The Sad and Sorry Tale of my Own Untimely Demise: IV

Le Chef d'Oeuvre - Rene Magritte, c.1955

This is potentially the last update of this story as I only planned to put up the first chapter, which is now complete. I hope you enjoy these updates, and strongly request you read these previous parts first, else this part will make no sense: 

(Part I), (Part II) & (Part III)

"

It is said that man's greatest fear is his own mortality, but once this slight inconvenient blip has passed it simply becomes a matter of what he's going to do to pass the time. 

        And as I sat and watched with watering eyes the fine crumbs of burnt bread break off beneath my clenching fingers, I was not, except by extension, in fear of my approaching death. Though if I'd have known how quickly is was travelling it might have merited more forethought. 

        For I had already discovered a fear that could make a man flee the gates of Eden, eschew the warmth of love, and shun the comfort of life. It was a fear that had been on my lips as soon as I had awoken this morning, but that had been for some time slowly rising and frothing through my subconscious until my tongue could taste its scum. It was, put simply, the nerve shattering, debilitating, soul destroying realisation, that if I planned to continue living as I did, I would need to find a proper job.

*

"I'm sorry sir, but I don't think I quite understood what you just said." It was two hours later, and I was in a library. This is confusing, and I would imagine the majority of readers would have some form of problem with my sudden appearance in such a place, but so did the people in the library, and I shall simply say to you what I said to them. Which is that life is full of unexpected intrusions, and that if you're going to sit around all day and draw your vicarious pleasure mainly through reading about other peoples' lives, you can't complain too much when life comes along out of the blue and shouts at you. 

"It's fairly quite simple." Said I. "I need a job because I've run out of toast, and I need to work here because of utmost importance."

I looked down at the timid girl behind the reception desk with slightly reeling, obstinate eyes, and attempted with a slight casual smirk and downward gesture of my head to make her laugh so as to show my joviality. However it appeared to make her quiver slightly and I decided somewhere in the back of my mind that dutch courage had probably been more detrimental than one would have originally hoped, and quickly recalled the gesture, hoping my bemusement and slight irritation didn't show through in its stead. 

"I'm sorry sir, I just don't  really understand why you keep saying that you need to work here."

"Because I don't like people, and if I have to work with them, I want to work somewhere where they're at least not allowed to talk." At this I slammed my fist, perhaps overly hard, down on the table and the girl gave a sudden jerk, snapping the pencil with which she had been toying nervously below the desk cleanly in two. By now I was beginning to get serious looks of mutiny from several passing browsers, and I began to wonder nervously if this was already a lost cause. 

"Listen, Um…" glancing quickly down at the girl's breast I noticed the absence of a name badge, and this annoyed me greatly as I had always wanted to use that line. "… I know you're busy, and I don't want to keep you long from whatever it is you're doing on that computer, so I shall state my case boldly, and as simply as an honest man knows how.

"I really need a job, and that is making me very depressed. What I essentially need is to be able to sit in a library all day long and read, and occasionally, as way of compensation, talk to customers, and stamp things out. I believe you, or somebody else here could just give me this job, because libraries are homely, and don't require all the rigorous interviewing and criminal record checking that other places, like banks, might."

At this point I paused for dramatic effect and drew myself up to my full height of 5"10 and a half before delivering my final flourish. "On top of this I am of course a writer, which means that I may even one day build on your very own market, and you can put a blue plague right over your very own chair to show where I wrote some of my most very best work. So all in all I think that's all fine and I shall start tomorrow if that's when you need me."

I always feel it important when recounting my last few hours to do so honestly, and I make no apologies for illogical arguments, poor use of language, or a tragic sense of waste. Because that is how I remember them. However, I am compelled to express to you that how I interact with other people is not generally how I actually am, or more aptly, how I wish to see myself as being. One of the major problems I have always faced as a person is the conveyance to other people of genuine sincerity in my character, and I have often found myself playing up, either to peoples' ill-informed perceptions of me, or my own ill-judged notions of what I perceive they expect me to be. Often I appear more abrasive, more divertingly indignant, more arrogantly assured than in actuality I am, and whilst in its extremes it is largely due to drunken ornateness, I do sometimes wonder, when by myself , alone in a dead man's spare room, if there is an element of subconscious projection involved. As though I am a clown, painting a thin facade of a character over my own distinguishable features, so that when people laugh I can feel they laugh at the character I have created, as opposed to the tragic figure I embody beneath it.

