Dactyls & Diphthongs

Dactyls & Diphthongs

Actions speak louder than words.

Nonetheless – Poetry – is word in action:

Apple of discord rolls onto floorboard...

Either side of a wide divide claims an axiom.

 

A story untold since storied days of old;

Æther off Emerald Tablets

Breathing out beautiful worlds.

Neither wealth nor fools' gold can ford first+final /Fold/

Let's tune it down a key or two.

How'd that song go again?

Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!

Rerunning boob tube lines, which hold us forever fain.

Artistry isn't lost (though many can't glean this gloss).

{Eagle-cum-mockingbird | comes across cuckoo too}

Thus we must thaw like the permafrost to find

♠Ace♠ in the moss hid from view.

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Minefield of Meanings

Minefield of Meanings

Watch your step:

There's no real right way

To speak about Poesy

Yet somehow it also happens

There are plenty of wrong ways!

Both lector and pupil

Say one thing, meanwhile

Mental and sentimental

Versifiers become divergent;

Their writs misunderstood by gen. public.

These subspecies chant lyric

Only amongst themselves

As do birds of a feather flocking

Together—before excluding any Other.

Think 'synchronized swarm of swallows'.

In this life we all want to be first

In line. Not left behind

Hence each of us breaks off a piece

Hoping that during days to come

Inspired implosions may eventually remind...

A foot soldier trudged fearlessly

Through hostile nobody lands

To tactfully detonate charges

Whose explosive echoes vibrate

Across Akasha's supernal field!

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Conative Causation

Conative Causation


Let's rewind to primary times
Returning and rooting out rhymes —

Chaotic patterns such as ours
Are sensitive to initial conditions.
Conclusions always allude
To their own origin story.

Anyway, as Aldous asked:
Where are we off to in a big hurry?
We're progressing toward what, exactly?
These questions bear repeating.

So quit your sanctimonious bleating.
Holier than thou? You wish bro!
Seriously though, you're mistaken;
Taken in by the miscellany of modernity.

This pagan priest will now hear your confession.
Consider yourself free from imaginary salvation
(An Ankh isn't an unwarranted concession),
But back to the basics poor pilgrim...

The Material Causes here may be many
While any Formal Cause = quite antithetical.
This piece's Efficient Cause is redefining language
But its Final Cause advances stanzas ¡[parenthetical]!

Image: Illustration of the Four Aristotelian Causes.

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Re-fix

Re-fix


React against inertial forces

Realign energy vortexes

Rearticulate ageless phrases


Rebuff untoward advances

Reconstruct deconstructed nuances

Redress any inherent imbalances


Reengage reader's mental faculties

Reform grammatical casualties

Regenerate like crab apple trees


Reintegrate the least of these

Rejuvenate tamed inner beast

Release pheasants for hunt and feast


Remorse isn't worth dwelling on

Renovate; evaluate pro & con

Reorient the Western canon


Repetitio Est Mater Studiorum

Requisite knowledge stumps all but some

Resolution makes such depths easier to plumb


Retrain senses thence cleanse lenses

Reuse outdated references

Revise whatever the tense is


Rewired synapses sing grand symphonies

Reword what was first heard from aborigines

Rewrite old scripts to grant grand epiphanies...

Image: A pheasant in flight may symbolize abundance and creativity.

Hear It Read Aloud by the Author:

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Rambling About Rabelais

``Here is a dimension in which thrashing and abuse are not a personal chastisement but are symbolic actions directed at something on a higher level, at the king. This is the popular-festive system of images, which is most clearly expressed in carnival (but, of course, not in carnival alone). In this dimension, as previously pointed out, the kitchen and the battle meet and cross each other in the image of the rent body. At the time of Rabelais these images were still alive and full of meaning in various forms of folk entertainments as well as in literature.`` | Mikhail Bakhtin

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Rambling About Rabelais


He was breaking down the fourth wall well before they were even finished putting it up...

Arguably nobody else has ever equaled his grandiloquence; past plus present company included.

Polyglot and polymath — what isn't measured by your staff? Aye there is no doubt — we can all ways count on him for a good laugh!

