This poetic remix exercise takes the titles of all poems written for this month's challenges and roughly reworks them into the style of James Schuyler's poem, Sweet Romanian Tongue.
The Jisei is a Haiku written by a poet shortly before their passing from the world. The "sleigh" of the first Troiku is the Jisei of the poet Gozan, written shortly prior to his death in 1781 at the age of 71. The "sleigh" of the second Troiku was written by Jane Reichhold (1937 - 2016) shortly prior to her passing.
All Hokku stanzas were created by Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694). All Ageku (closing) stanzas were written by me.
I would like to dedicate this set of poems to my mother's and my late father's friend Richard, who passed away yesterday from complications stemming from ALS. I hope that one day a cure is found for this terrible, debilitating disease.
The Hokku (Haiku) stanza of this Tan Renga was written by Matsuo Basho. The Akegu (closing stanza) was written by me.
Matsuo Basho was born in 1644 and died 28 November 1694. As a point of coincidence, my father died on 28 November 2010.
As Chèvrefeuille explains, Basho's Haiku references his desires for a man. Basho was a Samurai, and, as with the warriors of ancient Greece, homosexuality was considered normal and acceptable. Relationships between older men and adolescent boys were also considered acceptable.
I do feel that homosexuality is normal and acceptable, but I think it is better not to have sexual relationships between adults and youth.
My portion of the poem does not refer to my sexuality. Being heterosexual, I never found myself in the position of keeping my sexuality a secret. It refers to living with mental illness in a society which stigmatizes people who struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts.
Some people think that in this age of readily available psych meds, no-one should struggle with psychological problems. Many people do not respond well to psych meds, and not all psychological problems are chemical in nature.
The Hokku (Haiku) stanza of this Tan Renga was written by Akutagawa Ryunosuke a.k.a. Gaki (1 March 1892 – 24 July 1927, death by overdose of Veronal.) The Ageku or closing stanza was written by me.
One of the things I treasure about this type of poetry is the way it makes a mundane item or creature such as a sardine beautiful and precious. Some people mock minimalist forms such as Haiku/Senryu or Tanka/Tan Renga, but I find that they have a meditative quality.
My monkey mind is far too chatty and jumpy for me to meditate very well using traditional meditation methods. Either my mind wanders off track and I get bored and antsy, or if I do manage to relax, I fall asleep.
This type of poetry allows me to meditate. I find that engaging in the Tan Renga challenge has made me calmer overall and given me an eye of the storm to escape to although my life is very chaotic. I am extremely grateful for this gift.
I watched the Jimi Hendrix documentary, Voodoo Child, this evening.
I didn't really become a Jimi Hendrix fan until I was in my teens. He died when I was only five years old. I saw a documentary about him when I was eighteen or nineteen, and it was good, but this documentary reveals more of his personal thoughts. He was brilliant and he left a lot of wisdom for the world.
The wisdom he imparted to me today is to stop looking for adulation and approval from others. This is something that I've struggled with my entire life.
When asked how it felt to receive so many compliments about his work, Jimi said that he really didn't care about compliments, in fact, he found that they distracted him from what was important: creation.
I think that's what it really means to be secure in oneself. Not so much thinking that one is flawless, but to be able to see the worth of one's goals and actions regardless of the opinions of the masses.
Lots of views and comments stroke the needy ego of the insecure and wounded child that remains within the crusty, curmudgeonly, and likely not at all tasty exterior shell which houses my soul.
This becomes a distraction to the creator. I start wanting to please my visitors rather than express myself through my words.
Next time I get stuck in that unharmonious groove, I need to remember Jimi's wise thoughts on the matter.
I will always be a fan of Jimi Hendrix the musician.
Perhaps most people won't understand this, but that doesn't matter.
I also appreciate Jimi Hendrix the philosopher, and I'm grateful for the wisdom and works that he left behind.
Seldom have I encountered a more troubled soul than Per Ohlin. As my lovely friend, the late Walt Cessna would have said, he was fukt 2 start wit.
(This was the title of Walt's autobiography. He said that I inspired him to actually sit down and write it. I have always treasured this knowledge. Walt died from complications of AIDS.)
I sometimes become overwhelmed and try to bury my empathic nature. It doesn't stay buried for long. Maybe a minute, maybe an hour, rarely more than a day, and then, as Per once wrote, up from the tomb it comes. I can't ignore the soul calls for long.
I wish I had known about the phenomenon of soul calls when I was younger. It could have saved me a lot of grief, but it's too late now. Anyone who is of a metaphysical mind is welcome to read about this issue here. For anyone who is not of a metaphysical mind, do us both a favor and don't bother. This isn't the high school debate team, I'm tired, and I have no desire to bend anyone to my own particular set of beliefs.
I am utilizing the Poems in April prompts again, but I am not joining up with the Linky in order to prevent another barney from brewing. Instead, I will comment on a few poems from people who have been kind and supportive along the way. Bit of a shame as I was getting a kick out of having so many visitors, but I find confrontation stressful, so best to keep that gate shut, I think.
