2/24/09 - Lonesome Hobo's Poetry

From the stolen diary of a Lonesome Hobo lying in Washington Square Park

I am a Lonesome Hobo who threw away his wealth
I squandered love on someone else, forgot about myself

I am the tightrope walker, just before he falls
I looked for my love in the crowd and noticed she was gone

I clothe myself in garbage, material and fake
The tattered shreds reflect my heart, scared in disarray

I cast you in my movie, you said you loved the script
You changed the lines without me knowing, boy do I feel jipped

Today I shoot the camera, I hide behind the lens
I wish that could do or say that which would make amends

Meet me in the park sometime, beneath our fav'rite tree
The place you swore undying love and gave your heart to me

I would sing you a folk song, about life that never ends
But I'd rather share my heart with you, than remain as simply friends.

I'm told I must stop rhyming, that my lines are played and cheap
The most beautiful, profundities, in my mind I'll keep

2/23/09 - Lonesome Hobo's Loneliness

From the stolen diary of a Lonesome Hobo laying in Washington Square Park

Is there anything worse than feeling completely alone?
Solitude has it's benefits, but loneliness is different.
Loneliness is like a slow moving, painful cancer.
I feel the pain tapping the love from my heart, sucking the goodness out of my body.
What do you do to stop it?
How do you bring yourself to go on when everything you do reminds you that life never used to be this painful?
I don't want to deal with the pain. I've been dealing with pain my whole life and I don't need anymore.
I can't sleep.
I can't eat.
I can't feel the way a functioning human being feels.
I'm putting off death as long as I can. When I can't deal with it anymore, then I'll let death take me. As long as I'm around, that's proof that I can take the hurt of desertion, right?
The sleep of the sinful is no rest at all.
I'm being punished for sins no one knows but me.
What was once bright and beautiful, has grown gray and ugly; the sun, the clouds, the sky, the people with whom I walk.
The day holds no providence for me anymore. I'll just sit here and grind my teeth while God plans my next misfortune.
I wonder what my next unfortunate event shall be... I've had enough of them.

I could list them, but my hand is getting tired and my pen is running out of ink.

The rats will keep me warm tonight.

Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll

Desperate Times Famous Poets Series: Volume I

Here, for your reading and analyzing pleasure, is one of my favorite poems. Taken from Through The Looking Glass by the great Lewis Carroll: Jabberwocky. The poem appears at the end of the first chapter in Carroll's sequel to Alice in Wonderland.

Here's what Alice had to say after reading the poem...

"It seems very pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand!" (You see she didn't like to confess even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate---"

JABBERWOCKY

JABBERWOCKY
Lewis Carroll
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.


"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.


`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

What are your thoughts on the work? Please, feel free to post your opinions, and perhaps your thoughts on the poem as it relates to the previous post of prose entitled Over The Meadow And Through The Woods.

Over the Meadow and Through the Woods

Desperate Times Prose: Volume IX

Over The Meadow and Through The Woods
a tale of dreams...

Part One

Reboot. The computer screen flickers, stark black and white shades of infinity. I must get some work done tonight. Altho, my increasingly labored typing tells me I'm tired, I must go on. My fingers get heavier with each keystroke. I begin to drift. Light fades and colors bloom out of reality. The solstice is here. My computer gives birth to a triple moon. Light beams shoot forth and I run for dear life. Fate chases me through rainbow colored space; milky smooth waves pass over and under me. The waves grow fearsome, the claw at my face, shrieking unpronounceable curses. I see the end. I see light. I see peace. I see pain behind me, clear skies up ahead. Eternity slows down, I live life one thirty-second of a second, one frame at a time.

Each passing second fills me with the desire to tumble off in to a puckish green meadow of sleep. I close my eyes and dream myself a field. Unfazed by my feckless exploits, I lay in a puckish green meadow in peace. A raven circles overhead. Even though I know he will do me no harm, I still wonder why he has come to this place. Ravens do not prey. They wait for the nearly dead to expire, that they might feast on carrion. The Ravens can smell death approaching like a sixth sense. Perhaps this Raven smells death on me. Perhaps he has come to warn me. Or perhaps he has simply come to say hello.

I feel alive. I feel awake in this dream, far more so than in the waking. I think the Raven has in all actuality, mistaken me for someone else. I look at him looking at me. I must remind him of something; a previous version of myself maybe. Perhaps I represent the personification of an idea, a unique point of view trapped inside something corporeal, waiting, always, waiting to be unleashed. The ground quakes. There is a tree? There is a tree apparently. The tree simply appeared, I could swear it was not here when I first entered the field. Unnerved, I pick myself up. My overalls are covered in white wash and I lead a red wagon full of misappropriated toys down the path ahead.

Part Two

Sky smiles down upon me as I walk, the way a father smiles upon his son. The wagon seemed to vanish and I am no longer wearing overalls. Clothed in the colors of the forest I walk along the country dirt road. A small yellow creature slightly resembling a Sunday comic strip character follows close behind. The path, once blooming with flowers of every color imaginable, has grown gray and listless. A tree shrub groans in pain. I hear his cries; weary from a long life of being shoved aside and stepped on. A butterfly zooms past me. Frogs of every shape, size and shade begin hopping toward me in perfect synchronization. All of a sudden I am in a packed theatre, surrounded by dreamers and philanthropists from all plains of existence. An usher with six legs, a violin and a rather vegetative complexion ushers me to my seat. A private box has been reserved in my name. I have the best seat in the forest theatre. The lights dim, the curtain lifts, the orchestra readies and before I know it, I’m witnessing an all amphibian musical production of the Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass. Despite of, or perhaps thanks to the rather fantastical source material, I am startled, scared and downright impressed at how efficiently the frogs’ used dance to progress the plot. The music and lyrics reminded me of Gilbert & Sullivan, Robert Johnson and Elliot Smith. The music soared and pounded and exploded throughout the theatre and through the forest. My spirit had been lifted. So moving were the frogs in their individual roles and as an ensemble, that they had me in tears by the finale. After the performance I had the honor of being invited backstage to meet the creative team.

