Is this not beautifully phrased tragic truth?

 

As if it had already happened.  As if whatever was disappearing had already disappeared.  As if it was too late.  As if it was already over.  And no one saw it go.  This country this experiment, America, this hubris: what a lament, if no one saw it go.  Here today, gone tomorrow.  Dissipation is actually much worse than cataclysm.

-Tracey Letts’s Pulitzer Prize winning play August: Osage County

This beautiful piece of writing is splashed throughout with the imagery and words of the below piece of lyrical beauty.

The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot

      I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

      II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

      III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

      IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

      V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
                                Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
                                For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Online text © 1998-2009 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Hollow Men | 1925

 

Paula Pengelley’s Hollow Men

i was intrigued.

A Stream of consciousness

We walk and talk and

        play on the swings.

I want to spend my days with you.  We make 

Really Good Friends.

Pondering in philosophy class,

      annoyed by the thought that

(everytime the thought comes up)

but also when you seem to

want only me.  (because what if you need me instead of wanting me?)

I want to run and dance and ignore

that other personality that makes me

           Second Guess

And avoid and annoys

me and causes me to cry 

  in the dark.

And regret it.

And I'm regretting.  right now.

regretting not using the rest room before

Modern Philosophy and

wondering...what      makes     it     so    very    hard   to  think about anything other thanhowfullmybladderis. Sometimes

P is contained in S

and the predicate is

PART

of the subject like triangles have 

3 sides

Bachelors are unmarried.  But sometimes

pee is barely contained in my bladder and Modern Philosophy

g

 o

  e

   s

    

     o

      n

       ...

The differences between us.

Short-skirted, smiling, she could be cute.

I would have thought she was, until I knew about you.  

Pink waterbottle on the 4th desk in the 2nd row.

Eyelids.

Falling faster.  Dozing.  AWAKE.

   Black & yellowed pages

            blurring to a warm sloppy gray.  Words.

Mixing.

Unawares introducing a 

t o t a l  s k e p t i c i s m

into the most essential articles of natural and revealed

theology. What!

Modern Philosophy blurs

into dreams

...no decisive proofs can ever be produced

against this authority.

resting

THE WHOLE SYSTEM of a religion on a 

Point   . 

which from its very nature must 

forever be

uncertain? 

the nature of time defined

--Pale hand holding purple pen.
--Her voice is very constant.  Constantly loud.  
--my hand still reads vaguely: Call J. Allsup @ 1:35. in Blue Ink.  Check.  
--my fingernails need trimming, my lips need chapstick and I need to define what is going on in my mind because I want to know that I don't just want this to have a this I need to want this because I want THIS this not just anyone but exactly that one.  Exactly you.  And it's gotta be forever.  
--umpteen distinctions and not enough care taken.

--two hairties and a pink ribbon; left.  An old scar still healing; right.
--in 30 minutes I am going to be eating a dinosaur burger in the past.