variant mist
[Doom, castling]
Lem reached for the boggle
Ancient greed gripped,
Prehensile greed, filigree’d
Desire, calming down the waters,
Angering the myths of doom,
Castling the kings within. This
Carousel lapses, this storm withers,
This kestrel flies the dreams
Of hell. Now I have a straight face,
I linger, I seed the vastness,
Crippled by nascent envy
In the face of aqueous retribution.
She traveled the third ways,
A vigilant second,
Desperation in a perilous
World.
Lem reached for the boggle
Ancient greed gripped,
Prehensile greed, filigree’d
Desire, calming down the waters,
Angering the myths of doom,
Castling the kings within. This
Carousel lapses, this storm withers,
This kestrel flies the dreams
Of hell. Now I have a straight face,
I linger, I seed the vastness,
Crippled by nascent envy
In the face of aqueous retribution.
She traveled the third ways,
A vigilant second,
Desperation in a perilous
World.
Labels: rooking
posted by murat11 at 8:04 PM
12 Comments:
Stanislaw Lem? Or just a name picked out of the ether? Either way this led me to him on wikipedia. Interesting dude, I'll be reading more about him. Greed certainly is prehensile grabs a hold of folks and greedy folks grab. That hawk needs to flap harder - I'm afeared those kind of dreams can catch up to you.
My favorite lines are Crippled by nascent envy In the face of aqueous retribution. Envy is always crippling and freezes me - that and the fear of someone symbolically spitting at my work. Is it that way for all of us?
Travelling the third ways - the third place is an online community made up of relationships outside of work and home - the first and second places.
The last line makes me start over from the beginning. there is a tired, resignedness to this but my money is on filigree's desire. She gonna calm the waters and start the carousel spinning..
Dee: That's some mighty fine detective work there, sister. In a Douglas Adams interview, he acknowledges a debt to Stanislaw Lem, which sent me revisiting. I gave a short story excerpt to my SAT Prep class, so he was in my frontal lobes. As we know, love always wins, and so too filigree. Clearly, with Lem, Tolkien's LOTR (this evening's The Return of the King, especially) figures in the undertow as well.
If you google Lem, the third link is Him on wikipedia. Not too hard to find :) I wonder if he would have allowed his books to be sold in electronic form. I;m not so sure he would have been a third placer either, but I would have followed him on Twitter..
Don't know Stanislaw Lem and no time to google. (sigh) I did enjoy the poem. Quite a change from the happy stuff inspired by the urchins of 6th period. Your SAT class must be depressing...
Dee: Lem was huge back in, I think, the 70s, a Lem-ish renaissance, back when I had no clue how to read sci-fi: my brain was solidly locked on its left-brained channel in those days. Except when I was doing therapy, which was at the time, I suppose, my chosen art form.
Teresa: Don't let the poem be a reflection on the class. They're actually a nice buzzing hive of urchin activity. My least favorite "subject" to "teach," but a really cool group of people. We've turned it into a kind of resource room / independent study class, so folks are all off on their various projects. The poem was actually written during yesterday's sixth period class. Today, they're looking at surrealist paintings and writing poems to go with them - lotsa fun.
Hope you give us a peek :)
Guess I'm yet another person unfamiliar with Lem... I enjoyed the comments, though; there's always something new to learn around here.
And I liked the poem, too. My reading of it was colored by the picture of the lonely rook and the tags you used... reminded me of the queasy feeling I get every time I castle... as though my king has gone into sequestered retreat. I want him to be brave and noble, and he just never is...
Sure liked the foreboding rhythm of ...This/
Carousel lapses, this storm withers,/ This kestrel flies the dreams/ Of hell.
Yikes!
Well, all that foreboding just kind of rang with me coming into the homestretch. Only two more weeks of classes and then a week of finals, all kinds of papers and presentations and this and that... a true storm that withers.
Anno: I am a mere poseur when it comes to chess these days. Walden, on the other hand, is the real deal: he loves to pare down to his king and his rooks and go to work blowing up his opponents - his father's pieces included.
Teresa: Not a perfect storm, for sure. Glad to hear you're in the home stretch, but I'll be happier for you when you're on the other end of the stretch . . .
Dee: We'll have to see what they cook up. They're working on them yesterday and today.
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