I told the Frogs how much I appreciated their obvious uncanny understanding of American Musical as a relevant contemporary art form. I complimented them on an all around stellar production and before departing, asked the artistic director if the company would be adapting another classic for next season. The artistic director responded by taking me aside and telling me how they’ve been adapting source material in to musicals for millennia. The artistic director, a yellow tongued, brown spotted frog name Slitherdin said my comments warmed his cold blooded heart and the hearts of his fellow amphibians, but that the company wanted to move in another direction. Next season would feature the frogs production of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre on ice. Privately I thought that seemed like a bit of a step backward. Publicly I wished Slitherdin and his friends good luck and told them I would do my best to attend next season.

Part Three
The theatre disappears. The forest path lies in front of me. The light fades, my confusion grows. I look to the smiling sky, but the sky smiles no longer. Troubled by a line in the frogs’ production I ask myself; am I dreaming? Or am I merely part of someone else's dream? Were the frogs a figment of my imagination? Am I a figment of theirs? Clouds block my sight and I know what’s happening. It’s happened before and it’s happening again; I know it, I can feel it in my ventricles. My vision is being obscured my melancholy horror.

Part Four
Melancholy Horror had always been completely unpredictable. She took on many forms. There are legends, stories really, of her birth to Celestial parents. Some say she was the daughter of a bastard wolf and an evil sorceress. Some say she lives in all of us, in the deep recesses of the negative heart soul, buried underneath grief; hidden between nightmare and despair. Truth be told, the origins of Melancholy Horror remain largely unknown and highly suspect.

There stands before me a man, cloaked in gray. He carries a giant book in his hand. With a nod of his head, he tells me to follow the path down through the forest to where the wild oak tree forks the road. At the oak tree I take the path on the right. The skies grow darker. Who knew what manner of creature inhabited the forest. I hadn’t exactly taken stock of the patronage at the theatre, but it seemed to me that if my usher had six legs, then there was no telling what Sprites, Jabberwoks, Vernicious K'nids or Flugglecarps lurked in this unknown forest.


I longed to be lying in the puckish green meadow with the Raven comfortably perched on the branch of our mutual friend the redwood tree.

(Next Time: Part Five)

The De-Evolution and Re-Evolution of Current Existence

Desperate Times Prose: Volume VIII

The De-evolution and Re-evolution of Current Existence
as recalled by Jared Weiss

PART I - De-Evolution (Slowly dying Haiku)

1.

Something Brown gets down
In a Flemish kind of way
Leuven keeps movin'

2.

Flowers keep dying
Rain drenched Sunday shuts me in
Board game sales are up

3.

Focusing on wrong
Why not focus on what's right?
Refocusing now

4.

Dream King is calling
The soft meadows, fields of green
protect my slumber

5.

Representing loss
Surreality presents
dashed expectations

6.

Stood up and put out
Let down, drugged up, feeling down
Tie rocks to my leg

7.

Loneliest evening
Shadows creep up white walls
threatening violence

8.

Spend some time thinking
about how you've hurt yourself
Now try something else

9.

Stare at blind poets
On street corners, musicians
struggling to make the scene

10.

Find solace in the cold
From something unfamiliar
Old stories fade

PART II - The Poet's Last Waltz (Re-Evolution)

11.

A blind poet on eighth street curses a traffic cop
The man takes exception to the poet's arrogance but tries not to make a scene
The artist eggs him on with slang graffiti on the walls
While troubadours play sweet love songs on the café sidewalk

12.

The poet composes angry scorn for all the men who've done him wrong
Like the music mechanic of Times Square, who raped his words in to a song
The troubadours hear a voice truth pure, their lonely souls ache no more
"Sacrifice me for difference sake" the poet says – I'll be famous in death for sure

13.

City boy becomes a man as he takes a young girl's arm
She clutches his shoulder in blissful embrace, protecting her from harm
She's shy at first, but he's got a song that speaks of his hunger for love
He takes the guitar from off of his back and plays what he's dreaming of

14.

Entranced in the moment fireworks go off in the summer on the beach
A truth song frightens and inspires a young boy and the world seems just in reach
And all the men who've wronged the poet, show up on the right
To the left of the poet a cop shivers and quakes, not even supposed to be here tonight

15.

The sometime lovers overhear, the poet's song of truth
Reminds her of home and daddy, who moaned and yelled and sipped vermouth
The Markets over crowded with slaves of new found freedom giving way
To the new revolution east village child, down to seize the day

16.

His melancholic horror, evaporates with snow
We get drunk while we wait for the poet to explode, to numb us to the sight
For the poet dances naked in the streets, mind open and willing to flow
The Horizon line grows dim as the junky poet sets up for the night

17.

Sirens wail and bullets fly, Many here about to die
The poet runs through traffic, shouting words fantastic
Lithe as a kitten, the poet seems smitten with dodging through cars all night long
Swiped, now he falters, his game plan he alters, his goal now to sing one last song

18.

He spoke very slow, before he did go
He struggled to open his mouth
With a lift of his arm, ignoring the pain,
he stretched out his hand and began to sing

19.

"Alone she seems to sleep so sweet
As I blow sweet kisses in her ear
She dreams and prays her soul to keep
In the heart of fallen angels... sleep."

20.

Tonight, I saw a poet reborn
He carried scars, deserved scorn
No man alive could break his will
Or drive him to that righteous kill

The End