A lover of felines in Britain
With cats was unusually smitten;
She heard a tom yowl
While on his spring prowl -
In winter she gave birth to kittens.
Wrote that one in the shower. My wife assures me I do my best work with my clothes off - make of that what you will. I think that my nudity cuts into my broodity. It's hard to be melancholic around all that skin. In case you're wondering, I've noticed what a downer this blog is. Nothing inspires the windbag in me like a bit o' Teary Tom. I can play the violin of sorrow with the best of them. Is it in fact the smallest violin in the world? Most varieties of unhappiness are self-indulgences, but so is life. And maybe Jean-Claude is right. Perhaps art too is self-indulgence. Shakespeare didn't intend to serve the public good, did he? And thank G-D he didn't dedicate himself to feeding the poor or some such.
(Like the pseudo-Hebraic touch? I'm going to use YHWH next time, just to fuck with you.)
There once was on hombre from Spain
Who often used God's name in vain.
"Dios mio!" he'd cry
If you just tapped the guy.
If you pinched him, he'd do it again!
This reckless abuse of the Torah
Made God up above very sorah.
Our Father decreed
"Senor should pay heed:
'Swounds, I won't take no morah."
Mittwoch, Februar 23, 2005
Montag, Februar 21, 2005
Dis-satisfied...
There is a god of the underworld names Dis. I always liked the name - so elemental. Yin and yang, fire and water, Dis and Dat. Dis aint wot ah wannid ta tawk abow.
There once was a fellow near thirty
Whose rhymes were consistently dirty.
But he bore no blame -
He'd simply exclaim,
"I jus think them girlies is purty."
A princeling there was with a vassal
Who found her Protector a hassal.
Whenever the serf
Knealt down on the turf
She felt prince's prick in her assal.
Is my maturity a putridity? Is there anything worse than competence? Did I lose something essential along with my careless self-destruction? I felt I was missing youth when I was a kid, and growing up has done nothing to help that situation. I can say at least that I have gone from thinking I was 50 when I was 17 to thinking I am 23 at the age of 29. But I will never be young enough to be young. I never have been.
I was too old when I had young love. My age, not my youth, made me covetous and frightened. I had the dream of love but saw that it was a dream and felt the tragedy of its illusion even as I lived it.
But I'm getting off track in this mush. I wanted to reflect somehow on the fact that I have not let go of the idea of the writer as rebel or the suspicion that there is genius in suffering or suffering in genius. I am a careful husband and father, but there is in me a reckless soul. The former is the master of the latter, and I trust it will always be so. Can that soul not then truly serve that careful man? This destroyer god that is in me, can I let it beat prose from my brain without myself feeling the concussion?
There once was a fellow near thirty
Whose rhymes were consistently dirty.
But he bore no blame -
He'd simply exclaim,
"I jus think them girlies is purty."
A princeling there was with a vassal
Who found her Protector a hassal.
Whenever the serf
Knealt down on the turf
She felt prince's prick in her assal.
Is my maturity a putridity? Is there anything worse than competence? Did I lose something essential along with my careless self-destruction? I felt I was missing youth when I was a kid, and growing up has done nothing to help that situation. I can say at least that I have gone from thinking I was 50 when I was 17 to thinking I am 23 at the age of 29. But I will never be young enough to be young. I never have been.
I was too old when I had young love. My age, not my youth, made me covetous and frightened. I had the dream of love but saw that it was a dream and felt the tragedy of its illusion even as I lived it.
But I'm getting off track in this mush. I wanted to reflect somehow on the fact that I have not let go of the idea of the writer as rebel or the suspicion that there is genius in suffering or suffering in genius. I am a careful husband and father, but there is in me a reckless soul. The former is the master of the latter, and I trust it will always be so. Can that soul not then truly serve that careful man? This destroyer god that is in me, can I let it beat prose from my brain without myself feeling the concussion?
Mittwoch, Februar 16, 2005
Rosy-fingered raspberryman
The muse of limericks (a girl from Nantucket, I understand) has looked away from me. The absence of her gaze is a cold hell. I feel lonely, lost, pointless.
The salmon-colored, glowing snowsky of Boston always created in me a physical euphoria. Maybe it is because I am hopped up on chocolate and soda at the moment, but I can almost feel that delicious, desperate need to jump out of myself that dogged me on those odd fluorescent nights.
I knew the night so well back then. I had to wean myself from it after college - it's a useless preoccupation. But the universe is just my size at night. There is no sky to dwarf me, only the ground beneath my feet. Stars are pinholes that could as well be just out of reach as a trillion miles away. Streetlights too are like stars, not planted to the ground by poles but hovering in the dark. My breath is right by me, in my ears, on my face, and my skin is electrified by the icy air of midnight.
Senses come to life. Smells are stronger, sounds more distinct, the touch and texture of every surface seems suddenly important. How many times I wanted to melt into an ecstasy of darkness!
The salmon-colored, glowing snowsky of Boston always created in me a physical euphoria. Maybe it is because I am hopped up on chocolate and soda at the moment, but I can almost feel that delicious, desperate need to jump out of myself that dogged me on those odd fluorescent nights.
