Welcome January 30 2012

Welcome to Mafe Castaño,  raibishni38,  DIANA,  JB HERO,  and also to  하나의 동지  into the group listed on the right.
You are all welcome to be the laboratory subjects upon whom I test my unauthorized and unapproved poetries. 

I was thinking about when I started this enterprise: a wish for peace, something-something about fasting, and various poorly defined goals washing about in my head. To use a metaphor, sloshing about in the soup tureen of my brain: various ingredients of the bouillabaisse of my discontent...
vague plans for peace floating like fish heads, religious impulses layered like crustaceans, secretive oysters, fame and its rewards goggling like the eyes of fresh shrimp...

No peace, no fame, just some hungry days. I had checked other peace blogs, and many had fallen by the wayside, and had not been updated for months and months and months... I think the people involved probably went on to better things, although they may have merely tired of the novelty of giving a rip about such things like blind Peace and his Brothers.
No matter. I believe "Fast Day 260" will be the mark of 5 years completed. I distinctly remember wondering if I had the "imagination" and the "wit" to do a poem-thing every bloody week. Well, some are pretty crude and some are awful, but at least I stuck to it, and I am glad for that. I really can't think of anything more depressing and more repellent than the evidences of thwarted good intentions... strewn about like empty peace blogs no one cares about.

I think sticking to the project matters. The outcomes might be far different from what we originally imagined: peace may not come in our lifetimes and we may not find a harmony of life, but we will find something, and it is that something that is important.
No efforts are wasted. We are Pioneers of the Future. We are the Stewards of the garden of the Earth, and we till and harvest it during our tenure. Our homes are like the homes of Pioneers where nothing goes to waste.  Our desires may not be fulfilled, our prayers may not be answered, but nothing that we do is in vain.
--

Welcome Tänya

Welcome Tänya Priest as a friend.
I notice she is a runner. As I just wrote in a comment, I have been running for 45 years now. This year my ligaments and tendons have been a problem, and I hurt a knee ligament back in July, forcing me to lay-off running for 6 weeks. I returned cautiously and slowly. I still cannot do things like squat down comfortably, but I do not think I ever could. I never was able to sit of the floor very well.

I found that jogging or running for at least an hour was an important part life: it got one outside and right into Mother Nature, wet grass, hidden bumps, tumble, fall, roll, and bounce back up. You became part of the changing seasons, as you were running throughout the entire year, even in the winter: cruel winter wherein you ran eastwards to begin with the wind at your back, then sooner or later turning back and feeling the sadistic division wrought by winter wind, freezing the sweat on your body and forcing you to greater effort to warm yourself! The division of time into the Warm and the Unbearably Cold!

By being "within" the year, instead of merely living through the year and using a calendar as a way to mark off the passage of time, it changed my perspective on Nature and Creation forever.

--

Welcome to Friends

There are four friends to welcome:

chubby..^_^.. aishiteru(n_n)..

Jan Preben Andersen

CoffeeTeaMandarin

alex.dejoy

and it's nice to see their avatars hanging out.

I have been in low gear for a while. This entire century has been a bummer! I hope that when we come to the end of the century no one can say the same thing. That's why friends are so good: smooth over the rough patches on the black-top of life.

Welcome: Rifatcoui and Ligia Guerra

Gardens are a form of autobiography.  ~Sydney Eddison, Horticulture magazine, August/September 1993

So are friends, I would guess.

My dream garden is prairie grasses, short and long, with native sedges instead of lawn. It is not a manicured lawn that needs constant watering and attention; it is an organic growth and comes about with some planning and attention, but affects an insouciance while its grasses bend in the wind, like people tossing their hair in the breeze to dry it off, not mindful of anything but that turn of the head.


Welcome, Rifatcoui and Ligia Guerra

Welcome Matt

I mean, welcome to "Matt at Shadow of Iris"... that's what I mean.

Since no one comments anymore, I shall do my own comments. I find my most recent effort too contrived. The poet strains at being inventive. But there is a great deal I like, particularly the quatrains titled by the seasons of the year. Perhaps I have found my voice... or a voice, at least.

Comments are appreciated, particularly critical comments. Criticism well intended makes us stronger.

--

Welcome May 10 2011

Welcome, Emmie Overtown.
The name Overtown brings Underhill to mind, but that would lead us far astray in The Lord of the Rings theory and nomenclature... I think Frodo in The Fellowship went by the pseudonym Mr. Underhill.

