pedantic, i am bitter, vii

mutant sonnet (extra feet)


when i was young and lived across town from my beloved,
at night i would walk out and look at the sky and know
that star-swathed moon-graced planet-strewn arch above
gazed down on my beloved as she slept or dreamed below.

older, i and my distant beloved spoke on telephones.
i imagined we both closed our eyes, as i did, to float
in dazzling cavernous meditative space, although alone,
conjoined in echoing chord, each voice donating a note.

and later, my far beloved i addressed through letters.
while composing, and while awaiting reply, that space
now mediated by no moon nor wire where we, together,
mutually contemplate, abide, converse, an implied grace.

learned sufi poets call beloved their coy elusive gnosis,
find in every moon face tone intimation of the divine,
scry their lifelong jubilant quest with grim obsessive focus;
see in my composite beloved divinity similarly sublime:

no secret sacred ethereal space exists for us to meet,
beloved, idealized fantasy no mortal woman could be.
by the same token, those, who have at times animated
my muse-beloved, they were no gods, offered no satori.

and these, the words fanatic i address fantastic her:
beloved, floating in the graceful luminous airs of
transcendent contemplation, these graceless words are
not love poems to women; they are clumsy prayers.

talk about pedantic

Metrical Feet
lesson for a boy

Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot! yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long--
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng;
One syllable long, with one short at each side,
Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride--
First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer
Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred Racer.
If Derwent be innocent, steady, and wise,
And delight in the things of earth, water, and skies;
Tender warmth at his heart, with these meters to show it,
With sound sense in his brains, may make Derwent a poet--
May crown him with fame, and must win him the love
Of his father on earth and his Father above.
My dear, dear child!
Could you stand upon Skiddaw, you would not from its whole ridge
See a man who so loves you as your fond S.T. Coleridge.

pedantic, i am bitter, vi: sloppy not-a-sonnet

Your windows are dark.

I realize that implies that I miss you and I do.
But I also could, with access to you,
Grow used to not feeling unfaithful to
Be home and know you’re home and not call you
Or slighted to receive no call from you.

I don’t know how we can achieve such ends,
Remain such trusted confidential friends
And excise our wonted co-dependence
Avoiding too much injury and repentance,
But hope we’ll remain where’er our path wends
Friends as karma or providence intends.

The above may allow the inference
That I’ve not been fantasizing of you,
Which would be inaccurate, and untrue.

pedantic, i am bitter, v

shall i write another sonnet now? nay, shall i
write another song? shall i succumb to the thrum
on my heart beat sweet fingers i have dared
not dream so long? shall i try to ply a new troth, blaze
a fresh way through, to light a hopeful smile anew
beneath this long-hallowed hanging brow? shall i strive?
or is it a lie, luring my fantastic heart to inflate,
great with scheming song, to float a bare moment
unencumbered of doubt and fear, ethereal, ere
crashing again, in pathetic wreckage of brain, heart
and pen; hope and energy spent, back on the far shore
of the broken continent of love, back pinned, eyes
baked open in the empty stare of the arid plain:
the strain or stain and blame, and finally shame.

~c. 2002

pedantic, i am bitter, iv

I would become poem and not poet:
Not flattening sublimity to page,
poor pinned abstract concentrate of beauty
flensed from visceral life, inchoate.
A poet must from living disengage,
stalk epiphany yet never know it,
in word and self alone may build his home,
acclaim his value's solitary gauge.
Only song bestows meaning 'pon flute, the
player knows who performs his sacred praise.
I would divest this calculating self
for it compares not to how you root me;
you are my living flesh my breath my bone,
grown entwined, my love, will we be poem.

~c. 2000

pedantic, i am bitter, iii (arrhythmic sonnet)

if i were to keep a journal of on-
ly her and have nought but the slightest af-
finity for words, it cannot help but
be Zarathustra's rhapsody: genet-
icokarmic complement rendered in
ink and cynic hyperbole. if this
hand were to continue its obeisance
adoring in these cragged characters'
embrace along these pages' edifice,
the impending ages could do no less
should these blest phalanges' progeny thrive
than to canonize, to cast this sublime
hand, these metacarpals in marble, for
a beauty only writ to honor, her.

~c. 1998

pedantic, i am bitter, ii

Let words not 'tween thy lips and mine intrude
As yet again the hemispheres insist
For solely in thy kiss do I consist,
Within thy pulse commence and too conclude.
Let not thine ear nor mind believe my lies
In contradiction laying siege thine heart;
Though our words fade as yet again we part
Significant remain our skin, our eyes.
She did not go without effect or trace
Nor glimpsed my face to mirror all her tears:
On our separation thrive my fears,
I breathe to sleep again in her embrace.
Vain in word to adequately mention
The full magnitude of my intention.

~ c. 1996

pedantic, i am bitter

Having ne'er before a sonnet written
Ambition, laughing, tries his hand at it, then
Casting round for subject worthy inking
Sits in silence desperately thinking.
Of what shall he then odes and verses write,
Which has not been so overwrought and trite?
Then lo, there dawns amidst the mist a slight
Idea, part formed, still vague in distant sight.
Of sonnet's rigid form e'er gravely twinkling
modern free verse offers but an inkling;
rhyme and meter lately so sore smitten,
by their own teeth will be more deeply bitten.
In metered rhyme to metered rhyme decry:
A clumsy youthful epigram, yet sly.

~ c. 1995

membrane

i.

there, in the middle of infinite
space and infinite energy, grows
a membrane, elastic, extensible,
pliant yet definite, bounded. it
is skin, and all the things inside
(but not the mind, oh not infinite mind)
the skin and organism of embodied
perspective, stretched taut, the
rebounding surface on which the
resounding beat of infinite space
and infinite energy echos and plays:
as above so below; as below, above.
this membrane is the stage of love.

the allegory of the skin may be opaque,
may take some explanation, for those
who have firm brain-based metaphysics,
who have never dreamed or been elated
or traveled out-of-body or relegated
all these to endocrine neurochemistries
-those who pooh-pooh and psshaw, in
peer review literature, such non
reductionist holistic mysticism.
too bad for them. now must not be
their time to see these words, read
these lines, as in the story of the
pearls and swines. but those who have
the taste, let them savor the wines.

ad lib'd

Well. Yesterday very little of import happened. I spent the day reading etc. (I'm done with Crowley, and am into part III of Thus Spake Zarathustra -- there seems much similarity between Nietzsche [and Crowley]). Link came home from work early, so we hung out a bit. That was good. Then I went to work. I had only one class and it went well. Went home, ate, and watched (another!) Jackie Chan movie with Duke.

Then I did my exercises and stretches and went to bed. It was hours before I could sleep, but eventually I did.

Today has, so far, been a pretty interesting day. I played some guitar and read some more Nietzsche. I cleaned the kitchen and my room (I even cleaned my bed -- I vacuumed it!). Then shower.

In the shower I was struck with the urge to write. So after my shower I wrote a sonnet.

I think that it is the first sonnet I have ever written! It isn't good (because it is not disciplined enough) but it is cute, at least. I feel pretty good about having written.

Then I split for work. On my way to work I smiled at a bunch of people ~ the more I do it the easier it gets (this is per my father's suggestion: yesterday I received a letter from him, in which he said, "I have always been well served by a ready and self-deprecating smile").

Two boys started to follow me and spoke in English enough to get me to turn off my walkman. We spoke a bit in a pidgin of English and Korean. At their house we parted. But, as I waited to cross the road, they caught up with me and gave me a drink. Pretty cool. So far this has been at least an interesting day. I plan more for later.