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Like springs, adaptations can only go downhill.

quote by John Simon
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All Downhill From Here

Your hiding somthing cause
Its burning through your eyes
I try to get it out
But all i hear from you are lies
And I can tell you're going through the motions
Figured you were acting out your part
Once again we're playing off emotion
Which one of us will burn untill the end
Catalyst you insist to pull me down
You contradict the fact that you
Still want me around
And its all downhill from here
And its all downhill from here
Your good intentions
Slowly turn to bitterness
Reoccuring episodes
With each and every kiss
And I can tell you're going through the motions
Figured you were acting out your part
Once again we're playing off emotion
Which one of us will burn untill the end
Catalyst you insist to pull me down
You contradict the fact that you
Still want me around
And its all downhill from here
And its all downhill from here
And I cant believe you pulled it off again
Or notice till it all sets in
You'll deny it till
You're at your bitter end
And I can tell you're going through the motions
Figured you were acting out your part
Once again we're playing off emotion
Which one of us will burn untill the end
Catalyst you insist to pull me down
You contradict the fact that you
Still want me around
And its all downhill from here
And its all downhill from here
(then you keep pulling me down)
Pulling me down (pulling me down)
You contradict the fact that you
Still want me around
And its all downhill from here
And its all downhill from here

song performed by New Found Glory
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Soboba

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[...] Read more

poem by Rwetewrt Erwtwer
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Downhill Stuff

This song appears on two albums, and was first released on the john denver album, and has also been released on the country classics album.
Blue river blues
Id rather be outside
Here I am inside
Watching it rain
Blue river blues
Id rather be somewhere
Here I am nowhere
Watching it rain
Some people like that downhill stuff
They like it fast and breezy
Some people walk on the other side
They like it slow and easy
Some people run on a mountain trail
Some like it wild and rough
Some like to fly and some like to sail
Some like the downhill stuff
Theres work in what we practice
Work in the things we say
Sometime we work just to try to make a livin
Or were workin just to make it pay
Sometimes were tryin to work our will
But that wont work anyway
I only know that Im workin still
Just to get another chance to play
Some people like that downhill stuff
They like it fast and breezy
Some people walk on the other side
They like it slow and easy
Some people run on a mountain trail
Some like it wild and rough
Some like to fly and some like to sail
Some like the downhill stuff
Keep a movin in a forward direction
Like a river rollin down to the sea
If you wanna make different selection
Honey let yourself go with gravity
Oh everybodys lookin for heaven
Everybodys lookin for hope
Everybody lookin for higher and higher
But nobody wants to be lookin alone
Everybodys tryin to get down to it
Everybodys tryin to sing
Whatever it is were all gonna do it
But whatever we do
We gotta do our own thing
Some people like that downhill stuff
They like it fast and breezy
Some people walk on the other side
They like it slow and easy

[...] Read more

song performed by John Denver
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Joseph's Gloss On God

When Joseph tells his brothers: “I
am not God, ” he perhaps implies
that unlike God he sometimes lies,
and unlike Him, is doomed to die.

The words that Joseph never said
are wrong, as we find out when burned;
God often lies, a lesson learned
from history, and God is dead.

Inspired by a review by Paul Buhle of R. Crumb’s The Whole Book of Genesis, in Forward, October 10,2009 (“In the Image of God: The Ambition of R. Crumb’s Graphic Genesis”:

