I now have the whole of this thread (sans this and the previous two posts) fully transcribed onto my hard drive. It will tell the tale of life on the internet off-road. The proetic pitch.
If nothing else, please recommend, if you have liked or if it has grabbed, to others, the ability to read this thread. There are pomes in here designed from the ground up, like most lightning bolts, to be forthright, dynamic, if not slightly obscure. They are all dreams of honesty or at the very least, honest dreams.
I wish them all the best of lives. And here's hoping to a publication sometime in the future.
Thanks to all that have waded through my liberal use of far too many words. And most of all to the poets around here who continue to inspire me. And to Kat and Sea whose patience with this thread has been of the saintly sort. It has been around a long while, ID#271 ain't shabby. I think we're on number 60,000 or so on the board.
I will keep in touch, I hope. Many of you know where to find me. The rest can ask the many, if you wish.
If anything pops up worthy of the forum, you will be the first to know. I would cry but I am tired. Perhaps, on the morrow, my tears for us all will be shed unabated.
I shall now follow Calvin and Hobbes into the white.
Take care of each other. Sometimes, we are all thats left. And after that, words are just that: words. No truth without light, no light without darkness, no darkness without blindness, no blindness without love, no love without truth and ever onward. Do not be afraid to bleed. Our pools shall mix and the flowing tide shall wash us all into evaporation. Dust and vapor: the wind, a sneeze, a thrown glance and slang in the breeze. When your rain doth fall, please it you to become a downpour. I'm stepping in front of the gushing hydrant in a hurricane,
and I will miss you. with love:
setaside2
I'm stepping in front of the gushing hydrant in a hurricane. I'd like to see the traction I keep.
Originally posted by setaside2 LIGHT THE MATCH/borne away
I
There is a texture upon the breeze this day
Again and a flavor
Mildly abrasive and it snaps
A clapped human hand
My brethren helpless but to fold at the whim of sight unseen
I am the frond trembling
The oncoming blaze hypnotic
It’s beckoning warmth a lie that seeks to embrace and engulf
Oh it feeds on us all
Many of us foolhardy and brave
Glide to smother, to drown, to blanket the wave as it jumps to taste
Tonguing the air
A ribboned and undulating snake
Those who are left twist away
Frightened acrobats with one foot tied to the swing
Still whistling as the air expands
Slow lightning
Drawn out thunder
I am flattened, weeping chlorophyll
Ah yes we’ve heard the gunshots of hunters
As they enthuse their daily bread
Those below me mimic and mime a death ritual that frees us from our holdings
An early autumn
Our disillusioned and wayward flight to the ground is paused
The kissing heat
The swirling eddy of the updraft
Slings us above the masters
And we have held in thrall
The site of this raging orange beast
So ravenous
So inefficiently irrational
Our powered effect perpetuated by wind and a broad reach
Sending so many signals across the globe…
II
A wish has only the power of the sigh
The coin but sinks to the bottom a treasure to be stolen by a caretaker
We all breathe oxygen and nitrogen previously spoken for though thoughtlessly given
And the leaves that sway
Their treasure plundered
Our exhalations their final exclamation
Look for those who fall at your feet desiring the touch of home
Speak of the evanescent beauty
The lost island of life they represent
It is a hand held forth whilst sitting on the concrete porch
Beware the blaze or the new cold war
They are coming inexorably
If thou shalt band together as an elastic barricade
A proven psyche
The vale of dreams
It is true that such thing can be blunted in track
We believe in the impasse
The final gambit
The last plea before consumption:
III
Dear lord, where has the rain gone these past months? Our throats are parched and things no longer seem as green as they once were. I lie here curling in the last flickering ash, darkening to shades I had not known previously existed, asking for the call of water. The others about me whisper their regrets in the browning haze, and speak of things they had not known previously existed. They knew better in the early spring breezes, they say, they know better now. Ashes and dust and reincarnation. Such is the way of things. I cannot breathe, lord. The sky is no longer sharing its secrets with me… have I turned the deaf ear? Has it turned a blind eye?
Or is this the final duel and we shall both about face and seek the deaths of one another?
Dear lord, where is my ammunition, I have no weaponry for this ensuing battle, I have no means to serve and protect. I have no legs upon which I may stand. Bear the wind to lift me. Bear the whirlwind to grasp at my brethren in ash, take us to the stream, take us to the parts of the world we would never have seen so stationary, so stuck to one place or another.