I knew the night so well back then. I had to wean myself from it after college - it's a useless preoccupation. But the universe is just my size at night. There is no sky to dwarf me, only the ground beneath my feet. Stars are pinholes that could as well be just out of reach as a trillion miles away. Streetlights too are like stars, not planted to the ground by poles but hovering in the dark. My breath is right by me, in my ears, on my face, and my skin is electrified by the icy air of midnight.
Senses come to life. Smells are stronger, sounds more distinct, the touch and texture of every surface seems suddenly important. How many times I wanted to melt into an ecstasy of darkness!
Donnerstag, Februar 10, 2005
Blackbird screwdriver
A poem by Michael Drayton (d. 1631)
Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done: you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly, I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And, when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life, thou might'st him yet recover.
This reminds me of a favorite Yeats poem and of my own experiences. It's awfully sad. There's a useless, impotent heroism here. There's a willingness to give up the last shred of pride. I love "Faith is kneeling by his bed of death / And Innocence is closing up his eyes." Faith and Innocence are so active, so consciously suicidal. Furthermore, I always love what my father called a "Ciceronian sentence," otherwise known as a big finish. I think it's particularly appropriate in a poem about the torments of unrequited love. It is an unsettling, confusing gesture; instead of sealing up the poem, the last lines shoot it off in a new and much more powerful direction. Isn't this like the last moments of a great love affair? Don't we try to say the last thing, the fundamental thing, and don't we always end up creating a whole other beast in the process? Finally, the poem contains the basic tragedy of love and life - that we cannot turn back the clock, or even stop it where it is. It is a law of reality (though not of fantasy) that the bloom will fade. I have learned better kinds of love since, but the first blush of young love has an unrivaled sweetness. Alas, the tree bearing that fruit dies when you pick it.
I was watching Smiles of a Summer Night again today, for the first time in a few years. There are three smiles, the first for the young lovers, the second for the clowns, the third for the sleepless and lonely. When they describe the third, it is with such joy, such contentment. What a ravishing gift life gives the sleepless - a dawn.
Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done: you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly, I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And, when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life, thou might'st him yet recover.
This reminds me of a favorite Yeats poem and of my own experiences. It's awfully sad. There's a useless, impotent heroism here. There's a willingness to give up the last shred of pride. I love "Faith is kneeling by his bed of death / And Innocence is closing up his eyes." Faith and Innocence are so active, so consciously suicidal. Furthermore, I always love what my father called a "Ciceronian sentence," otherwise known as a big finish. I think it's particularly appropriate in a poem about the torments of unrequited love. It is an unsettling, confusing gesture; instead of sealing up the poem, the last lines shoot it off in a new and much more powerful direction. Isn't this like the last moments of a great love affair? Don't we try to say the last thing, the fundamental thing, and don't we always end up creating a whole other beast in the process? Finally, the poem contains the basic tragedy of love and life - that we cannot turn back the clock, or even stop it where it is. It is a law of reality (though not of fantasy) that the bloom will fade. I have learned better kinds of love since, but the first blush of young love has an unrivaled sweetness. Alas, the tree bearing that fruit dies when you pick it.
I was watching Smiles of a Summer Night again today, for the first time in a few years. There are three smiles, the first for the young lovers, the second for the clowns, the third for the sleepless and lonely. When they describe the third, it is with such joy, such contentment. What a ravishing gift life gives the sleepless - a dawn.
Mittwoch, Februar 02, 2005
You rhymed ants with pants? You are a genius.
A monkey once lived on the Lido
Who always would wear a tuxedo.
To women of Venice
The ape was a menace:
They feared the chic monkey's libido.
Can a limerick liker bash bad rhymes? Does the licensed poet have the poetic license to go ahead and rhyme love and dove?
I one knew a man who rhymed love
With the equally common word: dove.
So was he ironic?
Or is -ove a phonic
With no other rhymes to think of?
I have always been overimpressed by the fact that love rhymes with glove. I have found substituting 'glove' for 'love' in songs far funnier than it actually is. These are my sins. I do not regret, however, my fascination with the habit of some unknown, unknowable and faceless creatures of the Boston night who place apparently lost black gloves on the high pikes of wrought iron gates. I saw and remarked on those lonely, unlikely mitts on many occasions and never failed to be struck by their surreality. On one of the most memorable nights of my college life - memorable for entirely different, slightly obscene reasons - I believe I saw two in the course of one long night's walk. If, dear reader, you put gloves on pikes, please do not reveal yourself to me. The mystery is delicious.
Who always would wear a tuxedo.
To women of Venice
The ape was a menace:
They feared the chic monkey's libido.
Can a limerick liker bash bad rhymes? Does the licensed poet have the poetic license to go ahead and rhyme love and dove?
I one knew a man who rhymed love
With the equally common word: dove.
So was he ironic?
Or is -ove a phonic
With no other rhymes to think of?
I have always been overimpressed by the fact that love rhymes with glove. I have found substituting 'glove' for 'love' in songs far funnier than it actually is. These are my sins. I do not regret, however, my fascination with the habit of some unknown, unknowable and faceless creatures of the Boston night who place apparently lost black gloves on the high pikes of wrought iron gates. I saw and remarked on those lonely, unlikely mitts on many occasions and never failed to be struck by their surreality. On one of the most memorable nights of my college life - memorable for entirely different, slightly obscene reasons - I believe I saw two in the course of one long night's walk. If, dear reader, you put gloves on pikes, please do not reveal yourself to me. The mystery is delicious.
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