i_havent_felt_poetic
daxle in a very long time
i used to, in semi random, semi regular intervals (occasionally)
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imagine that "poetry in general," she once told me, as if to pre-empt an oncoming outburst of poetics that she had inspired "is shit." 050912
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z this is a much too poetic way to die

jane fonda as barbarella 1968
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superleni is sad to not feel poetic. i, too, rarely feel poetic anymore. they say most poets become disillusioned with poetry eventually. what is the point? the point is sound and beauty and maybe truth. and sharing, and expression. sometimes poetry is the right thing. 050913
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pete i think it may come back this year, though its been gone for oh so long 050913
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oldephebe i've often and overtly opined here that poetry IS the language of the soul.

When my innards clutch at the unseen and now unfelt and all its grasps is the scoured out air--

air without smell
air without the pregnancy of many ecosystems vying for expression and existence
air without the music of civilization
air without the musty scent of strangers packed into an obsolescent steel trolley hurtling on rusted steel girders
air without the energy of steel carriages the drivers cradling cell phones, the ubiquitous cell phone to the scrubbed and erudite ear
air without sound and noise

I agree with jane--it's really disquieting to reach for your souls music and come up empty
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oldephebe the lone contemplative
having withdrawn from
the crush of bodies
and the bedlam of so
many minds and mouths
having seen his/her ideals
distributed as through
wireless nodes and seen
them savagely jettisoned
from the modern soul
in its singularly desperate
tenacious pursuit of
wealth and power

the lone contemplative
arduously and dreamily
plaiting his ivy cords
ceremoniously festooning
his shoddily constructed
tower
they, the world of machines
and competition
and iron will
the world that does not shrink
from the ugliness and harrow
of honest struggle
the world that does not construct
alternate realities
the world that does not
hide in the mists of mysticism
the world that does not
comfort the pathetic dream
fugue plagued reality avoiding
psychosis and neurosis
with obsolescent notions of
Thoreau, and Voltaire and
Dickens and Bronte and the
16th century
mediocre
actor with little formal education
that somehow aquired the facility to read ancient greek and plumb
the works of Plutarch to examine
and articulate the quality of being
human in a way that no other document
than the King James (james was a torturer and tyrant of the nth degree)
Bible

He has been banished from the world
of comptition and commerce
and like Focault found guilty
of trying too hard to impress
upon the Philistinistic age/heart
the compensatory virtue of his
esoteric erudition
and banished to an isolated
prison high in the Pyrenees Mountains
to spend what is left of
a laugh of a life
alone

no hears him
no sees him
when he
descends from his tower
to walk amongst
the world of men
when he out of neccessity
must ruefully punch the clock
and accept the Beasts stamp
upon his brow
for a few schekles
to pay the usurious
rates of the monopolistic utilities
he and millions of others
throw their rubles, scheckles
dollars, lira, pounds, deutchmarks
into the bottomless canyon of
the corporate maw

the lone contemplative
does not understand
in his idealist
and overtly romanticist
passion, his regard for the
under dog in all of us
he does not understand or even
accept how power that is vested
in the hands of the few
elected officials who
pass laws that enable
the corporate collossus
to poison the drinking water
and over charge in a basically
monopolistic market
he wonders whatever happened to
The Taft Hartley Act
he wonders how can such men
become so innured to the
spectacle of horror and
trajedy when corporations run
amok in the pursuit of its
blood, its vitality
the reams of printed paper
with the faces of our
founding fathers
emblazoned across the front
have they not permitted
the omnipresent, unsleeping
corporate ID
to become far worse than
old King George

the lone contemplative
has a habit
of wounding, of injuring
the vanity of the powerful
or at least the lilliputian
tyrants that rule over
ponds, and the thin trickle
of water that feeds the
corporate current
he tries to say
that he owes the Other
his honesty and humility
like that painter whose every
stroke is honest upon the canvas

instead the vain and the powerful
will not SAY
what he sould know
that they want elaborate
parties and promenades
in honor of His/Her vanity
he wants no one
around him who can so easily
unbalance his sense of himself

and so he is doomed to
inadvertantly injure
peoples vanity
and he continues to pay
raises are witheld
the air become rank
with hostility
taut
all motion and words
stop
when he enters the conferance room
one black stone
amidst a sea of white
he is too small for this
ugly ignoble job
the job that so many
others pragmatically
accomodate themselves to
for down the road
they will be reward for thier
selfless and craven sycophancy
-the job of propping up the
continental mass and whieght
of the department heads vanity
he wonders how any
work gets done
the mere IDEA
the unholy act
of hiding his light
of becoming the echo
to someones fatuous deliberations
is like dying

but this is the way of Power
but he neither has the
inclination nor the time
to pore over the
infinite complexity
of the psyche
the proud and the powerfully
who want, no who chemically
NEED to be the center of
attention at all times

He knows that Power once offended
like Heaven intent on venting
its fury on a sinful world
will have its justice, its honor
even if it means
grinding the knife in the back
over and over and over again

We are not free
not the black or the white
not the red or brown or yellow

He wonders why the powerful and wise
and acomplished cannot
see that there is not enough
fuel to feed the flickering fires
of envy, rage, greed, malice, hate

He cannot artfully feign sincerity
he is not adept at those political
stratagems...
he feels like something vile and
horrid smelling has crawled into
his soul, his heart whenever
he tries to imitate the art of
the charmer, the charismatic

The Constitution is no longer a
document for the people and by
the people--it is now whatever the
imperatives of power and all those beholden to it whatever it wants it to mean

so yeah
its difficult to feel
poetic

I don't know if retreating into a fortress is really the best solution
here. Isolation can breed a kind of misanthropy sure. Isolation robs one of what the soul so desperately needs--
human contact.
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oldephebe May I share a bit of Rabbinical wisdom with you?

Great. Here goes.

"Man thinks, God laughs....But why does God laugh at the sight of man thinking? Because man thinks and the truth escapes him. Because the more man thinks, the more one man's thought diverges from another. And finally because, man is never what he thinks he is."

Some very wise rabbi.

I think the essence of feeling poetic, or even more accurately stated, I think the essence of writing poetry is the act of transcending the world's ache and whieght, or even because of it--one stops struggling, one reaches for the firmament and is carried there almost effortlessly upon the currents of his/her own music. To become light in the midst of all this whieght, to carry the anchor with you, and because of the mass and whieght of your souls torment, you fly higher, you make a sweeter sound. Poetry does that. If you can carve out one REAL moment where you'e not even aware of driving or piloting the plane. You look down and suddenly discover you've achieved the winged perfection of flight.

I guess
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stork daddy i haven't felt poetic ever. 050914
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oldephebe I don't know, I have read a few things of yours that while not aspiring to any ideal of poetry of romanticism quite clearly succeeds in sounding poetic. I mean exigency and existence, the metaphysical and the rational just delineating the diachotomy of those two polarities invested in the Human can produce a poetic tension, and can at times be powerfully expressive rivaling even some of the finest "poetry" written.

The process of divestiture, of dignity, innocence, is in itself equisite fodder to fill all those plumed pens and parchment paper with enough authorial authenticity to rouse the jaundiced soul from its stupor.

I mean after all in this post-modern age where can the soul seek respite?
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daxle jimmy, you lie 050915
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stork daddy yeah i do. what does that have to do with anything? 050915
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daxle You're breaking my heart! How dare you, you cruel selfish bastard! 050915
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stork daddy that's pretty poetic. if by poetic i mean pathetic...which i don't! but come on now, you're a sophisticated mama and yet you just keep using my name just so people know i gave it to you! well i hope it lasts longer than the xbox! 050915
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