We tire of sucking sun for one so ungrateful.
It is our turn.
Make us one.
invisibility cloaked
mindswept soaked
the unknown of whither goest the rogue
and whether the mouthspeak has something to say
for all these things unpredictable
though as transparent as silken sheen
the passing secrets barely detectable
the fingers, the body, the mind, the self played and played in the intimate mean
such harps that chime and thrum and vibe their way across our frosted air
my fingerprint leavings,
melted and expanding,
settle the puddles upon yonder cair
why does the mark fade so readily?
why does the world paint over?
as if our footsteps are pressed up and away,
rejected by this earth,
such being the resilience of spring clover
the folly of infinity, indeed!
the arrogance of forever!
were it not so short an expansion within the desert of each letter.
etch thy walls well, young rogue.
chisel with skill, and grace.
for the graffiti of your kind is the history to another race
unwound, yet wounded, tongue tied and blind...
they will seek your wisdom upon these corners,
they will worship your dreams,
they will wish themselves upon you and for your inevitable return.
Though you may be the deific force to bear for these generations asunder,
you have one other thing,
a living fact that you will be given much time to ponder:
That you are here and now
and that I have deemed your rules of play and expression,
regardless of your indiscretion,
and as such I am torn to judge accordingly:
That your work on these vertical bricks is art cannot be argued.
It would be witless to attempt as it is in front of the viewer
and even the most skeptical illusionist would be forced to agree,
this is, at the very least, a thing of beauty created by a single man's hand.
However, and again... I presume to surmise that as I approached,
your sudden turn and spirited flight points toward knowledge of certain ledgers
and events written by many men, many years before us.
That I have caught you is no reason to be belligerent.
And the fact that you have been arrested for defacement of public
and private
property is a matter with which, I am afraid,
you will have to discuss with your attorney.
You have the right
to remain
silent.
I'm stepping in front of the gushing hydrant in a hurricane. I'd like to see the traction I keep.
Long live this, the biggest thread,
The Titan of the forum,
and long may all the folks who read
This live. It shall not bore them
To come here but once in a day
To check out seta's latest.
His thread is great! It's great! Hooray!
(I still think mine's the greatest.)
I always edit my posts. I am a craftsman. I strive for the perfect bunn mutt.
Actually, I've often also felt that there's this difference between British and US novels. Britain's Empire has ended and the British novel since 1945 is the exact opposite of the Victorian "Condition of England" three-decker; it's slim, understated and preoccupied with deliberately provincial themes, but not in the all encompassing style of say, Eliot's "Middlemarch" (1871-2). There's no grandstanding attempt to incorporate a world view like a massive "web of affinities"; it's densely ironic because the end of Empire and Britain's subsequent socio-economic dwindling have left people across the political spectrum seeing the ideologicality of what their society had once taken as a truthful given about their "nation" and its place in the world. As a son of Irish diaspora my perspective is post-colonial (and the English, Welsh, Scottish and Orange did colonise Ireland heavily), but my view is inevitably conditioned by this particular postwar history of Britain.
However, in the US there has been this steady transition from Republic to Empire; the US is where Britain was, in many comparable respects, around the 1870s. I believe many US novel writers are still making the big "Condition of America", epic text, whether as a perpetuation or all-out condemnation of the world-view of the nation. (I should mention film as well as the novel, shouldn't I? Michael Moore is a "Condition of America" filmmaker.)
I think this distinction can be perceived in our writing of verse, also. There is inexorably some politicality in our work, and the way in which it might be perceived as being able to effect change rests on how readers perceive the themes and the forms of the writing. There are what Macherey called gaps and silences in our work which we cannot control: whatever our authorial intention, we cannot help somehow in reproducing to some degree the underlying dominant assumptions and attitudes we seek to critique, and this often shows in our work. Some might say that my work's tension between low-key themes and references to both "Celtic" and contemporary representations of the Irish in Britain shows conflicts in the diasporan construction of identity. Others might say that your work in embracing "universal" themes replicates the universalising tendency of a US hegemony. We may eloquently argue otherwise, but our work is culturally codifed and situated and we can do nothing to effect closure over what we may feel to be aberrent responses to our work.
But this is good. As long as people interpret or misinterpret our work, they're reading it. As long as people think about how our words relate to their own moment and concepts of place, identity and society, then our work is being kept alive.
