Prose Poem, Blood For Money..

    Sleep is my vacation and Death is the retirement plan, there’s no going back. It's blood in exchange for money that is what my life has come to. taking a life to put food on your plate. The sound of a gun being loaded is the sound of money in my pocket. wanting to live life the "Wrong" way is learning how to take one in return. in this life time, there’s no what ifs and why, a fool kills a man but, only a real man stays alive. Pulling the trigger is more than you think. Your life is no longer the same. The days in which you were a baby in your mama's arms could never have been compared to what now is put in your life to overcome. no matter what you must be brave and carry the strength of a million, in one. Anyone can kill from a far but a real man will take a life looking into your eyes. At the end of it all you must ask yourself, are you a man or a coward?.. Never judge a book by its cover because you may come across something you never wish you did. I guess you can call me two faced. Not because I’m not loyal to what is my life now. But because the smile you see today is not real. I’ll never feel like smiling, until the visions of the mistakes and regrets that appear as a blur each and everyday, disappear completely, those that haunt my days wipe any hope of a simple smile. days and nights go friends and foes watch as I continue to expose a side that is truly not there, a smile and a joy that was never real. The truth of the matter is that at the end of the day its all a game and only those that feel no shame can learn to win the game.

Prose Poem, Diseases.

Money, betrayals, loves lost.. she has her eyes blinded, her slim body walks in the darkness, the agony of loneliness tried to take her away, they don’t know the innocence they damaged, being a young girl with a few years. Her and her brothers shared the silence of their betrayals and lies, she was so beautiful, maybe even more than the sun during the day, and the stars at night. Now, all that’s left are the memories alongside ashes, the flames that consumed time, the loved ones left behind that agonized over her pain. Deep inside she would always carry an injury on her heart, that scarred her entire life, people saw the outside she portrayed, yet they never knew the battle she faced fighting against her past. They finally understood her actions, loving is much harder than killing... she never had the will to try to forget and so with tears in her eyes she whispered..


 “If he has eyes don’t let him see me.
  If he has hands don’t let him touch me.
  If he has feet don’t let him catch me.
  Don’t allow him to scare me from behind
  Don’t allow my death to be violent.
  Don’t allow my blood to shed.
  You, that knows everything,
  You that knows about my sins,
  But also about my faith Continue to watch over me,
  Because there is not a sin that faith cant justify…”

As human beings we all suffer from our diseases, some of which torment us everyday we walk this earth, the smiles we put on our face are as fake as the way flowers blossom in beauty to hide the mud under our feet. But it is you and I who walk today. Its us. life is too short to worry about our selves. So what are you waiting for? Life is beautiful knowing we are not eternal not knowing when our lasts heartbeat will be, or the last breath our lungs will take.. we as humans, should end the internal battle with the past, and move forward.

On Death.

When reading Keats’ poems even from the shortest amount of words that are read, many ideas of possible meanings are created. I chose to read one of Keats’ poem titled. “On death” this poem is one of the shorter poems Keats wrote. I decided to break down the poem line by line to better understand it, this came much easily in this case since the poem is much smaller in the quantity of words but just as big as a longer poem would be in its meaning. “Can death be sleep, then life is but a dream” what this first sentences says to me, is that life really is only here for a limited time, for certain people their life is longer or shorter than for others. So, since the life we have right now is only temporary, Keats is questioning the reader if then death can be considered a type of sleep. I look at it more an eternal break from the life we will have formed for our self. In my mind if we look at it from a religious point of view

Thoughts, "Ode To a Nightingale"

MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toil me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?


    Every one of John Keats’ poems usually have a theme or topic that he talks about repetitively throughout his poem. In certain occasions his poems themes are clearly present, and are easily stated to the reader. While in other poems, the theme or main point could be hard to uncover. Keats is also good at having a theme in his poems that makes the reader think beyond the literal meaning, and focus more on a metaphorical, creative meaning. Like in a lot of the romanticism poet’s work, it is mostly likely you don’t understand the poem after the first time you read it. The poem above is ‘Ode to a Nightingale, by the poet John Keats. When it is read this poem to most people it is easy to say that it falls under the category of the poems that are usually not able to be understood from the first time that it is read.  Another thought I have about John Keats poems is that not everyone that reads his poems picks up the same meaning or theme. Although Keats might have made his poems so people extract one single main idea, from reading his poems I believe if someone reads a poem of his and another person reads it they may take a whole different understanding of the poem than the previous person did. Now, going back to the poem, “Ode to a Nightingale.” after reading this poem many times, I can easily say I do not have a complete clear understanding of it, but there are bits and pieces of it that I made sense of in my head, to start off I when I first read it I imagined that there was a lot of pain felt during this poem. The way I thought of this poem is that there was a loss happening by someone. Something or someone was going away or being taken away. However after reading it varies times I ended up changing my thought about the beginning of this poem. My understanding changed to believing that this person speaking is in a horrible situation, a place he does not want to be in, and he has the desire to go away. To escape “ fade far away, dissolve…” the fact I thought on e thing but then after analyzing the poem even more, proves how difficult it can be to decipher one of Keats’ poems.