Dear Rachel, you were my good friend In many ways, your life was hard You came from humble beginnings Were buried in a pauper's grave Strange that you've been gone ten years Dear Rachel, you were my good friend One of the few to accept me One of the few to know my heart Wish I could have done more to help Though there were many miles between Dear Rachel, you were my good friend I have never forgotten you I wish you hadn't died alone Wish I could have been by your side You were estranged from family Dear Rachel, you were my good friend Love, Cie
Notes:
Written in memory of my spirited friend
Rachel Lee (September 8, 1940 - April 17, 2009) who died of complications from diabetes.
This isn't where Rachel is buried, but she would love this place.
We will meet again in a place like this.
The poem is a Quatern. (Duh.)
I didn't end up following the NaPoWriMo prompt.
I am no longer doing the Imaginary Garden With Real Toads Poems in April prompts.
While there were a lot of great people who made me feel like I might have found "my tribe", it became clear that I really didn't belong there, so I feel it's best that I distance myself. Thank you to those of you who were kind to this freak of nature. Maybe one day Rachel and I will have tea with you in a place like the lovely memorial garden pictured above.
I've come a long way in keeping my temper in check from the days of my youth, but there are a few things that make me really hot under the collar, and then I overreact just a teeny tiny little bit and hit the red button with the nearest sledgehammer, sending the verbal nukes a-flyin'.
One thing that sets me off like nobody's business is the implication that I'm a liar or one of those self-important twits who would create a puff piece minimizing the struggles of a person with a cognitive, physical, or psychological impairment to prove how Deep and Poetical (TM) I am. I have ripped shit more than once on the kind of people who say things like "he's so autistic" or "she's so bipolar" when what they mean is "he's withdrawn and not socially adept" and "she's mercurial." Do NOT use people's health conditions as adjectives. It's really fucking rude. Recently, I fired a real estate agent who believed that questioning my credibility would inspire me to "move quickly." Say whaaaaaat???? In what Universe does that even make sense? I remarked that this guy must have watched American Psycho and thought that it was a business training video. The lack of logic in this line of thinking is astounding.
Having my credibility questioned is a real sore point for me. All my life I've had people imply that I was "just looking for attention" or "being dramatic" or straight-up lying about my symptoms. I have a lot of physical issues that have never been resolved, and the scars on my arms are not the result of "seeking attention," fuck you very much. They are the result of having been in one whole fuckload of psychological pain and feeling like no-one was on my side.
Point of trivia: my ex-husband has Asperger's syndrome and I have bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. This combination proved to be oil and water. He is one of my great friends in this life and I have been very worried about him as he is having some serious health issues. But a marriage between such polar opposites in the neurodivergent spectrum proved to be a volatile combination and not sustainable.
Our son is autistic and has ADHD. He's strikingly intelligent, but his way of thinking and problem solving does not jibe with the modern education system. He learns by doing and is incapable of learning by reading textbooks. Yes, he can read. He is a prolific reader of the likes of Roger Zelazny (whose works I sometimes have trouble wrapping my brain around), Fred Saberhagen, Kurt Vonnegut, C.S. Lewis, Arthur C. Clarke, and J.R.R. Tolkien. He simply is unable to conform to the textbook-and-lecture style of learning.
I feel like the world is missing out on a lot of great talent by insisting that everybody look alike and dress alike and think alike and talk alike. The Stepford Wives was not an instruction manual.
One of the things that I loved about AC/DC, outside of their badass marriage of the blues to garage rock, was the fact that these cheeky-ass working-class bastards gave the middle finger to propriety at every turn. This doesn't mean they believed in being mean and stomping on other people. They themselves had been bullied and belittled and had quite enough of it. They were speaking up for the "mongrels", for the "ugly" people, for the people who had been told that they would never amount to anything because they were weird and different and not conventionally attractive.
They were not a band for the ever upper-class high society. They were a band for the outcasts, like me. So, when I stood up for them when people started accusing them of "devil worship," I got pigeonholed as a devil worshiper too. It was pretty funny in retrospect. I went around throwing devil horns and evil grins at the idiots spreading the rumors. I was probably the biggest excitement they had in their narrow-minded lives.
Fun's fun, but the reality is that I always felt bad for these guys who really weren't doing anything wrong. I had a particular affinity for Malcolm Young, because he was painfully shy (like I am by nature), because he tended to be depressive (gee, I wouldn't know anything about that, I'm just your dyed-in-the-wool ray of fucking sunshine), and because I could see that he was actually a lot more sensitive than he let on.
I have to confess that I was a bit jealous of the powerful bond of friendship that Malcolm had with Angus. Not everyone is lucky enough to have the other half of their soul born in the same lifetime. Forget having the other half of your soul be your guardian angel. Having them be your best bud is the way to roll!
