Fast Day 337 November 23 2013 King Of Yue Garrison Mountain

King Of Yue Garrison Mountain

The King of Yue Garrison Mountain
is traversed by a highway, all eight lanes.

The King of Yue looks at Xiang Lake,
and thinks rippled waters are his army;

he thinks the rarified mists of the dawn
are the great spirits of his ancestors;

he thinks the strong stems of the water plants
are staunch swords held by his noble soldiers;

Wind, water; wind, water, feng, shui; feng, shui;
what are the rights of the natural world?

Do they waves have heart, and the lake a soul?
Or compulsive winds seek revenge?

Xiang Lake is no warrior terra-cotta,
and will not sleep-guard the King of Yue!

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Fast Day 336 November 16 2013 Aleppo

 

View of the Castle and City of Aleppo, Syria

Aleppo 

An hour four minutes by horseback,
an hour four minutes to town;
on rural and pagan dirt roadways,
and then on the streets paved with stone.

Broad moat turned into a garden,
an old wall not little decayed,
in atrium bordered by cypress,
a cloister in which ages pray:

There lived the Star of Aleppo,
and she bloomed though seasons did change:
there was narcissus in winter,
and there grew the war that estranged.

I no longer go to Aleppo,
love flown from the bed it once stayed,
the root of my passion is buried
yet while the leaves are decayed.


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Fast Day 335 November 9 2013 The Cooling Pond

The Cooling Pond

perfect Pripyat marshes, oh, 
the setting for a horror film;
college students spend the night,
came across the river,
in a dishwasher boat,
and on the other shore
there was the Chernobyl cooling pond...
and the dog did not bark…
so strange to see a cyclist,
and not to hear the dog bark,
and the students shiver.

a lot of bold mosquito,
whose bloody noses
spread the zombie parasite;
there dwells nearby a watchman
who charges forty rubles to tell you
that the mosquitoes are too thick,
and feed the dog a sausage
which could be your arm
when you wake up and hear
the dog barking
upon the river Pripyat

they invisible bark,
the childrens' silent cry,
the road of rock ruin

spread pandemic's news
in Russia we died in '98
and now we are immune



--

note

a student horror film based in Chernobyl.
some students spend the night by the cooling pond at Chernobyl

it is the anti-Yevtushenko

Fast Day 334 November 2 2013 Closing The Cottage

Closing The Cottage

pale sienna, umber brown held in place
by the reddened shaft-like earth toned bunting
of old Anabella hydrangea -
bonneted ash-grey and spotted blackcaps;

I cut them down, dropping them on the clay,
and hear the distant boom of duck hunting,
pluck down an old nest of Philomela,
while the cost of winter fuel I reckon.

--

notes

I am late with this, as I have been closing the cottage while doing things at my mother's home, as well as my place.

This is an experiment

Anabella is a type of hydrangea, the dead remains of its blooms are the ash grey bonnets, etc.
There is constant far-off gun noise as this is duck season.
Philomela is the nightingale.

lines 1 and 5   share the same long vowel in the final syllable, but not a rhyme.
lines 2 and 6   are obvious, as are lines 3 and 7

in lines 4 and 8  we have what I call a "long consonant" contained in the last two syllables, a "blackcaps" and a "reckon" which, by all accounts, should be a "k" sound that is a bit longer than the usual single "k"... twice as long just about.
The "ck" in "black" is one tempo, not two, so the addition of the "c" in "caps" gives the long consonant, sort of like
"black [pause] caps".

At this point, the "reckon" might be considered one beat, so we read it as two with emphasis on both syllables, reading it as  reck' - kon' 

I have been working on my poetry, also.


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Fast Day 333 October 26 2013 The Death Of The Television Age

 

Peter Finch in Network

The Death Of The Television Age

the clepsydra of Alexandria
was television in its ancient day,
when Ptolemy was still a gen’ral,
and Phillip’s son surveyed the Bengal Bay;

when Caesar seduced his Cleopatra
while boozing on the eastern Jersey Shore:

even then it screeched and screamed the evening
news that the Rubicon River had been breached,
Marc Antony had shipped to Actium,
or Pompey the field of Pharsalus reached.

We were born together,
and we shall surely fade,
as the Past carnivals to Future,
the world passing in gaudy atomic parade;

and we shall watch the future,
and the kings of the Lunar race,
reigning from Ganges to Yamuna
in a milky river way of space!

 The Social Network

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