To a Person Seized With Sadness

To a Person Seized With Sadness
I.

Tragedy is an easy thing to make:
it recquires men too foolish to name,
and the deeper sleep we all must take;
Life's laments are all the same (as a rose
posted to any other namesake),

The quick darkening season's sigh erupts,
blasting the passing season's hopes to dust,
the cradles, a little emptier stand,
and the nothing stretches from land to land.

II.

Is this our darker day's damning descent,
Is the second Fall already fallen?
It is evident --- Winter breeds lament
like a rabbit without a threat of wolf
(or so goes on my "graceful" dissent).

The point, into the deeper belly thrust,
Is that not all that lives, lives to be just.
The days die longer when spent in mourning;
The icy night will melt into morning,
and leave behind a gift of rust.

Simple Poetry

Simple Poetry

Lyrics come and go:
harder, then a stream;

One sees the flow
passing in a dream,

too quick to catch
or even seem

to know the patch
of gold which gleams

From the Fools gold's
Emptier beam,

to fish it out
and hold its lean

body flat out
and let it scream.

A Prayer to My Grandfather

I wrote this, as Frost would say, in one chunk. I think it's the purest poem I've written philosophically, the beginning middle and end are apparent to me at least and the conflict eventually leads to a resolution, although it seems pessimistic at first glance...

I.
The star-crossed prayers of young and old
Are worth more to God than gifts of gold,
And all the bellies bursting bold
What secret hearts within enfold.

The withered dreams to God committ
Could make the bough of Heaven split
and make the gentle Atlas sit ---
In the green grass yet greener sit.

The mighty giant's shoulders ache
From the weighty wishes men make.
Man's hopes and wishes in God stake
(He suffered so much for their sake).

In Winter wind and winter chills,
Warmer hearts pray to window sills;
Without what their neighbor wills ---
Battling prayers or warring wills.

II.
There is much too much movement here
To ever hold a peaceful ear
To desert ground and hope to hear
The proof to men that God is near.

To scratch graffiti on the wall
And second wait to second fall;
The crushed cement and scattered all ---
All remains of your shattered scrawl.

The prayer of work is worth much more
As harder labor, toil, and chore ---
The simplest man of men before
Are relief to Atlas all the more.

The earth is heavy. I'll admit.
We watch the bough of Heaven split,
You and I, together set,
Too late to help. We both admit.

A Public Announcement

I won't lie to you folks...sometimes the lonliness is greater than the all-encompassing night is dark. But we all have our little hopes don't we? For some, tragically, it's a spiral into drugs and alcohol, for others, it is over-saturation in sex. I am a shy character in heart and I'm not boastful and I have no reason to think my poetry is even good (one person even went so far as to suggest I didn't know what poetry was) To quote Hardy, "haha." It's a complicated thing, the desire to be desired --- the want to feel needed. Recently a friend of mine gave me a "mission" to make 2 new friends. I tried but I could not get over how artificial and callow it is to make friends for the sake of friends. Women like me as a friend, but I'm sorry, I don't like to be indexed into anyone's broad collection of "friends".

Thursday

Mephisto call-backs were keen. I only expect so much and if I do not get it, then I'm fine to ride off into the sunset. Some guy spit on me. But it was in the context of the scene. Still...a man spit on me. What a crazy world.

So here it is---"lines of poetry I write in class instead of paying attention"

I listen to the whistling thistle sing
Songs I would die to prescribe to you;
And know that, from you, one rich eye could bring
Out fluttering desire's dreams of you.

I will give you a second to gag, groan, or just leave the page...OK?

Robert Frost

I'm still in the middle of the Jay Parini biography of Robert Frost (no time since school began) and I notice in Frost's philosophy and technique a lot of the things that made Yeats the Poet---with a capital P, people---and also the differences. Idealistically, Yeats addresses perfection head on, there is no shy conversation; however Frost, in his simple view of worldly things, takes the perfection in the thing. You have in two poets, both the desire to see the ideal and the ability to handle it. Look at this!

Frost:
I sang of death---but had I known
The many deaths one must have died
Before he came to meet his own!

and Yeats:
While still I may, I write for you
The love I lived, the dream I knew.
From our birthday, until we die,
Is but the winking of an eye

Wow...it's not enough to pore forth over these few lines that contain, in my opinion, the whole of each poet's talents. You just...admire them.

And a Poem

Here is also just a quick couplet verse. Doesn't mean anything except the night is cool...enjoy

Those elm and pine through brick and glass
reach, wanting, waiting for the darkling flask.
They all move meekly towards the aftermath
of lamppost posits---lightly in the path
of road, safe and ordered, into darkling
grass. Moon beams flush and dead suns sparkling.

It's Tuesday...Well it WAS...

But here it is...your Shakespeare thought of the week.

In Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", the theme of fishing pops up twice explicitly and is referred to subtly throughout the rest of the play; this sport, as it's called, relates to how Shylock will do his business---the baiting and repetition of monetary details.
Fishing first appears in Act 1.1 when Graziano attempts to cheer up the dulled Antonio. He tells him, "But fish not with this melancholy bait/ For this food gudgeon, this opinion" (pg. 1092 1.1 ln. 101-2). Antonio is indeed melancholy and his thematic attachment to fishing and other sea activities (he is a merchant of Venice after all) connect him to Shylock.
Once Antonio declares forfeiture, Shylock wants his bond for a pound of flesh fulfilled; when asked why, Shylock responds, "To bait fish withal" (pg. 1115 3.2 ln. 45). The two, Shylock and Antonio, are inexorably linked to the sea and the base imagery of fishing is a synecdoche for the greater process of trade and larger business endeavors of the sea.
This link is essential in the play because it ties the two characters together as foils. Shylock may not explicitly make his money on the seas, but via his rates and loans, the profits of the ocean eventually come back to him. He is no merchant himself, but he would use the merchant's flesh to carry on the businesses in the sea because he cannot.
The play ends in Belmont, across a body of water; Shylock, destroyed, cannot follow after the happy couples. In the end, the sea which bound Antonio to Shylock, ultimately separates them.

New AIDS Scare? WHAT!

New Aids nightmare shocks US

The man - who has not been named - is believed to have had unprotected sex with hundreds of partners. He complained of feeling ill in November, was found to be HIV positive in December and had contracted full-blown Aids in January.

I had to re-read this sparse paragraph a couple times. "unprotected sex" and "hundreds of partners" are two phrases that spell D-O-O-M when juxtaposed. What was this man thinking? Honestly, I feel that if he doesn't develop boils and leprosy on his skin, he'll just keep on doing what he's been doing, namely, spreading AIDS to the entire world.

But keep in mind that AIDS is not NEW. It's not like scientists just discovered HIV yesterday. almost 30 years and this planet still had degenerates like this guy who have no earthly clue. It's like people who still leave their cell-phones on in movies; sure when it was new it was understandable, but 30 years into the future still repeating the same idiot mistakes makes you a grade-A retard.

Not to mention this little announcement of Fate is comparable to God smiting. Come on, "hundreds of partners", this man didn't just bang 50 chicks or even 100, it is "hundredS" with a plural S. It's like a disaster movie and the worst case scenario has just happened:

General: Lay it out straight for me Dr. What are our chances of containing this debilitating virus.
Doctor: Well, General, I would say our chances are liminal at best...
General: Damn it Man! Don't sugar-coat it. Give it to me straight!
Doctor: Okay, the human race has a 70% chance of survival on a good day.
General: What's the bad day?
Doctor: Worst case scenario: HIV is contracted by the biggest stupidest man-whore alive and he spreads it to everyone in New York. With that many possible hosts, the viral variations will be astounding!
General: Good God man! Arm the nukes!

And so it turns into Independence Day or the Omega Man or whatever. So as a spokesman of the world, I'd like to say, "Thank you, Mr. Over-Sexed-Sleazeball, for destroying the dignity of the human race and proving, once again, that like Athens, Medieval Europe, and Rural Africa, pinheads precede plagues.

4 More Lines 4 More Lines!!

"All in All Under Wind Would Fall"

As the stars start suicide diving

by the pole's high horizon's cleft,

under the starshine light night driving,

I want a lullaby for what's been left.

This wood, under hard wind would fall

houses the Blessed Spirit, point in all,

Till steeple, pew, lectern, and wall

all in all, in crumbled chaos bawl.

As the whipping wild winds subside,

and the weeping stars in all have died,

The casual creator looks with pride;

the souls prostrate upon the earth side.

A Sonnet I am Working On

"A Pieceless sky in Peaceful Lay"

A pieceless sky in peaceful lay
all over in blanketing blue day;
save two clouds, side by side,
till baptist winds blew them away.

If I were god in crowning,
the earth to see it browning--
crumbling, the sun-star hiding

into neutral tones drowning.

I would keep that beast Winter to kill,
the free and gentle fools who fill
too much with pleasant pointless joy
to hope lazy happiness I avoid.
Except for hard love's dizzy sleep,
secret under a blanket blue I keep.

