R.M. Engelhardt's Blog: Burn Brightly, page 21

October …

 
 
All things on earth point home in old October: sailors to sea, travelers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken. For have not all these things been here before, have we not seen them, heard them, known them, and will they not live again for us as they did once, if only you come back again?”
 




~
Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River 

A MARCH SNOW

 
 
 
 
A March snow
Has fallen
 
Small children
Create angels
On earth
 
 
They smile.
 
 
__________
 
 
 
 
 
R.M. ENGELHARDT
 

Be Not …

“Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.”





~ 
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I know it is a good poem when I cut my self shaving.”...

 

I know it is a good poem when I cut my self shaving.”

~ W.H. Auden

Some People

 

 

Some people.

 

Some people, will lie

Some people, will cheat.

 

Play dead

Play the martyr

Destroy all others

 

Regardless…of the outcome.

 

Never taking the blame

Never taking the fall,

And never feeling the pain

 

Of all others.

 

And someone once told me;

 

“That honest people don’t exist anymore in the 21st century”

 

And someone once told me;

 

“That love…is dead”

 

And perhaps, they were right.

 

But I am not a romantic

I am a romantic

I am the last rational man

 

With a soul.

 

I am the last human being left who still believes

 

In “The Way”

 

I have done the unavoidable.

I have done the unreliable.

And I have been the unwanted… as well.

 

“The Dead”

 

“The Living”

 

“The Risen”

 

So call me… what you will.

Do your best, or do… your worst.

 

But either way, know this;

 

That you can never win

A battle against a man

Who’s already gone head to head

With the universe

 

And “Lost”

__________________

 

R.M. Engelhardt

The Hollow Men : T.S. Elliot

The Hollow Men

 

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.


The Hollow Men | 1925
Happy Birthday To T.S. Elliot

 

The Muse …

 

 

“Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.”

~ William S. Burroughs

“Once in a while there is a man who won’t do what is...

 

 

“Once in a while there is a man who won’t do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. They’ll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you.”

~  John Steinbeck

WRITE

 

 

 

There were days—there were many days—these words could burn stars… and raise up empires… and topple gods.

~ The Doctor

If You Want To Write …

“If you want to write, write it. That’s the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don’t send it to me. Don’t show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody.

They’re not going to publish it.”

~ Robert B. Parker