To say this book is a remarkable volume or even a landmark volume in comic art is somewhat of an understatement. It doesn’t hurt that excerpts of the book appeared during the summer in the New Yorker and that the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is opening an exhibit of the original drawings from which the book’s contents were adapted. “The Book of Genesis, ” Robert Crumb’s version, nevertheless stands on its own as one of this century’s most ambitious artistic adaptations of the West’s oldest continuously told story.
No comic artist has been more influential than Crumb. In terms of sales, his work is dwarfed by the superheroes and, in comic art prestige. Art Spiegelman, and a short list of others including Alison Bechdel and Marjane Sartrapi may have displaced Crumb. But Crumb’s influence abides and endures in his occasional LP/CD covers, in his volumes of collected work (16 volumes so far and counting) , his artistic prizes and a generation of artists who have incorporated his particular view of humanity.
Surprisingly, his best work in 20 years has actually been in the genre of adaptation, specifically an adaptation of Franz Kafka, dating to the mid 1990s. On that highly curious point, any consideration of this “Genesis, ” as a highly personal comic art, properly begins. Notoriously, Crumb is a gentile who fled from his deeply dysfunctional Delaware family to the Cleveland neighborhood of Harvey Pekar and the arms of the first of two Jewish wives. “Crumb, ” the 1994 film documentary, was in many ways about emotional pain (including a brother doomed to suicide) and his craving for a certain kind of woman, who, although possibly any female with a bemuscled backside, was in fact most likely to be Jewish. She, reality and image, was his consolation. The strips that he drew of Jewish-American life, nevertheless, reworked stereotypes, some funny (he visits Florida with his second wife, and holds a tiny grandfather on his knee) , and some, doubtless, insulting to many readers.
In the pages of “Introducing Kafka, ” Crumb became his fictional protagonist with such depth of insight into the logic of the doomed writer, as well as of Kafka’s famed works, that many readers were simply astonished, this reviewer among them. Kafka is the exemplar par excellence of a type of ambiguous, tortured mittel European Jewish personality as it hovered between faith and uncertainty, shortly before the Holocaust. Not Spiegelman, not Ben Katchor, nor Sharon Rudahl, nor others who drew historical or quasi-historical strips about Jewish history, had taken the characterization as far as Crumb. An earlier escape from Middle American culture had propelled Crumb toward his satirical protagonist Mister Natural, a Zen-like, robed quasi-prophet of the 1970s-80s. Three decades later, Crumb’s robed prophets are far from Zen.
Crumb’s “Genesis” is then perfectly serious and the author wants us to know it. As he says on the cover, “Nothing Left Out! ” Every “beget” from the King James Bible can be found here, along with plenty of scenes censored from previous graphic adaptations. And more prose, in the final “Commentary” segment of the book, than non-writer Crumb may have put on the page anywhere, aside from his published letters. More striking for anyone but the seasoned Crumb fan: unlike previous Biblical comic adaptations, including some published and drawn by Jews, Crumb’s characters actually look Jewish, the women even more than the men. The contrast to the classic work, EC Comics’ “Picture Stories from the Bible” (1945) in that respect is most illuminating. But more recent works like the best-selling “Manga Bible” (2000) are not much different (nor was the “The Wolverton Bible” by one of the strangest of comic artists Basil Wolverton) . Close readers will see Crumb’s wife Aline Kominsky, to whom the book is dedicated, again and again, in various guises; perhaps only Chagall drew his beloved wife so often and with such varied imagination.
Not only are the characters Jewish here, they are all ages and sizes. If, for instance, there are more drawings of Jewish elders in any single volume of comic art anywhere, I have never seen them. The women here are beautiful when young, heavily busted with large, muscular thighs. The men are strong, their beards full and noble. The deity has a really big beard and retains his notoriously bad temper, as well as his commanding presence, and absolute demand for loyalty. The animals of Genesis (in Noah’s ark and elsewhere) may be where Crumb is most similar to earlier comic art adaptations of Biblical texts, but they are drawn, like everything else, with such loving care that they are special and demand repeated viewing.
In those extensive notes at the end, Crumb comes as close as he is ever likely to revealing the sources and depth of his commitment to the text. He had been puzzling, no doubt under a wave of feminist criticism, about the gender struggle, until Torah scholar Savina Teubel’s “Sarah the Priestess” (1984) gave him new insight: a matriarchal background, female deities and actual female power, in a society turning toward patriarchy but retaining some elements of women’s prehistorical strength and centrality to the direction of early civilization. If anything is reinterpreted purposefully in “Genesis, ” it is in gender, and Crumb does so not by scoring points but by rearranging the visual subtext. Gender issues also help him reframe somewhat the class dimension of tribal society, which endures not through brute force but because of the strength of its women.
The commentary on his visual choices and his broader interpretations explores and explains his few intentional deviations, not only in the name of narrative clarity but artistic intent. Mainly, his notes drive home how he struggled to interpret the text in suitable graphic form, chapter by chapter, sometimes even character by character. There is no doubting the artist’s integrity or hard work, in no small part because he redrew again and again, trying to find historically accurate clothing and scenery. The Old Testament of cinematic Charlton Heston, so to speak, became the Genesis of lived and perceived experience, socially real and super-real. Clues are provided with translations of specific Hebrew names within the visual text, essentially metaphorical in meaning. These clues may be the closest to footnotes that Crumb has ever provided.
Comics scholar Jeet Heer, has noted in “Bookforum” that Crumb’s biblical characters, with the exception of the deity, have no internal lives: only the deity has depth and personality. As with the original text, much more is implied in Crumb’s visual text than can be stated, because scenes rush by so fast and because the artist forever works out, pen or brush in hand, a unique meaning that escapes easy interpretation. Even closer to the mark, Heer argues that above all, this is a book about bodies, the natural expression of an artist whose work has, possibly more than any other master of comic art, been concerned with body structure and expression.
And offending the deity? Crumb treads with a caution all the more remarkable for an artist, who, short decades ago, allowed himself the full run of his imagination, heedless of the consequences. Crumb’s innovation might be summed up in his characterization of Joseph, brilliant in subjugating Egypt but weary of his own powers. In the final phrases of the book, the artist suggests a radical view several thousand years previous to Jewish Karl Marx. “In the very last chapter, when his obstreperous brothers fling themselves at this feet and proclaim, ‘Here we are, your slaves, ’ he says to them, “I am not God, am I’ Joseph has learned a much finer humility than the fear-driven kind shown by his barbaric brothers.” So says a humble Crumb.