And that the global phenomenon of the Internet can be able to juxtapose in one forum two represented world views speaks of the potential of hypertext to pluralise discourses and break down barriers.
i started to read from the beginning of this thread & made it througha few pages. enjoyable reads for the most part. yeah, some were long, but so are some of my poems, so are some from the others...it's just part of writing, there is no length police in writing, so don't worry about it.
my favorite line was the one about the candy wrapper hitting the street...i forget the name of the poem.
i also like the idea for the pearl jam poetry press publication. i don't know how well that would fly with the band though and using their name. i know they are great guys, but it seems like a legal hassle.
keep writing, even if it's just for your own personal gain. i wouldn't place much value into what others might think or not think of your work. keep a level head and don't get full of yourself and be one of the good ones.
anyways...i'm just taking a break from crazy and my homework
I chose page 5 to go back to, today, and oddly... I find I've missed one... Of course Lunar Echo begged for attention, but you know, who am I to pick favorites?
and
where is that Savannah66chick, anyway?
My dear Sir, 'tis YOU rizzocking zi hizzouwze, btw... I like being on top, but it's your turn today. ACK! my PC!!!! Save me! Kisses... Me
Originally posted by setaside2 I dedicate it to Savannah66 who is fighting the good fight.
And, I realize that this is different from my usual stuff, but it is real and it was real and I really did tip 45% that night. I'd do it again. Especially if my waitress was a girl named savannah....
MOTHER/dirty wash cloth
Waitress
They said
White trash
Poor
They said
She served me well
Not that I’m chauvinistic or anything
But
Hell
I felt like royalty
She deserved a tip
Didn’t trip
And even yelled at those people behind us
Who got so annoying
Words failed me
For a change
Brown hair
Withered smile
Mother to all that pay witness
Caring beyond our right to receive
“Punctuality is optional,”
She said with a small smile
“When you have to rely upon line cooks.”
We laughed courteously
Only a few of us truly understanding
Where she was coming from
Which was off her last break
Something like sixteen hundred
Hours ago
She smiled again
And shuffled off to some other destination
Lighting up the much needed cigarette
A silent discussion
Aside
With the apparent manager
A haggard looking man
Occurred
In which we found her name to be Julia
A twenty-something
On the road to somewhere
In no particular hurry it seems
But with import
And persistence
She was light on her feet
In the heavy hours of the early morn
A ballerina in servitude
Pinocchio on strings
On her way to the real
Real
And she was the best
That I
In my fascinated haze
Gave her 45%
Only because fifty would have broken me
She touched my hear with a menu
And limitless freefloating time
Her blue eyes sparkled
And I don’t think
I’ve ever had
A cleaner table.
I look forward to reading new poems, soon. I have been anticipating a renaissance of creative industry from you since the weekend, seta, and I hope to read more.
You know, and I’ve been wondering, you know, all the way home
whether the world will see I'm a better man than others by far.
You know, I’ve had it so good, how loathsome, and not quite my style.
Work and vanity wasted my time inside, oh, you see me in a cardigan
and a dress, dress, dress that I’ve been sick on.
Oh, how are you? Can't say I really care at the end of it all,
actually, oh, well there's something I’ve found, it's that we're just flesh and blood
and well, now, just one thing I’ve found, it's that we're just flesh and blood.
And you know, and I’ve been wondering, you know, all the way home
whether the world will see I'm a better man than others by far.
Ooh, how are you? I shan't say I really care at the end of it all,
actually oh, there is something I’ve found, it's that we're just flesh and blood,
well, now, there's one thing I’ve found, it's that we're just skin and bones.
Actually oh, there's something I’ve found, it's that we're just flesh and blood
and you're nothing much more, there's something, just something I’ve found
it's that we're just flesh and blood and we're nothing much more.
Oh no, what did I do wrong, individual doubts.
Just one thing I’ve found, we're just flesh and blood,
nothing much more, something, just something I’ve found that we're skin and bones.
Comments
If nothing else, please recommend, if you have liked or if it has grabbed, to others, the ability to read this thread. There are pomes in here designed from the ground up, like most lightning bolts, to be forthright, dynamic, if not slightly obscure. They are all dreams of honesty or at the very least, honest dreams.
I wish them all the best of lives. And here's hoping to a publication sometime in the future.
Thanks to all that have waded through my liberal use of far too many words. And most of all to the poets around here who continue to inspire me. And to Kat and Sea whose patience with this thread has been of the saintly sort. It has been around a long while, ID#271 ain't shabby. I think we're on number 60,000 or so on the board.
