Rathin's Blog

You can check out the playlist for the previous month  here .  I only wrote five album reviews for this inaugural issue of "Monthly Streamnotes" (title still a work-in-progress) since my main goal here was to publish this as soon as possible to avoid getting bogged-down with quantity. The idea of doing something like this has been floating around in my journal entries for a while, which risked its permanent banishment to hypothetical.   Unlike the other reviewers whose format I'm shamelessly ripping off here, (predominately Robert Christgau and Tom Hull) I've decided to not be particularly constrained by time. The streaming age—for better and worse—has made music's temporal relevance largely irrelevant; I will probably get into this subject more in a future post, but for now, the curation of music that exists here will be largely dictated by my mood.  Another thing: The grading system used here is the same as Robert Christgau's current one . This will almost c...

  Afternoon Tea The sight of the face that is our bough Is to be enough, and is enough to be. Together, we are under the dome now. We lay wishing to find what can endow An apparition across space to see The light of the face that is our bough. We make god’s equal from the sound, Dreaming of two-fold complimentary tea They would be serving at the dome now. We are fishing from the star-thunder’s brow That folds and makes the lovers’ city Out of the face that is our bough. Separating form and action, verb and noun Until the only peace we meet is in the hopeful sea Poured from the ghost that presupposes us. All the stars will coalesce this time around, And profess no good is the hope that burns quietly Using the petal that is her face’s bounds, To claim, We are under the dome now.

  ES(R) / Leaf falling Cold oil rises in the water. The oil rises in that distant water. The sight is like a crane, Which flies separate its wings And goes to paint water As light the daughter sings The oil falls as the pilgrim atomizer, Who short-sighted sees down as up And the boy, its sole advisor, As no different from an elephant. The quiet water serenades  What cannot be reclaimed in normal modes. It tries again tonight, alone, To convince us they are miscible But it is broken language that it screams, Like the self-knowing of a blue dream haze, Like shivering cold together fires, Like one and one, and two separate In absence of the lost world, The bubbles of mostly oil in water Collide and explode in fair measure We forget about the boy and daughter Cold oil rises in the water The oil rises in that distant water.  Cradled back and forth in the arms of the wind Slowly cascading down, as slow as I walk. Our green ribcage seems to place its bind Over the undinal flesh ...

Note: This poem entirely steals from "Picture of Autumn" by Thomas Chatterton. The poem may be considered to be an inspired retelling in this aspect, but it is more accurately described as artistic highway robbery from early british romanticism. I also COMPLETELY stole my description of winter as warm from Eliot's "The Wasteland". I am unfortunately not creative, but regardless I hope you like the poem loyal rathin.blog reader.  Central When winter, overbearing and warm, do appear, With his old hand aging the falling ice Bringing up silver and gold to crucify the year Bearing upon his back the weighted dice When all the homes, those hills, are young When some levied roses, and inks, do meet From where they’re sung. When naught left is fair, and the sunbleak sheets Do bend the body unto the sleepless ground When I am searching for something which repeats When the rhythmic signature do give way To the game we found And we forget our worst bound hopes to play When ...

  Someday Soon And you will feel it silent someday soon Like bullets through water hitting your skin The daughter of emphasis and mechanics. You will find helplessness in bargain bins, Like stranded thoughts. Suddenly someday soon You will see only decaying physics. Like a language I’ve yet to learn, you talk. Like a puzzle I’ve yet to place, your face Yearns to sustain that piece of someday soon. When it slows, I will slow with it, and chalk Outlines will revive all except the skin. I cannot walk, I stop to note: Divine Intervention waits for someday soon. And someday soon old thoughts will converge In folds of time and these corridors That themselves take refuge from the simple Idea of you.  I wait for, it does not Come, someday soon

Cattle Drives Like the men who came to Texas With only drawn-out boots for possessions to herd cattle in the drives to Kansas,  Your face contains that old kind of copper, Where all the best of hope and time’s resistance Means to make well the thought of a train, One to cover 1000 miles of distance, But with each unit oxygen, things still remain Like the ruffled back of a man in transit Who gazes onto the buffalo grass. Picturesque, the land that was before it: The cattle drives and their greatest trespass. It all leaves, waiting long enough alone. Cow leather gets exchanged, your face turns grown.