Même si nous te entendu
Le monde n'a t'a jamais compris
(Excusez-moi mais Français c'est ma troisième langue)
Lingua Ovid autem quartus

These carnivalesque tall tales weren`t so much stories about their larger than life characters like Gargantua & Pantagruel—as the pages of these texts themselves were the ever sprawling unfurling and unraveling bodies of said gigantesque literary figures.

Equally the oft bucolic provincialism evinced by the changing accents in which his characters speak among one another offer us a stained glass window`s peek into Enlightenment Era France.

Furthermore, Francois was a pioneer in the field of potty humor. The body itself speaks in burps, farts, squealing innards, and other bodily functions such as excretion of feces or urination. Sexual congress was no less off the reservation in his contextual consideration.

So say a hooray for Rabelais, that prodigious eater of creamy cakes topped with fresh grapes! First Thelemite, he makes no mistakes. Thy abbey remains thirsty until True Will finally wakes and slakes the likes of us sullen under lunar lakes or when the Earth herself suddenly quakes...

Image: Panurge Emerges ^^British Museum

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Ethos, Logos, Pathos

“I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion: if everyone thinks one thing, then I say bet the other way.” ~ Al Pacino as Ricky Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross [1992].

“In the flames stood and view’d the armies drawn out in the sky,
Washington, Franklin, Paine, and Warren, Allen, Gates, and Lee,
And heard the voice of Albion’s Angel give the thunderous command;
His plagues, obedient to his voice, flew forth out of their clouds,
Falling upon America, as a storm to cut them off,
As a blight cuts the tender corn when it begins to appear.
Dark is the heaven above, and cold and hard the earth beneath:
And, as a plague-wind, fill’d with insects, cuts off man and beast,
And, as a sea o’erwhelms a land in the day of an earthquake,
Fury, rage, madness, in a wind swept through America;
And the red flames of Orc, that folded roaring, fierce, around
The angry shores; and the fierce rushing of th’ inhabitants together!
The citizens of New York close their books and lock their chests;
The mariners of Boston drop their anchors and unlade;
The scribe of Pennsylvania casts his pen upon the earth;
The builder of Virginia throws his hammer down in fear.

Then had America been lost, o’erwhelm’d by the Atlantic,
And Earth had lost another portion of the Infinite;
But all rush together in the night in wrath and raging fire.”

~ from America, A Prophecy [1793] by William Blake.

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Ethos, Logos, Pathos

-I-

What's in a name?
That of our Orange Emperor
Originates from the Latin Triumphus:

When Caesar returned to Rome
Having gone, and seen, then vanquished
There would be such a parade!


-II-

Sometimes what's unpopular
Ought to be expressed
Precisely because it is so.

Other times what's popular
Should be shunned
By all kindhearted folk.


-III-

July 4th 2019 CE
It rained in Washington DC
While a 6.4 magnitude quake hit California.

Street clashes broke out;
Red Communist Revolutionaries versus
Proud Boys fist-bumping The Boys in Blue.

~≈≋≈~

Just recall... "Pride comes before the fall."

Image: Title page of America, A Prophecy by William Blake [1793].

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Aliquid Stat Pro Aliquo

Aliquid Stat Pro Aliquo


Literal ontology is not what it used to be.
Why, there isn't even a text on this page
(at least not until an ideal or implied reader perks up)!

Indeed, postcolonial discourse is no more.
Constricted within these passages
This premature reading comes too close.

Forget any affective or intentional fallacy...
Such old criticisms may have applied to the Western Canon
But we're way past that now.

Insofar as The Sign is concerned
One must needs muster
The mastery of metonymy.

Ecce Signum
Arbitrary equivalence doesn't add up.
There's more than meets the eye to our inference.

Something stands for another?
Maybe so; yet what are 'things' in themselves?
You can't write about perception without referring to its percept!

Images: Two basic models of Semiosis according to A) Ferdinand de Saussure, and B) Charles Sanders Peirce.

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Sententious Sonnet

Sententious Sonnet

Now who could fill the shoes of Petrarch today?

