Saturday, October 27, 2007

ode to the pastoral cityscape

the diesel fumes confront me from the riotous city's splendor
of traffic lights reflected off the shattered pools of water
on concrete covered earth that conceals all soft or tender
each street a tomb of meadows, monument to ancient slaughter

the horns a-blare and distant sirens echo from the walls
that rise around me like the fists of man's complete dominion
their imperfections hidden by the night ere morning falls
and men arise to share their lot with rat and roach and pigeon

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Refrain, oh ye Profane



O
de to the Profane,

may ye live in peace.
Through Cerberus disdain
he chases you, your pain

and no refuge found in any crease.






Ode to the
Profane,
may your days be always numbered.

Like that killing brother Cain,

for you, there, a trouble that is lain.
In whithered hour, your dream-color, only umbre.

Ode to that
Profane,
life for you to only agonize.

In your life, only pain,
the devil in your eye, pure disdain,

and all those about you only patronize.

Ode to you,
Profane.
Tis a life not worth living,

birth for you ney again,

(for that first, from womb, was never sane)
and now your life's blood is only for the giving.


Ode to you,
Profane,
your books you may write,
and the necks, they may crane,

but on the minds only strain,

and yours is a legacy of the trite.


Ode to you,
Profane.
While great bastions from ye are pummelled.

But in the melee of that great train,

your thoughts, they sum in a certain refrain

of the fact of a life that is never humbled.

Ode to you, Opie Taylor
for yours is the heart of a Louveteau.
While your idol is Kaaba,
The cowan's heart in you, Jablichas
pitied soul pours forth like blood from wounded doe.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Quoth the Wraith: I have seen destruction, and I am him

Sweat saves blood.
Erwin Rommel


But, can sweat stop a bullet?
-Visum


All war is deception.
Sun Tzu


So is global warming, but just look at the hullabaloo it has caused. More than one war has been fought by the deceived.
-Visum


The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
Sun Tzu


Sounds like the collectivist motto that the supreme art of working is to create something without doing anything; of course, it has gone far to create a bunch of porky couch potatoes; you might call them the "fog of boar".
-Visum


Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
Plato


I see dead people...and they are fighting over potato chips and who owns the remote control for the idiot box.
-Visum


A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations. They have the best implements of war.
Herbert V. Prochnow


Yes, but can a microbe on a meteorite assist that nation in cultivating civility in the rest of the world? I'd say that like the socialist, all the microbe can do is promulgate and infect and ultimately lead to the downfall of civility.
-Visum


I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.
Ulysses S. Grant


A piece of Georgia, a piece of Bamie, and a piece of Tennessee.
-Visum


What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.
Robert E. Lee


Alternately we can take a passive approach...just sit on our haunches and let the barbarians (and other assorted enemas) burn a path from New York to San Diego, rather than simply a paltry 50-mile swath through the Southland. Cruel, yes. Necessary? Depends entirely on how much you actually care about things like joy, happiness, your personal God and whether you consider Columbia, Atlanta and Savannah "fair faces" in this "beautiful world".
-Visum


To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.
George Orwell


I wonder if he saw what was wrought on Columbia by the blue-blood, socialist hoard?
-Visum


War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory.
Albert Pike


And to the victor belongs the catastrophes that are the spoils of the achieved "peace".
-Visum


Men do not fail; they give up trying.
Elihu Root


And worse, they fail to try again...danged ol' under-achieving socialists.
-Visum


We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.
Jeane Kirkpatrick


And when what they want is not tangible, such as the soul of the infidel...what then, tit for tat? Soul, for eternal soul? Eye, for spite-filled eye? War exists as long as the devil believes one singular soul is left that can be turned from righteousness. And what is righteousness? That eternal attempt to gain a peace that only exists in total on the "other side"; a place where evil has no home. It is an attempt won only by fighting vehemently to bring some semblance of that peace to a world seemingly run by a soul-consuming devil and existing here just shy and short of heaven's bright shore.