10/22/09

poem by Gershon Hepner
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Downhill Ryder

I'm a downhill ryder, babe I ain't going down slow
I'm a downhill ryder; I get the urge that it's time to go
Take my cue from my old guitar,
that I used to play,
Underneath the moon and the
stars, 'til the break of day
I'm a free flying glider, got my
head up in the clouds
I'm a free flying glider; I don't ever want to come down
Take my cue from the moon and
the stars that I used to play,
Underneath with my old guitar 'til the break of day, Yeah.
All across the nation I can feel a vibration,
Let it in your mind, let it shine.
Take my cue from the moon and the stars,
That I used to play, underneath with my old guitar,
'Til the break of day, all across the nation,
I can feel the vibration, let it in your mind,
It's going to shine, yes it's going to shine
Well I'm a downhill ryder,
I'm a down, down, down, down, downhill ryder,
Got the wind in my sails; baby I'm a cool man,
Down, down, down, downhill ryder,
Down, down, down??

song performed by Bad Company
Added by Lucian Velea
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Home, Wounded

Wheel me into the sunshine,
Wheel me into the shadow,
There must be leaves on the woodbine,
Is the king-cup crowned in the meadow?

Wheel me down to the meadow,
Down to the little river,
In sun or in shadow
I shall not dazzle or shiver,
I shall be happy anywhere,
Every breath of the morning air
Makes me throb and quiver.

Stay wherever you will,
By the mount or under the hill,
Or down by the little river:
Stay as long as you please,
Give me only a bud from the trees,
Or a blade of grass in morning dew,
Or a cloudy violet clearing to blue,
I could look on it for ever.

Wheel, wheel thro' the sunshine,
Wheel, wheel thro' the shadow;
There must be odours round the pine,
There must be balm of breathing kine.
Somewhere down in the meadow.
Must I choose? Then anchor me there
Beyond the beckoning poplars, where
The larch is snooding her flowery hair
With wreaths of morning shadow.

