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Yitkbel Oct 2019
I read words flowery and towering
Like the distant and illusive stars
And feels nothing but inferiority
And so so lost.

I read words unadorned and bare
Like embracing warmth of sure suns
And feel nothing but familiarity
And in their light
I am found.
I have often read works by unknown and young writers whose work seem awe inspiringly grand or obscure that I felt lost in a great dazed inferiority. It would seem I understand nothing and am in the presence of some great oracle who only speak in incomprehensible parables. And feel like a fool.
Then I must go and read Tolstoy, Gogol, Blake, Byron, Nietzsche, Shelley, and The Word to feel rooted and grounded again, true wisdom knowledge must be easily understood and used. Or else what is the use?



Obscurantism: "The practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known." - Oxford Dictionary Definition

Nietzsche on the subject:
"Friedrich Nietzsche distinguishes the obscurantism of metaphysics and theology from the "more subtle" obscurantism of Kant's critical philosophy and modern philosophical skepticism, claiming that obscurantism is that which obscures existence: "The essential element in the black art of obscurantism is not that it wants to darken individual understanding but that it wants to blacken our picture of the world, and darken our idea of existence."
Yitkbel Oct 2019
It pains me to see mankind
In good faith and in boasting
Place ourselves above everything
Above all other beings
We pity those we deem less
Infants, animals, the poor, and even believers
When we can
Neither keep peace within the circle of life
Nor so instinctively level the balance of death

We wonder if dogs understand this world
As well as we do
When we can't even love loyally or truly be happy

We have even taken away
Our ability to be content with next to nothing
And deemed the best as those who have everything

Yet,
There's more wisdom in our inferiority
For truth and superiority lies not within
Possessions, capability of destruction, and
Already and actively retained knowledge

But
Our ability to
Learn
Accept
Adapt
Have a little faith in our feelings
And invisible things
Look up at those who love like fools
And
Admire those who are content with nothing

The sun doesn't shine on us
From underneath our feet
We must look up
And know that even when it's most bleak
And desperately cloudy
The fiery hope
Is still there
Only temporarily
Unseen
Yitkbel Oct 2019
Why do we look down and pity
Those who are content in their
Nothingness and suffering

Is it really right and righteous
For us to want them to have more?
It is both impossible and implausible
For us all to have more.

For those who had nothing
Everything is gained
For those who have everything
Fear of losing is more constant

When I was a child
I read that story of a man
Who used to be happy with
His limited share of goods
Then, he found a gold nugget
And the poison spread through
His mind
Till he was viciously suspicious
Of old friends
And remained sleepless
Fearing the loss of
His fortune
How unfortunate that
When he gained the most
He lost it all
Lost his soul

Those of us with so much
Are gluttons with ever
Increasing appetite
We are constantly trying to
Fill the emptiness in our
Soul with a fleeting
Satisfaction and
The joy of a newly acquired
Good

The happiness last for
Shorter and shorter
Periods of time
And then we are left
With the void

When we protest this
We are met with
“You are ungrateful”
“You are so blessed”
Are we really blessed?
When we gained everything
We lost our soul, our happiness,
Our upward gazes facing the sun,
And are now facing the field of ennui,
Or even, the dust of unspeakable shame,
For it seems we also lost the right to suffer.

When we are young,
Likes candies to a toddler
We crave for the sweetness of being
When you grow old
Likes the bitterness of tea
We immerse in the more tattered memories.

In Peter Jackson’s
“They Shall Not Grow Old”
Such horror was described
By the soldiers and veterans
That survived
You’d think they would block out
Their memories entirely
Yet, it ended with such a profound
Declaration
That
If they had a second chance
They would do it all over again

Same with my grandmother,
When you ask her what was
The best times in her life
It will always be the times
She fought the most
And was hurt the most

And my mother’s generation
Was subjected to much hunger
Yet, she is more regretful about
The blandness
Of life and fulfillment now
With so many of her and my
Peers trying to actively
Seriously, and dangerously
Starve themselves
Just to feel pretty

How the rice and fruits
Tasted so preciously
How my grandmother
Had tried to relive her
Less materialistic life
From her childhood in me
How I searched and searched
For those imperfect berries
That always tasted sourer
Than sweet

Such is the Fullness of Being!
Yet,
We are now blessed
With the Emptiness
Of Everything

I often feel so guilty
Being someone with so much
That I could leisurely
Just write poetry
While others try to give more and
More to those with
Nothing

Yet,
I see them much much
Happier than our materialistic
Society
We think are more blessed
We think we are in a better place
But are we?
While they are able to find
Happiness and fulfillment
In hunger and suffering
We are lost among
Our everything.

Do they need more, or
Do we need to learn to
Live with less, much less?

I can’t help fill hungry bodies
But can I give myself to comfort
Souls that are suffering in
The Blandness of being
And abandoned for
Having everything.
The Emptiness of Everything
October 28, 2019
By: Yitkbel Yue Xing ****
Yitkbel Oct 2019
The Death of Time: Chronothánatos

✼✻✻

Time in each realm is a ‘living entity’

The collective consciousness

Branching into streams for each being

Or rather, each SOUL


For it is TIME

The consciousness  

The awareness of change

Atrophy, ‘death’ and ultimately loss

That binds us to Envy, Fear, Grief

And

Even Desires for possession


What remains is the eternal

The everlasting

Love without loss

Hope without fear


In Etahphh, the entity of time

As cliche as it is, is

Literally a river

And the streams of consciousness

Literally streams


Perhaps

It would be far more interesting

For us explore the planet Tarphah

Where the whole realm itself

Is a gargantuan elastic fabric

And it is in itself

Time, space and

All of its living souls


Or the perpetual

Self-devouring serpent

Of the Twin Neutron Stars

Where time and all events

Are in eternal repetition


But those are for another day

For time is dying in Etahphh

The eight side diamond shaped

Sandy planet of golden palaces

And crystal blue

River of Time and

Streams of Consciousness


Situated between a Spinning Black Hole

And two colliding neutron stars

Etahphh, where, as it spins

Time is being pulled towards

Either the Night of the Black Hole

Or Day of the Twin Stars

Is about to undergo

Chronothánatos

Or

The Great Sleep of Time

And Consciousness


The measurement of time

Is rather like the measurement

Of the length of the river itself:

Being divided into fixed increments

You’d expect it to take the same amount

Of time through each circulation


But the flow is never consistent

And more importantly

The viscosity is changing

Time is slowing down

And the planet is getting hotter


For the land roamers of this realm

This means a great change is coming

Though change has been in effect

Since The Great Flood, also known as

The Birth of Time


For in the Olden Days, it seemed like

The ancestors lived forever, or at least

Much, much longer

In reality

It is rather that time used to flow

Much, much quicker

And each Sigh, or each increment

Passed in at least tenth of the present

Speed

While aging remained the same pace


In the same breath or meter of time

The same generation lived,

In the past, through a thousand sighs

Or a thousand waves

And in the present, as the flow slowed,

Through only a hundred


To the rich and powerful

And creatures beneath the waves

The direction and speed of the flow

Matter much less than to those

Without vessels, or the ability to

Wade and swim freely through the waves


However, that is only if the waves does flow

What happens when the ‘Chronothánatos“

Does finally occur?


Does everything stand still?

Even aging and atrophy?

But surely, not the subconscious, the soul

And since sand must return to sand

Does that happen the moment of thánatos?

And are we therefore instantly released from

Our ****** confinement?

Do we roam free as spectres in a waking dream?

Without temporal consciousness,

What remains of thoughts?


It might still be unfathomable

For beings confined to travel

Linearly in spacetime

Some no matter what direction

Or speed

To truly grasp the reality

Of an existence of

What would seem like

All that would happen

Would happen all at the same instant

The same exact indivisible moment

Much like life on the planet of

Phahrah, where all of its history

Happen in a single moment

Ever closer to eternity for its citizens

But next to nonexistent

For distant observers:

In the moment

Its whole cradle Nebula

Was destroyed and swallowed

By a gigantic black hole-The Thánatos-

Life was created

As it’s waters dispersed

And land was slowly exposed


For the powerless among us

The freedom of pure soul

Its twinges of love and joy

Without loss, without pain

Is ever freeing and welcoming

And as the planet is becoming

Hotter and hotter

The Death of Time seems like

The perfect paradise

But for the Rich and Powerful

Who has for countless generations

Used observers and other means

To ensure their life is lived to the

Most prosperous outcome

Being so powerful for a long time

Is perhaps more tempting than

Being eternally powerless


They might be able to set up

Minions at fixed points in

History of the Present, Past, and Future

To ensure all possible outcome

Of each action is reported back to all

Previous points no matter what

Can they be so powerful to

Stop, rather in this case

Revive Time itself?