Vox Dei may perhaps sway the mind of a logician

Running the gamut from pedestrian to patrician.

Attentiveness is key, to keep many balls in play.

Heave the anchor ho and pray Aquilo's gusts won't betray

As we set sail like the Argo on its perilous mission.

Till simile’s soil 'til dragon's teeth foment sedition.

Do not stray from battlefield—dilettante—join the fray!

Oxford might have us keep ‘shtum’

‘cause the scheme here goes athwart

And this theme seems desultory.

Pollice Verso (with your thumb);

May these thoughts on art impart

Aesopian moral to our story.

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Semantic Satiation

Semantic Satiation

Let not our poetry become

sybaritic adulation.

Instead we ought to make a new

semiotic adumbration.

Nobody entertain any

sophomoric arrogation.

Forgo feeling sorry cause that's

 symptomatic abnegation.

Don't you shirk benefiting from

synthetic alteration.

Follow now the bouncing ball of

syllogistic deviation...

Why ever worry about such

semaphoric saturation?

Hopefully someone catches this

syntactic intonation:

There's a hidden treasure trove in

synergistic copulation.

So join us when lauding love as

synchronistic appellation!

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Hapax Legomenon

Hapax Legomenon

(n): a word or phrase that appears only once in a manuscript, document, or particular area of literature. Sometimes called a 'nonce word' [a word coined and used only for a particular occasion].

---

Fret not

Hollowed word —


This pseud

Shalt soothe

ALL falderal

From carte

To tierce.


As Hellas

First fell

So will

Persiflage

Reinstill

That endonym

And expel

Any exonym.


Voracious

Vocalization

Counteracts

Churlish

Stagnation.


Ne'er fear

Hallowed word!

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Contentious & Pretentious

Contentious & Pretentious

The difference between us is that you tend to find only a single meaning when reading any Gibbon word. Where's your ear for homophony, and your eye for elision? Sometimes more is said through an act of omission. A real Logophile eats obscure words for breakfast as well as every other repast. Xenophobia is often grounded in fearing foreign languages; intellectual insecurity characterizes minor minds. After all, such folk rarely think about the parts of speech inherent to their own mother tongue. They wouldn't even know the difference between adverb and verb if you asked them. Why? Because they take the Howe for granted. It's tough to tell what's similar when you never dare to compare. Humble your big old Self and take this strange advice: 

Challenge the limits of conventional thinking by paying close attention to any other way of speaking — whether it be in film, song, or out on the street. Understanding isn't what's most important, but rather the loosening of one's conceit. That's that... these theses incomplete ≋ ≈ ~

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Covfefe

Note: If you don't catch the reference, see: WIRED.

---

Covfefe


What's that got to do with the price of tea in China?

If you wish to stay atop the rolling ball
then take your eye off the blue birdie.

Presidential marmalade is spread too thick
throughout the Blogosphere;
it's gumming up the gears
and has everyone humming the same tune . . .

Speak not the name of biggest T!

Overcome the need to neurotically: 

* press, swipe, tap-tap-tap *

World's most prestigious office

TRIVIALIZED.

Typo — 

crosses a boundary to be canonized.

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Lorem Ipsum

Lorem Ipsum [ Latin, n. ]: Also known as: Greeked text, blind text, placeholder text, dummy content, filler text, lipsum, and mock-content.


Lorem Ipsum


MEDIA capta ferum victorem cepit ...

(Lingua Franca narrat mendacium semper).

Credat judaeus Apella, non ego!

Iuventus stultorum magister —

Mutatis Mutandis; varietas delectac.

Bis dicere: docendo discimus.

Ven, nescis cui bono?

Nemo enim potest personam diu ferre.

Inter arma enim silent leges.

Sapere quis in culpa —

Nicto ergo suum cuique ;)

Nosce te Ipsum!

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Makwil Cuetzpalin (rare trilingual edition)

Makwil Cuetzpalin


E aqui Tonal

(un destino propio)

El mero proposito de esta existencia.


