Corazon del Hombre/ Sandburg

I found the prose selection I had been looking for! It's very exciting, I quite like it. Of course by some inverse nature this means that casi nadie mas les gusta. Some lines were partially inspired by Carl Sandburg's Always the Young Strangers. In the end though it's really a pretty overt poem, or so I thought when I was writing it. There seems to be one small point that needs clarification. When I refer to the "working-woman" I am indeed referring to a woman of the worlds oldest profession. If that still doesn't clarify it for you ask you parents. I'm purposefully not using the current or more grotesque terminology, because it's unnecessary and not the point. These few lines have no name yet, so I'll just tentatively name it Heart of Man.

Heart of Man

The heart of man is like the Working-Woman, 

Wailing alone in the night,

Struggling to recall those young days of bare feet and hands grasping for the tops of trees.

Striving against some spoiled thing deep within,

But still caught in her own mire.

--------------------

Again, I really quite liked this one. Unfortunately, as with some of my other work, I was praised on the writing style, but my concept was heavily criticized. I think it's both appropriate and true but if I didn't then I probably wouldn't have written it.

I would like to take a moment now to promote my favorite poet who I mentioned before, Carl Sandburg. I just recently finished reading his autobiography Always the Young Strangers which was simply amazing. It's very chic these days to be almost anti-American. I find this somewhat ironic because America is one of the few countries where you're allowed to actually stand up for what you think is wrong, and I feel that any major change that people cry out for would invariably take that right away. Even so, even I get into that mood at times, I look to the president and blame him for things far beyond his control, forgetting that he has a huge job that I cannot even begin to fathom. One way or another however, Sandburg has a magical quality that actually makes you proud to be an American. His story of growing up in the late 1800's in Galesburg Illinois makes you remember what America was built for. He speaks with such reverence of the rich conglomeration of cultures that have settled here. He was proud of civil war heroes and worked hard to get by.  I would highly encourage you to read some of his poetry, it will pierce your heart. I'll likely be posting a lot of it in the future, but for now just enjoy this small snippet.  

HAPPINESS

I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
     me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
     thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
     I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
     the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
     their women and children and a keg of beer and an
     accordion.

 

 

Sisters

Growing up I was home schooled, a middle child amidst four sisters. This is surprising given my current introverted poetic nature and tendency to relate better to women, but is true nevertheless. More or less everything in and around my life up till i made out of the house has had to do in one way or another with one of my sisters. Oddly enough these concepts rarely consciously work their way into my poetry. One exception to that is this poem, First star from the right. Although the Peter Pan reference is obvious enough it has more meaning than that. It is written more specifically for my second oldest sister, who would be the second from the right if all my siblings and I were lined up from left to right in descending order of age. Actually I think it would work alphabetically too...

Regardless, here it goes.

First star from the right.

Oh shining Star!

You are the most beautiful among us.

Onward so far,

Your actions could not become us.

Display hard work,

Take up the children who are among you.

You never shirk.

Teach them to become you.

Beloved Star!

You are the most honored and most true.

You, without mar,

We’re held back only by you.

---------

I have often wondered if other large families have this problem, but even if they don't I'm sure everyone has someone in their life like this. That one person who outshines everyone's expectations. Who you love more than life, but makes life so very difficult for you just by existing. Graduating with straight As, married to the perfect guy, always has everything together. How can one feel when the world turns to you after something like that? I love my sister, she is the brightest star among us, but she causes a pretty deep hole for the rest of us to fall in.

--------

Sufjan Stevens, my single favorite recording artist, has two songs which don't exactly have anything to do with sisters, but have sister in the title. I figured a good way to end this post was with a bit of almost-related beauty. So, I give you Sister Winter. 

 

That is all, have a sullen day.

Just a Haiku to get you through your day.

You're so beautiful

You are just so beautiful.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Just, Wow.

Scribbled on the back of a reciept is still not as good as a Bird.

