bluesy monday in verse

bluesy monday has arrived
and I've nothing solid to show
money's come, but pleasure is hardly derived
like my neighbours, i'be bound to my row

of seeking dollars more than a dime
so i can drive and not have to climb
uphill to reach the sundry shop in such hot clime
actually it's my bruised ego, that's the real crime
that my neigbur drives a limo, versus old jalopy of mine

so lady time has crept another se7en days on me
do i postpone my precious quest for another time
i continue to drown in my sorrows, trying to catch
the luxuries of the se7en seas
but meanwhile, the sun, the moon and the stars
they all laugh at me, at me, but i do not see

DESIDERATA is going to immerse himself in poetry for the comiing weeks in the run-up to prepare himself in a publishing project. I find by fleshing out my thoughts in verse in doing the gretaest justice to oneself. It's not just seeking the reader's understanding -- it's more the writer seeking to see himself AS IS.

Human beings' greatest reluctance, in my humblest of opinions, (and that is me the writer speaking for himself, for none others) is to confron the REALITY that he is, warts and pimples, bloomingg assets and smooth skin, et al. I'll be damned if I do not also admit to such reluctance; hence the occasional escapades into composing poems to share.

My esteemed readers, my poetry need bout elicit a universal response. No, no. If the response is ame from eah and everyone of you, then I would have failed. For I would have been not much different from a salesman peddling the illicit VCD of Passion of Christ or Jet Li in Fearless. Pay less in deed! RM5 a copy -- and every buyer's response is the same: Value for money thought it be a COPY of Mel Gibson's original work. Sacrifice a little quality ne'er mind -- I only want RM5 worth for my money.

As a poet, I want to excite in my dear friends spending precious time reading me his/her unique response. How my writing strikes your emotional chords in your unique heartstrings.
Don't ask me what do I mean by such and such a verse.
I'm asking of you what does that verse strike you most?
In eleiciting an emotional response.
I want to know your feelings.
Through verse I have rendered my feelings, innermost thoughts.
Baring myself -- yes, the Emperor does know his own vulnerability,
he's weakest in his naked glory.
Even a child can see through that.
It's the Adult, with all his thought drifting to material things --
worrying about the daily three meals,
the chikldren's eduactyion.
Yes, that holiday on SS VIRGO ON THE SE7EN SEAS.
The aduilt LOST on his own island,
or sold to the most foul of material world.

This morning I chanced on a fellow Blogger's "emailed"
nonsense verses, which elicited a similar nonsense response
yes, from Desi.
I guess, assume's the word, that Mental Jog @lucialai.org won't mind my reproducing
the said silly -- yet entertyaining, and teaching -- lines.

the new malaysian poem

"Posted in humour, CnP by Lucia on the April 24th, 2006

as monday is usually a blue monday to many since it is the start of a week… a long week of work work work… here’s a joke to cheer you guys up. received from forwarded mail."


Can study continue STUDY
Can’t study, work FACTORY
Cannot rely on CHARITY
Earn a little SALARY
Just enough 4 daily ROTI
Go work no WIRA but LRT.

Colleagues formerly FRIENDLY
Daily treated to KOPI
Now gradually get CRAZY
Behind me say I LAZY.

Boss has no SYMPATHY
Work always must HURRY
Say I not enough BUSY
Often ask me do OT

Midnight go back by TAXI
TAXI surcharge KILLING ME
Now i pokai and NO MORE MONEY

Borrow from chettia kena EXTRA FEE
Coz money is never FREE

Boy/girl-friend go STEADY
Serious, and then MARRY
Ceremony and PARTY
joker-friends give PANTY

No money sure no HONEY
10 months later be DADDY
Wife at GH birth a BABY
Monthly pay back RHB

Earn not enough FEEL GUILTY
Jump down suicide and MATI
No money 4 funeral how to BURY
Go see God every thing hoping will JADI
Because MALAYSIA BOLEH. SEMUA JADI.

One Response to 'the new malaysian poem'
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ylchong said,


on April 24th, 2006 at 10:56 am

i wake up feeling down
your poem adds to my frown
why go mati when malaysia
is land of milk and honey
when pokai go see your MP
failing witch see thy PM
He’ll surely offer thee tehsee
or capati or mamak mee
Or go-see taiko Ah Long
Borrow more, amore
Enuf to buy two coffins
One for Him and one for Thee

PS: Yes, monday blues
Can’t settle down to work
So UP to blog nonsense
Jest to get some syiok



NOW contrast the above with what follows -- extracts of two fellow movie fans' commentaries on a movie from my Goggling trail that ranks within Desi's list of must see; because my abiding poet William Wordsworth has had one of his immoral works immortalised there -- the strains (poetry is like music, yes?) keep bugging Desi because the verses somehow or other were strewn about my Hollywood Trail in some mystic connection which I have yet to fathom.
I will know, by 2010.
No, I can't wait till 2046!
So I seek my Reader's personal indulgence if I get a little selfish
in the coming weeks,
and Blog on personal things.
Funny things. Wicked things.
Nostalgia maybe.
Fun and frolic perhaps.
Insulting and ego-busting even, mayhaps.
But that's all fair in love and war. And writhings.


[1173] Splendour in the Grass

Date : 14 Feb 2003
1stLine: What though the radiance
Comment: by KassieB


Splendour in the Grass

What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass,
of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

-- William Wordsworth


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

William Wordsworth's 'Splendour in the Grass' is the poem we hear in the 1961
movie by the same name. Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty starred and Wood was
nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Deanie, Beatty's girlfriend.

The poem is from Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early
Childhood , which begins with the majestic:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.

The entire ode is well worth reading.

My first introduction to Splendour in the Grass was on a day when I was home
from school, sick with the flu. I passed the day watching movies on the
television. Though I was only about eleven or twelve years old, the poem
really resonated. And who can forget Natalie Wood struggling to read it in
her English class, then hearing her recite it again, this time much wiser,
at the end of the movie?

Kassie


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

The seocnd's from: "Anustup Datta"

The poem more or less summarises Wordsworth's poetic philosophy. He once
described poetry as "emotion recollected in tranquility" - his best poetry
has the poet-philosopher lying on his couch "in vacant or in pensive mood",
remembering a flash of beauty in Nature or Man. As his "inward eye"
diminished in power with age, his poetry too lost its power. Unlike other
poets - such as a Browning, for instance - his power of observation did not
mature with age, nor take on deeper and subtler overtones mellowed by
experience and understanding. Ultimately, the fount of stored memory and
captured emotion ran dry without anything to replenish it with. As a famous
critic observed, Wordsworth "lived on capital" - profligately.

I have always thought that Wordsworth at his best was the greatest poetic
Impressionist - his eye captures the fleeting moment in the same dazzling
interplay of light as Claude Monet's watercolours. And you know what Cezannesaid about Monet - "Only an eye, but my God what an eye!" Like Monet,Wordsworth remained the truest to the absolute fidelity of emotional impression.

Wordsworth himself realizes what he has lost through the passage of time,
and his reaffirmation of faith here sounds hollow and forced, as though he
were trying to convince himself that all is not gone. But try as he might, a
touch of nostalgia about the glory that was, of the splendours of the past,
creeps in. The grass remains splendid, but the keen-eyed young man who had
felt it earlier is no more."


DESIDERATA:

Many of us wish there were more than 24 in a day, don't we?
It's a mad rush here, a mad dash there,
and at the end of the day
we mourn, we have not done the more important things of the day.
And the cycle repeats itself.
I'm going to pause.
To lessen the moans.
Then maybe, by End-September, I have something to show.
I must also keep my word.
I've to deliver some PRIZE!