Among the thicket hazels of the brake
Perchance some nightingale doth shake
His feathers, and the air is full of song;
In those old days when I was young and strong,
He used to sing on yonder garden tree,
Beside the nursery.
Ah. I remember how I loved to wake,
And find him singing on the self-same bough
(I know it even now)
Where, since the flit of bat,
In ceaseless voice he sat,
Trying the spring night over, like a tune,
Beneath the vernal moon;
And while I listed long,

[...] Read more

poem by Sydney Thompson Dobell
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I'm Goin'

Well, I'm goin', I'm goin'
Goin' on a downhill slide.
I'm goin', I'm goin'
Goin' on a downhill slide.
Things feel so easy
I'm never gonna change my mind.
I'm goin', I'm goin', I'm goin'.
Well, ride me babe
Hang on to my hat
Ride me babe
Hang on to my hat
I'll howl like a wolf
Scream like an alley cat.
I'm goin', I'm goin', I'm goin'.
Don't wanna change my mind.
Don't wanna reel it in.
Don't wanna stop
this slidin' honey
That's the shape I'm in.
I'm goin', I'm goin'
on a downhill slide.
Things feels so easy
I'm never gonna change my mind.
I'm goin', I'm goin', I'm goin'.
Goin', goin',
goin', goin', goin'.
I'm goin' on a downhill slide.
Watch me now, watch me now.
Goin', goin',
goin', goin', goin'.

song performed by Neil Young
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Im Goin On A Downhill Slide

Well, Im goin, Im goin
Goin on a downhill slide.
Im goin, Im goin
Goin on a downhill slide.
Things feel so easy
Im never gonna change my mind.
Im goin, Im goin, Im goin.
Well, ride me babe
Hang on to my hat
Ride me babe
Hang on to my hat
Ill howl like a wolf
Scream like an alley cat.
Im goin, Im goin, Im goin.
Dont wanna change my mind.
Dont wanna reel it in.
Dont wanna stop this slidin honey
Thats the shape Im in.
Im goin, Im goin on a downhill slide.
Things feels so easy
Im never gonna change my mind.
Im goin, Im goin, Im goin.
Goin, goin, goin, goin, goin.
Im goin on a downhill slide.
Watch me now, watch me now.
Goin, goin, goin, goin, goin.

song performed by Neil Young
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My Springs

In the heart of the Hills of Life, I know
Two springs that with unbroken flow
Forever pour their lucent streams
Into my soul's far Lake of Dreams.

Not larger than two eyes, they lie
Beneath the many-changing sky
And mirror all of life and time,
-- Serene and dainty pantomime.

Shot through with lights of stars and dawns,
And shadowed sweet by ferns and fawns,
-- Thus heaven and earth together vie
Their shining depths to sanctify.

Always when the large Form of Love
Is hid by storms that rage above,
I gaze in my two springs and see
Love in his very verity.

Always when Faith with stifling stress
Of grief hath died in bitterness,
I gaze in my two springs and see
A Faith that smiles immortally.

Always when Charity and Hope,
In darkness bounden, feebly grope,
I gaze in my two springs and see
A Light that sets my captives free.

Always, when Art on perverse wing
Flies where I cannot hear him sing,
I gaze in my two springs and see
A charm that brings him back to me.

When Labor faints, and Glory fails,
And coy Reward in sighs exhales,
I gaze in my two springs and see
Attainment full and heavenly.

O Love, O Wife, thine eyes are they,
-- My springs from out whose shining gray
Issue the sweet celestial streams
That feed my life's bright Lake of Dreams.