It does not matter. What matters is the Fast. Everybody remembers the poems, but then they forget the second pillar of this blog: the fast one day per week. It's all rather simple once you get used to it, although there is a cumbrous lot of canonical laws relating to which days to fast and whether the sick or pregnant (!?) may be excused. There even is a section on forced feeding of poetry to recalcitrant children... all very medieval.... reminds me of those German Easter decorations where jazzy rabbits in zoot suits are pulling fast ones on little chicks, making them cry!! Nothing quite like German Easter decorations. Scary. We saved one for years where Jasper the Urban Rabbit is abusing a brace of cute baby chicks who are pulling a wagon with all their might, teamed to the wagon with harsh looking bits in their tiny beaks!  Really appalling stuff for tykes. However, when I was a mere child, we used to have one of those Germanic comix where the Scissors Man went around cutting off the thumbs of children who sucked their thumbs: two strikes and you're out!

Enough of that. Brrr! Depart, Memory!!
--

Welcome AnNySs

Welcome to AnNySs.
My experience of Malaysia is, unfortunately, restricted to Anthony Burgess' stories and novels set in Malaysia during the period when Britain was still hanging around. My knowledge of the culture and science and society is, therefore, restricted to Brits suffering from the heat and drinking Tiger Beer. I shall remedy this failing soon, and get some overdue background in modern day Malaysia, which, by all accounts, is a super place with rather good food, too.

Welcome davis_agie_girl5

I am welcoming davis_aggie_girl5 to the group. We shall send her the oath of secrecy to fill out later, as well as the vow of fasting and abstinence required of us all.

On a more serious note, I am taking this occasion to remark that I am a great fan of comic books and graphic novels. I do not think I've ever mentioned it before. I have a trunk filled with Marvel comics from the 60's and 70's and an original Donald Duck (the large format). For myself, Carl Barks, the artist of Donald Duck comics in the 50's is nothing short of a genius. In fact, I was just re-reading some Watchmen and some adventures in the Halo series.

The android picture is an homage to Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons, and his store, The Android's Dungeon. Don't you just love the word "homage"? I can not get enough of its pomposity.

Humani nil a me alienum puto... Nothing human is alien from me, I reckon, pardner. (I had to through in the "I reckon... so as not to appear pompous.)

--
pix: http://clawfire.tumblr.com/

ㄚ琪 welcome

冬天的詩

冷，冷風景

心是溫暖

winter poems,
cold, cold landscape;
hearts are warm

--

I can barely remember my elementary Chinese from a long time ago, so I had to go back to the books and work on this, even as basic as it is. I actually know very little. Small small as my Nigerian friends say. (I did manage to restrict myself to 4 characters per line and probably have made a total mess of it!)

Welcome January 27 2011

I have two new friends to welcome, Greeneyes-16 and Stioxomata.
I wish I had something interesting and witty to say. I just got back from the bank and stopped by my auto mechanics to say hello and see if he wanted to go get a "finjan qahwa" (cup of java) at Mrs. Kaplan's Jewish-Palestinian coffee shop. It is a nice place. It is Hallal and Kosher, so everything is very good and fresh. Of course, it is limping along during these times, so we try to stop by and gorge ourselves into doing a good deed.

The Kaplan is a poet, too. I have read her poetry. Puts mine to shame. Instills a desire to write better. I am going to take more time writing. After a while, you begin to notice how you repeat yourself. It takes time to get to the real important stuff of poetry. Sometimes I feel as if my poetry is white socks with black shoes.

High School Confidential

white athletic socks
and black tennies
and my  blue, blue heart
aches for 24 seconds
in the red paint
of sweet, sweet love!

Welcome Alexander and Anaudos

Welcome to Alexander and Anaudos. I noticed their pictures in the rogues' gallery to the right. I believe Alexander to be Russian and Anaudos to be Greek; both names are of Greek derivation, and their presence makes me think of Byzantium, the Euxine Sea, and the ancient history I learned so long ago; Professor Vukevich's class: Russian History.
We learned of the earliest origins of the Kievan state and the profound influence of the Greek culture upon the noble Slavic peoples. We were mightily impressed. We used to call the Professor "Vuke the Duke". It was not mocking; it reflected our awe of the hitherto unknown Slavic history and the unknown influence of the Greeks in the times after the fall of Rome. We had always been taught history of the West and Rome, ignoring the East and Constantinople as if they did not exist. We were filled with wonder at the new world! Just like Balboa standing on his peak in Darien! We stood at Kiev and were speechless at the riches of the Greek Empire and its influence on the Rus!

I saw a magazine with an article that dealt with how the Internet is re-wiring our brains. I find the statement that the Internet re-wires our brains to be a doubtful proposition, but Lord Almighty how it expands our souls!
Amen!

When I see new friends, I feel a twinge of shame at the admittedly rough poetic sketches I force upon them. I feel insignificant and a bit depressed....
But then I get over it.

--

Welcome and Thanks, Dmitri

I have two things to do, the first to welcome two new friends, then to thank the President of Russia for actually considering - and hopefully effecting - the demise of Daylight Savings Time.