✼✻✻

STILLWATERS OF INCONSEQUENTIAL EVENTS

✼✻✻

How convenient it is that

Time is a river and there are

Stillwaters of inconsequential events


The general plan is thus:

To use ‘unused’ time

To prolong time

To use wasted water

To replenish the rivers

And continue and repeat

Forever forward

And so

The observers became gathers

And unworthy streams

Will make its sacrifice for the

Greater good

But the lever of the Time Reserve

Was not to be pulled until

The very last moment

And the most ruthless of

The Clockwork Regime

Is set to pull it

For even lives barely lived

Still lived

And death is always unwanted

By the sufferer

And any measure to prolong

The Status Quo when there is

Hope for a much much more desirable

Existence

Is always met with

Rebellion

✼✻✻

THE REBEL’S PLAN

✼✻✻

How do you rebel against

Those who could see through

All of time, albeit through

The Gathering Observers

Their minions at hand?

They must be the key

These Reporters of Time

Surely not everyone of them

Is as devoted as the rest

And surely, not all of the

Rich and powerful

Is against this welcoming

Salvation?


Elimination of all of them

Is not only impossible

But also impossibly cruel


Just certain calculated altering

Of pinpoint events could in theory

Alter the course of that one specific

Event, even if ever so slightly


Only a thought need be erased

Or even just unnoticeably delayed

By just one indivisible moment

To end their reign of eternity

And let time meet its natural end


In a world where if there is

No one coming back in time

To stop you is a literal

Indication of everything

Going exactly as it should be

Perhaps, just a confused distraction

Is enough to terminate a timed action


We could find points in history

Where by slightly altering

The outcome of certain elections

We could end up exchanging

One key decision maker for the other

From one for the Revival

To one for the Death


Or a simpler and more likely

Solution:

We just need a rogue agent

To delay the inevitable revival

By one second, or just, again

By one indivisible moment

Beyond the point of no return


The seed, the idea of his betrayal

Must be planted at birth

Unbeknownst to even himself

By people’s subtle mentions

All throughout his life

Till his final act is without premonition

And completely sudden and unstoppable


Out of

Perhaps, yes, wrath of revenge?


The one to pull the lever

Will not be without enemies

So our hero must be close to

One of his previous victims

Take heed of the target’s every word

Especially his very last

For that will be the Trigger:

Our hero's very first word

And

His love’s very last word

For revenge must be buried

Deep in his heart

✼✻✻

ERAHKHU : REBIRTH

✼✻✻

Rebirth, Erahkhu

The General’s last word was

Echoed through the Time Reserve

And entered into Erahkhu’s

Stream of consciousness


It became his first thought

It became his first word

It became his name


Erahkhu loved Thaehrah

And when she was killed

By a bandit within the rebels

It became her last word

As falling into the river

She called out to him


Erahkhu thought he was

Destined to help revive

And rebirth the dying

River of time

As did the General

For it was he who ordered

The killing of Thaehrah

To ensure Erahkhu left

His home at the riverside

To become the destined

Final observer and witness

As witnessed and observed

By Reporters of his time


But as the General’s last words

To begin the rebirth echoed

In unison with the voice

In his stream of consciousness

As it did when he was born

As it did when she died


Erahkhu’s last indivisible moment

Was never intended for birth

Or Rebirth of any kind-

It was the General’s last word

It was our hero’s first word

It was his love’s last word-

So it was to ensure death

The death of the General

And the death of time

Perhaps, without it

Without prolonging of life

They may once again

Reunite

✼✻✻

THE GHOSTS OF ENNUI

✼✻✻

We succeeded and time died

But we were not reborn as

Timeless beings

Or reunited with our ancestors

Or Erahkhu with the love of his life

In that better kingdom

We can now faintly see

But never reach

Where Thaehrah and the General

Reside


We are destined to roam forever

As aimless spectres, for we never

Crossed the threshold of True death

But became The Ghosts of Ennui

Our home was eventually plundered

Turned to ruins and then finally

Taken over by a nautical race of

Time creatures in the shape of waters

And in effect, ironically, revived the river

The River of Time
All of my poems are written on a impulse in a stream of consciousness, even when they are structured or follows a narrative, no matter how many lines or words, I write them all at once. So I do not know if this even makes sense.
Chronothánatos
By: Yue Xing **** (Yitkbel)
Wednesday, May 29, 2019


--=
I wrote this quite spontaneously, and heavily influenced by Doctor Who and Fringe, if you're a fan of the two shows.
I composed the entire nine page poem in one day, and:

