Death of a Poet

He used to think of himself as a Poet, in the Ancient, Romantic tradition, and he did write poems, dozens of them.  But they were not very good poems, things like: ‘The cat is on the mat, it has a hat. That’s That!’ That sort of thing.

He did attempt to read his poems to people a few times.

Once, he was camped by a billabong, as one does, and found himself not surrounded by local people who had all gone visiting relatives but by City Hippies having a festival.  Invited to sit by a campfire by a group and asked what he did, when he said he was a poet he was adked to recite a poem.  Sadly, just before the end a lot of new people arrived suddenly and un-announced.  My poem was abandoned and forgotten and eventually the billabong dried up, as they do.

Another time he summoned sufficient courage to go to an advertised Public House where an open Poetry reading was occurring.  However, once inside the door, there were two further doors on either side, each with people, and either being the Poetry Reading.  In a desperate act of Free Will, he chose one side, which turned out to be a play, but he was ‘seduced’ into staying and watching the play, which was a good play that creatively used the confined performance space of a front bar.  He never went back.

The last time was after befriending some people who ran a café that had Jazz Music (He wondered later if he had remembered correctly what they called it) and also had Poetry Reading.  He went there with his folder of poems, and sat in the back room and promised he would return.  Some time later the folder had ceased to exist, as things sometimes do.  He wondered if he had left it in that Café.  He always intended to return, till the years turned to decades.

Then in a scenario that is yet to happen, it turns out the poems were found and read and admired and kept, till eventually someone decided to publish them ‘by the hand of an unknown poet’.  And then, as Fate would have it, as it often does, he was collecting up old newspapers to put under himself as he lay in a forgotten corner, and saw by the light of a fleeting moon one of his poems with an account of the fame of this ‘unknown poet'.

That night was particularly cold, and he froze to death, but he died blissfully knowing he had been discovered and was acknowledged as a true poet and was now one of the Immortals.

Hi Heather 2,

Hi Heather,

Please don't feel obliged to reply at length.  While of course I delight in your comments and letters as you are one of the few people that have understood me, perhaps about the only one.  I am still coming to grips with the concept.  Your ideas and perceptions make so much sense to me.  I greatly envy you mixing in a milieu of people with such mentalities.  It is my own fault, of course.  I apparently was born with the ability to understand things and hence, with some effort, to become good at something.  Ability?  Now all I have is a Billy, and we drink coffee, not tea.  I have such a different perception of myself since I had all the counselling.  (I still confuse the 'se' and the 'ci'.  My late Father was the latter in the City of Malvern, and totally failed in the former, which is what a Parent ought to be, after milk supply of course.  Now I can understand how other people must have perceived my "intelligence" as I suppose I was mentally precocious, occasionally.)  I suddenly recall * when I was very young, perhaps four or so, after I had "recovered" from being dropped on my head in that very same bathroom, when I delighted everyone, meaning my Parents and all the family and friends they told, when I told someone who asked how I slept that I had "slept like a Mally root:, because I had heard other people say they slept like logs.  How odd that now i can only sleep with chemical help, mostly herbal but sometimes antihistamine; nothing prescription only, drat! * I started this letter in the reply page of "webmail", but suddenly I copied what I have written and jumped into my Blog.  I have written some things as letters, including by hand to Marie, that I should have put in my blog.  I never mentioned anything at all about the operation or is consequences.  I suppose that was part of the closed-mind approach that did me so much harm.  I am improving in some things but not in others.  I call the Blog Minicipality, and it is on Google's Blogger system.  It is nothing to do with Facebook or other 'social media'.  It is mostly snaps from my world and comments about who I am, but sometimes I post personal things, and should post more, instead of writing it all to you, except that thinking that you are reading makes it so much easier to write.  I suppose knowing that there are then thousand people listening to you play the bagpipes or whatever, would be a great incentive to do one's best.  Just playing for oneself is like dipping one's toe in the edge of the ocean, but not bothering to go in because there is no one with whom to cavort, or share the buzz.
[Suddenly, at that point I noticed the time, with ten minutes to put on my shoes, grab the shopping trolly and head to the bus stop, just a stone's throw away, but the other side of the main road.  Anyway, I made it with minutes to spare, and reached Chaddy with nearly an hour to go.  Had a crepe with fromage and Mexican Coffee.  The appointment at OPSM took nearly an hour, but after endless tests in various machines, with all sorts of flashing lights and puffs of air, I ordered the replacement sunnies.  Did I mention that yesterday, or was it the day before, suddenly they had dematerialised and I cannot find them anywhere.  Perhaps taken by Ravens.]
While waiting for the bus, I thought more about the libretto I am writing for another Opera.  It is one of the literary forms I like to play round with.  This one not in hexameter like the great German Poets, but in free form.  I was taken by London Road.  It is now out as a movie, but it was reading about it and seeing that they were going to reprise it at the National that was my inducement for my second trip to London.  I had dinner first on the terrace, reading all about it in advance.  The idea of setting normal conversation to music and making "reality" into High Art was a new direction, that I have wanted to follow ever since.
I was thinking this morning of six voices, three women three men, of course, permitting various combinations.  As a flaneur, I imagine walking though crouds and hearing snippets of conversation that overlap and seem to repeat, or not quite.  The theme I am currently working on is Justice, and how to present the argument that the Criminal Justice System is mistaken to administer Retributive Justice, including "punishment" instead of rehabilitation, and is divisive of society creating us and them classes, instead of being inclusive.
Later, I was thinking about the column in the Age Business section claiming Australia needs to be a Republic so we will be somehow more independent and also it would be better for business, in ways that he didn't seem to be able to elaborate.  Rupert Murdoch was the original 'angry young man/journalist' who never grew up, and he leads the pack.  He must be amused that he is reviled by the so called "left" because he is Fiscally Conservative as well as being Socially Progressive, something the Chinese are now combining to great effect. You might have read all of this.  I am sorry I went on at length just now about nothing much at all.
Please do not feel the need to match me in length, detail or flippancy.  A single character from you would let me know you are thinking of me.
Do you type up any accounts of your experiences?  You are visual, Brett is aural, but I do words.  If I do anything at all, it is string words together.  This is quite a new experience for me as I was semi-illiterate for most of my life due to being sick as an infant and missing crucial, foundation lessons. [Arguably, to my benefit as I also missed the brainwashing and being convinced of falsehoods at an early and impressionable age.]  But I have mostly thought the words to myself.  If only I had bothered to type them up as I thought them, I would have had a shelf of books by now, perhaps a couple of plays and at least one epic opera.  I like Epic as an Art Form.  In India, I saw nearly all the Ramlila, that goes for ten nights at about four hours per night and tells the story of the Ramayana in singing and music, and is traditionally performed every year in many cities and villages all over India.  It is Epic in the true sense of the word.  Wagner's Ring is smaller but of that type, as were the Classical Greek play cycles.  That is why I can write long letters.  This one might never end, now I have started it in this new Blog-format.  I can save it on Google's hardware and retrieve it in an instant to extend or change it.  People who search the labels might find it, but it is just an extension of my thought processes.
Stop.  Stop. That is enough.  Shall I revise it or just send it?  I had the plumber at High Street as the basin upstairs was totally blocked and needed new pipes.  I don't know why we didn't do down stairs at the same time.  Anyway, he did not go in the back or see your paintings.
Cheers, Na'um (previously unknown as e-normus)