First, I noticed  onny969      and   sa girl  .
I noticed  onny969  seems to be based in Malaysia, which is one of my favorite spots on earth, ever since I read Anthony Burgess' Malaysian Trilogy.  Then there's  sagirl, and I am glad you're both here. I actually invite criticisms of the poems. Tell me what you think, how you would change it, what you'd like to hear. Remember, I write them like one per week, so it's not as if I had years and years invested in them.
If you stand back about twenty feet and look at the poems, they look a lot like Jackson Pollock paintings, with words spattered instead of paint. 
I hope your lives are filled with joys.


Now, I wish to thank Mr. Medvedev for considering a ban on Daylight Savings. Statistics have shown that people undergo more stress at the time of the change. Lord knows, I certainly undergo a lot of stress. I'm going to tell my yearly story about Daylight Savings... (I hear undisguised groans throughout the audience).
Simply stated, I could not remember the direction of the change. Did I set the clock one hour ahead in the Fall, or one hour behind? And what did I do in the Spring, tra-la? So my wife had a little ditty: Spring forward, Fall back. This helped one remember that in the Spring, one set the clock forward one hour, and did the reverse in the Fall.
That would be the end of it for most people. They would go about their business, messing with their clocks, and all the clocks would run on time, except the clocks in their cars, of course. Those would be left unadjusted for another five months.

I, however, immediately faced the quandary whether the ditty was Spring forward, Fall back; or Spring back, Fall forward. I could equally envisage springing forward, like a lion, or springing back, like myself confronted by a spider. And I could easily see teams and armies fall back, but also I could imagine the same teams or armies standing at attention in the hot, hot sun until they fell forward on their faces from exhaustion. As a result, I immediately mixed up the little song that was supposed to help me with my clocks, and I was even worse off than before, because I had an extra worry - the stupid ditty itself.
 This whole process reached its climax when one fall I set the clock one hour forward instead of one hour back, resulting in the clocks being a full two hours forward. When I went out to jog in the morning at a sprightly 6:00 AM, I was surprised how little traffic the was on the streets and how few were the signs of life in the neighborhoods I ran through. It took me about three months to sort things out. I left the clocks in the automobiles on DST and their were my only source of chronometric solace until Spring.

So, in honor of Russia - another country I love and had long predicted would get over its troubles and re-emerge to leadership in the 21st century - I reprint the poem below:

To Russia
 
In Vladivostok once
in the eastern light
we bent our heads into a wint'ry day
and we all did strain mightily
to raise structures
sturdy and strong for Mother Russia.

If Time were as infinite
as it is in Mother Russia,
theotokos, iconic eye of God,
then all the lost would find their way:
the sick would dance
and the mourners rejoice!

To my oil cloth dacha
of the ashen windows
came a brown haired girl so calmly
beautiful; she warmed the day;
she took my eye;
we never returned to the wasteland.

Welcome...

Two welcomes in a row. It reminds me of a story, but first welcome to Mauro, who will be firmly in my memory, since the name is so similar to that of my own child.

So... the story. Well, it takes a turn and twist, not in the narrative itself, but in my own mind as I jumble it out of the storeroom of souvenirs and memory, and try to get it ship-shape and Bristol fashion for this particular regatta... or picnic - my mind being a great deal like La Grande Jatte .
My mother moi croidhe (mom-in-law, in my parlance ) used to have an expression "Collie will you lick!"  The word "collie" referred to a border type dog, the same breed we all know, but it was pronounced with a long "O", not a short "o" as we pronounce "collie" these days. So "collie" sounds exactly the same as "goalie", as in hockey or soccer.... excepting the first consonant, of course.
I was always able to figure out some sort of meaning for these expressions - me mother macree not being much into analyze and explain every nit, tib, scrub, and hatch that blew along the cornfield - like I was and so many others of my generation: we questioned endlessly and learned nothing new.
Anyway, the way she did explain it was that it was Rough Times and the mistress of the house went to the cupboard to get her doggie some food, and as the cupboard was bare, she extended her alabaster hands and invited the hound to lick them, potentially drawing sustenance from her own breakfast of hardtack and water.
A nice story, sort of Old Mother Hubbard, but what was the point of it? Why did she say it when she did? I remember once hearing it when there were cold cuts and fresh bread on the table, so I did not quite "get it".