---------------------------

Your Shakespeare Thoughts for the Week

Comedies are typically resolved in a quick and efficient matter; however, Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona’s finish seems not efficient but arbitrary and hasty. The impending conflict (Valentine’s banishment and Julia’s scorn) is too great a plot development to be defeated with a simple five line apology; Proteus is not sufficiently redeemed textually, but the additional question is whether or not the traitorous Proteus should have redemption.
Proteus claims “hearty sorrow” (pg. 128 ln 76) but his audience should be more skeptical of this announcement on the basis that Proteus has lied before (quite plainly too, “I grant, sweet love, that I did love a lady, but she is dead“ (pg. 119 ln 98-9)). His constant deceptions make Valentine’s ready acceptance of penance almost seem a foreboding omen of future deceit. However, this does turn out to be the case, instead, Proteus is in turn taken back by Julia. “O heaven, were man/ But constant, he were perfect. That one error/ Fills him with faults, makes him run through all th’ sins;” (pg 129 ln. 108-10) is his offered apology to Julia, simply paraphrasing her statement in the preceding line, “Woman to change their shapes than men their minds” (107).
The language maintains its poetic quality, but the plot suffers from Proteus’s abbreviated agony. One wishes for an extended cut of dialogue from Proteus to defend argument of his inconstancy so that his turn from villainy may better be observed by his audience, theater-goers and actors alike.

And your Irish word for the day is
du'il = Hope

The Skeptic Inside is a Chancer Sore (an exercise for myself really)

It occurred to me not five minutes ago that the intrinsic leaning of this self-styled journal of mediocrity is a faulty omen. It's fine and good to catharsise personal feelings, but never let that be the cause, action, and result of being. Aristotle says that in the pursuit of everything is the pursuit of happiness, but one must always strive for excellence in the priori thought. In other words, emotions are a starting point but never let yourself wind up in the same place.

I think it would lead to a meloncholy. A smart person I know told me about a "beard of apathy". Well...she didn't say it, but disregarding the context of what she was talking about, the image sticks.

The phrase itself is mediocre--both in metaphor and in language. It conveys a good sense of description to the person it attaches to. We learn this character is obviously unmotivated, but the syntax of "beard" before "apathy" reveals a motivation towards the apathy. I will explain. One gets the sense the person is a poet, or in the early stages of becoming one, with an affliction for tweaking language. It is all this person can do.

The next stage is assumption. Let us proclaim this product of Poesy as a Byronesque subject. He longs for that which is unknown, pines after the unattainable, and is generally of a bi-polar aura. A paradoxical human because poets should BE, but this poor man is always waiting for inspiration; the passion boils over his side every moment of his life like steam-hot water escaping a copper pot; the ectasy of poetry is a gutteral heaving of thought and blind furious scribbling; his releases are spaced farther and farther apart and less and less durable; all of this combines in his homogoneous blood of sweat, fire, and g0d-almighty's hand of SOUL--yet the best, the BEST he can come up with is...

"beard of apathy".

The skeptic inside is a chancer sore because it provokes thought and only brings more pain, it distracts the mind from Faith and brings it to simple mediocrity. This poet is lovesick and devoid of control. There is no action in his voice because he would rather be a subject of his own thoughtless verse. I once called myself "a shadow of man" until I realized there is no art in that.

Art is imitation of life, yes, but to me, aesthetics is half pleasure and half control. The thing which brings the most beauty to the audience is the thing which is in the most control of the artist. Super-modern anything is not art because it is like our poet here: they see themselves in their own world. That is what I love about Frost.

Read "Birches" and you'll see an old man walking silently past icy entombed stalks of trees bent majestically earthward as if in prayer. Feel his nostalgia for youth among the worshipping trees and people'll see this is the poet as he sees himself in this world. Ahhhh...now to rest on such a supple transcendent image.

Note: If you read this, pardon me for stealing that nice little quote. I thought it great to use as a little exercise. ;^)

Saturday Night Show

"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they see it done every day but they are incapable of producing anything themselves" Brendan Behan.

Today was a lot of talk about relationships; boyfriends and girlfriends; premarital sex and hesitation. No one asks me my opinion. Nice to know one's own position as marginal. Truth is, I can imagine women I'd like to date, but I'm not passionate enough about any of them--from this comes my chauvinist (and some say misogynistic) tendencies. They're all whores and the more they lie, the more frustrated I become.

So you're a good practicing Catholic girl, very moral we all know. You'll still wear the push-up bra along with the midriff shirt because the basis for your sexuality is repression, and ironically, it is as open as the Atlantic. And men are to blame because they allow themselves to be subjective to this fashion of tease. Instead of formulating purer theories, minds are distracted by flesh. So scandal generates power for women because it only serves to weaken men.

Not to worship the Puritan ideal, I think such rigidness is detrimental; however, the attitude of moderation is the penultimate in attractiveness. They don't come quiet unless depressing; and there is never a light cheery woman who doesn't turn out to be regressing in maturity.

I don't know. Who knows. This post apexed a long time ago possibly before it was even written. As Aristotle would say, the truth here is in the matter before the form ever took place.

Huzzah for opening night...

