BASTARD BOX

Analysis

Bastardbox — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:59:08 +0000

Animal Tranquillity and Decay

The little hedgerow birds,
That peck along the roads, regard him not.
He travels on, and in his face, his step,
His gait, is one expression: every limb,
His look and bending figure, all bespeak
A man who does not move with pain, but moves
With thought.–He is insensibly subdued
To settled quiet: he is one by whom
All effort seems forgotten; one to whom
Long patience hath such mild composure given,
That patience now doth seem a thing of which
He hath no need. He is by nature led
To peace so perfect that the young behold
With envy, what the Old Man hardly feels. William Wordsworth

The poem talks of aging and reconciles it with how desire/s or the idea of someone having desires (as to dreams) grows old as time wears the skin out.

The readers are immediately introduced to the image of birds not giving attention to an old man passing by them. This image is used in the poem to connote that the man’s existence is somehow unnoticeable to the world around him, and it must be the same thing with him, as he passes by them, without any act of fondness.

Then the poem describes the man’s “bending figure”, and everything from his gait down to his every step as one expression, and that is, not of a man who moves in pain, but of a man who moves with thought, which is somehow suggestive of wisdom itself.

Towards the concluding parts of the poem, the lines are suggestive of the absence of desire, as the poem tells that the old man’s patience has almost of no use to him. This is then supported by the succeeding lines which seem to frame the old man’s absence of desire as something that the young people envy.

In conclusion, the poem tells how experience can teach wisdom that eventually rests on the absence of desire, or if not, the poems tells how people eventually end up passive, on dreams and on life itself.._

Some Kinda Poem

Bastardbox — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:41:48 +0000

There is nothing,

tonight is just plain and cold..

Grendel is right,

“Tedium is the worst pain”,

the Backstreet Boys are right,

“Loneliness is tragical”..

But this is supposed to be a poem,

so I guess abstracts won’t do,

especially from poor purple patched images—

of a disruptive monster who whines,

‘bout life, like hell,

and some cheesy-ass American boys, who sing

‘bout the meaning of being lonely..

But they’re right anyway..

So how about..

Nothing to do..

The night is cold, and that’s all there is..

I lit a cigarette,

blow its smoke out,

fancy it to be fog..

I wish to find your face when it clears,

but, instead, I found Neruda, writing about his dead dog,

at the sight of the flower falling on its weight before me..

“…and that’s all there is..”_

Free Writes

Bastardbox — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 09:36:22 +0000

Free Writes:

Day 1:

Yah man, free writing mode engaged! Just for the hell of writing this in the intro, today’s a Friday night, short saying, I’m 2 sessions short of free-writes. Just received my photox of the material.

Moving on, I’ve decided to do some words on the poem, A Farm on the Wei Rive, basically because I like the way words dig images out, plus I think the last two lines are kinda wicked, kinda give some sudden twist, some feel on the poem, from being a photo album poem to a yearning fade-away exhausted feel poem of some sort.

And yoh, the 10 mins is over.

Day 2:

Second free-write session of the night, take note “of the night”, thanks to me being a lazy as idiot not saving my work, and to this pc, shutting down on me, I have to do my words again, I did for 10 mins.

So here I go again, this second night after reading the poem, for me to have words on, I noticed that the “character’s” of the poem, or the ways they are portrayed in the poem, are without tension. I mean, they have been framed with certain relax-feels, like for instance; the aged-farmer watching over his shepherd lad under sunset(if its really sunset, I’m not sure yet), the pheasants…

10 mins is over, gonna dig this tomorrow so I’ll have something to begin with, than a blank word page and a yosi stick.

Day 3:

Day three, and I have the relax-feel discussion to begin my ten minutes of free-write.

… the aged-farmer watching over his shepherd lad under sunset(if its really sunset, I’m not sure yet), the pheasants being tagged with flying(of course they’re birds, but hey, the poet could’ve tagged them with other attributes, such as sitting on branches, or singing, but no, it has to be flying…), the silkworms, with sleep, the line—home-ward trudging with their hoes(the poet used the verb trudging, he could’ve used run, or walk, but again, no, he used “trudging”…)

10 mins is over again. Till tomorrow.

Day 4:

(but yoh, the poet used the verb trudging, he could’ve used run, or walk, but again, no, he used “trudging” which means to walk wearily, which makes the line something like, to walk wearily with problems..), the workmen, which the earlier line mentions, in the following line, do murmur stuffs upon their meeting(again, the poet did used the word murmur instead of talk, or some other verb), and in the line before the concluding line of the poem, the pesona utters—This life makes me hum(hum, he used hum, instead of sing).

Now after that catalog of the relax-feel free-writes I did, I have to say, I’ve misjudged the words that tagged the character’s in the poem.

Now, what I perceive is not a relax feel-poem, but a hardcore exhausted-feel poem.

10 mins.

Day 5:

Going back to the discussion, that ended my free-write page yesterday, the poem, from the very beginning of it doesn’t have a relax-feel to it but instead a very weary feel,, as in the sun, that is about to set, the crooked lanes, the aged farmer, the birds flying in heavy wheat, the sleeping silkworms, the workmen trudging with their hoes, murmuring upon their meeting.

And the last two lines to wrap the poem up—This life I long for makes me hum, The ancient folksong Going Home..

A weary, weary poem..

CRICKETS

Bastardbox — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:32:15 +0000

Outside my wooden window,

just below the jewelled midnight heaven–

blades of grass hum lullabies.._