Needless to say none of the bathetic pathos of my tragically anti-climatic life helped convince a girl from the local sixth form doing work experience in a small library that she should lead a coup to seize, and then unwisely use, the power to employ members of the public, in a form of communist satire. And I would be lying if I said that I didn't secretly know, ten minutes later as I stumbled through the revolving doors and out onto the pavement of the street outside, that that approach was never going to work. I believe that somewhere hidden deep inside my mind I had the notion that if I got myself systematically rejected from all the jobs suitable for me, I could still convince myself that I had gallantly tried, and that it was other people, in this instance, who were to blame.  

All the same, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself  as I turned from the entrance of the library and, wrapping my shabby overcoat tight around me, for it was bitingly cold, even though it was the middle of May, began to walk purposefully, but without particular reason, down the road.

I wandered aimlessly up and down the high street for a further few hours, trying to sum up the courage to apply for a job in various shops that seemed quite, and dusty, but all this proved fruitless. I stopped at a coffee shop with outdoor seating, went in and bought a strong black coffee, found a seat outside on the pavement, and lit up a cigarette. I watched the steam and smoke entwine and dance in the cold but gentle breeze for a while, rising and falling like two graceful dancers in the mid noon sun, before I began feeling listless and decided to start heading back to the house. My thoughts now anchored by the weight of the coffee from the tumult of a drunken sea, I began to think a little about the novel I planned to write that would bring me notoriety in high literary circles. I had little idea what it would be about as of yet, but I was fairly sure that the protagonist would be a disconnected, young, but dissatisfied writer, trying to give coherent form to his work through themes that permeated and troubled his own life, but being impeded by his inability to find articulation for vague notions that swam through the murky waters of his consciousness. As I rounded the corner onto my road, and saw the house looming ominously in the distance, I had decided that, dissatisfied with his job and his insipid relationships with women, my character would embark on a journey through the streets of London, experiencing and being exposed to the extremities of drunkenness, violence, sex, and perverted debauchery in all of it's rawest forms. And by the time I was entering in at the garden gate I was debating whether this exposure to such events would beget articulation or lead to his self destruction through physical temptation. By the time I was pushing the front door open, I was so engrossed in the finer details of the plot and themes that I didn't even notice I had apparently forgotten to lock it. And, as I entered the kitchen to fling my coat over the back of a chair and make more coffee, I had so nearly woven the interlinking subtexts into such a perfect tapestry of literary wealth, that I did not at all notice the stunningly beautiful black haired girl sat, cross-legged, pale faced, and red lipped, on the chair across from the door. But I caught a fragment of something intoxicating floating the normally musty air, something delicate yet dominating, that ensnared the senses and made them want to fall willingly to their knees. I was so startled by the apparent apparition of a girl in my kitchen that I dropped the coffee cup I had managed to get all the way out of the cupboard in alarm and spun round as she rose to meet me.

"Derek Green?" She asked, her voice penetrating yet soft.

"No." I responded in alarm.

"I'm sorry." She said, as from the folds of her hands I saw a flash of something silver and sharp. But her voice was distant now, detached, yet full of something else, something undefinable. And then something rather unexpected happened. I died. Rather slowly, and very horribly."

The Sad and Sorry Tale of my Own Untimely Demise: III

The Man in the Bowler Hat - Rene Magritee, c.1964

I must apologise for the spasmodic nature, quantity, and indeed quality of these updates. I am fleshing out a rough draft as and when I have the time, which is rarely. These drafts, I am then simply posting for the doubtable interests of yourself, so a lot of the sentences, and some of the more unpopular words, are being replaced at later dates, but that is not for you to see. Here is what I have determined is for you to see, and I highly recommend, as these posts follow only arbitrary beginning and end points, reading (Part 1) & (Part 2).

