I make it outside.
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