No one ever answers when I call

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Hi Brian,

I was just teasing about the ghazal Enjoyed rereading the latest with the commentary.

-Matt

[PClem]

Sorry about your mom. Between your mom and dad, sound like you have your hands full! Don't know how you have the time to write, at all and such engaging pieces! Of the more recent
Your Tin Foil Hat -wonderfully satirical
Climbing Mount Fuji - very well done, love the changing reps. Is this a twist on a sestina, don't recognize the form?
All I've Got - the asides crack me up.

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Hi Brian,

I was just teasing about the ghazal Enjoyed rereading the latest with the commentary.

-Matt

Thanks, Matt. One can learn even from teasing.

Sorry about your mom. Between your mom and dad, sound like you have your hands full! Don't know how you have the time to write, at all and such engaging pieces! Of the more recent
Your Tin Foil Hat -wonderfully satirical
Climbing Mount Fuji - very well done, love the changing reps. Is this a twist on a sestina, don't recognize the form?
All I've Got - the asides crack me up.

Thanks, PClem. We started a 24 hour live-in aide with Mom on Tuesday, along with the nurse that comes in 6 days a week. Having the aide will take a huge burden off my back. I was getting totally wrecked.

"Your Tin Foil Hat" - took a fair amount of work to focus the satirical tone. I am reminded of some of the great lessons of NaPo, which is the lesson on focus, focus, focus to get things done.
"Climbing Mount Fuji" - This is simply a poem in which the stanzas are a series of tanka. The decision to use repetitions was not imposed by a formal consideration, but I felt that it served a useful rhetorical purpose.
"All I've Got" - wrote itself very easily, as the situation presented itself.

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Dawn at Isawa in the Kai Province



Ameratasu,
goddess of the sun, rises
over Fuji's peak.
Travelers raise weary eyes—
the short night ends far too soon.

Thatch-roofed inns nestle
by the slow-moving river.
Over the slim bridge,
and into the morning mist,
Fuji and Edo await.

Travelers pass here
from many distant domains—
Kofu or Kyoto—
serving commerce or Shogun.
Some remember the goddess

and her descendants,
bereft of throne and honor—
Tenshi, Emperor—
who sits in distant Kyoto,
prisoner of the Shogun.

If they are hopeful,
they do not venture to speak.
If they despair—ah!—
there is nothing to be done.
Someday the long night will end—

Ameratasu
will rise from the great ocean,
high above the lowly
hills, the weary men. Her sons
will, again, stand in the dawn.

-------------------

BrianIs AtYou

[delph_ambi]

'Prodigality Play' - wonderful, especially lines like this: 'Her body is defined by deficits.' And the ending is beautiful.

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

'Prodigality Play' - wonderful, especially lines like this: 'Her body is defined by deficits.' And the ending is beautiful.

Thanks, delph_ambi. Hopefully, it will be possible someday to write a poem of restoration, when some of the deficits can be made whole.

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

A Sign (for Michelle)

Reckless freckles upon your face
are just a sign of God's good grace.

BrianIs AtYou

[larryrap]

Hi,

Once again I'm mesmerized by the Japanese print poems - and thankful for your gift of them. I actually bought a Hiroshige book under your influence.
I'll be back to say more on the personal poems which you treat us to with such admirable frankness.

Larry

[5th column]

Hey Bisay, All I've Got is a little work of genius made all the better by the p.s

p.s guess where I'm writing this from?!

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Hi,

Once again I'm mesmerized by the Japanese print poems - and thankful for your gift of them. I actually bought a Hiroshige book under your influence.
I'll be back to say more on the personal poems which you treat us to with such admirable frankness.

Larry

Thanks, Larry. I remember your fondness for the Japanese print poems well. At this point, there are only one or two more prints in the series without a poem. I have done a number more on my own away from PFFA. I have a large Word document with all of them laid out as I would wish with a brief introduction and notes on various things like pronunciation guides for the few Japanese terms that appear, and some background. If I ever get it done, perhaps, I could send you a PDF of the whole, if you would wish.

Hey Bisay, All I've Got is a little work of genius made all the better by the p.s

p.s guess where I'm writing this from?!

Thanks, 5th. That one wrote itself, and its self-referential cleverness made it an absolute must to post.

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Never Easy

I ventured into Hades on an unexpected journey,
The spectres and the shades were vastly thronged on either side.
I ventured even further down the Tartarus abyss,
and there I saw my alter-ego struggle up a hill.

His name, of course, was Sisyphus, that man of bitter myth.
A clever and a crafty King—some say he’d best Odysseus—
but some had found his clever craft a thing to be despised.
He spent his endless time in death at cruel unceasing toil.

I smoothed the ground before him, as he pushed his way uphill,
the giant rock against his breast—with dead but deathless force he pressed.
He reached the crest, and here our breathless Sisyphus could rest
for not a single moment, for the boulder rolled him down.

I threw my rope and tied one end to some fair distant fruit tree;
its boughs bent low from side to side where lonely starving Tantalus was tied.
I threw the other end below to Sisyphus and cried out—
“Tie up the distant end, my clever crafty King!”—and he complied.

