Holiday In Hell

A holy Iman dies in peace. He is astounded to be welcomed by St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

“Sorry about the no 72 virgins. In this heaven we spend our days in the glory of God, who is non-denominational. You’ll meet the truly blessed evolving into the truly blissed.”

The Iman accepts this heaven in all its goodness, but after a few weeks he goes up to St. Peter and says, “Heaven is great, but all those years on Earth when I was preaching about the horrors of Hell, I was often curious what Hell was actually like.”

“Pretty much as you envisioned it.”

“IS there anyway I can see it?” The Iman was more than slightly bored with the communal utopia of Heaven.

“Of course there is.” St Peter opens the Pearly Gates and points to a set of endless stairs. “You can visit Hell on a one-time visa. Two weeks. Do anything you want. You earned this holiday by all the goodness you create on earth. Get it out of your system and then return to the bosom of the Creator.”

“And I can go now?”

“Anytime you want?” St. Peter walks the Iman to the stairs. He is greeted by doe-eyed houris and escorted to a bar where Jimi Hendrix is playing LITTLE WING. Hitler painting the walls and Marilyn Monroe working upstairs in the Satan a Go Go. It’s great fun and time passes in the blink of an eye. The Iman says goodbye to everyone and climbs the steps to the Pearly Gates.

“So how was it?” St. Peter asks peering down the stairs.

“Not like I expected it.”

“Well, at least you got it out of your system. Back to the eternity of bliss.”

Unfortunately his holiday infected the Iman. He can’t stop thinking about hell. Heaven is all communing with the great oneness. He goes back to St. Peter and asks if there’s a way he could go back to Hell.

“Sure, but if you go you can’t come back.”

The Iman looks over his shoulder at the fleecy clouds and praying angels.

“No problem.”

“See you on Judgment Day.” St. Peter is all smiles like a dealer selling a hot shot and so is the Iman as he walks down the stairs, although this time the houris greet him with pitchforks. Fire laps his legs. His flesh is torn open by the demons.

“St. Peter, this isn’t the Hell I knew. Why’s it so different now.”

St. Peter shouts from the Pearly Gates, “That’s the difference between going someplace on vacation and living there.”

"Emissaries" Reading at MOTHERBOX Friday 5/18/18

Please join us for Emissaries, a night of candlelit readings and the launch of The Enthusiast, a limited-edition press specializing in talismanic bindings at MOTHERBOX on Brooklyn

Friday, May 18, 2018 8PM

MOTHERBOX 405 Flushing Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11205

Hand-bound editions of Vroom-Vroom by Geoffrey Bridgman, Transcriptions by Katherine Finkelstein, Famous for Never by Peter Nolan Smith, Of Flowers and Shadows (or Springtime in the City of the Vital Dead) by Damon Stang, and Lumpy Log, a book of poetry by Clara Lip, will be available after the show.

THE EXILE'S POEM by Ezra Pound

Way back in the last century Ezra Pound stumbled on the writings of a 19th Century scholar of Asian Art, Ernest Fenollosa. The historian came from Salem and after graduated from Harvard traveled to Japan with the Orientalist and naturalist Edward Sylvester Morse, who developed a great love for ceramics during his stay at Tokyo's Imperial University.

Japan underwent great changes during the Meiji Dynasty.

The kingdom welcomed the West.

The fall of the Shogunate destroyed the Samurai.

They became ronin or outlaws.

Worse happened to China under the invasion of the Gwai-loh, but in 1913 Ezra Pound lived in London, where he met Ernest Fenollosa's wife. She gave WB Yeats' assistant her husband's notes and he constructed CATHAY by creating a supposedly modernist version of the ancient classics by using the technique of Ideogrammic method.

木 or tree met 日 or sun to become the light of sunset trapped in the leaves.

The man was capable of great thought as well as madness.

I have always loved these faux translations

Especially THE EXILE'S POEM

The poem has been attributed to Li Po, usually considered the greatest poet of China: written by him while in exile about 760 A. D., to the Hereditary War-Councillor of Sho, “recollecting former companionship.”

SO-KIN of Rakuho, ancient friend, I now remember That you built me a special tavern, By the south side of the bridge at Ten-Shin. With yellow gold and white jewels we paid for the songs and laughter, 5 And we were drunk for month after month, forgetting the kings and princes. Intelligent men came drifting in, from the sea and from the west border, And with them, and with you especially, there was nothing at cross-purpose; And they made nothing of sea-crossing or of mountain-crossing, If only they could be of that fellowship. And we all spoke out our hearts and minds … and without regret. And then I was sent off to South Wei, smothered in laurel groves, And you to the north of Raku-hoku, Till we had nothing but thoughts and memories between us. And when separation had come to its worst We met, and travelled together into Sen-Go Through all the thirty-six folds of the turning and twisting waters; Into a valley of a thousand bright flowers … that was the first valley, And on into ten thousand valleys full of voices and pine-winds. With silver harness and reins of gold, prostrating themselves on the ground, Out came the East-of-Kan foreman and his company; And there came also the “True-man” of Shi-yo to meet me, Playing on a jewelled mouth-organ. In the storied houses of San-Ko they gave us more Sennin music; Many instruments, like the sound of young phoenix broods. And the foreman of Kan-Chu, drunk, Danced because his long sleeves Wouldn’t keep still, with that music playing. And I, wrapped in brocade, went to sleep with my head on his lap, And my spirit so high that it was all over the heavens. And all this comes to an end, And is not again to be met with. I went up to the court for examination, Tried Layu’s luck, offered the Choyu song, And got no promotion, And went back to the East Mountains white-headed.

And once again we met, later, at the South Bridge head. And then the crowd broke up—you went north to San palace. And if you ask how I regret that parting? It is like the flowers falling at spring’s end, confused, whirled in a tangle. What is the use of talking! And there is no end of talking— There is no end of things in the heart.

I call in the boy, Have him sit on his knees to write and seal this, And I send it a thousand miles, thinking.

I know that land of exile well.

No drink.

No women.

No future.

Here's Li Po's poem FAREWELL TO A FRIEND.

Green mountains steeple across the North Wall. White riverwater rushes round the city's east end.

From this place once we part, a lone tumbleweed, my friend will be tossed ten thousand miles.

Like drifting clouds his wanderer's dreams. Like the sinking sun his old friend's heart.

We wave hands as he starts away, our horses neighing to each other as we shout our last goodbyes.

In the word of Gloria Gaynor.

NEVER CAN SAY GOOD-BYE.

She must have understood Li Po too.

To hear NEVER CAN SAY GOOD BYE, please go to this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCSvNZWpXaM

The Trade Route Of The Orient

From 1956 until 1973 20 Thai baht bought $1.

A flight to Penang on Thai Airway cost about $130US.

I checked Air Asia current ticket fare from Bangkok to Penang and discovered the price is about the same.

Some things never change.

Broadway Junction - Crossroads

Broadway Junction has been Brooklyn's busiest subway station for over a hundred years. Six lines converge in East New York to service the outer-lying neighborhoods of New York's largest and most populous borough; the A, C, J, L, and Z. Most of the station rises above the streets on steel girders.

To the north the Jackie Robinson Parkway runs through miles of cemeteries.

The J train proceeds east to the unsheltered Alabama Avenue station.

The L train heads to stations unknown by most New Yorkers.

Canarsie–Rockaway Parkway is the terminus of the tracks and a trolley once continued south the the Canarsie Pier.

A long time ago.

To the east the L train dives underground on the journey to Manhattan.

The platforms were wintry last week.

But now it's spring.

Even at Broadway Junction.