"

The passage of time, it is said, is a great healer, but combined with a lack of  consequences,  sobriety, and police investigation it is a certified doctor. 

        And so, driven by mounting invoices at my own address, a misguided sense of cleansing through exposure, and a desire to avoid a rather persistent and dubiously pregnant girl, two months after having accidentally committed murder, I took up residence in the scene of my own crime, and as way of vicarious atonement, resolved to let the liquor answer for my sins. The matter of the missing dustbin, was for the time forgotten, or at least suppressed heavily. Doubt not though, dear reader, that any of this was undertaken likely; and one can be assured that from the back seat of my Ford Mondeo, amongst the remnants of fast food chicken boxes, Whyte & Mackay, Benson & Hedges, and the torn pages of Raymond Chandler, (who I had taken to reading, but eventually resorted to chewing) I watched that house until the sun was dizzy from chasing the moon. And not once did I see a soul approach it. 

  Not even the postman. 

Even junk mailers seemed, disinclined, to write. And so what once was legally his now became ostensibly mine. However, I admit I felt so bad about the whole affair that I was reluctant to ever do much more than sleep in his spare room, use his toilet, and eat any food with a sell by date on it. The other rooms I rarely ever ventured into. The front room I have never seen, the wine cellar was resolutely locked, and the other rooms are gloomy, dusty and full of books that I as a writer have no appetite for. I rarely ventured out of doors for the first few weeks, so petrified was I of being accosted and exposed by the first elderly pedestrian that I should chance upon. But eventually boredom, and a sudden drop in the supply of tinned food, forced me out into the harsh lamp-lit world of the dead night, to hurriedly steal towards an never-ending convenience store, and having done my dishonest shopping, to slink back once more. After this escapade I began to feel a little bolder, and began to visit the local bar of an evening, The Panda & Tortoise, whose staff were as fashionably transient, mundanely detached and as  enervatingly numb as the name would suggest. Garbed in labelled polo shirts, beach shoes, and denim jeans designed to prevent unnecessary conception, this inaptly dressed army of the undead seemed more suitable for one wishing to remain unremembered, than the shady confines of a pub harbouring the close-knit remnants of  the inexplicably stereotypical pool room sharpers, who one can only assume have been lurking near the fruit machines for so long that they hadn't even notice the 70s end.

Nonetheless, it was a pleasant bar, where the ale was cheap but strong, the women high maintenance but susceptible, and the music dirty with the crunching bass and megaphone vocals of blues-rock. All in all, it was the life of an art-house writer, so I saw it through my sophomoric cinematic thoughts. In reality I was a freelance art critic, who was running up ever more increasingly against the paradox of seeking literary fame, and keeping my change of address unknown. The greatest problem was mostly in receiving checks through the post, as one cannot survive of the charity of dead men indefinitely.

It was this very same idea that stuck in the back of my throat as I awoke in May to an alarm call of cold-sweat and damp sheets, coughing and racking my lungs as though I was trying terminally to dislodge the unpleasant realisation which had rattled the cages of my dreams and awoken the fear of my eyes. It was a realisation that made me want to cry and wretch and blubber and froth, all of which I promptly did, before thrashing blindly to one side with my left arm until it's hand found the radio dial, rolling limply from the volume wheel onto a pack of cigarettes which, upon bleary eyed inspection, contained one pink lighter and half a cigarette. Which was very disappointing. With smoke now fleeing to the ceiling, I stretched forth my right hand and grabbed from within the folds of dirty sheets a battered notebook and a badly bitten pencil. Whilst the jarring tones of the radio roused me from my numbing sleep I made out the time from the wall-clock across from my bed, opened the notebook to a heavily annotated page, and jotted down the information accordingly: 

'08.45:' It read, 'Cough, now dry, throat, like gravel, mild improv. on Tues. Radio still persisting with soul destroying phone in comp, still not heard back. Fear the worst. prize money.' 