There are a few brave souls left who will fight like hell for an impure and clouded reflection of heaven's peace right here on earth. To they alone belong the victory that is heaven's ever-lasting peace."
-Visum


We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
Winston Churchill


Uh, best of luck to all you socialists out there. Happy hunting!
-Visum

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Thoughts about Language...

... or why there are no good Soviet poets.

Ever since college I have believed that the only two things the world does well anymore are lust and despair. All "art" as such which is any good seems to be based on either or both of those strong emotions. The many nostalgic poems, like the ones I try to write, are a part of that despair.

But look at Gerard Manley Hopkins
GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
And Robert Burns
Thus ev'ry kind their pleasure find,The savage and the tender;
Some social join, and leagues combine,Some solitary wander:
Avaunt, away! the cruel sway,Tyrannic man's dominion;
The sportsman's joy, the murd'ring cry,The flutt'ring, gory pinion!


And W. B. Yeats
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.

Here an englishman, an irishman, and a scottsman all wrote soft pastoral poetry. Was it because they knew and understood country scenery better? Surely not.

Why did people give up? Was it too easy or too hard? I believe actually it is because the language itself has become less poetical. I believe it is because of the manipulation of the language by the elite, and by the media Furthermore it says something about the way we approach things. Instead of aiming for the universal, we aim for the "lowest common denominator" or for a level of abstraction only attainable by the professional. Thus art either becomes a speciality of the elite or merely fast food for the unwasahed masses.

Friday, October 12, 2007

The Dry Well

Someplace under a dead red bud tree, there is an old well and a rope.


When I was a kid, I'd pull back one of the wood planks and look into the blackness.

For a quarter (sometimes a dollar) from my brother I'd stand on the blanks, bend my knees, push off. The old boards would bend and spring me up. They'd fall back down clattering on the stones. I'd land in the dry dust.


Belly in the dirt, I'd look down into that darkness.


Around noon, if you were lucky you could see fifteen feet and maybe more. My friend said twice a year you could see all the way to the bottom and catch a view of yourself down there. But I never did once, not in fifteen years before we moved away. All I saw was the dirt walls. All I heard was an occasional drip of water, or a plunk from a rock or from some spit. Not even that from a handful of dirt.


If my momma caught me over there by the well she'd have my daddy whip me, but there's a thing for dangerous places we boys had. I wanted to go down to the bottom. I got the rope ready to go. One end was tied around the old tree and another around my waist. I was going down, but I got scared. Would I be able to pull myself back up? I was scrawny and not very strong. Damn that scrawny kid.


I lied, that well ain't there anymore except in my mind. Someone filled it in and someone else put a lot of houses where that well was, and someone cut down that tree. The people who live there now don't know anything about that well. They don't know anything at all. Nothing at all.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

From The Two Towers, Book III, Chapter IV

We come, we come with roll of drum: ta-runda runda runda rom!
We come, we come with horn and drum: ta-runa, runa, runa rom!
To Isengard! Though Isengard be ringed and barred with doors of stone;
Though Isengard be strong and hard, as cold as stone and bare as bone,
We go, we go, we go to war, to hew the stone and break the door;
For bole and bough are burning now, the furnace roars-we go to war!
To Isengard with doom we come!
With doom we come, with doom we come!

-J.R.R. Tolkien

A Poem for a Poet

Two faced god of night and day,
Hot breath, foul corpse, mocking fear,
Corruption, skull, grinning from ear to ear.
Barren desert land beyond a boatless quay.

You I know, I know so well, I know,
I know, I name a thousand ways,
And each name its own annointed tome,
A great new novel or a novel poem,
But each is all the same

The same great devil within each thought,
The same wraiths in each inkblot,
The same fingers split between the rocks,
The same last gasp beneath the waves
As I am dragged into that liquid grave.

This I know, I know I know, I know.
It's all I hear, it's all I see,
The steady beat of tuneless drums,
The drums that call, I come, I come!
Fly far away from me.