Caligula's Ships on Lake Nemi
Languish Out Loud
I feel dissuaded from elegance
of style, mind, and manner;
I speak a quick, garbled texting
of harsh primitive
brutish, naked words
too cute
to be
forgotten...
Like Caligula's Nemian ships
built for candy and childish steps of
myst'ries of th'Egyptian goddess;
sunk by old age or
Claudius' decree:
dark moon
for the
misbegotten...
--
notes
What appears to be elegant disappears into the fog, just as Caligula immense pleasure ships built for worship of Isis sank into the Lake of Nemi, and others were sunk by Claudius' decree.
I use this to describe a conflicted sense of language - the educated versus the texting brief chop-chop rebus type of approach. I am not talking about slang or hip-hop or anything like that, for I consider urban slang to be very sweet.
I sense a diminution of my being - of anyone's being - into a smallness when language is so circumscribed... even if one has hundreds of Facebook friends. All of us are classical Romans and poets potentially, and all of us are dumb as driftwood if we do not constantly strive to "diversify" our language environment.
QUERY
should we write the last 3 sentences:
2 cute
2 B
4 gotten
(we do mention "texting" earlier.)
2 comments:
I understand this. Everything else is just too rich right now. Love the first stanza.
"dark moon for the misbegotten" is an interesting ending that is also not forgotten. And it sinks in.
When you say "rich", it makes me think of a feast, but a feast too big and too fancy... far beyond our needs.
Our needs are simple, yet we insist on selling and buying into "feasts" and "groaning boards" rather than more simple fare.
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