Greetings all my faithful followers! The sad part about that joke is that there is no-one to get it, and if there were it wouldn't be a joke. Either way I suspect I am.

Right! On a less depressing note I have a super-duper cool video today. I was just gonna write about how lonely and depressed I am, but the fact that nobody would ever read it would probably drive me to suicide... so instead, Mr. Andrew Bird!

Man that guy is good. The way he plays with the English language is on par with the greats. There isn’t anything special in this video that particularly struck me. It just sounds good. I wouldn’t even say it makes me happy, but it certainly makes me feel.

Anyway, I would like to include a little something of my own today. If you don’t like it, I would encourage you to just watch Mr. Bird again, or go download some of his other beautiful work. Of course by “you” I mean any of the seven people who have viewed this blog since it began, three of which are from Germany. I wish I could go to Germany. I almost got to go to Europe for spring break, but I missed getting the appropriate grade by a few points in one class. Cool huh? O.K., before I get any more cynical about nobody reading this I should just move on.

I jotted this little ditty down on the back of a receipt the other day. It’s not my best prose, but I don’t remember where I put that. Honestly I just write things in whatever notebook or piece of paper I have handy and it stinks when I write something nice that I can’t ever find again.

This one has no name yet, so, here goes.

Have you no intention for me?

You, who commands the wind and wave,

Who sends me nightmares of a perfect reality

Only to shake me from my sleep as she fades from my arms.

To what end do I lie awake,

Afraid to enter her realm,

Knowing that You have forbidden that I stay?

I would probably call this “Aegri Somnia” had I not already named another poem that. It’s a handy little Latin phrase that I picked up from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea which basically means “troubled sleep” or “troubled dreams.” I’ll probably include that on my next post. In fact, I may just name them the same thing, as the essentially deal with they same thing. I would combine them if they were in the same format.

This poem can basically be summed up in a quote I once read in a Garfield comic.

“The only thing worse than a bad nightmare is waking up to a worse reality.”

Through this poem I basically just tweaked the statement based on personal experience. Waking up to reality is bad enough, but when you’re tempted with dreams of perfection and acceptance it makes everything real taste so much worse. Like I said before, I’m not sure if more people would choose to live in ignorance in the dream-world or not, but I at least hate to wake up. I suppose some people are energized by good dreams, but I just don’t get it.

Tune in next time for the exiting conclusion of Aegri Somnia!

Will our Hero ever find escape through his dreams? Will his reality ever make him glad to awaken? If a tree falls on a hipster in the middle of a forest, will anyone care?

These questions and more next time on Three Came.
 

This has never gone well...

I know I had something that I had wanted to post about, but for the life of me I can't seem to remember what it was, so I just decided to look back through some of my work and post something new. Here is a poem which I have only shared with to people before, and both times it has been ill received. Maybe if i explained it a bit better people would like it, which I would love, but at the same time I didn't exactly write it so that people would like it. I did give it a title which I think helps the interpretation, but I'll let you decide it before I say anything else.

Concerning my inevitable joy

How could I have a son?

What dream of pandemonium,

Could convince me to show a daughter into this world?

Wouldn’t it be better to tie cement shoes around my neck,

And jump into Lake Travis,

Than to bring a child into such a place as this?

Could I hang my son?

Could I beat my Daughter?

Could I look to my right and see my child nailed to a cross?

Isn’t life a sort of abortion?

---------------------------------

I am not a proponent of abortion at all. For me I really don't know if it's moral. I see good points on both sides of the argument. I would think however that it would be better to err on the side of giving life, not taking the chance of destroying it. Either way, that's not what this poem is about.

Essentially I'm scared to death of having a kid, which is something I want more than almost anything. I want to show a child the wonders of Creation and the great joys that life has to offer. But Lord it's frightening! I experience pain of the deepest variety nearly every day. I often long for death as a perfect escape. 

