Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey - Songs from Vagabondia

Vagabondia

Off with the fetters

That chafe and restrain!

Off with the chain!

Here Art and Letters,

Music and wine,

And Myrtle and Wanda,

The winsome witches,

Blithely combine.

Here are true riches,

Here is Golconda,

Here are the Indies,

Here we are free,

Free as the wind is,

Free as the sea,

Free!

Houp-la!

What have we

To do with the way

Of the Pharisee?

We go or we stay

At our own sweet will;

We think as we say,

And we say or keep still

At our own sweet will,

At our own sweet will.

Here we are free,

To be good or bad,

Sane or mad,

Merry or grim

As the mood may be,—

Free as the whim

Of a spook on a spree,—

Free to be oddities,

Not mere commodities,

Stupid and salable,

Wholly available,

Ranged upon shelves;

Each with his puny form

In the same uniform,

Cramped and disabled;

We are not labelled,

We are ourselves.

Here is the real,

Here is the ideal;

Laughable hardship

Met and forgot,

Glory of bardship

World's bloom and world's blot;

The shock and the jostle,

The mock and the push,

But hearts like the throstle

A-joy in the bush;

Wits that would merrily

Laugh away wrong,

Throats that would verily

Melt Hell in Song.

What though the dimes be

Elusive as rhymes be,

And Bessie, with finger

Uplifted, is warning

That breakfast next morning

(A subject she's scorning)

Is mighty uncertain!

What care we? Linger

A moment to kiss—

No time's amiss

To a vagabond's ardor—

Then finish the larder

And pull down the curtain.

Unless ere the kiss come,

Black Richard or Bliss come,

Or Tom with a flagon,

Or Karl with a jag on—

Then up and after

The joy of the night

With the hounds of laughter

To follow the flight

Of the fox-foot hours

That double and run

Through brakes and bowers

Of folly and fun.

With the comrade heart

For a moment's play,

And the comrade heart

For a heavier day,

And the comrade heart

Forever and aye.

For the joy of wine

Is not for long;

And the joy of song

Is a dream of shine;

But the comrade heart

Shall outlast art

And a woman's love

The fame thereof.

But wine for a sign

Of the love we bring!

And song for an oath

That Love is king!

And both, and both

For his worshipping!

Then up and away

Till the break of day,

With a heart that's merry,

And a Tom-and-Jerry,

And a derry-down-derry—

What's that you say,

You highly respectable

Buyers and sellers?

We should be decenter?

Not as we please inter

Custom, frugality,

Use and morality

In the delectable

Depths of wine-cellars?

Midnights of revel,

And noondays of song!

Is it so wrong?

Go to the Devil!

I tell you that we,

While you are smirking

And lying and shirking

Life's duty of duties,

Honest sincerity,

We are in verity

Free!

Free to rejoice

In blisses and beauties!

Free as the voice

Of the wind as it passes!

Free as the bird

In the weft of the grasses!

Free as the word

Of the sun to the sea—

Free!

Read them all here: http://www.canadianpoetry.ca/confederation/Bliss%20Carman/vagabondia/index.htm

"Resume"

I got my first false kiss

from cold indifferent ignorance

but she quickly pulled away

and ran upstairs.

So I drew a hot bath

Like a roman suicide

but no blood in the water

only gentle virgin's tears.

I got my first real kiss

from unexpected big heart bliss

leaping over boundaries

clutching tight, kissing right

whispered teachings in the car

I almost learned

but couldn’t quite.

I lost my virginity

to an enormous rolling sea

of acceptance and affection

pulling me in her direction

and just begging for five seconds

of my hurried ecstasy.

Oh I tried my best to love her

but my heart could never cover

the ugly sharp disdain

of my hated haughty mind.

How come they only love you

when your serotonin's high?

How come they only see you

when you fit in, when you hide?

How come they never love you

when your just your lonely self?

Because you only love them

when you try.