Oval and large and passion-pure
And gray and wise and honor-sure;
Soft as a dying violet-breath
Yet calmly unafraid of death;

[...] Read more

poem by Sidney Lanier
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Skateboard

Whoa whoa whoa mama
Here I go whoa again
Too fast on the downhill
Faster than I can run
If miles turned to inches
You know that man would roll
All the way around the world tonight
Look at him go
No jumping off the ride
At 30 miles per hour
Iron brains and ball bearings
Give him the power
Whoa whoa take a look
Whoa whoa look at that man
Whoa whoa you can see it
That man is free
Whoa whoa whoa mama
Here I go whoa again
Too fast on the downhill
Faster than I can roll
You got to see him to beleive him
Cant you hear em callin
You got to hear him, theres no fear
In that man
Cant you hear em callin
Hes like a mean molten gold
Cant you hear em callin
Lord, hes got to have his story told
Cant you fear youre fallin
Tounge tip slipn inand out like a lizard
Cant you fear youre fallin
Ah, good god, that mana a damn wizard
Cant you hear em callin
Black hair snapn like a bull whip in the air
Cant you feel youre fallin
Red rolln wheels runn for the downhill
Dare me!

song performed by Jefferson Starship
Added by Lucian Velea
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The Kerrigan Boys

By jove it’s hot on the track today, my flannel is soaked with sweat.
I think I’ll sit in the shade a bit and wait for the sun to set.
I know of a decent camping place by the river beyond the town,
And I’d rather carry my swag through there after the sun goes down.

A touch of pride, well perhaps it is, though I haven’t much cause for pride.
It’s sixteen years to a day almost, since old man Kerrigan died.
Sixteen years and his place is sold and the fortune he left us spent,
For the road down hill is an easy road and that was the way we went.

Kerrigan, that was our father’s name, was one of the tough old sort.
And he held by graft as he held by God, and he hated drink and sport.
We lads were fond of a bit of fun though he kept us under the rein,
And we had to bow to the old man’s will, though it went against our grain.

He was kind enough in his hard old way, but we had to earn our keep,
Driving horses and milking cows, branding and shearing sheep.
No wonder we bucked a bit at times, for you know what youngsters are,
We mustn’t dance at the local hall or drink in Mulligan’s bar.

Well, those were the orders the old man gave, but we did it just the same,
Jack was two years younger than I, so I was the more to blame.
But I’ve often thought had he been less hard and left us a bit more free
It might have been better for him perhaps, and better for Jack and me.

The old man dropped in the yard one day where we had the weaners penned.
We picked him up and we carried him home but we knew that it was the end.
The neighbours gathered from miles around he hadn’t a single foe,
And the crowd that stood by the open grave spoke well of the man below.

We grieved a lot for the old man’s death though he left us wealthy men;
If we had not known what he meant to us we realized it then.
Our only sister had died at birth and our mother was long since dead,
And we found that we were the only heirs when the old man’s will was read

We were just a couple of country lads; we’d never been off the farm,
We’d been held in check from our boyhood up by the weight of the old man’s arm.
Good in the saddle and fair with our fists with a touch of the old man’s pride,
But the neighbours muttered and shook their heads when old man Kerrigan died.

Hard and all as the old man was for years he had kept a stud.
For the love of the horse for the horses sake is strong in the Irish blood.
But breeding was only a hobby with him a sort of a harmless craze,
Though I’d often thought that he had his fling way back in his younger days.

We got mixed up with a racing crowd and started to go the pace.
Forgot the sound of the old man’s voice and the frown on his rugged face.
For the road down hill is and easy road though it ends in a swift descent,
We were only youngsters, a reckless pair, and that was the way we went.

[...] Read more

poem by Edward Harrington
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The Rill From The Foot Of The Mountain

The rill from the foot of the mountain that joins the river to the sea
It has babbled on downhill forever by hedgerows in the high
Country
It has witnessed the birth and death of millions of Seasons even before the first Human was born
In the upland wood where it flows through the birds sing at dawn of the morn.

The rill it is truly immortal something that will live forever more
Forever 'twill flow to the river that flows to the great ocean shore
To it there is not a time limit it is as old as father time
It has inspired the long dead poets to glorify it in their rhyme.

The rill from the foot of the mountain towards the river ripples along
And sometimes above it's quiet babble the dippers can be heard in song
The dark brown white breasted waterbirds of Human kind they do seem shy
By the water-way they were born and in the water-way they will die.