Aristotle thought that to live a well rounded of flourishing life one had to be able to understand everything. Better a man in pain than a swine satisfied. He thought that people could have terrible painful lives, but it's still better to know the difference than to just be blissfully ignorant. In a way I see his point. He says no one would choose to be happy and ignorant if they were wise and unhappy. I'm not sure this is always true though. We chose to give up blissful ignorance in the Garden, but I think that, if presented with the option, plenty of us would take that back. At the same time however, is it really happiness if you don't know the difference?

These are the things I consider when I think about having a child. This poem basically illustrates all my fears surrounding the inevitable joy of bearing a child. Could I really watch my son suffer the same things that I have been through? What would I do if my daughter was assaulted or kidnapped? At the very worst, what if I create a life that would have been better un-lived? In the end I feel that's not really up to me, but I still can't help but feel responsible. 

Baudelaire and the Bottleneck

Baudelaire - 

Sometimes I get the impression that I'm not really a good poet because I don't read enough poetry. At the same time however I feel that poetry is very odd in this way. Like many arts it can be stripped down into basic elements and components, but can still be mastered by a person with absolutely no training or interest prior to their begging in the field. For just as many great painters as there were who had to struggle through art school and try their hardest to achieve what they loved, there seems to be a number who just as easily threw paint onto a canvas and, no matter how they did it, turned it into the greatest art of a century. There seems to be an odd discrepancy between artists who try to force their soul into a particular form and ones who treat their enormous gift with ambivalence.

In the end what tends to happen for me is that I think that i should read more poetry, so that I can be a good poet, but often stop myself because I'm not reading poetry because I want to or because I love it (although I do) and I'm not even reading it because I want to become a better poet (again, I do). I want to read other poets so that I can have the semblance of better poetry. Just like a great painter would be expected to have favorite artists from the past, or a famous singer is expected to have musical inspirations.

This kind of struggle goes on in my head a lot, and it often stops me from reading what I later discover to be great poetry. One such case is that of a brilliant poet I just recently discovered; Charles Baudelaire.

I don't know anything about him, but even with the limited samples that I have read so far I highly respect him and hope to some day achieve writing that could even be compared with his. I'm really excited to find out more about who he was and why he wrote some of the beautiful things that he did. It really makes me wish I didn't over-complicate reading poetry, and that I would just do what I love because I love it.

Baudelaire writes a lot about "the poet." Some of his descriptions are so brilliant that I can't even do anything but to simply show them to you. Here is a poem he wrote called "L'Albatros" (Obviously translated)

The Albatross

Often, to amuse themselves, the men of a crew
Catch albatrosses, those vast sea birds
That indolently follow a ship
As it glides over the deep, briny sea.

Scarcely have they placed them on the deck
Than these kings of the sky, clumsy, ashamed,
Pathetically let their great white wings
Drag beside them like oars.

That winged voyager, how weak and gauche he is,
So beautiful before, now comic and ugly!
One man worries his beak with a stubby clay pipe;
Another limps, mimics the cripple who once flew!

The poet resembles this prince of cloud and sky
Who frequents the tempest and laughs at the bowman;
When exiled on the earth, the butt of hoots and jeers,
His giant wings prevent him from walking.

---

Simply amazing. again I can't wait to find out more about this guy and what drove him to write things as beautiful as this.


____________________________________________________________________________________



On a more personal note, I really like people. It fascinates me that every person that I pass is an individual mind with a separate soul, with its own desires and dreams. It's fun to think what exactly may go on in other peoples minds. I think that we would be surprised at how similar everyone is. Whatever the case I was walking from class back to my dorm on a particularly cold and blustery day this winter, when I passed a woman who stuck out in an impressive way. She was wearing a jacket wit a blue furry hood which looked nice by itself, but what was remarkable was her face. It was flushed with the most remarkable shade of cherry-red that I had ever witnessed It wasn't the red of someone who was overworked or out of breath, but the red of someone full of life and invigorated by her surroundings. I wasn't even particularly attracted to her in any way, it was just amazing how red her face was. I considered it for a while before writing down this little ditty. I like the first title better, the second one refers to the fact that it was the fault of construction on campus that had forced our paths together at that specific time.