When the air is clear and bright the days are colder,

The tradition of saying a prayer before eating dates from the times of ancient Temples, when blood sacrifices were offered on High Altars.  They resembled a Bar-B-Q, in as much as they were roasting meat on an open fire.  In Jerusalem, one person at a time was invited to ascend to the Altar to offer the sacrifice, starting with a Cohen.  In those long-forgotten days, a living being was ritually slaughtered with due reverence to the Eternal, Supreme Consciousness of which all life is part, before being “cooked” and then presumably eaten.  In late Republican and early Imperial Rome, there was a Mystery Cult of Mithras, where somehow a bull was identified with their deity and consumed, some say leading to the Xian Mass.   In Judaism, the idea moved from G-d being present in every living ‘soul’ to being serarate from all, including ourselves, needing to reconnect instead of acknowledging that we are already connected in an ontologically identical way.  The early Xians argued about the duality of the paternal and filial persons of their G-dhead, but the same argument applies to every living creature, for we are all equally “children of G-d” as they claim their already-born Mosciach was the “son of G’d” in some unique way that he had but is not shared with all other life forms, as is actually and on examination evidently the case.

When the air is clear and bright the days are colder,

Birds still sing, the flowers grow and we grow older.

If I had a tale to tell I’d write more verses

Filled with blessings and of course a few vile curses.

This is just a first attempt at rhyming writing,

Donning gloves to try to spar, the first time fighting.

Fitting thoughts into a corset made of words is

Just the same as all the twittering of birds.  Is

This new way of writing right for me? Because it

Makes me think, to start to wirite and then to pause, it

Forces ideas out I din’t know I thought, and

Gives me time to phrase and type them as they’re caught, and

Lets me take a page to structure each idea

Making all the inner meanings crystal clear.

Another long and knitted hat is lost.

Another long and knitted hat is lost.
The first was tall and pointed and was red.
It wasn't on the floor, or 'neath the bed,
Or anywhere at all it could be tossed.
I'd found it, so it wasn't just the cost,
But that was long ago, when all is said.
But this one vanishing fills me with dread
Because inside the house it can't be lost.

This limp and wrinkled hat has disappeared.
Or run away itself just like a cat?
Its sudden non-existence is just weird.
The only explanation can be that:
My grip on life is going, as I feared,
The way I've lost my grip on one more hat.

Naum Tered
5-7-15
http://www.tered.org/poems.html