The rill from the foot of the mountain downhill to the big river flow
The ancestors of the upland farmers who lived by it centuries ago
In the old Village graveyard it flows by with the long departed they lay
As on for to join the big river it babbles on it's downhill way.

poem by Francis Duggan
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Ask The Mountains

Dont come after
Dont come after
Dont come after
Come
Come
Come
Come
Dont come after
Dont come after
Please dont follow me along
When you read this Ill be gone
Ask the mountains
Springs and fountains
Why couldnt this go on?
Couldnt our happiness go on?
Ask the sun that lightens up the sky
When the night gives in, to tell you why
Ask the mountains
Wild woods, highlands
Ask the green in the woods and the trees
The cold breeze coming in from the sea
Springs and fountains
Ask the mountains
Springs and fountains
Ask the mountains
Springs and fountains
Ask the mountains
Springs and fountains
Ask the mountains
Ask the sun that lightens up the sky
When the night gives in, to tell you why
Tell the mountains
Springs and fountains
Why couldnt this go on?
Couldnt our happiness go on?
Why couldnt this go on?
Couldnt our happiness go on?

song performed by Vangelis
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The Eve Of Revolution

The trumpets of the four winds of the world
From the ends of the earth blow battle; the night heaves,
With breasts palpitating and wings refurled,
With passion of couched limbs, as one who grieves
Sleeping, and in her sleep she sees uncurled
Dreams serpent-shapen, such as sickness weaves,
Down the wild wind of vision caught and whirled,
Dead leaves of sleep, thicker than autumn leaves,
Shadows of storm-shaped things,
Flights of dim tribes of kings,
The reaping men that reap men for their sheaves,
And, without grain to yield,
Their scythe-swept harvest-field
Thronged thick with men pursuing and fugitives,
Dead foliage of the tree of sleep,
Leaves blood-coloured and golden, blown from deep to deep.

I hear the midnight on the mountains cry
With many tongues of thunders, and I hear
Sound and resound the hollow shield of sky
With trumpet-throated winds that charge and cheer,
And through the roar of the hours that fighting fly,
Through flight and fight and all the fluctuant fear,
A sound sublimer than the heavens are high,
A voice more instant than the winds are clear,
Say to my spirit, "Take
Thy trumpet too, and make
A rallying music in the void night's ear,
Till the storm lose its track,
And all the night go back;
Till, as through sleep false life knows true life near,
Thou know the morning through the night,
And through the thunder silence, and through darkness light."

I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.
The height of night is shaken, the skies break,
The winds and stars and waters come and go
By fits of breath and light and sound, that wake
As out of sleep, and perish as the show
Built up of sleep, when all her strengths forsake
The sense-compelling spirit; the depths glow,
The heights flash, and the roots and summits shake
Of earth in all her mountains,
And the inner foamless fountains
And wellsprings of her fast-bound forces quake;
Yea, the whole air of life

[...] Read more

poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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The Lake Josephus Days

We left Little Redfish for Lake Josephus, traveling along the good names — from Stanley to Capehorn to Seafoam to the Rapid River, up Float Creek, past the Greyhound Mine and then to Lake Josephus, and a few days after that up the trail to Hell-diver Lake with the baby on my shoulders and a good limit of trout waiting in Hell-diver.

Knowing the trout would wait there like airplane tickets for us to come, we stopped at Mushroom Springs and had a drink of cold shadowy water and some photographs taken of the baby and me sitting together on a log.

I hope someday we'll have enough money to get those pictures developed. Sometimes I get curious about them, wondering if they will turn out all right. They are in suspension now like seeds in a package. I'll be older when they are developed and easier to please. Look there's the baby! Look there's Mushroom Springs! Look there's me!

I caught the limit of trout within an hour of reaching Hell-diver, and my woman, in all the excitement of good fishing, let the baby fall asleep directly in the sun and when the baby woke up, she puked and I carried her back down the trail.

My woman trailed silently behind, carrying the rods and the fish. The baby puked a couple more times, thimblefuls of gentle lavender vomit, but still it got on my clothes, and her face was hot and flushed.