The Wind!

Or,

Passed by in a bottleneck

How harsh it strikes against her face,

It blows in from the north.

Her cheeks turn cherry red in place,

She timidly strikes forth.

It is a million blowing souls,

All striving to be warm.

And filled with, her hood, it bowls,

And gives her face its form.

So, scarlet tint or not, she goes,

With rapid steps on frozen toes.

She sets out through the campus-ground,

Commanding eyes and walking sound.

----

As far as sonnets go it's O.K. I guess. 

Virginia Woolf and Beach Glass

This semester in British Literature we read some of the short stories of Virginia Woolf. One story in particular dealt with a man who collected odds and ends, particularly a piece of beach glass. Beach glass is glass that had at some point fallen into the ocean and been tossed and turned and eroded and colored until it carried no semblance to its original shape size and color. My teacher talked about how certain small objects carry odd significance with people, and after showing us this picture of some beach glass she admonished us to try to write something based off of this picture of a piece of beach glass. Here is the poem that I wrote, I simply call it Beach Glass.

Beach Glass

The argument was vivid and distracting.

John threw his hands in the air and Elizabeth screamed.

The lamp-post drove itself through him, her neck was crushed.

From this, one shard was born, and for Sea was deemed.

“Child of Mine, born of My shores, now here returned.

Through greed they made you. Through anger, back to Me.”

She reached Her blue tide and carried him down.

“From who you were, I remake you” Said the Sea.

“From anger you will become crimson-orange,

And out of your curves I will form a round stone.”

So She, the patient Sea, did just what She had said,

And through the years he tossed and turned till he shone.

Now on that beach an orphaned man walked alone.

That fight took them, many years now, from his life.

Loading stones in his pockets, he had his plan.

When one beautiful thing settled all his strife.

----------------------------

I gave my teacher a copy and she seemed to like it. I actually was a bit impressed myself. I wrote it during philosophy, now I may fail. Fun!

Anagraneto I

Un poco sobre Yo

                     I have pretty much always wanted to have a blog but I was never exactly sure what I would write about. In the end I decided the that the internet seemed like a great place to start publishing my poetry and short stories, since it has such a shining reputation for even-handed respectful criticism from it's variety of users. I write often, but it's often in apostrophe to God or anyone else I may be thinking of at the time. Still, I sometimes to take the time to carefully consider and write down other musings and I want to start tonight with my longest and most difficult piece of work. I say most difficult not only because it was taxing on my to write, but because unlike most things that I write it is somewhat dense to the point of being tedious, although, that is part of the point.

- The Anagraneto

                     I came up with this form of poetry myself without really understanding what I was getting myself into. Basically the Anagraneto is a three layered poem,  with each layer having its own significance. In the case of Anagraneto I each layer delves deeper into a man's mind. The first layer, or the entire body of the poem itself is odd, deeply poetic, kind of boring and honestly a little difficult to get through. It's filled with metaphors and half ramblings which seem to lead nowhere while still perhaps alluding to some higher concept. The entire poem consists of fourteen separate sonnets, each with a unique format which lends itself to the second layer of the poem. To see the second layer you take the first letter of each line and use it to make new words. With each sonnet making a new line, the entire poem makes up an entire sonnet built from the original fourteen sonnets. This new sonnet takes you deeper into the mind of the man an with increasingly overt message, although still ruled by some symbolism. It's not over yet, the second layer sonnet like the first can be condensed. By taking the first letter of each line again the entire poem becomes a single fourteen letter phrase which represents the deepest level of the man's consciousness. 

Confused yet? Don't worry it's easier when you see it. Just remember; three layers, take the first letter of each line to make new lines.

