Number 4,000 ...
Hey, all ...
Well, here it is, poem #4,000 for the past 26 years. Yeah, I know ... nobody but me gives a flying fuck about any of this shit ... but, heck, it's MY journal and this stuff is important to ME, so I'll bore you with it! Now, I've written more than these four thousand poems, but these are the ones that I've been counting and have reasonably orginized files for. As I work backwards through the various years ... on the Big Poem Site at http://i.am/btripp ... the format keeps getting more primitive until I'll be having to scan from typewriter-written copies (and having to deal with more "iffy" filing systems). Fortunately, the 4,000 poems don't go back to highschool (I graduated in 1975), so there won't be too terribly embarassing things in the mix (like those sci-fi sonnet cycles I wrote in the early 70's)!
Here's how the break-down of when these poems were written goes ... for 12 of those years I wrote 250 poems per year, in 1984 and from 1987-1997. I had "ramped up" to 250 poems in the early 80's, when I started to want to take my writing more seriously. I "stumbled" in 1985 (a year I was having serious emotional problems and eventually quit drinking ... I had to learn how to write without gin!) and then sort of "gave up" writing for a while in the late 90's (again, for emotional reasons, only this time I didn't have the drinking to "fall back on" as it were, in terms of something to walk away from for a major life change). I'm hoping to get back up to about 200 poems next year, but I'll have to see how that will work (as has been repeatedly reported here ... I have a hard time getting "writing time" in my schedule these days). Anyway, here's when the current 4,000 poems were written ...
1995-2001 - 1000 poems - (7yrs)
1991-1994 - 1000 poems - (4yrs)
1987-1990 - 1000 poems - (4yrs)
1976-1986 - 1000 poems - (11yrs)
FOUR THOUSAND WAYS
without true semblance
of order or intent
we trigger action
within the gaps attained,
these unplanned liminal moments
which thus arrive
unthinking, uncharted,
unexpected and too free
what to make of this,
so heavy a marker,
so firm a stake in time?
we have nothing new,
no fresh resolves
or revelations to impart,
just scribbled lines
once more upon the grid
all that we know
is the static form
which cedes no change
despite chaotic flows,
the state of life
so morbid, stuck,
yet in wild plummets
ever down to doom
once we had dreams
and some belief
that futures held
some light not yet unveiled
but now we orbit
the attractor of our death
in decaying arcs
like angels cast to Hell
when morrows dawn
without us here
shall any know these words,
and learn from them the mode of sight?
or will unending sleep prevail,
the mundane mass triumph,
rolling juggernauts of grey,
darkness, blindness, and delusion?
- Brendan Tripp
12/29/2001
Copyright © 2001 by Brendan Tripp
Well, here it is, poem #4,000 for the past 26 years. Yeah, I know ... nobody but me gives a flying fuck about any of this shit ... but, heck, it's MY journal and this stuff is important to ME, so I'll bore you with it! Now, I've written more than these four thousand poems, but these are the ones that I've been counting and have reasonably orginized files for. As I work backwards through the various years ... on the Big Poem Site at http://i.am/btripp ... the format keeps getting more primitive until I'll be having to scan from typewriter-written copies (and having to deal with more "iffy" filing systems). Fortunately, the 4,000 poems don't go back to highschool (I graduated in 1975), so there won't be too terribly embarassing things in the mix (like those sci-fi sonnet cycles I wrote in the early 70's)!
Here's how the break-down of when these poems were written goes ... for 12 of those years I wrote 250 poems per year, in 1984 and from 1987-1997. I had "ramped up" to 250 poems in the early 80's, when I started to want to take my writing more seriously. I "stumbled" in 1985 (a year I was having serious emotional problems and eventually quit drinking ... I had to learn how to write without gin!) and then sort of "gave up" writing for a while in the late 90's (again, for emotional reasons, only this time I didn't have the drinking to "fall back on" as it were, in terms of something to walk away from for a major life change). I'm hoping to get back up to about 200 poems next year, but I'll have to see how that will work (as has been repeatedly reported here ... I have a hard time getting "writing time" in my schedule these days). Anyway, here's when the current 4,000 poems were written ...
1995-2001 - 1000 poems - (7yrs)
1991-1994 - 1000 poems - (4yrs)
1987-1990 - 1000 poems - (4yrs)
1976-1986 - 1000 poems - (11yrs)
FOUR THOUSAND WAYS
without true semblance
of order or intent
we trigger action
within the gaps attained,
these unplanned liminal moments
which thus arrive
unthinking, uncharted,
unexpected and too free
what to make of this,
so heavy a marker,
so firm a stake in time?
we have nothing new,
no fresh resolves
or revelations to impart,
just scribbled lines
once more upon the grid
all that we know
is the static form
which cedes no change
despite chaotic flows,
the state of life
so morbid, stuck,
yet in wild plummets
ever down to doom
once we had dreams
and some belief
that futures held
some light not yet unveiled
but now we orbit
the attractor of our death
in decaying arcs
like angels cast to Hell
when morrows dawn
without us here
shall any know these words,
and learn from them the mode of sight?
or will unending sleep prevail,
the mundane mass triumph,
rolling juggernauts of grey,
darkness, blindness, and delusion?
- Brendan Tripp
12/29/2001
Copyright © 2001 by Brendan Tripp