Reading Response 3

“A poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence, because he has no identity—he is continually in for—and filling some other Body”. This profound statement by John Keats, a romantic poet and author of “Isabella, or the Pot of Basil”, sets before the reader a conflict and a truth: the conflict of the statement lies inside individual perspectives, while the truth falls inside ones own experience. This statement tests black, white and grey areas and unlocks a great philosophical debate of its own. The statement is also the opening sentence for E. Douka Kabitoglou’s analasis article Adapting Philosophy to Literature: the Case of John Keats, in which Kabitoglou does exactly that. His article covers a number of related topics, such as the understanding of poetical identity, a philosophy that follows the same line of thought as Keats’s infamous statement. Kabitoglou drives the reader to delve into the significance of identity, its great exception to poem authors, and whether the losing of oneself in one’s poetry is a cost-benefit analysis for the ages: lose one’s identity in return for the “understanding” and “knowledge” that comes with taking on the identity of pure beauty? If this isn’t already a Philosophical-fest Kabitoglou pursues the relation of beauty and truth through conflicted greats like Plato, Aristole, Milton and Coleridge. “what is systematic beauty?” “Can what is ugly be true?” and “what are we supposed to learn from beauty?” are just are a few of the questions the dissections of the former poets imposed on Keats yield. In some ways, it all is greatly relatable to this blog, and Isabella in particular. Keats’s intentions of making the tragedy of Isabella out to be a teachable, beautiful tale, as well as the identity of a poet are two examples. The Headless Boyfriend is about Isabella, but the Keats’s “truth” is more worthwhile than the more obvious tragedy.

            One of the interesting points that came to me during my reading of Adapting Philosophy to Literature: the Case of John Keats struck me when I came across the poet’s arguments on Beauty, its relationship to truth, and the understanding that comes with beauty and truth combined. In particular it made me think about the tragedy of Isabella and what Keats really intended for the poem to be. In the article, Kobitoglou follows the poets’ musings. Its agonizing. Kobitoglou makes his analysis by examining multiple poets’ perspectives on this subject, from multiple different angles. To sum up the section, John Keats himself makes a crucial point in the form of prose:

“ ‘where the doth nightingale doth sing/ not a senseless, traced thing, / but divine melodious truth; / philosophic numbers smooth.’”

My interpretation of it is that the singing of the bird, even though it is not scripted or a direct attempt of the bird to make joyous noise, is beautiful. The beauty of the singing might be unintentional, but that does not make it senseless. This spontaneous, beautiful song from a seemingly unimportant piece of nature is evidence enough to Keats that there is real Beauty, and that beauty is truth, and therefore by listening to the song of the bird, we can speculate and maybe understand. What’s more, Keats (much like Plato and Aristole) comes to the conclusion that systems and machinations of man are insufficient to explain truth. Rather, Keats, Kibotoglou, Plato, and Shaftsburry explain beauty as the “voice” of the universe:

“ ‘ the truth of the universe speaks, as it were, through the phenomenon of beauty; it is no longer inaccessible, but requires a means of ecpression, a language in which the meaning of this truth, its real logos, is first completely revealed’”.

 This ultimum, of course, leads to questions of the beauty of intellectual power, the reason for beauty in systematic phenomenon, and the learning points of purity, which you can all read for yourselves in the article which you can read here. However, we have reached the point that so strikes me in regards to Isabella. In a way, it strikes me that all this(explanations of beauty, truth, and learning) reverses the entire story of Isabella, or the Pot of Basil. The story of a young maiden and lad in love, separated by social distinction, cleaved from each other by jealous cruelty, only to find that their love is strong enough to bloom as a shrine to that one love from beyond the grave, leaving one dead girl to waste away from absence of a pure, innocent love, cannot be, by the poets understanding of love, be a tragedy! In complete opposite the poem can be beauty, and therefore truth, and therefore it provides an understanding to us through understanding the meanings and symbolism of the poem.