        These last two words I scrawled largest of all and underlined many times, with multiple exclamations added as the pencil gorged into the paper. Then I unwittingly fell back to sleep, and it took a further three repeated incidents before on the third I was compelled to get a glass of water. Ten minutes later I was in the kitchen rubbing my toe and swallowing an aspirin for my head, cursing the household appliances in their complicity to see me maimed by degrees. The toaster was prone to electrocute at will, the kettle liable to overflow onto plug sockets and hands, and all were in cahoots with the stairs in their relentless attempts to wreck havoc through guerilla tactics and loose planks. 

I had often wondered, through forced bites of brittle black toast, whether the house could possibly be out to get me, or whether, more pressingly, it was haunted by the spirits of any disgruntled previous occupants. I had on one occasion sought in the local paper a psychic who might be able to offer professional advice without posing a threat of credibility in a court of law, but on that occasion the psychic, a man named Terrance who wrote the horoscopes for some kind of woman's weekly and liked to talk too much about Florida, ran from the house in a fit of panic and incredulity, screaming something unintelligible about a cult. Which was just as well, as I hadn't any money to pay him with, and in hindsight hadn't really thought the idea through properly at all.
        However, on this particular morning my inane fear of kitchen utensils was somehow both sharpened and numbed simultaneously, by the paralysing realisation that had stalked my dreams and haunted my awakening steps. On the morning that would be my last, as I unknowingly said goodbye to the rising sun, and failed to leave a forwarding address for the moon, I was staring blankly into the depths of blackened crust as the last of my store of toast grew cold in my trembling hand. 
        It is said that man's greatest fear is his own mortality, but once this slight inconvenient blip has passed it simply becomes a matter of what he's going to do to pass the time. And as I sat and watched with watering eyes the fine crumbs of burnt bread break off beneath my clenching fingers, I was not, except by extension, in fear of my approaching death. Though if I'd have known how quickly is was travelling it might have merited more thought. 
        For I had already discovered a fear that could make a man flee the gates of Eden, eschew the warmth of love, and shun the comforts of life. It was a fear that had been on my lips as soon as I had awoken this morning, but that had been forever slowly rising and frothing through my subconscious until my tongue could taste its scum. It was, put simply, the nerve shattering, debilitating, soul destroying realisation, that I needed to get a job.

The Sad and Sorry Tale of My Own Untimely Demise: II

The Son of Man - Rene Magritte, c.1964.

The short story so far... (Part I)


