Tonight

Tonight I wrote a poem.

When I was done, I read it over and thought it looked like a puddle of vomit in the toilet.

Unlike a puddle of vomit, I've saved it.

Like a puddle of vomit, I don't think I'll show it to anyone.

I mention this only because I'm still writing which is better than not writing at all.

Existentialism and Poetry

The older I get, the more French Existentialism makes sense. And inspires me. Take the following from Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus:

Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it. We live on the future: 'tomorrow', 'later on', 'when you have made your way', 'you will understand when you are old enough.' Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for, after all, it's a matter of dying. Yet a time comes when a man notices that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time and, by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. The revolt of the flesh is the absurd.

Emphasis mine. So I have this:

Building by Jason Mical

Stone and brick make this place
My fort.
My tree house.
This thing I cleared with a stick
and summertime persistence.

Time flows oddly here
Days in seconds
or seconds in days.
I'm eighty, wrinkled and out of breath,
I'm ten and can't sit still.

Entropy House I call it,
my carved-rock place,
where I rule as King and cannot be touched.

Speaking of entropy,
I return here more and more
The older/younger I get/feel
I don't want to waste my key after all.

A tower, a cave, an elevator to space.
A roller-coaster.
Magic it is and was, something ineffable,
Least of all by me and I'll be damned if I'm telling you.

I've never left this room,
doorless, windowless,
The way blocked by a triangle
of insecurity, fear and ennui.

Some days I am Spider-Man, climbing walls with my hands.
Some days I just am and call it good.

Poem: The Ash Tree City (Draft)

The Ash Tree City

"Circle Line chain now approaching,
stand behind the yellow line."

He growls in alleys on starlit nights
In dumpsters
Piles of human shit
Clothes and vomited kebabs
Sewer grates and curved windows.

His horns crown everyone:
Drunks in Burberry
The corner barber
BTP in H. Road Station
Football fans enjoying Premium Lager

Three sharp brass nails on a tail
Witch-dreams
and Old things, breaking through
Museum-Glass History.

"Stand clear the closing doors."

This is not our place.

It is bigger on the inside
Than it is on the outside.








This work is licenced under a
Creative Commons Licence.

What Times We Live In

Seth and I went to see Beowulf tonight, a movie that strikes me as remarkable for two reasons: first that for a time the most popular movie in the US was based on one of the oldest stories in the English language and second that it's basically a two-hour video game cutscene. I don't mean the last to be derogatory - I enjoyed the movie immensely - but turning everything into a CGI effect was more distracting than it was cool, as opposed to say 300 earlier this year.

They took some liberties with the story, but understandable liberties; overall it wasn't something that took anything away from the overall enjoyment of the "Beowulf is a fucking badass" premise of the story. You could argue that they aren't liberties at all, because Beowulf was a spoken poem long before it was ever written down and passed through several iterations before it reached the oldest known written form we have today. Oral stories change. Written stories can change. So adapting it to the screen and changing it a bit isn't bothersome at all - it fits completely the spirit of the original type of text. It also added another interesting dimension to the tale, the human side of the hero - which has been so overdone in comics recently it's drifting into cliche territory and Neil Gaiman was one of the writers, so take from that what you will.

I enjoyed it. I cheered for Beowulf, marveled at the effects, drooled at Angelina Jolie, and had a great time. That a poem 1400 years old can inspire that is also remarkable. If you have a chance, check it out.

London by William Blake

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new born Infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Vis a Vis: Emily Dickenson and Poe

A fellow Allit sent this poem to me this morning, and it reminds me of the song beneath it.

One Need Not Be A Chamber To Be Haunted by Emily Dickenson:

One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.

Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one's own self encounter
In lonesome place.

Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartment,
Be horror's least.

The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O'erlooking a superior spectre
More near.

Haunted by Poe:

Come here
Pretty please
Can you tell me where I am
You won't you say something
I need to get my bearings
I'm lost
And the shadows keep on changing

And I'm haunted
By the lives that I have loved
And actions I have hated
I'm haunted
By the lives that wove the web
Inside my haunted head

Don't cry,
There's always a way
Here in November in this house of leaves
We'll pray
Please, I know it's hard to believe
To see a perfect forest
Through so many splintered trees
You and me
And these shadows keep on changing

And I'm haunted
By the lives that I have loved
And actions I have hated
I'm haunted
By the promises I've made
And others I have broken
I'm haunted
By the lives that wove the web
Inside my haunted head

Hallways... always

I'll always love you
I'll always need you
I'll always want you
And I will always miss you

Come here
No I won't say please
One more look at the ghost
Before I'm gonna make it leave
Come here
I've got the pieces here
Time to gather up the splinters
Build a casket for my tears

I'm haunted
(By the lives that I have loved)
I'm haunted
(By the promises I've made)
I'm haunted
By the hallways in this tiny room
The echoes there of me and you
The voices that are carrying this tune

Father :
What is it Annie?

Daughter :
You think I'll cry? I won't cry!
My heart will break before I cry!
I will go mad.

Make Believe

I pretend
To have no money
Marseilles dismissal
My "higher" brain can ignore
Boethian truth.

It's not so cold

Survey says:
She'll just buy junk
A safe place to sleep
And a loving family.

It's not so easy,
This make-believe.