Hoy mismo se quebrara la primer regla

Ante todas las demas:

Si no sabes cual


Pues es porque no

Investigas suficientemente;

El numero cinco ha sido y siempre sera


Gran pentametro

De nuestra quintaesencia comun —

Un nombre del hombre en exilio desde Eden.


And on the fifth stave

An immense, jet-black Aquila hatched

From gone feathered serpent's crystalline egg.


Et le lendemain soir

Il est monte au clair de lune

Apres le coucher du soleil ...


Tonatiuh bajo

Al inframundo ~ en su puesto subio otro.

Con llamas tan agudas, que hasta siegan los malvados!

[ Nahual ItzQuauhtli sembro el sexto sol ]

Day-sign Macuilli Cuetzpalin (fifth lizard) corresponds to the author's date of birth.

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Oxy-Morons

Oxy-Morons


Let's engage in a productive waste of time;
Confusing to one's taste buds
Like a slice of sweet key lime.

Organized chaos thrives
Online throughout the web.
Cracking tasteless jokes
Like an aristocratic pleb.

Acting cruelly to show compassion is
Contradictory as a rich man wearing rags
Then setting off a brand new trend in fashion biz.

So hold what's left and write
From center of prefrontal cortex.
Cause bears forth its own effects
While old wrongs are all aright.

These sharps may sound retarded — thus they cleave in manner trite!

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Discredited Diction

Discredited Diction


Wrong from the get-go
(Opening lines are critical
 first impressions so pivotal).

According to website statistics
This is around where 90%
Of young surfers wipe out.

Why not? After all,
There isn't much here
Other than daft draft letters.

Coherence of a whole different
Order as well as magnitude —
Buildings before blueprints.

Hence it doesn't suffice
To say things less than thrice.
Vowel-chimes both vice and device.

Being clever won't get us very far
When we're regularly at odds
With the callous majority.

Clawing one's way uphill
During a merciless mudslide;
Life story of any poor minority.

While those who call themselves
"normal" or "sane" but whom
Are actually self-righteous

Act with hideous hypocrisy!
This cynical plaintiff stands
Little chance of dispelling such guff.

Thrown off golden cuff just because
You won't back bold individuals:
"He's only a lone dissenter!"

Yet ever in your wanderlust
You'll wonder what was lost
Asking fellow tourists for directions ...

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Pierian Papers

Pierian Papers


Got reams of them!

e.g.:
[ The peons could not produce enough quires of papyri for such a prolific Pharaoh. ]

Just lying, strewn all over the temple turf;
Haphazard ramblings
And bizarre babblings,
Which connote more than the sum
Of those notes.

Though it's a misconception
That everything an Artiste
Commits to canvas, parchment,
Or record is worth its weight
In the mirth of Midas.

Genius is naught but misnomer
Derived from Djinn
Who might grant our wishes
Yet with certain strings attached.
Don't be overeager like Faust.

i.e.:
[ The Lord of Hosts loosed famine, plague, and war upon the people  (only to end up surrounded by ghosts). ]

Written Subjects-cum-Objects!

Tehuti / Theuth / Thoth — God of Scribes

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Metacognition

Metacognition

noun, Psychology.

• higher-order thinking that enables understanding, analysis, and control of one’s cognitive processes, especially when engaged in learning.

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To the A-Gents of Language:

i-Ümlaut hath spoken —

Thy wiles ought betoken

Defiance toward 

Dictatorial decrees.

Trespass across thresholds . . .

Cede thee fours, reform the threes.

Too much recounting; Trump's won!

Zapata's brought down to his knees.

Albeit only an example

Of how sneaky sonants

Such as these

Command Order Cognoscenti

With just a simple sample

Doth ye see forest or trees?

Amongst the bestest trilogies

Was The Tripods

But recall, the Cognosc leaves!

A third act calls for dieresis

And diacritical remarks;

Something for the laggards

(zero sum game full of larks).

Cease those fours, return to threes —

Won't they notice it repeats?

Rather doubtful any care

(flatter them for being elites).

Cerebral psych's a breeze . . .

Photos: Scenes from "The Cognosc Departs" episode of The Tripods [BBC 1984-85].

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