"
                One of the interesting things about death, which I have come to realise as of being late is that there's an awful lot of it to going on all of the time, and that once you get over the initial shock, and the subsequent disappointment, there are a lot of support groups around to help you settle into your new celestial neighbourhood. Unfortunately I find the insipid cheeriness of support groups, especially ones of religious denotation, overbearing, and try to avoid them at all costs. I can only hope that the opposite was true for the three hundred pound, six foot three, heavily tattooed and heavily armed man that had just been introduced unwillingly to some of gravity's more unpopular and inaccessible work. However, my hopes that he was a part time Samaritan call worker weren't high, and in fact, as I sat half and hour later, smoking my sixteenth cigarette, crouching somewhere near the umbrella stand and wondering what to do in-between my frightened sobs and forays into morbid curiosity; the thought didn't even enter my mind. One reason for this was that the crossroads of my mind were at the time full of thoughts and notions careering recklessly from one lobe to the next, not stopping for warning signs nor pedestrians, and many of my more timid ideas had as a result decided to remain indoors, rather wisely. It didn't help that the entire city was over the legal limit either and was in no state to be in charge of a sensory motor vehicle.
                Being a writer is, in my opinion, a despicable occupation, and I shall here lay down a few brief outlines as to why. I feel that one of the problems with the English taught in school is that it is all essentially meaningless, and the only use it is truly put to by those good at it is to satisfactorily out argue other children and give clarity and comprehensible shape to confused notions about their sublimated hatred of women. If I let slip in the middle of a dinner party that all love is essentially selfish and by that very nature self-destructive, and that even relationships knowingly based on corrupted principles which have blossomed into something resembling genuine love are simply a facade unperceived by its participants, and that if our most basic human instincts are exposed or heightened by the rawness of love, all will see the inherent cynicism of love beyond its immediate destructive physicalness, I will not be offered dessert. However, if a writer puts this down in the form of a parable then I am perfectly entitled to restate it and people will either look around awkwardly for a second before suggesting we serve the crème brûlée, or counteract this view with another parable. It is therefore a sure fact that a large percentile of published authors chose their career simply because they were sick of not getting any pudding at dinner parties. But more than this, it means that there is such a wealth of differing views on any of the major subjects covered in an average secondary school syllabus that anyone can prove just about anything with literature, and it ceases to have any larger significance when considered in the context of what you think the author means, not what the author means to you. But my biggest problem with being a writer stems from my own inability to feel genuine when writing about a subject because I write about it solely from the context of being, by grace of my occupation, an outsider; and my inability to feel genuine about living because I approach any emotion or situation with the subconscious thought that it could make a good story.
                For instance I once wrote a intendedly humourous article for an online magazine, entitled '10 steps for disposing of unwanted bodies', and afterwards felt that not only had I written on a subject about which I knew nothing, but I had portrayed a false image of myself, the author. However, they say that time and experience are the greatest tutors and as I stood in the back garden of another man's house at 4 o'clock in the morning, franticly trying to get some kindling to spark and trying to remember step 7, I realised that I had been completely genuine when I wrote that article, I had just written it in the wrong tense.
                By the time the tops of the trees had crept back into the warmth of the Sun's caress, all that remained of the mysterious defender was not so much the quintessence of dust as it was an overcooked barbecue in the quintessence of a dustbin, but it was a beginning. By the time the tips of the garden fence were getting involved in the orgy of morning, I had burnt all of my clothes, wiped all of the surfaces I could remember touching, cleared away my cigarette ends, and put the entire court case out in the alley way for the bin men to collect. By breakfast I had haltingly managed to find my own house, dressed in an oversized dressing-gown, lime green trousers, a floral blouse, and one flat and one furry slipper that I had found amongst the man's possessions, and by elevenses I was rocking back and forth across the street from the back alley way feeling as nauseous as a fish in the desert, wondering why in God's name I left the dustbin, and trying desperately to reason where it could possibly have gone. "

My Favourite Albums of This Moment in Time III

No Age

-

Everything in Between

(+)

Gil Scott-Heron

-

I'm New Here 

(+)

Toe

-

For Long Tomorrow 

(+)

 Sour

-

Rainbow Under the Overpass

(+)

 Dirty Projectors

-

Bitte Orca

(+)

 Art Tatum

-

The Best of Art Tatum

(+)

 Melissa Auf der Maur

-

Out of Our Minds

(+)

Tom Waits

-

Rain Dogs

(+)

The Tallest Man On Earth 

-

 The Wild Hunt

(+)

Hiroshige - The 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō, pt.1

The first in a series of posts, running intermittently, focusing on the Japanese art of Ukiyo-e woodblock printing and its artists.

Memorial Portrait of Hiroshige - Kunisada

絵 (E) – Picture; painting.

浮世 (Ukiyo) – A floating world; impermanent. Evanescent pleasures that exist only in the moment; lighting upon the palm of one’s hand, before with sorrow the wind carries them on their way. Life and all its ephemeral desires will fade, and so one should live for the moment, enjoying each pleasure as it appears, passing from one day to the next.

浮世絵 (Ukiyo-e) - Pictures of the Floating World.
 

Evening Shower at Atake and the Great Bridge - Hiroshige, c.1856-58. (+)

In 1600, Tokugawa Ieyasu unofficially established the last shogunate to rule over Japan after defeating those forces loyal to Hideyori and the western clans at The Battle for the Sundered Realm. Three years later he was declared shogun by Emperor Go-Yozei, and so began the Edo Period; a time of prolonged relative peace, the emergence and growth of the urban bourgeois classes, and a subsequent antiquity in classical Japanese art, from which the art form of Ukiyo-e emerged, and came to define an era. 

