Category: Uncategorized

Otherness

My love, I had forgotten Smerdis was that Death, 
And Death my Doppelganger throughout my odes.

My poem decries the cycle of civilization. 
How there is always a vacuum left where power begins to fail.

In the Histories, Cambyses campaigned in Egypt, 
After his sire Cyrus had freed all his subjects;
Cambyses sought to reconquer them. 
Thus, Smerdis arose to usurp power from his brother Cambyses---
Yet Smerdis was killed by Darius,
So was justified because Smerdis was a changeling
As the story goes---drawing a comparison with Smerdis 
To the Androgynous mobs of Death.

Yet, I felt the presence of the poem,
That its meaning defied even me...
It was born from this author
But---as the Archer told me in his village---
It had a sense of strange otherness.
What I had made was beyond even my own interpretation.
How I could forget something so key,
There it was, beyond me, something I made and could now rediscover---
A poem I wrote had intrinsic meaning... 
Even its author need rediscover it.

It was, then, its own being,
Like I had given birth
And the child grew.
There the child was,
Born of my seed, 
But something else.

Feud of the Avatars

The painful stroke of marginalized
Artists, making 50,000 florins,
Taking up the apprenticeship of sire;
Walking the path his father gave...

When the two great masters met
They hated one another, competing
To best an adversary. Bitter and spiteful,
Like Southey and Byron,
Wordsworth and Shelley,
Leonardo and Michelangelo...

I watch like Raphael,
Wondering at their chafe.
Their unbridled hate.

For all genius is welcome to me...
I will applaud it.

Yet, the modern sage says Michelangelo's unfinished
Pieta is better than the one set in St. Peter's Basilica;
Better than Moses and David
For that, there can be no Raphael now...
For the sophist says
That exegesis is deferred to the reader
And their capricious whims.

I told him, I'd "burn my entire library
"And everything I'd ever wrote
"If you are right."

Yet, his musings were divine...
It was not jealousy, just the disrespect
To communicated thought.

Were Leonardo and Michelangelo
Different? Were they not the same,
Dissecting corpses, and both experts?
Yet, Leonardo was jealous of the craft
Of Sculpture, and Michelangelo 
Defiant in his defense.

Why do I write?
I tenderly ask this question when I see the sophist
Has reign over the modern age.
While I do not wish a scientist to determine the language---
While I do not want an algorithm to determine my meaning---
He says, "Language is not an algorithm, it expands, contracts..."
I say to him, there is one thing I disagree with.
One thing. I said that words can be understood.
And for that, he ignored me.

Like Leonardo's disrespect for Michelangelo's
Sculpture, the terrific thing is that I am not
Simply caked with dust like a baker.
I form with words the sculpture of my architecture...
And I wish them to mean something.
Not just be a kaleidoscope of feeling.

Blushed Facts

Weak faith had I, when every truth
Brought the blush of cherry tomatoes
To my peachskin face. I looked
And every good fact doubted.

I held to faith...
Would cut truth,
And in faithless backbiting
Tear down every bastion of knowledge.

A fire, burning the chaff
Of miracles, truth and beautiful exegesis.

Analysis of A Tale of Two Cities

I'm reading it right now. Am at the chapter where Charles tells the Doctor that he loves Lucile. 

I thought it was disjointed, too. I literally was dreading coming to this novel, but at about the scene where the wine flowed through the street, and the gritty realities of Feudalism were revealed to me, it began to make sense. The random scenes turned into a tapestry, and a story emerged. It's one of the most fantastic things I'd ever seen, actually. It really shifted focus once Monseigneur Marquis was introduced. It became a tapestry, and then adding Charles as the love interest of the Dr.'s daughter Lucile... It's very good. Like, everything else is making sense, and the earlier scenes have weight to them.

I think as Dickens was writing---it was first a serialized novel---he didn't know what direction to take, until the Marquis arrived, and then a plot formed out of thin air.

It's really a completion of War and Peace. Like, Tolstoy gives the Russian perspective of the French Revolution---and I have to say I'm kind of left wondering in Tolstoy why the French would invade---but then seeing the absolute tyranny of French Feudalism, it became clear why they would launch a campaign into the rest of Europe. Like, I know where the novel is going, to show the energy of the French and the oppression they felt.

It really puts into perspective our modern movements. Like, they're rebelling in their affluence. They aren't abjectly poor, and sheep for the slaughter. You can't run someone over in a city, and kill them, and expect to get away with it in America. Like seeing that scene with the Marquis---which is pretty high up in the food chain, but still ought to be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law---running over men and children on the street. And that there is no accountability for him. He does it with impunity. It's a good explanation for the social conditions which led to the French Revolution, and later on the Napoleonic Wars.

Like, it's truly one of the most important pieces of literature ever---it's kind of the other half of Tolstoy's War and Peace. You really get it, why the French would be enraged, but when they met the Russians, the Russians weren't dissatisfied with their treatment. Not until they were freed---which is kind of worrying actually.

A Tale of Two Cities is a great piece of literature. I shouldn't have called it disjointed at the beginning, as those first six chapters establish the character of Lucile and the Doctor. It gives us a portrait of their tender relationship, and the struggle, and when the plot explodes onto the scene, it's gripping.

A Connecticut Yankee

Mark Twain was no fool---
He looked at the records of the past
The Dark Ages---
Even without the amenities
Of iPhones, computers and tvs.
It had indoor plumbing,
Was gaslit, a comfortable place.

