by swirlylollipops


Thanks to circumstances (and certain things turning up where they shouldn't have), I've had to go down the friends locked path.

In the pixels of this journal you will find discussions concerning:
- my life in Japan, which both exhilarates and terrifies me
- my inability to write, despite the degree that certifies I can
- ball jointed dolls, and how they have taken over my life
- pretty boys, who can never be overappreciated
- literature, and how the publishing industry is killing it
- music, an eclectic mix ranging from folk acoustic to J-Pop
- a lot of random babble

If none of the above disturb you, please comment below ^_^
 

Every April, on the ride to work, I see clusters of bright red poppies growing wild along the roadsides.

One day I will make it to Flanders fields and ANZAC Cove, but for now, I bike past the poppies at the going down of the sun and in the morning, and I remember them.



Lest We Forget 

Originally posted @ http://pithetaphish.dreamwidth.org/555420.html

So now every April I sit on the porch
as I watch the parade pass before me
I see my old comrades, how proudly they march,
reviving old dreams and past glories.
But the old men march slowly, bones stiff and sore,
tired old men, from a tired old war,
and the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
and I ask myself the same question.

And the band plays 'Waltzing Matilda'
as the old men still answer the call,
but year after year, more old men disappear,
soon none of them will march there at all.

LEST WE FORGET

 

In Flanders fields the poppies grow
between the crosses, row on row,
that mark our place, and in the sky,
the larks, still bravely singing, fly,
scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are dead; short days ago
we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
loved and were loved, and now we lie
in Flanders fields.

- Dr. John McCrae, 1915



lest we forget 

"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well."

- Atatürk, on those who fell at Gallipoli

they shall not grow old,
as we that are left grow old:
age shall not weary them,
nor the years condemn

at the going down of the sun
and in the morning
we will remember them 

Back from seeing 'Bandage' this arvo.

I was under the impression the cinema where it was playing here was tiny, so I held off until today in hope that there'd be less of a rush. As it turned out, the cinema was huge, if rather old and in a building that looks like it could collapse at any moment, and privately run (which is awesome and I'm happy to pay the slightly higher ticket prices to keep independent cinemas in business). I could have rocked up at 9:30am yesterday for the very first screening and gotten a seat without a problem. But fewer people in the hall is always a good thing.

And you're not here to listen to me curse at myself for not going yesterday, are you? ^_~

( IN-DEPTH SPOILERS AND LOTS OF FLAIL/ANALYSIS WITHIN )
 

RAYMOND CARVER


Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.



<3
 

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE


The Man and the Sea

Free man, you will always cherish the sea!
The sea is your mirror; you contemplate your soul
In the infinite unrolling of its billows;
Your mind is an abyss that is no less bitter.

You like to plunge into the bosom of your image;
You embrace it with eyes and arms, and your heart
Is distracted at times from its own clamoring
By the sound of this plaint, wild and untamable.

Both of you are gloomy and reticent:
Man, no one has sounded the depths of your being;
O Sea, no person knows your most hidden riches,
So zealously do you keep your secrets!

Yet for countless ages you have fought each other
Without pity, without remorse,
So fiercely do you love carnage and death,
O eternal fighters, implacable brothers!
 

BANJO PATERSON


The Man from Snowy River

There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses -- he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush horses are,
And the stock-horse snuffs the battle with delight.

( There was Harrison, who made his pile when Pardon won the cup, )



HENRY LAWSON


A Song of the Republic

Sons of the South, awake! arise!
Sons of the South, and do.
Banish from under your bonny skies
Those old-world errors and wrongs and lies.
Making a hell in a Paradise
That belongs to your sons and you.

Sons of the South, make choice between
(Sons of the South, choose true),
The Land of Morn and the Land of E'en,
The Old Dead Tree and the Young Tree Green,
The Land that belongs to the lord and the Queen,
And the Land that belongs to you.

Sons of the South, your time will come –
Sons of the South, 'tis near –
The "Signs of the Times", in their language dumb,
Fortell it, and ominous whispers hum
Like sullen sounds of a distant drum,
In the ominous atmosphere.

Sons of the South, aroused at last!
Sons of the South are few!
But your ranks grow longer and deeper fast,
And ye shall swell to an army vast,
And free from the wrongs of the North and Past
The land that belongs to you.
 

BORIS PASTERNAK


Winter Night

It snowed and snowed ,the whole world over,
Snow swept the world from end to end.
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.

As during summer midges swarm
To beat their wings against a flame
Out in the yard the snowflakes swarmed
To beat against the window pane

The blizzard sculptured on the glass
Designs of arrows and of whorls.
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.

Distorted shadows fell
Upon the lighted ceiling:
Shadows of crossed arms,of crossed legs-
Of crossed destiny.

Two tiny shoes fell to the floor
And thudded.
A candle on a nightstand shed wax tears
Upon a dress.

All things vanished within
The snowy murk-white,hoary.
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.