Ieyasu moved the seat of government from Kyoto, the Imperial capital, to Edo (present day Tokyo) in order to consolidate his power around his main supporters, and to escape the rich arts and culture of Kyoto, which he feared would corrupt and tempt his generals. To further his control over Japan he had 5 routes constructed that were to form the major arteries of Japanese trade and commerce, allowing speedy travel and communication through the heart of the country. His grandson Tokugawa Ietsuna raised the importance of these routes and had post stations constructed along the way at which travellers could rest and replenish supplies. 

Of these five, The Tōkaidō was to be the busiest, and the most crucial, starting in Edo at Nihon-bashi, with the other five routes, running down the Pacific coast to Kyoto. The Tōkaidō had 53 government post stations along its 490km (300 mile) stretch, some being open to all, some requiring travel permits to pass through. Tokugawa Ieyasu required all the previous warlords and daimyo of Japan to move their families to Edo, so as to be under his watchful eye, and the purpose of some of these checkpoints was to prevent the escape of warlords' female relations, fleeing the city. Punishments for illegal crossings included crucifixion, so it was vitally important to remember your passport. 

Hiroshige was born in Edo in 1797, by the age of 8 he was an orphan, and by 9 he had produced his first major painting. His most internationally renowned work was the Hōeidō edition of the 53 stations, which he constructed in woodblock from sketches made on his travels down this road. It is the greatest selling series of Ukiyo-e prints of all time and established the genre of landscape art within the medium. 

The Hōeidō edition, published 1833-34, proved so popular that Hiroshige went on to produce many other versions of the 53 stations, accumulating in roughly 2000 prints by the time of his death in 1858. Here is part one of the original Hōeidō edition, otherwise known as the First, or the Great Tōkaidō.

日本橋朝の景 (Nihonbashi, Morning's View) - Chūō-ku (Edo) (+)

This print shows the head of a daimyo's procession crossing Nihonbashi bridge, "The Bridge of Japan", with six street hawkers in the foreground. The bridge marks the beginning of the Tōkaidō and Nakasendō roads to Kyōtō. It is the point from which the Japanese measure distances and all signs giving the distance to Tokyo (modern day Edo) give it to Nihonbashi bridge. 

 

Kilometer Zero - The plague found in the centre of Nihonbashi bridge to mark the point at which you would be exactly 'in' Tokyo.

 

Evening Shower at Nihonbashi Bridge - Hiroshige, c.1832

Here is another perspective of the bridge produced by Hiroshige around a year earlier. It demonstrates the perfect view of Mount Fuji that could be seen from the bridge. However, the city has grown in all directions since then, and for the 1964 Summer Olympics officials built a large expressway over the bridge; meaning that it no longer offers such a pleasant view. 

Nihonbashi in 2005.

1. 品川日の出 (Shinagawa Sunrise) - Shinagawa (Edo) (+)

 

 This print shows a procession including two porters and two bowmen walking up the village street from the bay at dawn. Shinagawa-juku was one of the Four Stations of Edo, which were the first stations on the 5 routes that still fell within the prefecture of Edo. Shinagawa could be taken as meaning 'River of Goods, or, River of Quality', and is situated on the edge of Tokyo Bay where, in 1853, door to door American capitalism salesman Matthew Perry, on the advice of a faulty guide book, mistranslated the Japanese for "Nobody's in, go away" as, "No please, fire your big cannons at our buildings till we promise to trade with you, it won't cause resentment that will play a part in some form of massively belated payback with some planes and your precious big ships giving you cause to fire the mother and father of all cannonballs back". 

Today Shinagawa Port district still functions as a post-station of a sort, with many hotels set up around the area for travellers coming in from Shinagawa station. As for being a river of goods, the ward is home to many major companies including Namco Bandai, Isuzu, Adobe systems and Japanese Airlines (JAL).

