From the Vault - Laforgue and the Sun

A word to the sun for starters....

Sun! Soldier patched up with orders and coughings

Poorly raised planter, know that the Vestales

To whom the Moon, in her equivocal cat-eyeings,

Is the rose of the Only Cathedral.

Know that the Pierrots, moths of the dolmens

And the white lilies of the lake where rests Gommorrah

And all of the benefactors who graze Eden

(Always springlike with renounciations) - abhor ya.

And these especially despise you,

The Hunk, the Indian Giver, the Desperado, the Ruffian,

For the charms of gold eggs that raise them so high to

The world and their lunar Orphan.

Continue to furnish those drunken sunsets

The vomit of tommorrow's national showbiz

To style your seasons, to damn well trounce us

From the dramas of the Umbilical Apotheosis!

Get on, Phoebus! But, Deva, god of wakening riot,

Take a look time to time at these Port-Royal aesthetes ahead

Who, in their lunar decamerons outside

Speak of no less than putting a price on your head.

Certainly, you've got many nice days above;

But of the old customs, it grows, that senate

For what good? who will dream of art and love

At the far door of the inorganic Aggregate.

-Know that we'll say a fine phrase, sonorous

Bone, but quite weak as wet medullary ,

Of all hollow-in-the-end prattle: it's pathos,

It's from Pheobus! - Ah! No need for commentary...

O vision of a time that was punished sufficiently,

From a: "Hey! Get on, Phoebus!"will return your prayer soon

Of old Crescite and multiplicamini,

To inoculate yourself forever against the fresh moon.

Of Ball and Chain

The case of post-modern post-poetry is so...tricky...But since I've begun with it

I'll just have to run with it.

(Since I'm first past the post-modern, I'll be happy to pun with it.)

But unlike many poets nowadays, I always have a good time

With a good rhyme.

So let the post-post-moderns tout their petty schism;

I'll refuse no witticism.

Another thing I won't refuse is a request

And so I'm writing the rest of this poem about my girlfriend, at my girlfriend's behest.

Ah, my girlfriend is swell, she's better than any Lesbia or Beatrice

(and if I ever had to choose between them, it'd be she-I'd-miss).

She's as cheerful as bubble-tea

She's got good looks and subble-ty.

She's got a voice like nightingale

And she sports a headpiece like a mountain quail.

If there's a problem afoot, though she hardly did ask of it

(Complain though she might) she'll make a good task of it.

And though at first appearance, she's got a rather dodgy grasp on train schedules and their relation to the Gregorian timeline

To me she is merely illustrating the relativity of time as purported by Albert Einstein.

And moreover she's very forgiving of my foibles

So who cares if she don't know her Duchamps from her Elgin Moibles?

And I know she'd love me in wealth or in penury

Or whether my name was Norbert, Alfred, or Henury.

And that's because I write her poems, yes, all women love a rhymester;

No matter how lilting your song or guitar solo is, fellas, my writing is sublimster!

I'm just sayin', if she ever took off from me like Helen of Troy

It'd have to be with one a helluva boy.

But most important of all, she is so good at sleeping in, I'd say she's a professional sleeper;

And as I rarely see much of her in the morning, I think I'll keep her.

(Post scriptum, lewd fellows, I'll be her defender

Against any who think this is double-entendre!)

The Information Age is All the Rage

At the cusp of the dawn of this new and brave Information Age...

You must forgive my opening, but to start essays like that has become all the rage.

Yes, consider the simple word “information”.

It's become a sensation.

If you were to ask me for a cause, I'd have to ask, how do you know where the restaurant you are going to tonight is located, or when King James VI became the 1^st of England, or even why we haven't gotten through winter yet?

You know because of the Internet.

There was a time when these things were not, and I know, because I was part of the liminal generation

Which naively held books in veneration.

(I imagine my case is something like the fellow who was 8 years old when they invented the wheel

Or the last guy to have an iron sword made the night before they began the Age of Steel.)

How about a small digital History lesson?

The Internet was born when some government types hooked up some state-of-the-art machines called computers for national security; and only gradually did it become a way to download digital delicatessen.

But how do we know it has fully infiltrated our day-to-day media?

I looked up all the preceding facts on Wikipedia.

You can't be part of the modern-western bubble

Unless you've got a digital double.

You might as well be confined

Unless you're onlined.

Is literacy dead? “In the beginning was word”, but can we still find the logos here?

Yes. All over the blogosphere!

People are still reading, albeit, none of the classics...

Still, I'm sure they are at least reading more than our ancestors in the Jurassics.

And they get stuff easier and more efficiently too.

If they want it, all they need to do is to wish it, they do!

At the click of the mouse

They can order a house.

With the press of a button

They can dine on beefsteak, chicken, or mutton.

You may marvel with wonder at the genies and magic lamps of Scheherezade

But my friends, the Internet is where-it's-ade.

Nowadays I need downloading at high speeds

To gets what I needs.

I'll admit that I've become addicted

(And I'm sure some people would call me afflicted).

But for my part, to quote Shakespeare, now 'tis no discontented winter yet,

So long as I've got my Internet.

Snow Day is'no Day

My god! It's near the end of March, and “that Aprill” is approaching. Now we must grant that the seasons are always correct...

But when it snows like Sodom on the 23^rd of March, I begin to wonder if they don't always bear men too much respect.

North Americans are generally inconstant, but there's one thing about them I'm sure that I know.

That they love nothing more in December, and hate nothing more in March than friggin snow.

Even elements have their season, I guess, and I feel it in my innermost soul.

When I see snow out the window in late March, all I want to do is to burrow in my blanket and black-out like a visionless mole.

Now take care, this is not an allegory, or satire, or comment on anything political.

