The Constorium of Greater Minds

jotted this down after stumbling across shinjuku goen yesterday following some holiday gift shopping. i can’t belive it’s taken me this long to discover what is probably the most beautiful park in the city. all the flat ground a man needs to roll bocce, beautiful winding paths, coy ponds and ancient trees dazzling in their fall colours. one old man of the forest in particular struck me with much awe and i sat for quite some time in a wooden pergola overlooking the japanese maple on a hill above a large coy pond. the juxtaposition of the bustling city shopping block and the meditative repose of the park shocked me out of the consumer stupor i had been in all morning and afternoon.

blood red maple

blood red maple
raging fire in my veins
burst forth from a wooden nervous system
burst forth from roots as old as
time

in the autumn of your life
warmed by the heat of a thousand suns
wise old man who has lived through so much
who has seen so much

emperors are born and die
under the shade of your wooden arms
battles are fought and empires crumble
in the impenetrable shadow of your mighty stalk
history is etched in your very skin
and your blood is the blood of a nation
proud and mysterious
it is the blood of the shogun
the samurai
it is so much the blood of the peasant

blood red maple
in this the autumn of our life
which was predicted in the first shoot of your might brow
and now smolders
in the raging fire of your bloody cannopy

you who have heard so much
the confession of murderers
the cooing of lovers
a mother’s tears as they fall in pond of coy

blood red maple
if you could speak on the eve
of our great demise
what would you say to a deaf man

have you ever had a night out that just made you sick? i’m not talking about drinking too much; not that kind of sick. i’m refering to the feeling you get after you realize you’ve done something that just didn’t mesh with your philosophy; a feeling that you’ve wasted time, money, emotion and energy on the pursuit of something trivial and base. friday night turned out to be the most ridiculously wasteful and meaningless night i’ve spent in roppongi since arriving in japan. i despise roppongi. i will be completely content if i never spend another evening in roppongi as long as i live. i need a break from japan. my class in newport and the subsequent trip to visit friends could not possibly come at a better occasion. my creative reaction to friday night:

waste

Undeniably, I said
Softly, replied
The past
Dead
Dollar rise, dollar fall
The creation of man-made things
Changed us
God in a neon sign
A generation of degenerates
Subsiding on emptiness
Beckoned onward by a false justification
A tear
From her eye
She’s stopped eating now
She’s so thin
It’s beautiful

just browsing some of cumming’s stuff and i came across this gem. maybe it’s just me and the state i’ve been in lately or maybe it’s just that this poem is entirely about sex…the car metaphor is great. i really enjoy cummings’ avant-garde style and amazing and artistic use of the english language. a lot of the stuff i have written is in a similar vein…perhaps because it’s easier to write without adhering to certain laws and forms or perhaps the style offers more room for creativity. anyway, below she being brand something cummings-esque i wrote back in high school.

she being brand
by
ee cummings

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a poem by yeats:

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

some powerful words:

Hollow Men ~ T.S. Eliot

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us – if at all – not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer -

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.