"King Charlamine, the Dumbass"

King Charlamine, the dumbass.

First of his name

I wear the crown that starts the reign

of King Charlamine, the dumbass,

walking in the rain

I hear the echo of the shame

of King Charlamine, the dumbass,

speaking to himself

of cold lost memories and what else

belongs to Charlamine, the dumbass,

Imagined golden crown

and his sceptre hanging down

down to dead days, the dumbass,

holding on so tight

won't give in without a fight

so he squeals and so he slaps

runs away until collapse

but King Charlamine, the dumbass

can't be killed so easily,

beneath his burning bodhi tree

he realizes emptiness

so when you swing you always miss,

King Charlamine, the dumbass,

with nothing much to say

so he pours out every day

down the drain of pages white

with a coward's meek delight

its King Charlamine, the dumbass

with his fingers in his ass

dreaming of a loving lass

can't be learned and can't be taught

always sold but never bought

is King Charlamine, the dumbass

pretending not to care

till he weeps and tears his hair,

in the bucket of despair

you will always find him there,

face reflected in the slops

madly laughing till he drops

and fades away....

To return another day

and continue on the reign

of the poor tormented brain

of King Charlamine, the dumbass.

Merry Xmas!

To my dear friends.

The Favorite Instrumentals

David Axelrod- Terri's Tune

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDTYbki8-tg


Lonnie Liston Smith- Desert Nights

Misled Children- Track 2

Stringtronics- Mindbender :Tropicalia

Donkey Kong- Stickerbrush Symphony

Ramsey Lewis- Legacy

Madlib- Fallin

MF Doom- Orris Root Powder

Arthur Verocai- Sylvia

Lonnie Liston Smith- Bridge Through Time

XXYYXX- About You

Mike Oldfield- Ommadawn

Pharaoh Sanders- Freedom

Kool and the Gang- Summer Madness

Bob James- El Verano

Lonnie Liston Smith- Bright Moments

Zero Seven- Polaris

Madlib- Distant Land

The Art of Kano Kazunobu

From "500 Arhats"

https://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/masters-of-mercy/

Excerpts from "Letters to a Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke

Irony: Don't let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments. When you are fully creative, try to use it, as one more way to take hold of fife. Used purely, it too is pure, and one needn't be ashamed of it; but if you feel yourself becoming too familiar with it, if you are afraid of this growing familiarity, then turn to great and serious objects, in front of which it becomes small and helpless. Search into the depths of Things: there, irony never descends and when you arrive at the edge of greatness, find out whether this way of perceiving the world arises from a necessity of your being. For under the influence of serious Things it will either fall away from you (if it is something accidental), or else (if it is really innate and belongs to you) it will grow strong, and become a serious tool and take its place among the instruments which you can form your art with.

....We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it. This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us. The fact that people have in this sense been cowardly has done infinite harm to life; the experiences that are called it apparitions, the whole so-called "spirit world," death, all these Things that are so closely related to us, have through our daily defensiveness been so entirely pushed out of life that the senses with which we might have been able to grasp them have atrophied. To say nothing of God. But the fear of the inexplicable has not only impoverished the reality of the individual; it has also narrowed the relationship between one human being and another, which has as it were been lifted out of the riverbed of infinite possibilities and set down in a fallow place on the bank, where nothing happens. For it is not only indolence that causes human relationships to be repeated from case to case with such unspeakable monotony and boredom; it is timidity before any new, inconceivable experience, which we don't think we can deal with. But only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being. For if we imagine this being of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it is obvious that most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth. In this way they have a certain security. And yet how much more human is the dangerous insecurity that drives those prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their cells. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares have been set around us, and there is nothing that should frighten or upset us. We have been put into life as into the element we most accord with, and we have, moreover, through thousands of years of adaptation, come to resemble this life so greatly that when we hold still, through a fortunate mimicry we can hardly be differentiated from everything around us. We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

Read all of the letters here:http://www.carrothers.com/rilke_main.htm