Tuesday, March 20, 2007

St Joseph's Day "poetry" inspired by, among other things, this Rich Leonardi post


Lines written on March 19

The Orbs are silent, yet if one star,
alone may guess of who you are,
no man who bides in Adam's wake may know.
In darkness you arise and toil,
for Master who in darkness coil;
In darkness, home - you to darkness go.

You furnish board for those who starve,
and for the lame the step you carve,
the altar built is but for never wed
In living wood intricacies,
are wrought for but the blind to see;
In sturdy pine the ark but for the dead.

And in the night, the prayer you raise
is, like the suff'ring prophet's days,
delivered deaf and empty, dry and cold.
The lamb is lost, its love in vain,
and bitterness will now remain,
long, long as the vain limb and mind grow old.

Gnarlèd feet tread dusty sand,
with tool borne by gnarlèd hand;
now bravely face this day your blackest hour
But turn, the angel speaks: how could
your gnarlèd stick of long dead wood
burst into flower?


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Feel better now, do we?

You are clearly a fine writer, why waste it being juvenile and bitter?

Rather than clog up Mark's comboxes, feel free to email me directly.

godblinked@bellsouth.net

cricket said...

I don't understand your comment Adolfo. Do you mean that my poem is juvenile and bitter? I think I can defend it against the latter. Or are you referring to my comments on Mark's blog as juvenile and bitter? Again, I'll cop to being juvenile--I'm not sure what the profit would be in being more adultish. But bitter? Not at all--I'm positively gay in the comboxes.

Anonymous said...

Cricket,
Of course my comment wasn't directed toward your poem. And, of course, you knew that. I really just didn't want to take up any more space on Mark's blog for something unrelated to the topic.

What you post is generally foolish and usually waste of everyone's time, especially yours. Quite frankly, you're better than that. So, when I called you an ass, I meant it. You were acting like an ass. You solidified my opinion of you when you decided to go all ad hominem on me later.

There is a great difference between being juvenile and being childlike.

Adolfo

cricket said...

Adolfo's comment above was sent to me by email. I replied under the subject line "Adolfo, I think I'm in love with you":

Just kidding.

1) No, I didn't know that it wasn't my poem you were talking about. I don't think I'm such a good poet, and "juvenile" or "sophomoric" might indeed be someone's considered opinion of my poetry. I wasn't prepared to defend it from the charge. As to "bitterness", the very word appears in the poem, though I contend it's not bitter in import. So you might have been talking about that. You did post in the comment box associated with the poem.

2) As to whether my posts are foolish, they're almost all light-hearted, while you don't appear to get all of them. Hence my comment which was all ad hominem as you say (So "ass" isn't all ad hominem?) I'm on Kathy Shaidle's side when it comes to ad hominem in the blogosphere: who cares, as long as it's witty (or not)--this ain't no Harvard debating society. But, see how I turned your words about pretending to be clever around on you? That was kind of clever, you have to admit. Incidentally, was that the comment you were referring to with your quip: Feel better now, do we? ?

3) As to whether my posts are a waste of everyone's time, they're not. As I said they're almost all very short, and can be written and read very quickly. I enjoy them immensely. You want a waste of time: there are people (we won't name) that post interminable comments of many paragraphs in Mark's haloscan boxes that take ten minutes to read, and when you're finished you realize only that they're idiots and that even you (you the reader, not you personally {see why do I feel the need to explain that?}) are a bit dumber than you were before. Isn't this email exchange a big waste of time? Maybe, but I'm still having fun.

4) Since we're being strictly logical, how is it that you can frankly know that I'm better than I think, while I can't know that you're worse?

5) I never laid a claim to childlikedness (is that even a word?)

Are you bitter?

Your darling boy,
a cricket

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I'd be a blackguard and a cad, if I weren't so ineffectual. The less said "About Me", the better.