I will keep in touch, I hope. Many of you know where to find me. The rest can ask the many, if you wish.
If anything pops up worthy of the forum, you will be the first to know. I would cry but I am tired. Perhaps, on the morrow, my tears for us all will be shed unabated.
I shall now follow Calvin and Hobbes into the white.
Take care of each other. Sometimes, we are all thats left. And after that, words are just that: words. No truth without light, no light without darkness, no darkness without blindness, no blindness without love, no love without truth and ever onward. Do not be afraid to bleed. Our pools shall mix and the flowing tide shall wash us all into evaporation. Dust and vapor: the wind, a sneeze, a thrown glance and slang in the breeze. When your rain doth fall, please it you to become a downpour. I'm stepping in front of the gushing hydrant in a hurricane,
and I will miss you. with love:
setaside2
i'll be all alone in my verbosity - but you my friend won't be forgotten.
please say hello from time to time and don't forget to remember there is a rooftop and our kindred waiting for your return.
with love may what you seek be yours
<blushes>
that's pretty funny y
but, i wasn't, i swear...
there WAS a post up there...
i know there was...
that's not what i came on here to say
i came on here to say
lollipops....
lollipops and crisps, that is... thanks ever so for turning me on to Radiohead, seta... kisses
take that, you
so many different things to it....
invisibility cloaked
mindswept soaked
the unknown of whither goest the rogue
and whether the mouthspeak has something to say
for all these things unpredictable
though as transparent as silken sheen
the passing secrets barely detectable
the fingers, the body, the mind, the self played and played in the intimate mean
such harps that chime and thrum and vibe their way across our frosted air
my fingerprint leavings,
melted and expanding,
settle the puddles upon yonder cair
why does the mark fade so readily?
why does the world paint over?
as if our footsteps are pressed up and away,
rejected by this earth,
such being the resilience of spring clover
the folly of infinity, indeed!
the arrogance of forever!
were it not so short an expansion within the desert of each letter.
etch thy walls well, young rogue.
chisel with skill, and grace.
for the graffiti of your kind is the history to another race
unwound, yet wounded, tongue tied and blind...
they will seek your wisdom upon these corners,
they will worship your dreams,
they will wish themselves upon you and for your inevitable return.
Though you may be the deific force to bear for these generations asunder,
you have one other thing,
a living fact that you will be given much time to ponder:
That you are here and now
and that I have deemed your rules of play and expression,
regardless of your indiscretion,
and as such I am torn to judge accordingly:
That your work on these vertical bricks is art cannot be argued.
It would be witless to attempt as it is in front of the viewer
and even the most skeptical illusionist would be forced to agree,
this is, at the very least, a thing of beauty created by a single man's hand.
However, and again... I presume to surmise that as I approached,
your sudden turn and spirited flight points toward knowledge of certain ledgers
and events written by many men, many years before us.
That I have caught you is no reason to be belligerent.
And the fact that you have been arrested for defacement of public
and private
property is a matter with which, I am afraid,
you will have to discuss with your attorney.
You have the right
to remain
silent.
BUMP!!!!!
Long live this, the biggest thread,
The Titan of the forum,
and long may all the folks who read
This live. It shall not bore them
To come here but once in a day
To check out seta's latest.
His thread is great! It's great! Hooray!
(I still think mine's the greatest.)
buy this man a bottle of Boon's
(wayyyyy cheaper than guiness)
On to boone's farm with mister carrots. I hear the autumn peach flavor is quite nice.
Oh, and I'm sure everyone will be interested to hear that it is snowing at this time.
no joke.
His may be the greatest thread, fine fine, but mine has a better chance of saving the world.
there you have it.
oh. and I meant that.
except for the part about the arrogance. he still gets the boone's tho.
a comparison of you's two's threads is all one needs to see that
however... 'tis not why I come
I come to wish mister two a happy father's day. I'd wax proetic, but I'm busted... and it's early... and my kids need eggs and icee's for breakfast...
ahhh... connect four pieces all over the floor
ain't parenthood grand?
I am assuming that this is due to the fact that he has since been informed of the wonders of Boone's Farm apple wine/malt wine...
it is the ultimate in cheap-a$$ alcohol.
and of course there are cultural differences. He's been properly brought up in the land of fog, mist, sunshine and ash.
I'm a punk.
anywho. Happy Father's day to all you dad's out there. I would also wax proetic but I am late for work.