There, in King Arthur's dystopian courts---
For the work is a dystopian
Science fiction about time travel---
Men were held in dungeons,
Queens killed with impunity,
Knights rode around aimlessly
And killed one another for profit.
The Church censored, and ruled
With an iron fist.

I read it, and am chilled by it.
I read two works of Feudalism;
Giving me an idea what it was really like.
The cruelty, inhumanity,
The callousness, the lawlessness,
The gross things people did to one another.
Believing in magic and mysticism
Which fully believed by the nobility
Strewn its luck throughout the kingdom
In disastrous chains of misfortune.

I've seen all I want to see of Feudalism.
Let kings be antiquated,
Capitalism flourish
And let the poor be fed by their own work.

As socialism in practice
Is just Feudalism disguised.

Monseigneur

A Tale of Two Cities,
The dystopian nightmare...
Monseigneur kills while he drives
His carriage, and doesn't flinch.
Men in lower social class
Were considered expendable
By those in higher social class.
Lawless, unaccountable...
A little baby was his victim.

It took me a while to understand
The story. I didn't like Dickens at first.
Now, I see a tapestry of the time before times.
Poor flooding the street to drink a filthy flagon of wine,
Prisons where men sit in solitary confinement,
Marquises murdering maliciously like mountebanks.

There is no great past---
And there is no great future---
There is only now.
Let us not spoil it with our greed...

Guangwu

They changed Guangwu before my very eyes.
I have documented proof, if only for myself.
Christ was crucified in 31AD, and the darkening was 
Not a solar eclipse. Someone is literally changing
The facts as we speak. Google literally said
According to yesterday's date, 5/4/22
"A solar eclipse on Passover Would have been impossible." 
End quote. Do we now change astronomy to sate the world's delusions?

The Men From York

Two men from York stand nigh a woman
Whom in great offense had slain free speech.
They, in their indignation, sought to bury
The bones of Elijah underneath the Broom Tree;
There, they sought their war, and exiled
The good and the bad and the ugly
From off the Earth. Jude and Thomas
Sat aghast, asking, "Why did the world
"Not accept you?" "LORD, they have seen like I!"
Yet, faith departed from the Earth as the two men from York
Sung their hymns, with Mary in great offense betwixt.
"Speak no more, and lie dead---For men are no longer
"Free to pursue truth, but must accept all words
"Canon to the world they have become yoked to."

Jude, Judas and Thomas slept
Sharing one another's dreams;
Jude, Judas and Thomas
All wrote their poetry;
Yet, Judas decried, "The stars are a lie!"
And he, in the dead of night
Walked the streets
And turned Thomas to try his tormented tyrannies.
He did it once to Jude, who in confusion
Bought the book most beloved of Benjamin
To see the stars were accorded to their clockwork
And the hands moved in their precious courses;
All was on time.

Thus, Jude and Thomas said,
"Let me never turn again.
"Let us never go back to our former sin---
"Let us not see Judas' treachery any longer!"

As it was, that thing we abhor is nailed to Christ.
Yet, Mary said, "I am offended at thee!"
Thus, the exile was fierce.

Jude and Thomas both believed
And like Daniel, were unharmed by the Lion.

Jude having once stepped on a serpent's brood
And though it bit, it was like naught.
Thomas, seeing the treachery of Judas Iscariot
Awoke, and like a dream, it was like naught.

The two men from York succored Mary
In great offense at Jude and Thomas---
Beleaguered, with Judas Iscariot
Their Captain.

Thomas said, "They see!"
And Jude said, "Why doth the world reject you?"

Dandelions

Treasure common things.
Cherish the dandelion flower
Over the hibiscus or rose.
Cherish the dogwood and Red Buds
Every spring, and cherish the mulberry's fruit;
Cherish the fruit in season
But have a taste for some fruits out of season,
Those commonly sold at market.
Splendor over the amethyst and not the diamond;
Dig your hand into the stone bucket
And cherish the variegated colors of those common rocks;
Don't seek after the Ruby or Sapphire or Peridot or Emerald.
Cherish the Zebra Coral, Unakite and Blue Quartz and Pink Howlite.

When the bluebells appear in the forest, cherish them.
When the helicopter leaves fall, cherish them.
Cherish the dandelion fuzz and the Queen Anne's Lace.
Find chestnuts, and walnuts, and hedge apples,
And wild violets and wild strawberries and Veronica flowers;
When they are in bunches, the common blue violets are a most beautiful sight.
In the fall, cherish the golden and blazen leaves.
In the winter cherish the snow.
In the summer cherish the summer storms.

Love chess boards, and old pictures of family and friends,
Love the curtains that hang in your home,
Love the common items you always see
Those which you have possessed all your years.
These I must say treasure, before you lose them.

Be exhilarated over  
Susan B. Anthonys and Golden Sacajaweas;
And Bicentennials which make change from the vending machines. 
Love the variegated state quarters
And the different nickels,

And the common pieces of art that hang in your home,
The ones that family had made.
Love those people around you,
Who you commonly associate with.
Love your coworkers and classmates
And bosses and neighbors,
And yes, even your job.

Be satisfied with your TV
And Computer with the key missing
And broken keyboard that doesn't type.

Love what is common and readily available to you
Over rare and priceless things.
For, if you seek out rare and priceless things
You shall always be impoverished by their lack.