               

           

Reading Response #3

In the article “Population Thinking”: Keats and the Romance of Public Opinion, by Mark Jones, who works at Queen’s University, He writes about ways that public opinion coincides with the critical reflection on the population thinking in the Romantic time period. In 1859 John Stuart said “That public opinion now rules the world.” In the Romantic time period, “public opinion was romantic. For it involved two wonders: first, that something so amorphous as public should have something so definite as an opinion; and second, that mere opinion might do something.” (Mark Jones) Jeremy Bentham calls public opinion as a “tutelary power…by which so much is done.”  Opinion is a power and it does not bring violence but the law. Public opinion does not proclaim a single opinion but the voice of multitudes. Arthur Aspinall asked, “Did the Press Govern, or did it reflect the public opinion?” Mark Jones said “In the Romantic era the answer is yes: both the press and the government reflect and govern public opinion—and are seen to do both.” In John Keats’ lifetime, the power of literary reviews, whether real or imagined, meant that no writer with professional aspiration was unaware of the power of public opinion. Mark Jones also writes “Keats’ interest in public opinion is inspired not only by phenomena of the discursive public sphere but also, and perhaps primarily, by the market. In March of 1818, Keats writes, ‘As Tradesman say everything is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer—being in itself a nothing’” As Keats was aware, the public was in pressed by the reviews and by knowledge of their “trickery”. Yet his relation to the public opinion is not altogether negative. For Keats, the romance of the public opinion opens directly into critical reflection on the casualties me on the casualties of the population thinking. This article reflect the interpretation, on “The Headless Boyfriend” blog topic, that John Keats (who wrote the poem “Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil”) was aware of the public opinion and he was also writing about the public opinion, when he was writing the poem “Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil.”

            In Mark Jones’ article “Population Thinking”: Keats and the Romance of Public Opinion he says that the public opinion now rules the world.  I believe that this is true because the public has a say in our government, even though sometimes it does not seem like it. Our opinion matter in our government; if you do not want someone elected then you cannot vote for him/her and also get your friends to not vote for him or her. I wish some people had more opinion and care more because only 58% of legal, eligible American vote. I think that sad because about 58% of American complain about the government. In Rome, you receive a fine for not voting. Luckily John Keats had an opinion when he lived in Rome (even though I do not think that they had that law way back then). Mark Jones says that in the Romantic time period the public opinion was romantic. I think John Keats knew that when he was writing “Isabella; or the Pot of Basil.” It is a romantic love story. While John Keats was alive he wrote many poems, and most of them are romantic. That is why he is a Romantic Poet. The public opinion, or what the public like, may have been one of the things that made John Keats famous. What also may have made him famous, or helped make him famous, was the way he was aware of what the people (the public) wanted (opinion). He must have known that the public opinion had the power to make him famous and known. People are still talking about John Keats opinions. People still put his word in love letter, song, and even movies. John Keats may have die, but his works and opinion will never die. If you would like to read Mark Jones’ article, here is a link to “Population Thinking”: Keats and the Romance of Public Opinion. Please read and learn more about the public opinions and John Keats.

Prose Poem: Say

If you know it say nothing; know nothing its conversation.

For aimless you are in nebulous space, swinging, turning, or hanging on thread, cast about or swallowed up—depending on the space you’re in. Is that adventure?

What you’ve always dreamed of is nor near nor close and yet is its whispering reality is as far as the sectioned distance between hands on grand wall clocks will let it be, and your feet name the color of path.

A plan. A plan is all we’ve got and yet plans are abstract—the rules don’t play by the rules because life was mapped in neon colored puzzle pieces on our rubiks cube.

We’re we’ll go, what we will do, will we love it (we better, it’s a lot of money), and why? – are terrible questions we ask ourselves in this garden of sound and song, of rocks and grinding stones, of our fleeting creations of mind that our beautiful summer and spring escaped to but we ourselves can’t follow for long.

 On this eve of traditional leaving we don’t doubt we can do it—because, oh no, we can do it—we’ve been building ourselves in our respective gyms with you.

We grasp thorned barbells with white knuckles and grunt out the crunches, we trip up the rose-red stairs to repetitive beats.

We’ve sat in study halls sunlit with great lights illuminating concrete blocks that build those gyms, their grey and sometimes gold handles holding us close for when the grand wall clock peals.

And we wonder, as we await to let go these chains and ropes that restrain to colder, more ground-level floor, why we grip so tight to that same chain and rope.

In the end it’s only me. Standing in front of the airlock door. The windows so fogged over like cotton balls against a fishtank the outside cannot look in.

I am getting out. Plans blow like paper napkins off me, the schematics, the plots, the order, all down a vacuum that taught me—what did it teach me?—gone. It doesn’t matter when I am mapped out inside my pulsating head, and discover the spear stuck firmly on a printed map icon:

I know who I am.

If I know it I say nothing; I know nothing its conversation.