A corner draft fluttered the flame
And the white fever of temptation
Upswept its angel wings that cast
A cruciform shadow

It snowed hard throughout the month
Of February, and almost constantly
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.



MARINA TSVETAYEVA


My Poems...

My poems, written early, when I doubted
that I could ever play the poet’s part,
erupting, as though water from a fountain
or sparks from a petard,

and rushing as though little demons, senseless,
into a sanctuary, where incense spreads,
my poems about death and adolescence,
--that still remain unread! --

collecting dust in bookstores all this time,
where no one comes to carry them away,
my poems, like exquisite, precious wines,
will have their day!



RAINER MARIA RILKE


Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
 

W.B. YEATS


Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
 

CHIYOJO


My little dragonfly hunter.
I wonder where he is
off to today.
 

BASHO


Awake at night

Awake at night--
the sound of the water jar
cracking in the cold.


Death poem

Sick on my journey,
only my dreams will wander
these desolate moors
 

SHAKESPEARE


Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

PETRARCH


Song I

It was the day the sun's ray had turned pale
with pity for the suffering of his Maker
when I was caught, and I put up no fight,
my lady, for your lovely eyes had bound me.

It seemed no time to be on guard against
Love's blows; therefore, I went my way
secure and fearless-so, all my misfortunes
began in midst of universal woe.

Love found me all disarmed and found the way
was clear to reach my heart down through the eyes
which have become the halls and doors of tears.

It seems to me it did him little honour
to wound me with his arrow in my state
and to you, armed, not show his bow at all.

APHRA BEHN


To Alexis in Answer to his Poem against Fruition

Ah hapless sex! Who bear no charms,
But what like lightning flash and are no more
False fires sent down for baneful harms,
Fires which the fleeting lover feebly warms
And given like past beboches o'er,
Like songs that please (though bad) when new,
But learned by heart neglected grew.

In vain did Heav'n adorn the shape and face
With beauties which by angels' forms it drew:
In vain the mind with brighter glories grace,
While all our joys are stinted to the space
Of one betraying interview,
With one surrender to the eager will
We're short lived nothing or a real ill.

Since man with that inconstancy was born,
To love the absent, and the present scorn.
Why do we deck, why do we dress
For such a short-lived happiness?
Why do we put attraction on,
Since either way 'tis we must be undone?

They fly if honour take our part,
Our virtue drives 'em o'er the field.
We lose 'em by too much desert,
And Oh! They fly us if we yeild.
Ye Gods! Is there no charm in all the fair
To fix this wild, this faithless, wanderer.

Man! Our great business and our aim,
For whom we spread our fruitless snares,
No sooner kindles the designing flame,
But to the next bright object bears
The trophies of his conquest and our shame:
Inconstancy's the good supreme
The rest is airy notion, empty dream!

Then, heedless nymph, be ruled by me
If e'er your swain the bliss desire;
Think like Alexis he may be
Whose wished possession damps his fire;
The roving youth in every shade
Has left some sighing and abandoned maid,
For 'tis a fatal lesson he has learned,
After fruition ne'er to be concerned.

OVID


Elegy XIII, as translated by Christopher Marlowe

Ad Auroram ne properet
(To the dawn, not to hurry)

Now on the sea from her old love comes she,
That draws the day from heaven's cold axle-tree.
Aurora whither slid'st thou? Down again,
And birds for Memnon yearly shall be slain.
Now in her tender arms I sweetly bide,
If ever, now well lies she by my side.
The air is cold, and sleep is sweetest now,
And birds send forth shrill notes from every bough.
Whither runn'st thou, that men, and women, love not?
Hold in thy rosy horses that they move not.
Ere thou rise, stars teach seamen where to sail,
But when thou com'st they of their courses fail.
Poor travellers though tir'd, rise at thy sight,
And soldiers make them ready to the fight,
The painful hind by thee to field is sent,
Slow oxen early in the yoke are pent.
Thou cozen'st boys of sleep, and dost betray them
To pedants, that with cruel lashes pay them.
Thou mak'st the surety to the lawyer run,
That with one word hath nigh himself undone,
The lawyer and the client hate thy view,
Both whom thou raisest up to toil anew.
By thy means women of their rest are barr'd,
Thou sett'st their labouring hands to spin and card.
All could I bear, but that the wench should rise,
Who can endure, save him with whom none lies?
How oft wished I night would not give thee place,
Nor morning stars shun thy uprising face.
How oft, that either wind would break thy coach,
Or steeds might fall forc'd with thick clouds approach.
Whither goest thou, hateful nymph? Memnon the elf
Received his coal-black colour from thyself.
Say that thy love with Cephalus were not known,
Then thinkest thou thy loose life is not shown?
Would Tithon might but talk of thee awhile,
Not one in heav'n should be more base and vile.
Thou leav'st his bed, because he's faint through age,
And early mount'st thy hateful carriage:
But held'st thou in thine arms some Cephalus,
Then would'st thou cry, 'Stay night and run not thus'.
Punish ye me, because years make him wain?
I did not bid thee wed an aged swain.
The moon sleeps with Endemion every day,
Thou art as fair as she, then kiss and play.
Jove, that thou should'st not haste but wait his leasure,
Made two nights one to finish up his pleasure.
I chid no more, she blush'd, and therefore heard me,
Yet linger'd not the day, but morning scar'd me.