(And the fellow who reads any of that into my poetic outburst puts the “anal” in “analytical”)

I just honestly wonder if there's ever been a love/hate relationship of such titanic stature

As the hatred and love that nature bears to man, and man bears to nature.

Otium...Negotium

What did you do today? I'd like to think you, my friend, spend your time doing things that are satisfying or pleasant or at least tolerable (not to seem sarcastic).

I myself like to lengthen my days with a good Hudibrastic.

I've always been curious about people whose every moment is purportedly a moment of joy.

They were either put on this earth by a benign deity to be a model to all of us, or otherwise shat out long and hard by Satan to annoy.

A day is alright, as long as nobody gets in the way, or talks too loudly, or turns on the news.

Which is similar to saying it'd be fine to be a firefighter if only one could avoid burns on one's shoes.

So if it's dragging? There are lots of astounding chances to save a bleak day from tedium.

I've seen them range in size from tall to venti, or in normal parlance, from small to medium.

Why there's nature out there, and all the splendour it entails;

(a few other things, and some snails.)

Classical music was born to yank Aristocrats out of Melancholia, and back into a joyous animation.

If it were more Democratic, for every angsty teen we'd have a Goldberg Variation.

Even a well-timed simple beverage can make you feel serene, after all.

Especially if it is flavoured with a little caffeine, or alcohol.

But to each their own; if your day stinks, I can't make it better, alas, for de gustibus non disputandam...

And if there's anybody out there who's consoled by that, I'll be damned if I've found him.

Contrariwise

Which is not to say that I am against improvisation. Although, reading Kora in Hell, for example, is like hunting for a four-leaf clover in a patch of grass; you're sure that if you look long enough you'll find it, but there's always the feeling that you could and should be doing something better.

Thus saith the lottery ticket to the grumbling debtor.

The long and the short road to satori; steep, respectively, and gentle incline. These last two posts have been shots in the dark, for, separated from my folder of classical contents, I am forced into an avant-garde riposte against my own tradition.

And the vanguard is the most-glorious-if-successful but most-miserable and foolhardy-if-a-failure position.

The new sense of it is, I've got something of a long life to live out.

Assuming my organs and efforts and will and luck at not getting squashed do not give out.

And what shall I do, if, as is the case, living it out without charting its here and there is a little bit boring? The short and the steep of it suggest that the days drag long for the uninitiated. The long and the gentle, well, that's a question of smelling the roses on the roadside

Or in literary terms, the work of poetic poses on a broadside.

Post on Methodology

Now that I have a banner, I feel I can permit myself some liberties à la poste. That is to say, as any revolutionary squadron will tell you, a banner helps greatly the cause of liberation. I thought I'd address the world directly today, in simple prose.

It's hard enough when you're proposing yourself a poet, God knows.

At any rate, it's been a year or so since this project was born, and Spring is on the horizon. It's about time I expound something behind the methodology of my posting.

It's something like a mix between confession, instructive writing, and high boasting.

As many people are, I too am superstitious. Especially with regards to artistic endeavour. And as an anthropologist probably said at some point or another, superstition is usually put in place for some subconscious practical reason.

Like circumcision in the desert, to prevent itching, or like how Lent is conveniently located around the end of Flu season.

I superstice here, above all. A little fear of forces unknown ensure that I rarely post a poem or a piece of writing that isn't at least several months old. This is because poems have a shelf-life, and the good majority of them decay. It encourages me to be self-critical, and at the same time, to write a lot. I'm not convinced I'm a writer because to me, writing a lot is a chore.

I would never presume to judge someone for what they weren't inclined to do or to enjoy, but if they outright say something I like is boring, I turn it right back on them and say the person in question is the boar.

On my computer, there is buried as a result of all this nit-picking a vast time-capsule of unpublished, unedited, and largely unread writing. On a given day I might sift through em. If any of it is particularly pleasing to me, and really gets me winking, thinking, or drinking, then there's a good chance, should the muse prompt, that I'll post it here online, where it poses like food on a restaurant's digital menu, but bigger!

Everyone knows digital space is not yet as good as physical space, but it's getting there and I wouldn't be surprised if someday soon it becomes the venue de rigeur.

An Ode to College and Ossington

holy moly

moses

went outside anditwas

spring

now guess whos

a poet

exclamation

the park was muddy

and the sun

was clouded over

soonasisteppedout

coffee was

and myhoody

underdressing at its finest

but guess whos

a poet

exclamation

im the laureate of

a dump

what a dump

but its dumpystreet

and im its

ex

cla

poet

mation

Another and Another

Another day, another thing to write.

The Earth is not yet stuffed to its ears

in papers of good writing.

Let's keep at it until

We've patched up the holes in the o-zone

And stalled our global warming

by means of literary snobbery.

The Wild Quietist in his Den

Not meaning to be pushy but

Our movement calls out jerks:

All those who praise the outdoors

All those who finger loose change

All those who love their country;

We would send them off immediately

In a large boat, to an island

Full of snakes and inedible fruits

And poisonous fish, and lice, and ship rats

If we could.

Our movement likes to heap on the metaphors,

For punishment, loves to lay thick with

The exaggerations, the analogies, the terrors,

And to pick fights to see who'll push back.

Our movement is a quietist movement,

We do not disturb the grass or the streams,

Our movement sacrifices to the sun,

We kill innumerable beings with the Buddha nature

Daily, nighthtly, weekly, a slaughterfest!

Cowards have no word for our movement;

Brave men are too arrogant to be ruthless.

The Partridge and the Pear

The Poem of the Partridge and the Pear

There are two words which shall go unmentioned

One is a species of fruit, and the other is some kind of bird.

We may talk about anything else, we may talk about boots

We may talk about glasses, bats, Sctochmen, and carbohydrates.