Sunday, November 20, 2011

Teacher


Nietzsche (1892/1966) stated, "One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil."

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Muses - Draft I

The muses are tired
They feel rejected by the angels
Who give work that godly touch
The angels have claimed popularity
And their angelic glow offers little space for debate
The slither through the heavens stealing prayers
Which should really be directed to the muse
The angels guide and grant serenely
And do not correct modern thought
As it informs the believer to stay close to the sounds that make you feel alive
To nourish the tender human communication through God

Forget your fear of words from the past
The muses sleeps due to the fear of language
She is leaping from land to land
Searching for a carrier
She once found habitation in the hearts of Wordsworth and Rumi
She once sprinted in the lives of Greek mysteries
In physics and maths, Yet in prose no longer
Maths and science are now her new domains
And she is slightly bored
For you cannot expect to give life to bodies devoid of expression
She wishes to once again dance across calligraphic words which can burn like blood
She wishes to fuel the cocaine running its way through your system

For the muse takes joy in baptising all those who choose to gulp the dark water
She dances in the orifices of the subtle link that joins the senses to the core of the inner flesh
If you remain in her slithers between life and death
You too will sing of perpetually shivering between two breezes
Hiding in the broken oath of the ode
You too will suck the life from the body of the dancer
Defy sense and become a schizophrenic
The rose which has become too sweet due to Shakespeare’s influence
Will become a menacing dagger
Allow it to bloom in a field of broken glass
As the muse smashes her feet in offered sacrament
Jets of blood spurting from each of her orifices

If she lacks response
Give her a violent kick
Not a struggle of thought
The machines are tiring her
Turn them off and sit in silence with the muse, state your demands
She has become lazy due to her lack of abode
She is only given a call in the most desperate moments
As the race of human beings wish for life over death
Fearing the possibility of dying from passion
They refuse to sign the contract
Yet, your personal vituperative demands
Create in her the blowfly of boredom
For this reason she sleeps
The muse is sleeping due to your lack of sacrifice
Lack of penance or renunciation
You dream of enlightenment
Yet, do not fancy to lock yourself in a cave
As did Francis of Assisi
Or to starve yourself to death
As did Simone Weil
You understand that there is a thin line between losing a heads
Or succeeding in their witchery
Yet, you make no move to tempt your way to oblivion
As did Queen Mary
For these reasons, your fate will be decided
In the tender necklace of sleep

Your neck will be cut with faintly remembered words
The muse knows that the poet is not brave
But has lowered to the ridiculous fate
Of doing what anyone can do
Yet few choose to
Play with their lives
For pain is the only real way to keep the muse alive
Sweeping the earth in deadly defiance to capitalism
When the muse sees the afflicted she appears
Eagerly racing to beat the angels
Writing an epitaph of sensation in shaky hand
For you cannot expect her to give life to bodies devoid of expression
Deleuze and Plath succumb to the calls
At the time of their death
The marrow sucked dry and offered as sacrifice
In their death, their bodies have no voice, no colour
But the muse heard and offered her presence
Insight was gained by climbing inside the bag ladies clothes
Sleeping beside her as they rested

If she gifts you with the words of prose
Run screaming in tribal pleasure through the fields chasing after those words
Catch the words in whatever order they appear
For there is no map or discipline
Backwards in Greek, Latin or a twisted frenzy
Gag out the tired voices of tin
Sing the blues to the artifices of your soul
Wipe the tears of ice which transported her message
Allow her to obliterate the memory of this moisture less world
Worship the men in abandoned whorehouses
Worship her by write a poem that changes everything
Which exhausts
That which I speak of is an exorcism
There is a reason that spirits are the choice of drink for the artist
Do not wonder on why men deserve your rhyme
Or of their worth
You are solely the vessel of communion
Give wisdom to the sacrificial lamb
Be rid of the ego which restricts you like a contracting mathematical equation
Where geometry borders on dream
Follow your soul as it seeks to escape the tiny confines of the body
I have only met the muse twice
If you see her
Seduce her
Weave poetry into her luscious locks
She is a succubus
A naked nymph, burning with naïve hope
Allow yourself to be the 80 year old woman
Stamping your demanding foot in between thin waisted women
Highlighting their beauty
Caress her, excite her,
Feed her grapes from between your breasts
Make her proud that the same lips which stained the cheeks of the masters
Are now licking your fingertips
If you please her, she may gift you the words of epiphany

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

perfection in narrative

None of that can begin to express the multiple layers of Mann's narrative. Here, for instance, is one of the central passages in the progress of Aschenbach's obsession (and one of the best examples of the loveliness of Heim's translation). He is watching Tadzio on the beach, while still trying to convince himself that his interest is solely aesthetic or platonic. Mann moves almost effortlessly from a total identification with Aschenbach, while he contemplates the boy's beauty, to a position of sardonic distance from Aschenbach's increasingly inane self-justifications. It's as if Mann empathizes -- indeed identifies -- with his passion, but can't bring himself to condone it:

"[Tadzio] would stand at the edge of the sea, alone, removed from his family, quite near Aschenbach, erect, his hands clasped behind his neck, slowly rocking on the balls of his feet, staring out into the blue in reverie, while little waves rolled up and bathed his toes. The honey-colored hair fell gracefully in ringlets at the temples and the back of the neck, the sun glimmered in the down of the upper spine, the fine delineation of the ribs and symmetry of the chest stood out through the torso's scanty cover, the armpits were still as smooth as a statue's, the hollows of the knees glistened, and their bluish veins made the body look translucent. What discipline, what precision of thought, was conveyed by that tall, youthfully perfect physique! Yet the austere and pure will laboring in obscurity to bring the godlike statue to light -- was it not known to him, familiar to him as an artist? Was it not at work in him when, chiseling with sober passion at the marble block of language, he released the slender form he had beheld in his mind and would present to the world as an effigy and mirror of spiritual beauty?"

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Pen

An object is a catalyst for the mind. It can either be an indicator of the future potential. For example, the pen with which I write these words, were previously just a pen, and now the pen can speak. It can also be an indication of the past. Words this pen has previously written, times it was held in the arms of another. It can become past and future simultaneously. The pen too holds an unknown past, no one will remember the pen or its exact history, among the sea of other pens from which it arose.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Good bye, For I go overland

Within the fever of restlessness
The world begins to lose its human shape
I no longer find God in each cadence
Sitting alone in a field of blossoms
I always take much less than the others

Looking up at the light I catch a glisten of a body
I have seen it in many lives, with many faces, in many stories
who come to me and whisper sensations of regret
But always you remain with me
As I reflect on who I am to become

With you I discovered original sin
So seal the lips of the muses
And let their devastation warn the ancestors
Allow obscenity to create the perfection of entanglement
Dance me to the edges of oblivion
Solely with your hands

I only crave the colour
And I know I must not walk this labyrinth alone
For you have gone ahead of me