The fruit tree held the boulder, as its branches bent and swayed,
so Sisyphus found brief relief, and stopped to mop his brow.
Poor Tantalus, in hunger, gnawed and chewed the fibrous hemp—
the bitter fibers lashed his tongue, and cut his face and neck.

The fraying rope recoiled at once; the fruit tree snapped and fell,
and Sisyphus fell back again before he'd climbed the hill,
and Tantalus fell bleeding—free!—with bitter curses on his lips.
He spied a fallen apple, by the boulder where a broken bough now lied.

He reached in desperation, but he stumbled all too swiftly;
a loop of rope ensnared him, as the gods command his doom.
He grabbed the gnawed and fraying end, and pulled with all his might,
as Sisyphus pushed grimly where the other end was tied.

The boulder moved quite slowly, but it moved a little more
than Sisyphus was used to—he stumbled unexpectedly,
and cursed the broken bough. He kicked away the apple and the bough
it was attached to—poor Tantalus spit blood and bitter bile.

He looked at me and cursed me for a meddling good-for-nothing,
and Sisyphus agreed with him. He asked if Zeus had sent me.
I pleaded understanding, for I'd only wished to help—
to make a little easier the task before him always.

But Sisyphus showed cleverness, for Sisyphus was wise—
“You miscreants know nothing of the gods, or of deep Tartarus:
you made my struggle easier for just a moment now—
but then I stumbled, lost my footing, stunned by my relief.

“but now things have returned again. My trials are as before,
except I have the memory of easier—not easy.
My back still breaks each heavy step beneath the boulder's weight,
and Tantalus now gnaws me, though I kick him in the face.

“Leave well enough alone, when you know nothing—or so little—
that the only thing foreseeable is that nothing is foreseen.”
I grabbed the remnants of my rope, and started on my climb,
throwing up the slender strand to the craggy rocks above.

I scrambled up the sheer abyss, and coiled the rope behind me.
I thought about his words, and all the toils that lied before me.
I wondered of my journey's end, my fearful destination.
The thing he said that stayed with me made all my questions easier—

though harder, too—a strange thing. For I understood at last,
that, through it all—despite it all—that easier would tantalize me—
tempt me from my chosen path, a golden apple always out of reach.
For easier can fool you: it’s relative at best. The quest is never easy.



--------------------

BrianIs AtYou

[Janet]

Hi Brian- all I've got has lovely rhythm and sonics- playful and personal. Enjoyed my visit.

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Hi Brian- all I've got has lovely rhythm and sonics- playful and personal. Enjoyed my visit.

Thanks, Janet. I'm still in catch-up mode, so another one is coming today.

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

In the Land of Gaton

In the land of Gaton lived a cat who was King.
And all of his subjects, both furless and furred—
though some were not happy, if that is the word—
lined up at his throne to purr at his Ring.

The canine court jester barked jokes—they're his thing.
But he laughed very little—his humor deferred
to nights in the doghouse, which he much preferred.
His life felt like prison; he suffered the sting

of canine pride shattered. But that soon would change.
The hairless cats asked him for help with their plot—
the Elf Cats, the Sphynx, and the rest of that lot.
The King heard some rumors, and thought it was strange.

He asked the advice of his calico Queen.
The Queen was well-loved, but, alas!—she was tired,
and wanted no part of it. All she desired
were kittens to mother. She hated the scene!—

the court-enforced pomp! that dog! and that Ring!
She herded her kittens all back to her quarters,
command-mewed her chambercats, pussies, and porters
to follow her hence. What would the night bring?

At ten after midnight, the moon was quite full—
the catacombs empty of cats—and the King
was sleeping and purring alone with his Ring.
The hairless cats padded quite softly. Their dull

measured footsteps unheard by the guard.
The dog in his doghouse—he howled at the moon,
distracting attention, and chewing the boon
of a bone they had left him, out there in the yard.

The end came quite swiftly. The hairless cats pounced.
The King and his Ring were dethroned, and the court
was vacuumed of unsightly hair. And the sport
that they made of the guard! They trounced him and bounced

him outside in the yard! But what of the Queen,
that calico beauty, whose hair was the thing
that most of the hairless preferred to the Ring?
They made her the monarch, and now they all preen

while playing with kittens in peace at the court—
the dog in his doghouse, content with his bone—
the King in the wilderness, sad and alone—
but new plots are brewing, or so they report.

----------------

BrianIs AtYou

[Steven]

Hi, Brian


There are a lot of really good things going on in this thread, but once again I'm captivated by the Japanese print poem. The latest one, 'Dawn at Isawa in the Kai Province', impressed me even more than the first one I read. Fair play to you for mastering the form. To read these two poems really relaxes me. I think that's important, that when you read, the poem doesn't dominate too much.

Some specific lines that I thought were just great:

there is nothing to be done.
Someday the long night will end—

Over the slim bridge,
and into the morning mist,
Fuji and Edo await.


Travelers raise weary eyes—
the short night ends far too soon.

Sublime work -- thanks for sharing it.