In truth, most soul mate relationships I've observed have been platonic rather than romantic. Too much is made of the romantic soul mate bond.
In fairness, I think that (romantic) love stinks, so take my previous statement however you wish. Take it with a couple of grains of sea salt. I use sea salt in my cooking. I recommend it.
All this is leading up to something. Bear with me.
I honestly think that there is a degree of elitism in the insistence on rigidly adhering to certain concepts. People who do not have access to higher education don't get to learn the niceties of iambic pentameter (I didn't even know what the hell that was until I was in my 50's) or what the hell ever.
I didn't know the difference between a Haiku and a Senryu until I was in my 50's. I just liked the 5-7-5 pattern that I learned in the third grade or thereabouts and I enjoyed using it to express my dumb and worthless thoughts.
There's a lot of shit that I still don't know. It doesn't mean that I don't have the right to express my shit.
Similarly, there are a lot of musicians who are self-taught, who didn't have access to higher musical education, and, frankly, a lot of the time I like their work better than the works of those who have been properly trained. For instance, Chris Isaak (who, by the way, is an incredibly cool person) can't read music. He couldn't tell you what a pentatonic scale looks like, but if you were to play one for him, he would play it right back at you, embellish on it, and turn it into a really amazing song.
The slaves who sang the heart-rending spirituals on which the blues (a.k.a. the backbone of modern music) is based certainly did not have access to higher education about music or poetry. They sang to comfort themselves and their fellow slaves. They sang to convey messages. They did not express themselves in a "proper" fashion, but they damn well expressed themselves. They told their truth. They told their stories. And they had every right in the Universe to do both, propriety be damned!
As well, the idea that using profanity shows a lack of intelligence is elitist fuckery, and I don't have a whole lot to say to anyone who adheres to that foolish line of thinking.
I think I would have thrown myself from a precipice long ago if it weren't for the rule-breakers and "mongrels" of this world. I couldn't bear the idea of being shut in a room with a bunch of hoi-polloi. Pair me with the proletariat any day.
I do like to share my work, and for a while, it seems to go well enough. But I invariably learn the lesson that my truth is not pretty or polished enough and I am not sweet and sunny enough, and I end up saying "fuck it" and oozing back down the back alley from whence I crawled forth in the first place.
I will never be acceptable. For the most part, I think that's a good thing. But it does get kind of lonely, so now and then I go against my own rule about not engaging and I engage. This is generally a mistake.
Live and learn. Again and again and again.
Now I have to unruffle my feathers so I can prepare the latest Carnal Invasion manuscript for publication via my seedy little company, Naughty Netherworld Press, purveyors of high-quality Kindle smut. These are supposed to be gleeful romps featuring a group of randy, shapeshifting aliens having a go with elementals, humans, vampires, werewolves and such, not a heaping helping of angry argleblargh by a pissed-off editor. I need to switch gears toot sweet.
~Cie~
Cracks me up every time. I did see an interview later where Malcolm revealed that the director for this set of videos behaved like a drill sergeant and they couldn't wait to get away from him. Angus spent the entire interview doubled over with laughter. Reporters had a tendency to interview the brothers separately because when they were together they tended to start smirking and chortling about some joke that only they were in on, and one couldn't get much useful information out of them.
I have only attended one fan convention. I went to Star Con back in 1984. I treasure the fact that I was able to hear DeForest Kelley speak. He was a very nice man with a somewhat wicked sense of humor and an unexpected tendency to use salty language. He didn't just talk about Star Trek, he also talked about the Westerns he starred in and laughed about having to reduce the salt in his language when working with Loretta Young, who was a very straight-laced lady.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get his autograph. The poor fellow was suffering from altitude sickness and had to go back to his hotel room. The nasty woman in front of me snidely said that he probably had too much to drink. I had nothing to say to her and thought that if I had to deal with people like her very often, I'd probably be inclined to drink too.
In any case, I'm glad I got to spend time listening to the musings of a person whom I like very well, and I'm glad I got to see the terrible B movie that he was in. I'm pretty sure that it wasn't one of his prouder moments. The Night of the Lepus is not a great classic, but it is one of those movies that's so bad it's good.
Just in case you can't resist having a copy for yourself.
This poem is for Team Netherworld's Fetch, the story which refuses to die no matter how many nay-sayers try to kill it. In context of the tale, the image is our protagonist, Gerry Clifford, photographed for the July 1977 issue of Loud Magazine.
Did you have any notion of what loving me would require?
I have no ability to trust although I love you so much
You set my world on fire
It's still burning
For
Gem from Cie
and
Gerry from Pepper
Notes:
Today the assignment was to take a Sylvia Plath poem and write a response to it. My favorite has always been Mad Girl's Love Song. Sadly, I have been able to resonate all too well with this poem in my life. Love has not been kind to me.
Here is the original.
Mad Girl's Love Song
"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"
