watched the devastation
afflicted with ennui
bereft now of meaning
a game we played with zeal
a thinking man's game
now a blitz of distraction
noise and visual trash
heaped at the eyes
with all the nonchalance
of a volcanic eruption
once we were proper heroes
once long ago we knew the stats
cards we traded - innocence
and determination were everything
we let the girls in
it's all ridiculous now
it's all nonsense it's all over
we may as well call it quits
grab our mitts and go home
like so many other good ideas
someone maybe many
decided to phuq it up
make the spectacle expensive
and empty
now devoid of heroes
now a pathetic showcase
for overpaid pretenders
what else
if i hang around
will they take and destroy
before my very eyes
i am sorely troubled
baseball is in ruins
amen
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
"Poetry is the devil's wine."
St. Augustine
98% of "poetry", beanball, ho-wood blockbusters--the work of the Luegenmeister.
Snoop Aug.
augustine he
was manichee
in ilk at least
until his later years
when finally aristotle
hit him like a bottle
and he gained his senses
epistemological offenses
fell away
and st augustine was a poet then
until his dying day
Better to swim with the Xolotl
than read old pervs like Aristotle
Perhaps jh but having read Ari's poetics (or the cliffsnotes at least), I don't recall the Philosopher praising poetry much. He approves of some drah-ma, serious stuff, Homeric heroes, hubris, etc.--Oedipus, IIRC. He doesn't bless the beatnix of his era, however ("satyr" plays). Nor does Snoop Aug. Is it in Confessions where Aug. high fives the early Christians for closing the roman theatres? Interesting passage. Ergo, I don't think Aug. actually approves of poetry or theatre. Perhaps hymns and biblical verses but that is not Homer. Then the sort of little dots and quiggles, hip homo haikus that Faville or Silliman, Kirby O, or that old bizarro Clark prefer are not Homer either. Mo' like... Gomer.
qed
rant continued)
In brief Augustine the rationalist realized ..IMHE that however profound some literature may be--Homer, Sophocles (or...Shakespeare, Shelley, Dostoyevsky, et al)...eventually, humans use it for corrupt, non-Christian ends. Sophocles is a stepping stone to...Sappho, and then to....people f**king on stage round the clock (as was the case in the time of corrupt Roman emperors). Porno takes over and governs the poetics. For that matter, Aug. may have still remembered a bit of the Republic wherein Socrates ...proclaims poetry as the work of the deluded, the irrational (ie, not geometric or logical, or scientific), the wine drinkers, and decadents.
In effect, the pimps get ahold of literature--was the case during Caligula, and now under the Bill Maherocracy. We get Harry Potter instead of Hamlet--haikus and not Holderlin anyway. So, best to control Lit., or ban it for most humans, and students.:] On that rational catholics and even skeptical logicians might agree (authentic ones--holy Modus ponens, ratman!--not those reductionist morons who think Sam Harris is "logical". )
qed
augustine mastered the roman ritual
and in its day and even today i might say it is poetry in its formal finest
and he had to study oratorical method and he admired deeply the hymn texts of ambrose he knew the power of words well placed and knew that a holy rite is perhaps the only safe place for that power
augustine's homilies betray a man wholy enveloped in poetic dictation
caught up in narrative caught up in miracles caught up in the possibility of a just society
augustine saw that justice and honor in a good society were linked to being well spoken
however the tradition of badboys and witty clowns and pied pipers and stand up comedians and lute players and singggerrz and drummmmers who are pranksters adn jokesters and practical parodies of unprincipled imposssible pathetic fools this tradition of entertainer goes way back
screw socrates
screw plato screw aristotle
if those cats don't like the blues phuq 'em
i would also argue that in the 4th 5th century there was a lively singing tradition of guys mostly who knew how to sing l like cantors in synagogues and greek churches and they knew the sung literature of israeli worship and they knew meditteranean folk songs and they sang at the liturgies and it was poetry
now one may argue that
well reasoned argument took precedent
in augustine's mind
and that is probably true
but it would seem horrendously incongruous to dismiss the knowledge of poetry from his consciousness
i'd be a t a loss without poetry
and i'd be at a loss without augustine
however
i do think american baseball is but a blithering glitzy half truth of what it was meant to be it has become mind numbingly dumb
and if poetry can't express that
well
phuq poetry then
the poets are the best commentators
by far
jh
donkeyschane for comments Herr Doktor Hansen tho' not sure I wd agree in all respects--"poets" you seem to use in a general sense as writers as a whole at times, not just the moon-june-coon or Kirby O sort. In that case, well, yes, Shakespeare, or Voltaire and/or Dostoyevsky and Rilke are klassic poets all. Assuming thats what you mean. But I mean...Tolkien and Harry Potterism takes over, and the kids don't read Shakespeare (or...it's PC'ed which is to say...kinked up and FUBAR), or EAPoe and Moby Dick for that matter. So like Tolkien and maybe the Color Purple, perhaps some white-zionist supremacist sci-fi ala Swinelein. Ergo, better off with Socrates, St. Aug, and even the fiendish Bertrand Russell and...shut Lit.Co. down.
Post a Comment