So yesterday we were in Stratford, Ontario, taking in a production of Peter Pan. The last time I was scheduled to go to Stratford was 9/11/2001, and maybe now I shall remove the jinx, curse, and malocchio from the world. Who knows?
Anyway, it was raining, and we were coming out of the Bijou Restaurant behind the Stratford Arms (there is no such hotel, but I do like the name "Stratford Arms"; it is so Raymond Chandler or Donald Duck - can't make up my mind. I think the hotel is the Stratford Hotel.) A significant other was helping the elderly and the handicapped exit the doorway into the teeming rain, holding the door while they fiddled with their umbrellas (leading me to wonder whether Nero fiddled with his umbrella while it rained in Rome?).
As I exited, the oaken door was let loose to slap and inconvenience me to no end.
So I said that it was a fine thing that a person could be so helpful and polite and courteous when all these others were making their way out, but when it came my turn to get through the door and dodge into the rain, hopping lightly over the puddles, it was "Collie, will you lick!" , and the cupboard of courtesy was bare!

And I got it! It made so much sense that I laughed aloud. Whooped also. Did a bit of a dance... or a jig. When I have these "Ah-ha" experiences, I usually don't sit there and say "Ah-ha!", but sort of convulse in a not altogether uncharming way... somewhat like Darby O'Gill, it was. I finally understood what it all meant, and what that collie felt like.

Welcome

I noticed a new face at the table, Stevany, so welcome, sit down, and be at home. It's good to see you. This morning I feel as young as you are.

If I were Orpheus,
humming "Only the Lonely",
walking the nighttime perimeter of the city -
only now and then descending from the tracks
to enter and walk
the cobbled streets
searching for Eurydice among the tangled web
of electric-line-hammocks spinning above;
where street meets sidewalk,
and brick wall the sky........


 I picked up on this on the other blog as " Orpheus Descending ".
My wife says it is a good thing that I amuse myself, being my own best audience, and so on.
Our friends in Cleveland said they read my blog..... couldn't say they got it, though.
Which was OK. Everybody is different.

Welcome

I welcome a new friend, Eric. He came on board at our last stop,
and he seems well suited to the life of a sailor upon the deep, blue
Hexameter Sea.
I am reading Moby Dick and feel ancient and nautical, yet still
bright coin and Quito gold. Welcome.

Welcome

Welcome to Luli, a new friend. I suppose now I shall have to actually work on my Portugese, no longer playing the dilettante of language. And I welcome her in the week of a poem on Fritz Lang's Metropolis - which is a bit much. I really don't know what to make of some of this stuff. It's almost like there's a scull full of crew and coxswain pulling at the metaphorical oars in the simile waters of the rhetorical Isis where the bumps race of Eights Week is always a-running... as it were. But poetry is not really "poetry", your grandmother's poetry, the "poetry" we learned in elementary schools: it is a launching pad to the universe, and Emily Dickinson put on the chains of rhyme and meter... to be free!... whereas some of us speak unfettered, but the only result is our enslavement.

Words are friends and companions. They are not mournful teachers and dons; they are not forbidding priests and stern Savanarolas...  If a word is a mighty tree, we climb it. If a word is a sea, we swim in it. If a word is a soft bed, trail forward lightly and invade a lover's delight-space !

Welcome

Welcome to a new friend, Claire. Now there's a fine name, my daughter's middle name and that of mathair mo croidhe  ( "Mother Macree" ); I like to use mathair mo croidhe for "mother-in-law", which is a term that is ungainly and belongs strictly to people with the minds of lawyers. It means "mother of my heart". For me own mother, I just say "mother of my ___ ( whatever organ seems appropriate for our relationship at the time!).
So the name of mathair mo croidhe is Claire, too. She has gone, but her presence is still here, as well as her fine name, which resonates in the choir of her family in Quebec and Ireland.

I welcomed Dana twice, so I'm recalling one of them. Actually, as I look at them, the second one was not much of a welcome or anything: just a mumbling about whether I had done it or not. So it didn't count, I guess. So I'm restoring it. Unless he wants to send it back for a store discount.

It is early this morning, and I have a distinct sense of eternity & art, as well as the propinquity of time; time seems like a rider on a horse who will reach down and pull us up behind them, to ride wildly into the rest of the history that stretches out ahead of us.
I feel good.

Welcome

I don't think I welcomed Dana Chabino to the page. Sometimes I can go on for years like that: totally unaware of what's going on about me.
Well, next week is old  # 156 , which will be 3 years  ( 52 x 3 ), and the week after is my daughter's wedding, so I think I'll try to do a prothalamion or wedding type poem. At this moment, I have no idea what it might be. Ideas for poems come right through the windshield at me driving 80 mph.

Welcome

I would like to take time to welcome a new friend to the number of friends, Dana.
A good time to join in. Soon we shall have poem #156 - 3 years worth - and the Poetry Powerball drawing will be held! With 7 members in the group, the odds are pretty good.

Nova Amica

Dextrā vidi novam amicam: Gossamer;  comes artis poeticae.
Commissit "proelium pro pacem" nobiscum, atque dicimus omnes: Ave !