Marker at the beginning of Tōkaidō road.

2.川崎六郷の渡し (The Rokugo Ferry at Kawasaki) - Kawasaki (Kanagawa)(+)

This print shows the Rokugo ferry crossing the Tama River whilst passengers wait at the other side, with a small village behind the trees and a view of Mount Fuji rising out of the wisps of clouds in the distance. Whilst it was the last station to be built, in 1623, it was the first major crossing for travellers from Edo as the Tama River was, as indeed it still is, very prone to flooding. Floods in the past have changed the river's course and divided whole towns in two, creating opposing settlements with the same name. It is near to Heiken-ji, a major Buddhist temple, and as such this crossing was used by many followers on their way to worship. The crossing was so busy that trade flourished in this area and raised Kawasaki's profile; helping it become the modern day major city it is.

3.神奈川暮の景 (Kanagawa Sunset) - Yokohama (Kanagawa)(+)

This print depicts travellers climbing the steep road that passes through the station whilst courtesans attempt to drag them into the tea houses that line the path. To the left is Kanagawa Bay. The station runs parallel with Kanagawa Port which is situated on the opposite shore in Naka-ku, and the area flourished from the combined trade of travellers on the Tōkaidō, and goods on their way to Sagami Province. Most of the historical points of interest in this town where destroyed by the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, and American fire bombings during WWII, and prints such as these are most of what survive to give an accurate portrayal of what the station was like during this time. 

Kanagawa is also the place in which another great Ukiyo-e artist, Hokusai, set his most famous composition, 'The Great Wave off Kanagawa', which will almost undoubtedly be featured in later posts, but as a nice way to round off, here it is anyway, damn hypocritical populist as I am.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa - Hokusai, c.1830-33. (+)

Ornithology

This is a heavily revised version of a poem earlier featured in the Menagerie, which, as it was simply a drunken ramble through the forest of 'Just how blunt can you make a metaphor before it can no longer cut butter', I felt should at least be made to rhyme.

You can read the original here if the mood should so take you,
though I see no earthly reason why it should want to.

Once a fiery songbird,
As summer ne'er heard
Sat in my tree,
And sang to me,
In reams of blazing verse.

But other fowls soon came,
To see my darling flame;
And beneath her wing,
They heard her sing
But it did not sound to me the same.

And they ate her feed,
And took her need,
And in their greed,
They laid their seed.

So i took my rifle,
And made bird trifle.

Distressed, my love took flight,
But by the shade of night,
Her floating strain
Came through the rain,
And it was my only delight.

But it was not for me she spake,
Twas for another's sake
Soft spun her ploy;
And through his joy,
My delight became my ache.

And so she took my heart,
And with a graceful art,
It slowly tore apart,
To all too soon depart.

So I went and shot her too,
And then made bird ragoo.

But now she's gone,
I miss that song,
that floated on the breeze.

For though I like
The tune of birds,
I hate their recipes.

And furthermore,
I do deplore,
You heed my sorry tale,
For a heart that yearns love's freedom passed,
May soon become a jail.

Time Passes Slowly; But Nonetheless

 Twilight in the Wilderness - Frederic Edwin Church, c.1860.

The ephemeral flame of the rubied sun,
Softly sinking in the mire;
Ablaze it lights upon the brook,
Where all that swirls now glistens in fire.

The wooded green where once we lay
To talk and laugh and smoke and drink;
Now held in twilight's fleeting grasp,
Time blows it softly to the brink.

Upon the stream where once we climbed
On pebble and rock through thicket deep;
Sol's languid eyes do gently droop,
Whilst shadows into mine do creep.

The laughter faded from these woods,
Where once it echoed in the brook,
And light now passes to the mire,
Whilst we chase after what time took.

For all the trees are peaceful now,
In broken wreaths of silver sheen,
And there's a darkness in its place,
Where once we lay upon the green.

Bathed in the golden rays of day,
We felt the power of its might;
But now I feel the cold of time,
Submerged in sleepless tears of night.