He Traveled Regions Vast Upon Arriving at a Monolith in the Undergrowth Wrinkling alone under leafy shelter a monolithic tower edged into view leaning time in unmarked barrenness suffering blank crumbling colonnades; shuffling enlightenment to this natural expanse caroming off an inventive moment I lose myself once again, on a distant planet with a core influx from ancient authority, into the irregular dwellings of underbrush overgrown, eons with neglect where my mind wanders in a long breath... Into the monolith... for light of the mind a forgotten pathway loose boulders of a magnetic ether cover a darkness that haunts... perhaps just the hypothetical particles exuded by high-temperature industries or perhaps from the limits of jurisprudence still mingling in the grasses of Paleolithic tribesmen buried somewhere in the foothills of these lush hills… I stumble into a clearing edged in solitude and quiet try not to disturb the pristine senses and thereupon I was drawn to touch the monolith... then carried on a sudden feeling of synergy an opprobrium of disingenuousness, exacerbated by the magisterial dotage of deliberations with an inordinate degree of lucubration from frenetic surreptitiously cogitated draughts of reductive moments of acuity somehow brought on by the monolith... meaning I was hit with a sudden guilt that I could not be everywhere, with everyone, at once… it was just such convoluted streams of consciousness that I tried to lose myself within, that I endeavored to flee the guilt that I was not spending time with those who mattered most in my life, in practical matters, while at this moment I'm caught in a dream, perhaps; no, I must admit it, a quest of necessity… As I approached cautiously I was stung by regret woven in all directions and attributes of God, redolent with disturbing feelings that map geometries of reptiles and primates that, even here amidst such a remote celestial body displaying old-fashioned arrangements of bygone societies... I meld with the land softened by muddy surfaces… I cannot attest if it was the monolith, or the flowering cities of my distant species functioning in the roles of structuring genes and thereby awakening them to subject and style, leaving monuments that sing philosophical religions and cryptic words of learning nevertheless doomed by an exodus of the enlightened and wise that gave rise to the arts and aesthetics found in the metaphysical city-states of their earlier times- at this monolith I am renewed by the wind-swept ashes of time-space explorers who followed a mere nightingale’s song, bleeding with social and political flame mixed with pastoral substance, oozing in urban cultures now soothed by ultra-thin polymers and plastics so common among the materialistic denizens who were flicked off the pinnacle of excellence and beauty by intense marketing of the illogical born of a desperate need to reduce vast and tasteless inventories… I turn, and a striped body skitters by, featuring short, flipper-like stumps, flailing its defective appendages as it has in the fauna for the last 500 million years, no doubt to some day travel to the winter health spas with the ultimate hope of being introduced to the alphabet used by the satellite colonies sailing the solar winds, most likely required in their university’s curriculum... I would open this vein of guilt and let portions of my abherrations spring forth in combustible passages of protoplasmic untriangulated mammalian remembrances railroaded by the cubicled employees who keep record of wonder and awe, but such an effusion would be insignificant… I stroll along the edges of a low leafy shelter, a monolithic tower marks my view, leaning heavily in unmarked barrenness, beyond the crumbling colonnades; I toyed with its enlightenment in the natural expanse of the inventive moment, was caught for a moment while a generous influent from ancient authority undistinguishable from the irregular dwellings overgrown in the underbrush and beckoning me on… |
I think I've found just the place for an orphaned musical piece I recently created- a piece just on the edge enough to hint at the other-wordliness of this creative exercise in four parts...
musical accompaniment: piece DGX-5a by me
(right-click on link and open in new window)
ah, now I have a true multimedia creation here...
This was a creative exercise in four parts...
This Edit is:
Edit 2- the post-view clean-up
Edit 3: with graphics (in spite of the abundance of tasteless abuse of graphics -but then, what haven't we abused here...?!)
Edit 4: the post-comment scrutiny...
Edit 5- many months later...
THE EXERCISE
Part One: Write a Paragraph discussing a Line from an Existing Poem
Let me go to Oldpoetry.com and see if anything tickles my fancy…
OK, here’s one as good as any…
"He traveled regions vast”
from The Ballad Of The Drover by Henry Lawson
Now your average person would not envision much in that line, and would rather reach for a sugar bowl of finely-crafted pitter patter and eat it straight-up rather than expend the effort to ponder the psychological and emotional depths of such a mundane scene, but here, we bother...
Now, taking the lines out of context, I would begin with a blank slate, and fill in the details based on my worldly, lifelong experiences. In context, I would let the original poem itself fill in what blanks it may...
I will try to take the best from both the 'in' and 'out of' context interpretations. In context, the poem is a ballad which recounts the story of a drover ('one that drives cattle or sheep') who is riding home from a drive, trying to beat the rains which will flood the river ahead… at this point the ballad could end up a tragedy or a triumph… the drover urges his horses and faithful dog to cross the swollen river… and it is a tragedy- the drover drowns, the dog makes it across the raging river but jumps back in for his master and drowns; only the pack-horse returns “to bring dumb tidings home.” (great line there…) Out of context, I'd have to plug-in my own imaginary, weathered character, drooping under the weight of his work, harboring the same regrets in life as myself...
Part 2: My Last Dream
Oh, dreams are so easily forgotten, let me pick my brain for my last one… hmmm… I think they are based on our digestive state… can’t recreate that! Maybe a recurring scene… nothing, too much stress in life right now… let me try harder… hmmm… I’m going to have to wait for my NEXT dream… I’ll pick this up then… OH, only 9 hours to go before the contest closes… there must be some way… how about a daydream? That would have been losing myself in a photo I took- there is land with an ancient monolith in a thick, overgrown jungle, and I was exploring the area looking for a good photo shoot while letting my mind wander, hence the daydream… in actuality I was in a sci-fi game featuring different planets with varied terrains, hence my using it for art. Since I was ‘there’ in mental spirit with my own unrelated musings, I’ll use that as my last dream, and I will weave into the poem the ancient monolith-in-the-jungle imagery…
Part 3: A Conflict in My Life Right Now
That would be spending time between work, sleep, family, and creative pastimes such as this; because whenever I am being creative, it is usually at the sacrifice of one or all of the others…
Part 4: Weaving it All Together in a Poem
Now the rule says that this poem does not have to relate to any of the above at all, which would make the previous efforts pointless! So I will opt to actually weave them all together…
Honorable mention
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