We stopped at Mushroom Springs. I gave her a small drink of water, not too much, and rinsed the vomit taste out of her mouth. Then I wiped the puke off my clothes and for some strange reason suddenly it was a perfect time, there at Mushroom Springs, to wonder whatever happened to the Zoot suit.

Along with World War II and the Andrews Sisters, the Zoot suit had been very popular in the early 40s. I guess they were all just passing fads.

A sick baby on the trail down from Hell-diver, July 1961, is probably a more important question. It cannot be left to go on forever, a sick baby to take her place in the galaxy, among the comets, bound to pass close to the earth every 173 years.

She stopped puking after Mushroom Springs, and I carried her back down along the path in and out of the shadows and across other nameless springs, and by the time we got down to Lake Josephus, she was all right.

She was soon running around with a big cutthroat trout in her hands, carrying it like a harp on her way to a concert — ten minutes late with no bus in sight and no taxi either.

poem by Richard Brautigan
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Part 8 of Trout Fishing in America

A RETURN TO THE COVER OF

THIS BOOK

Dear Trout Fishing in America:

I met your friend Fritz in Washington Square. He told me

to tell you that his case went to a jury and that he was acquit-

ted by the jury.

He said that it was important for me to say that his case

went to a jury and that he was acquitted by the jury,

said it again.

He looked in good shape. He was sitting in the sun. There's

an old San Francisco saying that goes: "It's better to rest in

Washington Square than in the California Adult Authority. "

How are things in New York?

Yours,

"An Ardent Admirer"

Dear Ardent Admirer:

It's good to hear that Fritz isn't in jail. He was very wor-

ried about it. The last time I was in San Francisco, he told

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poem by Richard Brautigan
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Spa (Hot Springs)

In the spa city of Hot Springs
Old maids sit in trolley cars
Up and down the busy streets
Young men strum on blue guitars

In the spa city of Hot Springs
Pilgrims gather at the sump
To fill their homely samovars
With rusty liquid from a pump

In the spa city of Hot Springs
Sidewalk touts hawk lemonade
In the park policemen wink
At winos on the promenade

In the spa city of Hot Springs
Artist hacks in residence
Paint the sun on velvet, black
For kings and former presidents

In the spa city of Hot Springs
Chinese men play dominos
In rooms where on another day
A tart pulls on her pantyhose

In the spa city of Hot Springs
Healing waters tip the pail
As ponies gather at the gate
To chase each other’s pony tail.

poem by Alan Hickman
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An Image Springs to Mind

An image springs to mind:
A child, with childish innocence
upon the shores of life, inclined
to play, without pretence
or mask. Or, if a mask there be,
it still retains a quality
allowing all with empathy to penetrate behind.

An image springs to mind:
So freely see the child dispense
the sifting sand, so unrefined,
with slight apparent sense.
It takes some perspicacity
to see each grain is memory -
dispersed or treasured as may be - quicksilverly defined.

An image springs to mind:
The shifting sands are implements
used differently by different blind
for good or ill intents immense.
Some knowledge is acquired for free,
transmitted some, instinctively,
the balance, finely tuned as we progress or slip behind.

An image springs to mind:
The grain in youth packed tight and dense
Age often loosens, cannot bind, -
how great the difference!
If we could meet mortality
with every thought recorded, we
could help those after us to see the answers we can’t find.

An image springs to mind:
These answers must, in self defence,
be hid from those who’d grind Mankind,
enslaving innocence.
Both Time and Knowledge thus should be
weaved secret in Life’s mystery
from here until eternity - or so it seems designed...

poem by Jonathan Robin
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The Pleasures of Imagination: Book The Second