Everyone did a magnificent job on the opening night of the play and I feel there is little to improve upon. My own performance, perhaps, was lacking in intensity and timing. I don't know why I practice acting so much because, in my earnest opinion, I'm not that good at it.

I cannot abide simple compliments from other people; I feel they are subordinating some truer intention when they come to me after a show, "Wow", "Great job", "that was fun". I would much prefer one inspirational compliment rather than a series of well-wishings. The whole supply and demand of the situation causes me to infer that I am not worthy of any such meaningful adulation; but rather, the whole of the compliments rests on a novelty of theater--it is you not me on the stage.

Well I must go now, but I leave with a few words from Wordsworth:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:

Preview Night Finished

Aha so the preview night is through. Should've been at confession today, but I was wrapped up in Will Durant's "The Story of Philosophy" here are some memorable quotes:

Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.

----------------------------
There's poetry and prose in this world and it is the balance between the poet and the philosopher; unfortunately, this modern world has no greats among it. Nowhere is there spectacular rhetoric and poetry is nothing more than a local series of failed experiments. Why? because neither endeavor possesses honesty today--the religion is false and the heros of our mythic age are simple celebrities. So if our history comes from nihilism, what becomes of inspiration from history. "Flow" does not exist and is the crutch of the false artist as he works by and by.

It used to be that only music and television were opiates, but now with such schlock as Harry Potter, Tom Clancy, and Dan Brown the literary dimensions of creative evolution have regressed into empty vessels; full of sound yet signifying nothing is an infamous line too in tune with our mediocre generation. Thus I lean with Plato and Nietzsche, democracy is immoral. Yes it is a great notion for meritocracy; however, the so-called "merit" of American culture is more an exclamation of product sales than actual achievement.

True beauty is a great risk when compared to the supply and demand of a democracy. On one hand there are the pacifists, those who seek to gain status by appeasing demand; and on the other, a movement of superficial shock artists whose configuration of aesthetics is the reverse, i.e. the most repulsive thing to0 demand. And so I read Durant to find and indulge my own petty nostalgia for a period of time when thought was manifest and frighteningly powerful--the hand of god in the minds of man.

I Tossed a Few Lines in Class

Call high, the animal soul
is mischief's shining goal;
glowing verdure growing
ivy legs, slowing slowing
till immoveabel as mountains.

Huzzah! Classes finished for the week. Now to enjoy some Will Durant's History of Philosophy.

Moments in Specificity

a. Sorrow, distress; repentance; regret. 2. Pity, compassion.

Never think what rue to you is pity brings;

we hurtle hurt-born lances at each other

and baste in aftermath of heart strings.

Loving sophistry is our filthy mother,

cradling truth into hefty pits,

my whirling stomach sickly sits;

You and I, Pity and Regret,

Except the love we beat to death.

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Because it's the first paper of the year and it will SET A PRECEDENT

Response for February 1 (Two Gentlemen of Verona Acts 1-3)

A relevant theme is alluded to through Proteus’ allegorical calling (a sea god who constantly shifted in shape) that the play will revolve around the changes in character. Proteus’ first instance of change, Act 2 scene 4, comes in the form of a soliloquy. Because it is also the first important soliloquy of the play, deeper analysis of the language and poetry used may reveal deeper themes which will come full circle in time for the play’s climax and denouement.

Proteus provides setting with “one heat another heat expels” (pg. 101, ln. 185),the first of several climate images. Metaphors of hot and cold run through the speech and symbolize the extremes of Proteus’ character and loyalty. His former love is “thawed” (193) and his “zeal to Valentine is cold” (196). It is interesting how the images of temperature are expressed as transitioning values; love thawing and then melting like a wax image (194) on account of the fire he holds in place for Silvia; and afterwards, “Bears no impression of the thing it was” (195) . Proteus’ shifts in character are complete and extremely opposite, he does not express regret and is utterly involved in himself and his transitions. This soliloquy is the expression of being overly absorbed in one‘s own passion.

like images of cold did for Valentine and Julia, the juxtaposition of thermal images includes passionate fire for Silvia . Silvia’s fire “hath dazzled [Proteus‘] reason’s light” (pg. 102 ln. 203) and thus her images of heat receive a treatment different from the transitional qualities of Valentine and Julia’s cold. Hot is characterized by blinding light and Proteus would have fair judgment “But when I look on her perfections/ There is no reason but I shall be blind” (204-5).

So in the course of the soliloquy Proteus travels from the two extremes of hot and cold. The ending rhyme “If I can check my erring love I will,/ If not, to compass her I’ll use my skill”(206-7) encompasses two of the dueling desires of Proteus, the wanton lust and loyalty to obligation. Neither one does he conclusively adhere to, ‘hot‘ or ‘cold‘, thus staying true to the allegorical definition of his name, Proteus, the shape-shifting god.

I'm so proud