Saturday, November 20, 2004

A union of sorts.

“Sky Land Ransom”

Slimy main laps at Karnak,
Rightful mood with dimming light.

Long ago, words had carats,
And a bard could ply Latin.

I carry my own asphault
Through an orchard of abort.

Hush hush, no sign in sight, no
Ghost survival hazards this.

Cloudburst of glad thwarts gawking
Cataract of ruin will.

Follow a smoking mirror,
Follow a child hungry wolf.

So much i would put away:
Draftworthy fandango iron.

Virginia Opossum, blink
And miss our rainbow sigil.

Holiday. (via Und*r th* Fir* Star)

Sad.

Still unknown?

Friday, November 19, 2004

"Amayxoya"

Torpid Sunday, aorta
Hardly glubs, polka

Of doom, ghost brinksmanship fails, a katydid
Squats as osmium in anagram

Gray raga
An aroma of Satan

Contagious Christians
Carry, crisply stars unfurl within basalt

Sorrowing;
And i find my only lackwit sky

A story without skuas
Flashing, and i look up in vain for a cloud.

“Vain are thy Hopes, to scape censorious Eyes;
Truth will appear, through all the thin Disguise:
Thou hast an Ulcer which no Leach can heal,
Though thy broad Shoulder-belt the Wound conceal.
Say thou art sound and hale in ev’ry part,
We know, we know thee rotten at thy heart.
We know thee sullen, impotent, and proud:
Nor canst thou cheat thy Nerve, who cheat’st the Croud.”

--Dryd*n’s P*rsius, Th* Fourth Satyr

Two Thoughts on Umbrism.

On my victrola- Rav*l: Gaspard d* la Nuit.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

What to Look Out For (scroll down to end). (via wood_s lot)

“Luminous Toxin”

Gigantomachia did again
Tank and stark
To small tasks school this
Sinking bat. Odious wish, idiotic

Pain: ogham was jilt and it
Wasn’t only skua balk
In adorn
Is sticky part gray sky stoop lotus

Ask smash basalt ills
Slant at dark isthmus, skimpy as usual, scorn
Thickly robotic collar
Slick storm what ring aspic osmium
Binds snap skin

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

“The first professional kyoka [humorous tanka] poet, Nagata Teiryu (1654-1734)...gained fame with one especially apt verse; when a Chinese-ink merchant from Nara presented the court with an unusually large stick of ink, Teiryu wrote these lines;

‘Although not the moon,
It has risen so high it dwells
Above the clouds;
I wonder what reason
There can be for this?’

[romanji text omitted] The entire interest of this poem stems from the puns on sumi (‘to dwell’ and ‘Chinese ink’) and on yuen (‘reason’ and ‘lamp black’). This display of wit so enchanted the court, even the emperor, that Teiryu adoptedthe name Yuensai (from yuen, lamp black). He soon gave up his cake business to devote his energies exclusively to kyoka, publishing his own verses and correcting those of other people.”

--World Within Walls

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

'As soon as Stalin showed signs of consciousness, Beria threw himself on his knees, seized Stalin's hand and started kissing it. When Stalin lost consciousness and closed his eyes, Beria stood up and spat.' --Khrushch*v R*m*mb*rs
Abysmal Atlas.

Inquiring mind.
“A Lost Color”

To talk about dank mulligrubs, sad moods born of long brooding upon immortal wrongs. To talk about soulful old music, that allows anguish to go skipping away, though it should crawl back to us again tomorrow. To talk about a politically-out faction, possibly hit by a con job, still mad, still not giving up.


How to talk Ham-Ham.



Monday, November 15, 2004

“The purity and stability of language, too, on which you found your claims of perpetuity, have been the fallacious dependence of authors of every age...as if the language ever sprang from a well or fountain-head, and was not rather a mere confluence of various tongues perpetually subject to changes and intermixtures. It is this which has made English literature so extremely mutable, and the reputation built upon it so fleeting. Unless thought can be committed to something more permanent and unchangeable than such a medium, even thought must share the fate of everything else, and fall into decay. This should serve as a check upon the vanity and exultation of the most popular writer. He finds the language in which he has embarked his fame gradually altering, and subject to the dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion. He looks back, and beholds the early authors of his country, once the favorites of their day, supplanted by modern writers; a few short ages have covered them with obscurity, and their merits can only be relished by the quaint taste of the bookworm. And such, he anticipates, will be the fate of his own work, which, however it may be admired in its day, and help as a model of purity, will, in the course of years, grow antiquated and obsolete, until it shall become almost as unintelligible in its native land as an Egyptian obelisk, or one of those Runic inscriptions, said to exist in the deserts of Tartary.” --Washington Irving, “The Mutability of Literature,” in: An Evening with Irving (1907)

Sunday, November 14, 2004

"POEM FOR TYRANTS

sentient beings are numberless--
I vow to enlighten them all

--the First Vow of Buddhism

it seems I must love even you
easier loving the pretty things
the children the morning-glories
easier (as compassion grows)
to love the stranger

easy even to realize (with compassion)
the pain and terror implicit in those
who treat the world around them
with such brutality such hate

but oh I am no christ
blessing my executioners
I am no buddha no saint
nor have I that incandescent strength
of faith illuminated

yet even so
you are a sentient being
breathing this air
even as I am a sentient being
breathing this air
seeking my own enlightenment
I must seek yours

if i had love enough
if I had faith enough
perhaps I could transcend your path
and alter even that

forgive me, then--
I cannot love you yet"

--Leonore Kandel, Word Alchemy (1967)