When shall the laurel and the vocal string
Resume their honours? When shall we behold
The tuneful tongue, the Promethéan hand
Aspire to ancient praise? Alas! how faint,
How slow the dawn of beauty and of truth
Breaks the reluctant shades of Gothic night
Which yet involve the nations! Long they groan'd
Beneath the furies of rapacious force;
Oft as the gloomy north, with iron-swarms
Tempestuous pouring from her frozen caves,
Blasted the Italian shore, and swept the works
Of liberty and wisdom down the gulph
Of all-devouring night. As long immur'd
In noon-tide darkness by the glimmering lamp,
Each muse and each fair science pin'd away
The sordid hours: while foul, barbarian hands
Their mysteries profan'd, unstrung the lyre,
And chain'd the soaring pinion down to earth.
At last the muses rose, and spurn'd their bonds,
And wildly warbling, scatter'd, as they flew,
Their blooming wreaths from fair Valclusa's bowers
Arno's myrtle border and the shore of soft Parthenope.

But still the rage of dire ambition and gigantic power,
From public aims and from the busy walk
Of civil commerce, drove the bolder train
Of penetrating science to the cells,
Where studious ease consumes the silent hour
In shadowy searches and unfruitful care.
Thus from their guardians torn, the tender arts
Of mimic fancy and harmonious joy,
To priestly domination and the lust
Of lawless courts, their amiable toil
For three inglorious ages have resign'd,
In vain reluctant: and Torquato's tongue
Was tun'd for slavish pæans at the throne
Of tinsel pomp: and Raphael's magic hand
Effus'd its fair creation to enchant
The fond adoring herd in Latian fanes
To blind belief; while on their prostrate necks
The sable tyrant plants his heel secure.

But now behold! the radiant æra dawns,
When freedom's ample fabric, fix'd at length
For endless years on Albion's happy shore
In full proportion, once more shall extend
To all the kindred powers of social bliss
A common mansion, a parental roof.
There shall the virtues, there shall wisdom's train,
Their long-lost friends rejoining, as of old,

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poem by Mark Akenside
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Georgic 3

Thee too, great Pales, will I hymn, and thee,
Amphrysian shepherd, worthy to be sung,
You, woods and waves Lycaean. All themes beside,
Which else had charmed the vacant mind with song,
Are now waxed common. Of harsh Eurystheus who
The story knows not, or that praiseless king
Busiris, and his altars? or by whom
Hath not the tale been told of Hylas young,
Latonian Delos and Hippodame,
And Pelops for his ivory shoulder famed,
Keen charioteer? Needs must a path be tried,
By which I too may lift me from the dust,
And float triumphant through the mouths of men.
Yea, I shall be the first, so life endure,
To lead the Muses with me, as I pass
To mine own country from the Aonian height;
I, Mantua, first will bring thee back the palms
Of Idumaea, and raise a marble shrine
On thy green plain fast by the water-side,
Where Mincius winds more vast in lazy coils,
And rims his margent with the tender reed.
Amid my shrine shall Caesar's godhead dwell.
To him will I, as victor, bravely dight
In Tyrian purple, drive along the bank
A hundred four-horse cars. All Greece for me,
Leaving Alpheus and Molorchus' grove,
On foot shall strive, or with the raw-hide glove;
Whilst I, my head with stripped green olive crowned,
Will offer gifts. Even 'tis present joy
To lead the high processions to the fane,
And view the victims felled; or how the scene
Sunders with shifted face, and Britain's sons
Inwoven thereon with those proud curtains rise.
Of gold and massive ivory on the doors
I'll trace the battle of the Gangarides,
And our Quirinus' conquering arms, and there
Surging with war, and hugely flowing, the Nile,
And columns heaped on high with naval brass.
And Asia's vanquished cities I will add,
And quelled Niphates, and the Parthian foe,
Who trusts in flight and backward-volleying darts,
And trophies torn with twice triumphant hand
From empires twain on ocean's either shore.
And breathing forms of Parian marble there
Shall stand, the offspring of Assaracus,
And great names of the Jove-descended folk,
And father Tros, and Troy's first founder, lord
Of Cynthus. And accursed Envy there
Shall dread the Furies, and thy ruthless flood,
Cocytus, and Ixion's twisted snakes,

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poem by Publius Vergilius Maro
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