RICHARD SIKEN



Little Beast

1.
An all-night barbeque. A dance on the courthouse lawn.
The radio aches a little tune that tells the story of what the night
is thinking. It's thinking of love.
It's thinking of stabbing us to death
and leaving our bodies in a dumpster.
That's a nice touch, stains in the night, whiskey and kisses for everyone.

Tonight, by the freeway, a man eating fruit pie with a buckknife
carves the likeness of his lover's face into the motel wall. I like him
and I want to be like him, my hands no longer an afterthought.

2.
Someone once told me that explaining is an admission of failure.
I'm sure you remember, I was on the phone with you, sweetheart.

3.
History repeats itself. Somebody says this.
History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
History is a little man in a brown suit
trying to define a room he is outside of.
I know history. There are many names in history
but none of them are ours.

4.
He had green eyes,
so I wanted to sleep with him—
green eyes flecked with yellow, dried leaves on the surface of a pool-
You could drown in those eyes, I said.
The fact of his pulse,
the way he pulled his body in, out of shyness or shame or a desire
not to disturb the air around him.
Everyone could see the way his muscles worked,
the way we look like animals,
his skin barely keeping him inside.
I wanted to take him home
and rough him up and get my hands inside him, drive my body into his
like a crash test car.
I wanted to be wanted and he was
very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good while moving.
You could drown in those eyes, I said,
so it's summer, so it's suicide,
so we're helpless in sleep and struggling at the bottom of the pool.

5.
It wasn't until we were well past the middle of it
that we realized
the old dull pain, whose stitched wrists and clammy fingers,
far from being subverted,
had only slipped underneath us, freshly scrubbed.
Mirrors and shop windows returned our faces to us,
replete with the tight lips and the eyes that remained eyes
and not the doorways we had hoped for.
His wounds healed, the skin a bit thicker than before,
scars like train tracks on his arms and on his body underneath his shirt.

6.
We still groped for each other on the backstairs or in parked cars
as the roads around us
grew glossy with ice and our breath softened the view through a glass
already laced with frost,
but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out
of lullabies.
But damn if there isn't anything sexier
than a slender boy with a handgun,
a fast car, a bottle of pills.

7.
What would you like? I'd like my money's worth.
Try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this—
swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood
on the first four knuckles.
We pull our boots on with both hands
but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do
is stand on the curb and say Sorry
about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

Mah, it's taken me awhile to get around to starting this. Well, not so long, it's only been a fortnight, but I still feel a tad guilty.

After a very (very) long spring semester, the July long weekend was a chance to get away from Kanazawa and stress and the frenetic pace that had left me feeling as though I hadn't stopped for breath in two months. Knowing myself and how damned long it would probably take me to get around to writing everything up, I bought a(nother) A5 notebook to take notes on the trip as I went.

The schedule at the time looked somewhat like this:

July 19th
Grab the Limited Express train to Echigo Yuzawa and from there pick up the Shinkansen down to Toyko, check into my hotel, head down to Hinode dock around 6pm for the Volks evening cruise.

July 20th
Spend the day with Sue and Paulette in Ueno, then catch the afternoon trains back to Kanazawa, then at KZ station find Jasmine, the girl I was buying my ticket to the Kat-tun concert from.

July 21st
Head out to Seiburyokuchi park for the 1pm concert, then head home and collapse into bed.

(Doesn't sound all that harried until you take into account the fact that Kanazawa is 4-5 hours away from Tokyo. I was exhausted by the end ^_^;;;;)


PART ONE

( Tokyo Afternoon )

( The Cruise )
 

The Sunne Rising

Busie olde foole, unruly Sunne;
Why dost thou thus,
Through windowes, and through curtaines call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?
Sawcy pedantique wretch, goe chide
Late schoole boyes, and sowre prentices,
Goe tell Court-huntsmen, that the King will ride,
Call countrey hands to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clyme,
Nor houres, dayes, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beames, so reverend, and strong
Why shouldst thou thinke?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a winke,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine
Looke, and tomorrow late, tell mee,
Whether both the India's of spice and Myne
Be where thou leftst them, or lie here with mee.
Aske for those Kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt heare, All here in one bed lay.

She'is all States, and all Princes, I,
Nothing else is;
Princes doe but play us; compar'd to this,
All honor's mimique; All wealth alchimie,
Thou sunne art halfe as happy'as wee,
In that the world's contracted thus;
Thine ages askes ease, and since thy duties bee
To warme the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art every where;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.

- John Donne