Relax, Larry is here to ease your soul.

[Scavella]

Hey, Larry, I’m just dropping by to praise and fluff this thread ESPECIALLY Neanderthal flute. The note makes it!! Great stuff there. Cheers.

[Midge]

Yo Larry,

I think Independence Day 2 would have been a lot better if they'd followed your script; Neanderthal Flute is most enjoyable, both for its tercets and its explanatory note. Fighting Words drums along in a combative rhythm. And New ID slides along neatly and inevitably with its well-handled metre and rhyme. It's a funny thing seeing that gap -- between our young selves made static in documents etc and the face we see in the mirror -- getting wider. It's both so gradual and so sudden.

[larryrap]

Hey Matt, Sarah, Cameron, Scraps, Scavella, Midge - I'm touched by your companionship.

I'm not sure if I'll proceed with the alien poems - the outline would be them getting more and more frantic and desperate for us to merge with them until some colossal cosmo-psycho-romantic break occurs. I wouldn't even have started unless it was the only thing that kind of worked that day.

I'm letting complicated political frustrations inform some of the poems and as usual they're not terribly well thought-out, so you can expect some inedible murkiness - don't mistake that for wisdom.

[larryrap]

4th – Tzimtzum

It was not a time for celebration,
although we had escaped the worst of it,
nor did lamentation feel right,
although our shame had been uncovered,
and some of our best were gone.

We tried to talk, but words trailed off –
reminders of old crippled ways.
And so silence took hold,
retracting sap from roots and branches
and coating the Spring with a frail, brittle crust.

We had spent our fury and tenderness
in last-ditch flurry,
yet the great alien god,
the true image of our dreams and fears,
had barely been glimpsed.

We tried to tailor this world,
to marry its tilt to our need. Now
we pull back. Mend our houses.
Give wide berth to those who boast answers.
Bend neither inward nor outward.

We wait.

[David John]

Hi Larry,

’New ID’ was a taut and pleasing first offering. I loved this:

‘The one that kept my youthful guise
had set its mind to atomize:’

Fighting Words was brutal and satisfying.

I loved “teeth tongues and arrows’ and that closing couplet.

Neanderthal Flute was my favourite so far. There was this sense of time stopping as the events unfolded. Eerie and beautiful.

Tzimtzum - Evoked a sense of sorrow and regret, of a falling back and need for recalibration. I really enjoyed this:

We tried to talk, but words trailed off –
reminders of old crippled ways.
And so silence took hold,
retracting sap from roots and branches
and coating the Spring with a frail, brittle crust.

[larryrap]

Hello David, i'm pleased you visited and enjoyed reading.

[larryrap]

5th - There Are Times

There are times that are hostile to any expression but smug,
when screens are alight with the smiles of superior people,
and the streets are a daily demand to get wealthy or die.
Then one is advised take refuge from friends, ignore doorbells,
keep the company of books, fellow hermits confined to their rooms
who crafted fine mazes around their own failure to thrive.

At other times misery bursts into bloom for a season,
music is judged by its level of angry denouncement
and a groan of disgust is the passport to social consent.
Times like these are just right for observing the birds by your window,
how they balance on branches embellished with lavish precision,
for now is as fitting a time as no other could be.

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Hey Larry,

I got an Old Testament vibe from Tzimtzum even before I googled the title (I think the lamentations helped). Though I also get the sense it applies to the modern world too. I like it a fair bit without fully understanding it. It's enigmatic in a way that makes me want to reread and ponder. I'm not sure who the we are. I think they may be us, if that makes sense? And that what we're waiting for is things to get worse rather than better, that the great alien god is coming. The end times.

There are Times The theme of taking refuge seems to link back to the previous poem, to pulling back and mending houses, staying away from others. I like the way that both sets of times yield very similar advice. Withdraw and look inward, or withdraw and look outward. And I like way the implication seems to be that there are the only two types of time.

Both of these are poems I'd like to have more time with.

Matt

[PClem]

Larry - New ID - "had set its mind to atomize" is a great phrase and descriptive of IDs, credit cards, people. That one will stick to me.
Fighting Words - the hurt, despair, regret and guilt that comes with disillusionment.
Tzimtzum - This seems to continue Fighting Words. S3 L3-5 are particularly memorable.
Neanderthal - this is my favorite, so far. Especially like S3 and 4.
There are times - the end is a befitting counterpoint to what precedes.

[Dunc]

Larry

Neanderthal Flute ─ Hmm ... within the poem I was able to work out that visitors from Elsewhere were speaking, but I had it dated to Neanderthal times, not at once recognising that we're still in 'em. Thanks for the note; between that and the poem you present an entire novel. Moved over, War and Peace!

Tzimtzum ─ so, potential for new ways of thinking and seeing, of being nearer or further from the divine, and yet ending in disappointment, contraction, being left with no plan but to wait. "yet the great alien god, / the true image of our dreams and fears, / had barely been glimpsed" is a frustration, a defeat, echoes in many parts of the world at present.

There Are Times ─ In a similar key to the previous, a Weltschmerz moving to anger; there will never be a better time for looking out the window,

The old power, then ─ so that when you hit these topics, they stay hit, indeed.

Regards / Dunc

[larryrap]

Dunc, thanks for returning and being as generous as ever.

[larryrap]

6th – The Perfect Song
for Xiu Xiu

Holiness happens,
unsummoned, far
from the world’s busy eyes,

when the spirit is splayed
on the body’s rough table,
twice raped and forced to come –

when there’s nowhere to crawl
but the hill of perdition,
broken in twelve, prepared to die.

Listen, you can hear it,
almost: the perfect song,
chained to the floor in a sun-denied basement,

adoring your name, pretending it’s time.

[larryrap]

7th - The Song of the Well

....Rise up, well, sing to it!
.....Dug by the leaders,
.....bored by the nobles
.....with their scepters and staffs.
..........Numbers 21:17-18

Rise, O well,
because our engineers are crafty.
Because our tools are refined.
Because our leaders speak,
and that which sustains us
falls into our hands.

Sing, for we are no longer children
hiding from thunder.
Forty years of stone
have rubbed the soft from our bones.
Sing of institutions, devised to keep
our blade from the next man’s eye.

Tell me which is the question
and which the answer:
our thirst, our thanks,
or the water,
rising pure from perdition,
a ripple of liquid light.

[Jee Leong]

Hi, Larry. "Tzimtzum" is inimitable larryrap. The strong emotions matched by the equally strong restraint. The passion dogged by the ambivalence, given as the only ethical stance possible. "There Are Times" has that bejeweled line: "how they balance on branches embellished with lavish precision" set aptly in a statement of silver. "The Song of the Well" is nothing less than a prayer.

[larryrap]

Jee, I was delighted to find your kind comments this morning. Many thanks!