25.8.04 | A Pseudo-Tribute To The Last Chapter of James Joyce's "Ulysses"
*Yes and do you want to change the constant stifling of your own voice and powers she said but not quite like that and i could think of no answer but i knew somewhere far away inside of me there is a child weeping and an old man weeping and they have both lost something dear to them but i can't for the life of me think what for i cannot even begin to grasp who i am and what i want anymore although i do know i do not want this continual existence on the edge of twilight walking in shadows until the end oh no that's not for me i so long to see the sun reflecting off a field of buttercups again and hear the river laughing it's way through the valley again but don't get me wrong here i love the moon as much as anyone and more than most it's just that you can't put all those eggs in one basket and i want to breathe deeply of the waking world once more do you see i always think of it like that Buddhist teaching where you are a playing a lute and you must neither tighten the strings so tight that they snap nor loosen them so much that the sound is all wrong and out of tune and did you see Keanu Reeves in that film it was his one good film i thought and i am very out of tune and my voice and power do indeed feel so very weak Prospero said and now my powers are all o'erthrown and what strength i've left is all mine own which is most faint faint faint yes everything feels distant how did i become this i who am most intelligent and compassionate towards others is this perhaps some kind of balance is that why most people find it easier to be crueller than kinder in the world today certainly many of those with hearts suffer more than those without i should be a stone unthinking and unflinching upon a beach beset only by the winds and tides i do so miss the sea i wonder if that's my Cornish ancestry but what of that it was so long ago and barely remembered amongst my family today i often find myself thinking of the past y'know even when it's no longer mine sometimes i remember my grandfather even though he's been dead over twenty years now we used to sit by the bowling green in the warm afternoon sun and he would take a penknife with a black handle and a bright red English apple out of his jacket pocket and peel the skin away before slicing segments up for us both i still have that penknife and i still peel apples that same way even after all these years i loved him so and yet i was the only one who did not weep on his funeral day when the curtains closed to upon the casket was that when i numbed myself to the world oh i miss him so and the others too there are thousands of people all carefully stored away within me some much loved like her she was so shy and defiant and quite beautiful with her dark gipsy hair and eyes full of enquiring vulnerability why we laughed at the whole world that first evening it was like nothing existed but we and we whispered and passed secret notes all night long oblivious to our friends around us in that bar some strangers that i only saw or heard for a fleeting second there was a very small child who waved both with sadness and joy at the entire bus as she was lifted off the doors step by her embarrassed and proud mother i remember them all as i age and the days go by ever swifter and swifter why sometimes i think i should be an angel in Wings of Desire you haven't seen it you should but most of all i remember her gipsy hair and eyes and of how she looks today and i try to remember that i don't want to disappoint her after all we've been through and be somebody that she can be proud of even if she no longer loves me the way she used to yes.
4 comments :.
Y'know I could never get away with James Joyce. Tiresome old windbag.
Unlike your magnificently verbose self!
WEll, th' last chapter of Ulysses was the only bit i really liked about it... although i do think the whole book has an aura of fabulous poetry about it... rare in books these days...
Personally, i wish i'd taken longer over this... i think i took me less than half an hour from conception to murder. And i think i should have suffered more mental anguish when writing it... i always write my best poetry when i'm in paiiiin... lol
I'll round up some volunteers to help you write your very best poetry if you like.
Joyce also needed to learn some punctuation, the slacker.
hmm, i think my poetry would enter the realms of "Godlike" if you were to do that, Carl. There'd be a queues around the block...
Yr too kind... no really, You ARE!!!
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