Giggle Poetry- at the Bamboo Hut

A variation to the Blake quote ‘To see a World in a grain etc.,:
To see a fly in a bowl of soup
And gleaming smile of Mr. Yongle
As I tackle noodles laid in god-knows-what slime
Need I die before time, tell me?

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Parody on Blake’s ‘To see a grain of sand…’

 

“To see a mug in the hand of a lush,

And a barmaid across the counter

Hold palaver with the bums who cut your view,

An hour is better spent elsewhere.”

Original quote is as below”
William Blake – “To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.”

benny

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Sailing to Neverland ©

Cry me a river, love

Let me feel the hurt, with each drop

I am drawn nowhere

But to the centre

where pain is nowhere

But everywhere.

Cry me an ocean of laughter

Ah I feel already the wind in my hair-

Hopes are a-winging and the shore line is receding

As sails full with wind I am away in a whirl

Racing the clouds overhead! 

Why didn’t we think of this before

I feel better already.

benny

It is almost 1.30 Am and I am wide awake. While opening the blog I casually saw the title ‘Cry me a River’ and this poem is the result. If I have to suffer insomnia let me turn it to something worthwhile.  b)   

benny 

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Pen Portraits- John Milton

John Milton(1608-1674)

Milton is best known for Paradise Lost, widely regarded as the greatest epic poem in English. Together with Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, it confirms Milton’s reputation as one of the greatest English poets. In his prose works Milton advocated the abolition of the Church of England and the execution of King Charles I. From the beginning of the English Civil Wars in 1642 to long after the restoration of Charles II as king in 1660, he espoused in all his works a political philosophy that opposed tyranny and state-sanctioned religion. His influence extended not only through the civil wars and interregnum but also to the American and French revolutions.
In understanding his polemics and championing anti-monarchial cause that was the most disruptive event of his time a clue may be found from his childhood experience. He must have been aware how religious belief had made his own father an outcast.
Milton’s paternal grandfather, Richard, was a staunch Roman Catholic who expelled his son John, the poet’s father, from the family home in Oxfordshire for reading an English (i.e., Protestant) Bible. Banished and disinherited, it was only natural the banishment of Old Adam would be the crowning piece of his poetic world. He transcended like Tennyson after him a personal calamity with his vigor and classicism achieved as though there was a compensatory mechanism at work. If any poet were destined to attempt the grandeur of the entire King James’ version of the Bible in retelling the fall of men he was the most qualified to do so. How well he enriched the English language ever since! Naturally poets like John Keats and Robert Browning accepted him as their master.

‘According to Gavin Alexander, lecturer in English at Cambridge university and fellow of Milton’s alma mater, Christ’s College, who has trawled the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) for evidence, Milton is responsible for introducing some 630 words to the English language, making him the country’s greatest neologist, ahead of Ben Jonson with 558, John Donne with 342 and Shakespeare with 229. Without the great poet there would be no liturgical, debauchery, besottedly, unhealthily, padlock, dismissive, terrific, embellishing, fragrance, didactic or love-lorn. And certainly no complacency.
“The OED does tend to privilege famous writers with first usage,” Alexander admits, “and early-modern English – a composite of Germanic and Romance languages – was ripe for innovation. If you couldn’t think of a word, you could just make one up, ideally based on a term from French or Latin that others educated in those languages would understand. Yet, by any standards, Milton was an extraordinary linguist and his freedom with language can be related to his advocacy of personal, political and religious freedoms.”
Milton’s coinages can be loosely divided into five categories. A new meaning for an existing word – he was the first to use space to mean “outer space”; a new form of an existing word, by making a noun from a verb or a verb from an adjective, such as stunning and literalism; negative forms, such as unprincipled, unaccountable and irresponsible – he was especially fond of these, with 135 entries beginning with un-; new compounds, such as arch-fiend and self-delusion; and completely new words, such as pandemonium and sensuous.
Not that Milton got things all his own way. Some of his words, such as intervolve (to wind within each other) and opiniastrous (opinionated), never quite made it into regular usage – which feels like our loss rather than his. ‘(ack: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jan/28/britishidentity.johncrace)
trivia
Milton was displeased with Cambridge, possibly because study there emphasized Scholasticism, which he found stultifying to the imagination. Moreover, in correspondence with a former tutor at St. Paul’s School, Alexander Gill, Milton complained about a lack of friendship with fellow students. They called him the “Lady of Christ’s College,” perhaps because of his fair complexion, delicate features, and auburn hair.
benny

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Poems for the Solitary Hour-W B. Yeats

The Stolen Child

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve had our faery vats,
Full of berries,
And the reddest stolen cherries.
Come away,O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery,hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can ever understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed -
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest
For he comes the human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand

The poem was first published in the Irish Monthly in December 1886. The poem was then published in a compilation of work by several Irish poets Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland in 1888 with several critics praising the poem.

W.B Yeats

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This floating life-guppy

The Guppy
Whales have calves,

Cats have kittens,

Bears have cubs,

Bats have bittens,

Swans have cygnets,

Seals have puppies,

But guppies just have little guppies.
Ogden Nash

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Quatrain#202 the Great Silence

Some tales with much moral add’d to lend weight
Prophets have told us: such is their bless’d state
We took it gospel truth: They are all dead.
None returns after he has pass’d the gate.

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Omar Khayyam-Rubaiyat parodies

Parodies based on Edward Fitzgerald version:
2.

Seeking yet old thrill,-it begins anew
I heard a cry within, ‘Snort or go bust!’
‘Yeah with a monkey on my back a fix
Will give my world its center: I am at rest !

3.
A quick bite on the run to my workplace
Will keep me for the day in this rat race:
You do know how to get on without sweat?
Backbite or kiss the ass to save the face. (#2 and 3 from First Ed.)

#12

Here with a kindle O, beneath the Sun
A word or two from my love,-it is fun
If she had her Kindle too; Had Khayyam
lived now would he check out from Amazon?

(Fifth Ed.)
benny

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Omar Says-Rubaiyat for the Present Day

Remote control it is not, press I well
Surfing channels of reason, my eyes fail-
If Nature stayed true to will and please
My senses-Ah it would be worth my while.

In this age of instant gratification can Omar Khayyam be relevant to us? I believe the quatrain form could be used to convey our spiritual confusion or love for Immensities that comes in byte-size, only we call it passing time. Nature changes: seasons after seasons on the treadmill of Time, is the riddle that was poets of every age and clime had to come to terms with.
Who is using the remote control, by the way?
It is somewhat like the theatre of the Absurd. One who makes Nature keep renewing the face of the earth affects us as well. Lacking in time we require certainties and only certainty that we end up with is what one might call as Chance.
Thanks to our attention-deficit we also keep checking out what is all available whenever we want some entertainment. Instead we are inundated with bits and snatches of man’s art, news of the mart that would not even feed the appetite of a louse. Who is using the remote control and what for?
benny

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Expressionism-Splash

“Logjam of flowers fallen,
And bruised by brutal winds,
Never more seek when or why
It must be so:
You did caress the wind once
And your fragrance for all
Freely bestowed;
Now oblivion of time has tossed
All foul and fair to be spent,-
Never mind our sighs,
We shall also walk to our rest.”
benny

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