One Long Poem
It doesn’t matter what I write,
It’s one long poem.
Three thousand poems in fifty years
That sometimes rhyme and sometimes
bomb.
One long poem; an Arlene there.
Searching thinkings, rational or sentimental;
Always verse, never prose –
Couplets almost never, ‘cause
They make a literate reader doze.
The beat inside, intrinsic, non-negotiable;
Always off the shoulder, meaning pivotal.
Communication always changing in its form,
Yet if one looks one sees a norm,
A dark red thread in love with words.
If I use the ‘I’ too much,
All I want’s to touch the inner you.
If I do, I do –
Pronouns notwithstanding.
-- Yung Cheng Lin
Arlene coments: "I'm really a cerebral being. But now and again the thought hits my frontal lobe in a wanting-to-remember mode. So my poetic brain reminds itself, examines, analyzes, comments, and I start writing not knowing at all in which direction the writing will go. It becomes a complex process: many sided and involved in the rhyme, the meter, the precise choice of word, philosophy, (reflecting on selfies, vanities, social commentary, you know...) The process takes over and emotion steps aside. Rhyme itself brings on complexities of reasoning. Rhyme, any rhyme, can take me miles from where I started and into distant lands. Sometimes I have to stop myself. Even a typo can do that. It can turn into a kind of Asperger’s syndrome, with the Asperger's tendency to work a detail to death. (I've known one young man like that, his thing being photographing. He photographs everything and anything, filing and organizing in a manner that would put the best secretary to shame). But then the rational part of me also edits and cuts, my natural sense of balance seldom going over an A4 size paper. (I don't know what A4 is in Americanese. 9x12?). I think the whole is a kind of keeping records. That need is strong in me. I just do it poetically."
ReplyDeleteYue Lao is a Chinese god of love and marriage who appears as an old man under the moon, but he lives either on the moon or in Tue ming (the "obscure regions"). He ties an invisible red thread around the ankles of those who are destined to wed. (According to the Koreans and Japanese the cord is tied around their little fingers.)
ReplyDeleteA kalava is a red cotton yarn tied by a priest or an older family member, typically a parent or grandparent, on the wrist of one attending a prayer ceremony. It is tied on the right wrist of men and unmarried women and on the left wrist of married women and sometimes has knots which are tied while sacred mantras are recited to invoke the Satvik state of human nature (goodness, positivity, truth, wholesomeness, serenity, wholeness, creativity, balance, constructiveness, confidence, peacefulness, and virtue) and to ward off evil. A red wool thread is also a Jewish talisman worn to ward off misfortune. It is worn as a bracelet on the left wrist, the receiving side of the spiritual body, and the wearer knots it 7 times while reciting the Kabbalah's Ben Porat prayer: "The angel who hath redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named in them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth."