We have a new band name, Tom.
If it means wearing skirts and eyeliner, MAM it is.
The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into anything that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer...he is individual...he is complete in himself....the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not.
The others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not.
He wears a conical hat and stands in the corner of his time out hoping they will notice or not. Of course he was a bully, of course he was showing off, but don't tell him he could not feel what they were thinking. Are they showing off or bullying less than he ? Is acceleration not pure? Besides, between the OCD & narcolepsy, are you sure his intent was discernable. Are you even sure it's him...the black keys...photons...the weak force...harms way...a bee.
is this one a painting?
Above is a broken piece of masonite with acrylic drooled over and filled in, circa 1998 or was it '97, the year I lived in 5 different places and painted on the fly, which now resides in my storage space, along with our friends below.
The Longing
I
On things asleep, no balm:
A kingdoms of stinks and sighs,
Fetor of cockroaches, dead fish, petroleum,
Worse than castoreum of mink or weasels,
Salive dripping from warm microphones,
Agony of crucifixion on barstools.
Less and less the illuminated lips,
Hands active, eyes cherished,
Happiness left to dogs and children--
(Matters only a saint mentions!)
Lust fatigues the soul.
How to transcend this sensual emptiness?
(Dreams drain the soul if dreamed too long.)
In a bleak time, when a week of rain is a year,
The slag heaps fume at the edge of the raw cities;
The gulls wheel over their singular garbage;
The great trees no longer shimmer;
Not even the soot dances.
And the spirit fails to move forward,
But shrinks into a half-life, less than itself,
Falls back, a slug, a loose worm
Ready for any crevice,
An eyeless starer.
II
A wretch needs his wretchedness. Yes.
O pride, thou art a plume upon whose head?
How comprehensive that felicity! . . .
A body with the motion of a soul.
What dream's enough to breathe in? A dark dream.
The rose exceeds, the rose exceeds it all.
Who'd think the moon could pare itself so thin?
A great flame rises from the sunless sea;
The light cries out, and I am there to hear--
I'd be beyond, I'd be beyond the moon,
Bare as a bud, and naked as a worm.
To this extent, I'm a stalk--
--How free, how all alone.
Out of these nothings
--All beginnings come.
III
I would with the fish, the blackening salmon, and the mad lemmings,
The children dancing, the flowers widening,
Who sighs froim far away?
I would unlearn the lingo of exasperation, all the distortions of malice and hatred;
I would believe my pain; and the eye quiet on the growing rose;
I would delight in my hands, the branch singing, altering the excessive bird;
I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form;
I would be a stream, winding between great striated rocks in late summer;
A leaf, I would love the leaves, delighting in the redolent disorder of this mortal life;,
This ambush, this silence,
Where shadow can change into flame,
And the dark be forgotten.
I have the body of the whale, but the mouth of the night is still wide,
On the Bullhead, in the Dakotas, where the eagles eat well,
In the country of few lakes, in the tall buffalo grass at the base of the clay buttes,
In the summer heat, I can smell the dead buffalo,
The stench of their damp fur drying in the sun,
The buffalo chip drying.
Old men should be explorers?
I'll be an Indian.
Iroqouis.
Theodore Roethke, c. 1960
Walt Whitman in the supermarket...bring back the murdered.
Just wait til you hear Ghost Dance, Tom, you'll go about ape.
I left it in yer box.
|
- Tom G 11-05-2004 11:46 pm
We have a new band name, Tom.
- Mrs Airplane Man (guest) 11-08-2004 5:40 am [add a comment]
If it means wearing skirts and eyeliner, MAM it is.
- Tom G 11-11-2004 3:24 am [add a comment]
The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into anything that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer...he is individual...he is complete in himself....the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not.
- Walt Whitman (guest) 11-24-2004 3:02 am [add a comment]
The others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not.
He wears a conical hat and stands in the corner of his time out hoping they will notice or not. Of course he was a bully, of course he was showing off, but don't tell him he could not feel what they were thinking. Are they showing off or bullying less than he ? Is acceleration not pure? Besides, between the OCD & narcolepsy, are you sure his intent was discernable. Are you even sure it's him...the black keys...photons...the weak force...harms way...a bee.
- Plankton (guest) 11-24-2004 3:18 am [add a comment] [edit]
- Tom G 12-04-2004 5:50 am [add a comment]
is this one a painting?
- sarah 12-05-2004 3:36 am [add a comment]
- Tom G 6-27-2005 2:05 am [add a comment]
Above is a broken piece of masonite with acrylic drooled over and filled in, circa 1998 or was it '97, the year I lived in 5 different places and painted on the fly, which now resides in my storage space, along with our friends below.
- Tom G 12-05-2004 5:55 am [add a comment]
- Tom G 12-05-2004 5:58 am [add a comment]
The Longing
I
On things asleep, no balm:
A kingdoms of stinks and sighs,
Fetor of cockroaches, dead fish, petroleum,
Worse than castoreum of mink or weasels,
Salive dripping from warm microphones,
Agony of crucifixion on barstools.
Less and less the illuminated lips,
Hands active, eyes cherished,
Happiness left to dogs and children--
(Matters only a saint mentions!)
Lust fatigues the soul.
How to transcend this sensual emptiness?
(Dreams drain the soul if dreamed too long.)
In a bleak time, when a week of rain is a year,
The slag heaps fume at the edge of the raw cities;
The gulls wheel over their singular garbage;
The great trees no longer shimmer;
Not even the soot dances.
And the spirit fails to move forward,
But shrinks into a half-life, less than itself,
Falls back, a slug, a loose worm
Ready for any crevice,
An eyeless starer.
II
A wretch needs his wretchedness. Yes.
O pride, thou art a plume upon whose head?
How comprehensive that felicity! . . .
A body with the motion of a soul.
What dream's enough to breathe in? A dark dream.
The rose exceeds, the rose exceeds it all.
Who'd think the moon could pare itself so thin?
A great flame rises from the sunless sea;
The light cries out, and I am there to hear--
I'd be beyond, I'd be beyond the moon,
Bare as a bud, and naked as a worm.
To this extent, I'm a stalk--
--How free, how all alone.
Out of these nothings
--All beginnings come.
III
I would with the fish, the blackening salmon, and the mad lemmings,
The children dancing, the flowers widening,
Who sighs froim far away?
I would unlearn the lingo of exasperation, all the distortions of malice and hatred;
I would believe my pain; and the eye quiet on the growing rose;
I would delight in my hands, the branch singing, altering the excessive bird;
I long for the imperishable quiet at the heart of form;
I would be a stream, winding between great striated rocks in late summer;
A leaf, I would love the leaves, delighting in the redolent disorder of this mortal life;,
This ambush, this silence,
Where shadow can change into flame,
And the dark be forgotten.
I have the body of the whale, but the mouth of the night is still wide,
On the Bullhead, in the Dakotas, where the eagles eat well,
In the country of few lakes, in the tall buffalo grass at the base of the clay buttes,
In the summer heat, I can smell the dead buffalo,
The stench of their damp fur drying in the sun,
The buffalo chip drying.
Old men should be explorers?
I'll be an Indian.
Iroqouis.
Theodore Roethke, c. 1960
- Tom G 12-11-2004 2:21 am [add a comment]
Walt Whitman in the supermarket...bring back the murdered.
Just wait til you hear Ghost Dance, Tom, you'll go about ape.
I left it in yer box.
- Plankton (guest) 12-13-2004 10:08 pm [add a comment]