Notes - (poetic-like) draft - Dead 11 /

       Late morning. You and Carol are at the far north lot at Pine Hill Lakes Park facing the west. Carol is working on a couple bills to pay today before reading. You don’t have anything to say. – Amorella

       1131 hours. I am mostly tired, Amorella. We had to ‘clean up’ before Jill arrived to clean the house. We had too much stuff cluttered about. Carol has a hair appointment at one o’clock and we have some errands and lunch to do beforehand. Tomorrow she has her BART luncheon in Blue Ash. I skipped exercise today.

       You had lunch at Piada Street Italian, stopped at the post office to mail and pick up two folders of stamps then you dropped off Carol and are sitting nearby on the parking lot at the northeast corner of Snyder and Tylersville watching traffic. It is cool, windy and cloudy but you have the top back and windows down some anyway. Let’s work on Dead Eleven boy. – Amorella

       1300 hours. I think it is a mistaken cause; however, we’ll see.

       1519 hours. I have 770 words of rather unorthodox poetry. Cauldron stirred without a witches’ brew. It is a form of unorthodox madness. Not done – words spray painted between walls of reality and not. Who’s to say Pandora’s box ever had a lid at all – who’s to say?

       I thought you were dead orndorff? Seems the case is not so when words attach to flowers, a soul’s expression angelic burnt from the hallows. Time passes and you are at the community center waiting for Carol to complete her laps. Post draft. – Amorella

       1559 hours. It is only a draft.

       A second draft and poetic in nature. – Amorella

       1600. We’ll see.  I could not help but think of Eliot's 'J. Alfred Prufrock' while composing this raw poetic-like draft. I don’t know why.

** **

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

BY T. S. ELIOT 

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse 
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo, 
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse. 
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo 
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero, 
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

               And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

               And should I then presume?

               And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head

               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;

               That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

               “That is not it at all,

               That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

** **

** **

The Dead 11 – Second Draft (as poetry) -rho        ----   Bold for working only

Two naked souls once and

without spine and eyes and trunk and hands and feet

Now, Hearts, we have and Minds too.

Secondary sources not Souls own –

Merlyn mutters,

How is it that wordlessness matters, that wordlessness

designs all physics and beyond?        

Methinks she wishes

to be free of me

but that kind of thing doesn’t happen.

Merlyn does not exist

with the Dead as his Soul speaks.

When alive Merlyn did not exist

with the Living nor the Dead when his Soul spoke.

Souls are Primary;

heartsanminds are less than Primary.

With recollection Merlyn thinks

when I was alive I ‘felt’

I had a soul but I had no proof.

Now, dead, I have no proof I lived.

Residual dreams are not proof.

I was and am only in a dream.

I dream consciousness and I am.

         There is no melody in a raw note

         Poetry must ebb and flow

         I sit a rock without a touch of Earth.

         I don’t believe ever I stepped on life’s rail

         with my soul stepped in with me

Merlyn sits in stone; itself rising from stone.

Our grave Earth.

One of many semi-solid cemeteries scattered

within Encompassed Physics.

Shall we let Merlyn see

a soul’s shape in unmattered nature?

No one can define life without being dead.

The Living do not know what’s missing.

Enough though, responds Foretoken,

Well-spirited Merlyn is heartanmind in soul

The less in the more.

To see

multiple dimensions with multiple universes within –

it breaks the conceptual think of how souls actually are

Two naked souls once and

without spine and eyes and trunk and hands and feet

Now, Hearts, we have and Minds too.

Secondary sources not Souls own –

         To the Living the Souls

Foretoken and Venerable appear untouchable

yet these two are solid enough

within a spray resourceful and heartfelt in fancy.

All souls know what they are –

immortal and though nothing,

souls are stronger than

the physics guiding

and framing the many universes

containing the Living.

Merlyn sits in stone; itself rising from stone.

Our grave Earth.

One of many semi-solid cemeteries scattered

within Encompassed Physics.

Shall we let Merlyn see

a soul’s shape in unmattered nature?

Venerable touches Foretoken in a notion –

Shall we let Merlyn see

a soul’s shape in unmattered nature?

Foretoken’s touch responds

To sit in the nothing of entirety

is Bliss Eternal

Merlyn mutters,

How is it that wordlessness matters, that wordlessness

designs all physics and beyond?

Merlyn rests reflecting.

I was born and died centuries ago,

a millennium and more. From dreamed puffs

I, once cooled bones in a sweater of warmed air.

My soul stirs uncomfortable in presented mode.

Shall we let Merlyn see

a soul’s shape in unmattered nature?

Methinks she wishes

to be free of me

but that kind of thing doesn’t happen.

Venerable touches Foretoken in a notion –

Foretoken’s touch responds

To sit in the nothing of entirety

is Bliss Eternal

Two naked souls once and

without spine and eyes and trunk and hands and feet

Now, Hearts, we have and Minds too.

Secondary sources not Souls own –

Even the humane Dead, the heartanmind,

cannot suspect we, the uncapitalized, are the primary.

Where is the self-interest in that?

Hearts and Minds rise and set by their own son

Even though we are the breath they take in

How was it though without holding heartansoul within

We were essence without wonder

we were not self-generated or self-serving

We are not self-serving           Such a weakness in reason

When Dead life is Saudade?        

Humanity is not clothing

Humanity is water in the soul   

Only water, not nourishment

Souls feed, it seems, on the opposite of breathing in and out

Merlyn sits in stone; itself rising from stone.

Our grave Earth.

One of many semi-solid cemeteries scattered

within Encompassed Physics.

Swarms of souls                  

Schools of souls

To what end from what beginning?

To remember how it is to be a what

Relative or not 

To life in the living – being

Only when once been.  Can one be again without flesh

Shall we let Merlyn see

a soul’s shape in unmattered nature?

A new alphabet for a new thought       

Life can be spelt differently in irregular form

Grammar like gravity is the same living or dead  

Grammar is the soul’s shell

Stored for good pickings in memory           

A spirit to have been recoiling

Without an inside or out                 

A line without end

no more solid than a period.

Bent by grammar not gravity         

No words, no punctuation in this deep.

Merlyn sits in stone; itself rising from stone.

Our grave Earth.

One of many semi-solid cemeteries scattered

within Encompassed Physics.

** **