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the saddest blog that ever was
10.21.2004:
Cicada Shell
hollow padded empty jar
walnuts resting on the wing
leaves fall down when summer sings
willows felled while Phraedrus dreams
of love outside the city walls
today I left behind the bell
the empty jar drunk of its fill
remants of last year's cicada shells
flutter in shadow of the darkening hills
while Athens burns
a pool of ashes at my feet
i scoop the soil of a thousand souls
run through my fingers riversfull
of half-moons waxing and waning
over the beating of their innumberable wings
and i swim and swim against the tide
before i fall, i hang on to the song of the cicada shell
trapped inside its throg-necked hollow being
the silver waves toss up their cries
Listen. it sings your praises by and by.
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
Marie Ponsot
New School Writing Program
66 West 12th Street, Room 508
New York, NY 10011
Dear Ms. Ponsot:
I am currently enrolled in my second semester in the Philosophy Department of the Graduate Faculty at New School University and I wish to participate in your Master Poetry Class. Although I have never taken any course in literature, creative writing or English since high school I feel that my outside perspective would provide a fresh voice for your class. See, my brain has dried up to the to size and shape of a dead prune, no longer plump or juicy, no longer a plum. I used to think that my life had the approximate circumference of a walnut shell. But now I realize that history is circular, that we are merely repeating choruses singing ever singing in the litany of a tyrannical choir-master whose only task is to make sure his little inmates never break free of their shells and disrupt the telos of the orchard. god is a landscape architect, and my nails have been carefully manicured to prune all the rose bushes of their thorns. I wanted to write a paper for a class about the idealization of dirt as a category of Heideggarian authenticity in Sophie Lascelles' film Till but the class was dissolved when it was discovered that the teacher suffered from multiple personality disorder. I don't think that is a very significant reason for the cancellation of a class, but the administration of the Graduate Faculty and its shadowy bereaucracy, kafka-like, extends its reasons through unreason. My capacity for philosophic thinking is coming to an impertinent end, a hacking cough that finally spits up the phlegms of yesterday, so I imagine. N- tells me of the uses and abuses of history for life and I listen with the devotion of someone who has eaten their way through the walnut shell with gnashing teeth and torn lip only to find the orchard ordered against me. The peaches are much too bright and the lemons much too many for my taste. Why only three or four birches when they should be gathered aplenty, a band of maidens to ward of the storms? And the willow, well, I cannot even begin to tell you why it cannot weep. I do love the ring formation of the bitter almond bushes in this fruitful choir that is the nebulous design of an obviously sadistic grand wizard. So my only option is to pick up reed and papyrus and right my way out. Please allow me to learn to do so. I hope to hear from you soon.
With Fondest Regards,
Cathy Hsiao.
Blog // 1:47 AM
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