 

Anagraneto I:

Vagabond so true

Ever in this life

Rising in the dew

Into this strife

Leaving my views

Yearning in rife.

Mundane in array

Yelling to assay.

Dark it descends

Everyone goes in

Still I will bend

Into my minds din

Reeling to an end

Excluding my sin.

Inwardly do I fly

Seeking the sky

Take me away King

Hear as I cry loud

All my soul sings

To a sea of clouds

I wish to fly home

Wings carry high

Over tired earth

Upwards now I spy

Legions in birth

Denying of hearth

Besiege my dream

Exit golden beam

Singing with joy

Each mad man goes

Tumbling as a toy

A shout is my song

Pass it not light

Assail me no wrong

Recount my sight

Taking off night

I wail into space

Never to the race

Fade into my smoke

Irradiated case

Raging do I choke

Ending this pace

I smell salty sea

Never have I been

Under the debris

Never have I seen

Darkness pull me

Adrift into a din

Taken aback I see

Every filthy sin

Drowning in a fee

Itching in waves

Never now staves

Searing my bones

Ever now I float on

Away in the tones

Three is now gone

Aching and alone

Killing the fawn

Even to his bone

Never to a throne

Wailing in the dark

Inside and apart

Take me now O Lark

Hurry for my part

Open thee the ark

Under mine heart

Teach it to chart

Magnificent way

Ever growing day

Mark my sad words

Yelling to birds

Hell has to exist

Or joy could never

Part nor persist

End nor endeavor

Illuminated sky

Still do I ask why

Forgetting love

Afraid to breath

Detached shoves

In holiday seeth

Nettles and glove

Garland and wreath

Every live thing

Tells of waiting

Each it will sing

Run down a dating

Nearer with wing

Alight relating

Longer in jading

Wail loud and cry

All big and small

Increase so high

The shouts of all

In as much you die

Nature will call

Given to the fall

Outward so fine

Vexed undertones

Each mental line

Rattles and rows

Year by year I sit

Eager to float on

Aching now to fit

Reason it is gone

Seeking the dawn

I want to be right

Whatever I may do

Afar or in my home

Is ordered by you

Though I may roam

Hark it is the sun

Each day it rises

Run children run

All my surprises

Languish for fun

Degrading vices

I want us to be one

Newly righteous

God please buy us

All I want is life

Fear will take us

Acting as reaper

This will make us

Each a bit weaker

Dusk approaches

Evening it falls

Self encroaches

Timidly it calls

Rah he engrosses

Opening the hall

Yearning in pall

Things turn grey

Hoary and silent

Each thing fades

Living is simple

If we find above

First this ample

Elated high love

Exhausted today

Take me black home

Carried far away

Hurriedly I roam

Ebbing in the bay

Drowning in foam

I have a yearning

Nearly a burning

Marriage take me

Yield me now free

Sowing the earth

Over this soil

Under the hearth

Lonely not loyal

Away from all men

Below the shirts

Acting out my sin

Talking it hurts

Enter by the dirt

Tomorrow the day

Hastily nearing

Early will He say

See what is under

Treat it hostile

Repeal in wonder

Irate for a while

Fear now asunder

Enter to the pile

Take up this fire

Outward is power

Reach to the pyre

Catch the flower

Hasten the hour

Make me now clean

Expertly do wean

I just want to fly

Never so close by

Why such yelling

How can it be this

Overtly selling

Love and her kiss

Exit into bliss

Hold me away King

Eternal ringing

Royally do bring

Eternal singing

Peace for all men

All now laughing

Yearly have been

This is not final

He is waiting now

Entered in vinyl

Take me far apart

Oh take me to home

Leave not a heart

Lost and so alone

             So there is is! Exciting huh? That's all for now, I may write some more about this later, explaining what I found to be the different strengths and weaknesses of this style, but for now I'm gonna watch some T.V.