Damn the need....
seta
Actually, I've often also felt that there's this difference between British and US novels. Britain's Empire has ended and the British novel since 1945 is the exact opposite of the Victorian "Condition of England" three-decker; it's slim, understated and preoccupied with deliberately provincial themes, but not in the all encompassing style of say, Eliot's "Middlemarch" (1871-2). There's no grandstanding attempt to incorporate a world view like a massive "web of affinities"; it's densely ironic because the end of Empire and Britain's subsequent socio-economic dwindling have left people across the political spectrum seeing the ideologicality of what their society had once taken as a truthful given about their "nation" and its place in the world. As a son of Irish diaspora my perspective is post-colonial (and the English, Welsh, Scottish and Orange did colonise Ireland heavily), but my view is inevitably conditioned by this particular postwar history of Britain.
However, in the US there has been this steady transition from Republic to Empire; the US is where Britain was, in many comparable respects, around the 1870s. I believe many US novel writers are still making the big "Condition of America", epic text, whether as a perpetuation or all-out condemnation of the world-view of the nation. (I should mention film as well as the novel, shouldn't I? Michael Moore is a "Condition of America" filmmaker.)
I think this distinction can be perceived in our writing of verse, also. There is inexorably some politicality in our work, and the way in which it might be perceived as being able to effect change rests on how readers perceive the themes and the forms of the writing. There are what Macherey called gaps and silences in our work which we cannot control: whatever our authorial intention, we cannot help somehow in reproducing to some degree the underlying dominant assumptions and attitudes we seek to critique, and this often shows in our work. Some might say that my work's tension between low-key themes and references to both "Celtic" and contemporary representations of the Irish in Britain shows conflicts in the diasporan construction of identity. Others might say that your work in embracing "universal" themes replicates the universalising tendency of a US hegemony. We may eloquently argue otherwise, but our work is culturally codifed and situated and we can do nothing to effect closure over what we may feel to be aberrent responses to our work.
But this is good. As long as people interpret or misinterpret our work, they're reading it. As long as people think about how our words relate to their own moment and concepts of place, identity and society, then our work is being kept alive.
And that the global phenomenon of the Internet can be able to juxtapose in one forum two represented world views speaks of the potential of hypertext to pluralise discourses and break down barriers.
Athangyoo.
my favorite line was the one about the candy wrapper hitting the street...i forget the name of the poem.
i also like the idea for the pearl jam poetry press publication. i don't know how well that would fly with the band though and using their name. i know they are great guys, but it seems like a legal hassle.
keep writing, even if it's just for your own personal gain. i wouldn't place much value into what others might think or not think of your work. keep a level head and don't get full of yourself and be one of the good ones.
anyways...i'm just taking a break from crazy and my homework
and
where is that Savannah66chick, anyway?
My dear Sir, 'tis YOU rizzocking zi hizzouwze, btw... I like being on top, but it's your turn today. ACK! my PC!!!! Save me! Kisses... Me
Cheers, mate,
Finsbury.
and new dreams
now arriving... gate 4
15 1/2 days, baby... ever ridden a horse? maybe a 4 x 4 will do... we'll see... nice book, btw... glad to take up a page or two... kisses... me
You know, and I’ve been wondering, you know, all the way home
whether the world will see I'm a better man than others by far.
You know, I’ve had it so good, how loathsome, and not quite my style.
Work and vanity wasted my time inside, oh, you see me in a cardigan
and a dress, dress, dress that I’ve been sick on.
Oh, how are you? Can't say I really care at the end of it all,
actually, oh, well there's something I’ve found, it's that we're just flesh and blood
and well, now, just one thing I’ve found, it's that we're just flesh and blood.
And you know, and I’ve been wondering, you know, all the way home
whether the world will see I'm a better man than others by far.
Ooh, how are you? I shan't say I really care at the end of it all,
actually oh, there is something I’ve found, it's that we're just flesh and blood,
well, now, there's one thing I’ve found, it's that we're just skin and bones.
Actually oh, there's something I’ve found, it's that we're just flesh and blood
and you're nothing much more, there's something, just something I’ve found
it's that we're just flesh and blood and we're nothing much more.
Oh no, what did I do wrong, individual doubts.
Just one thing I’ve found, we're just flesh and blood,
nothing much more, something, just something I’ve found that we're skin and bones.
If you are having a problem with another bbs member please take it to private message and/or use the ignore feature to block their posts.
Peace,
Sea