Between Linux and Anime

Titans. Sentinels.
Colossal monuments of ancient stone.
Seemingly numberless, vanishing
into the mist
Like a silent army poised
in a valley vaster than vastness
far as the beholder beholds

Young humanity, ever marching
with science and steel in ceaseless conquest
placed them at our feet
than those unspeakable enormities of cliff and shrub
we stand higher, on our pedestal of power
We look out upon them as above clouds

Yet even up here
lifted in the fancy
of humanity’s seeming victory
The mere man
surveying the conquered landscape
cannot but tremble
at the expanding, shattering image; stumble
smothered in the blanketing embrace
of ageless, inexorable nature
In the dizzying consciousness that the very stone
hard and strong beneath his weak feet
is but the speck of the hubris of Man
hewn in tiny steps and paths
upon the awful shoulder of an unfeeling giant
for which the dawn and rise of our age
is but a wink in a long and ancient dream

Snowfall
spiralling, swirling dance
The warm, smearing cloud
of my breath against
the burning frost in the air
The yellow lamplight
dotting the snow-clad wind
whisper of distance, beyondness, flickering
like shadows in my crusted soul
but with quiet, graceful tempo
Amidst the smell of fragant cold
the sweet, stinging taste
of yuzu

Strung with thorns, this path we plow
Far as the eye can gaze upon
Lo what comfort, what joy to know
The road goes ever on and on

Onward

-Photos by JX

One step into the fox’s glare
Then several more, as far as I dare
I leave the sunlit way behind
In silence in shifting shadows twine
Through winding path and jagged stair
Till deep in their enchanted lair
Pulsed my musing hesitation
My fearful, breathless, trepidation
From all sides the slitted stare
My melancholy, my soul laid bare

What is it that you desire?

To be of aid to fellow man
To seek, to know, to understand
A thousand more I daren’t demand

Silent words, like smoke, like foxfire

I held on to all I’d known
The conviction to which I am heir
With chill and wonder in my bone
I sought to sense the magic there
In freshness of the mountain air
Amidst the orange, faded stone
The enigma of a foreign throne
Filled me like a whispered prayer
As far as I dare, as far as I dare
Into the realm of the fox’s glare

PS: if you ever go to Kyoto, give the Fushimi Inari Shrine a visit.

I walk within the midnight dreary
On steps of lost souls weak and weary
The day’s load, the cacophony
Of lingering care, my sullen company
Glowers the horizon with quite too many
Blog posts and forsaken deeds of merry
Flickering beyond my reach and boundary
Dances the mirage, the winking Faery
Twinkling like a speck of starry
Infinity, above the midnight dreary.

Yes I know I stole “midnight dreary” from some poem that I liked but cannot remember. And yes, I’m stressed. Huge deadline period now, and right after that I’ll be going on a week-or-so-long vacation trip, so no blog posts until then. Not like I have one even close to being finished anyway (except this one, which randomly came to me as I walked my weary steps to the bus stop after a very long day of toil). Anyway, good luck to me, and happy holidays to all (most of?) the rest of you!