I have come to wanting to ‘disown’ this piece of narrative poetry. The poem is completely original of course, in some parts you can’t even find lines identical to it; it came to me in an uninterrupted stream of consciousness. I wrote it within one day, edited mere letters within it, left it alone, and was satisfied. But the ideas within it, or even the narrative structure, and the storyline is far from original. In fact, I could say, it is quite cliched. I was heavily, heavily influenced by what little science fiction, and popular astrophysics for the layman books I have read or watched: from  books by Stephen Hawkings to Kip Thorne, from HG Wells, to countless Doctor Who novels, and as for television and film, from Doctor Who itself, to Fringe, to even Interstellar. It troubles me to think the poem is merely the result of recycled ideas, for it is still thoroughly my creation, however unoriginal the core ideas and symbolisms within are. Like all that suffers from imposter syndrome, I have a deep rooted insecurity of being seen as a fraud, a mere thief of ideas. Thus, I must explain myself, explain all the thoughts that flowed through my mind when composing this piece of poetry:
(I am not a student of science, so please excuse the possible complete nonsense of this work, if it is not fit to be a science fiction poem, then please view it as a fantasy.)

Through thought experiments, before reading up on it, I have concluded that the illusion of time stems from the awareness of it, from our consciousness. Apparently St.Augustine was the first to ever question the entity of time, and resolve on time being of the mind and not of the physical. (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-temporal/)

Thus, the creation of the land in my poem of the river of time, river of conscious awareness of the passing and coming of change. Time is conscious awareness, as is birth, as is death. Therefore the river divides into streams of consciousness.

What is then core to the story of the death of time, is that, although the length of the circulation of time never changes; time, being a body of water, alters its viscosity. Time slows down, time freezes over, time stops, and time dies in a sense. (In my mind, this started as a metaphorically attempt to explain the differences in ages of human beings in the bible.)

When time mets its ultimate end, what comes of us?  Do we rejoice in eternity for the end of loss and sorrow? Or do we become the ghosts of ennui, ever away from true everlasting joy that must only exist beyond the threshold, unable to be reached without divine intervention.
Yitkbel Oct 2019
Ode to The Epiphaner:

Verse:

So all the silence and emptiness
Is just so I can grow endlessly and free
Unobscured by the foliage’s density
All the oxygen won’t be stolen from me

If the soul and mind can’t hide
In the darkness of the night
How can I ever collect
The fruits of the dreams I strive

Let me
Climb upon barren rocks of greater heights
With the abandoned groves in sight
Every yield is mine
Sometimes a no man’s land
Can be the most beautiful place under the sky  

Chorus:

Those that despair, still care
While the silent continues to sing
The Epiphaner will always be here
For me, a long long road remains
But we will all take flight, we will all fly
Our wings will bid farewell to earth
But, there is still time
There is still time
One day, even time will die
Even time will die
Time will die
It will die

Bridge:

If only leaves and lone stars reside
In the ultramarine midsummer sky
How short and trivial will be my sight
I want to be the century-old desert tree
The Watcher of the waning moonlight
Without the ceaseless River of Praise
I still won’t go “gentle into that good night”


Verse:

Why only distance and unreachable gaze
Could testify the true believer’s faith
Like watcher of the lost, the pale moonlight
I have to shine bright in the starless nights

I have to lead the way
For the broken and dazed
For them to escape
This bleak and hopeless place

Upon the
Land of nothingness and desolation
The road is calm with a sure destination
I will be on time
One day I will be there
Perhaps still the only one
The Lone Soul basking on the other side


Chorus:

Those that despair, still care
While the silent continues to sing
The Epiphaner will always be here
For me, a long long road remains
But we will all take flight, we will all fly
Our wings will bid farewell to earth
But, there is still time
There is still time
One day, even time will die
Even time will die
Time will die
It will die

CODA:

If there are more vessels than waves
In the tides and curvature of time
How tedious would the voyage be
I want to be the eternity shadow
Ever unrequited, loving the sunlight
When all matters in the universe die
The abyss would still be my paradise
Written before I heard this track, but best read with the flow of Leonard Cohen's Happens to the Heart.

Ode to The Epiphaner
Original Chinese Lyric and Translation by:
Yitkbel Yue Xing ****
Date of Original Chinese: Thursday, October 17, 2019
Date of English Translation: Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Yitkbel Oct 2019
I am a soul of fragments,
Of the minuscule,
Of the details.
I want to be a great sea of ceaseless poetry,
But always focus on the small, the unnecessary.

I am touched by every soul,
And they live on through me,
Sometimes it's not just me, but
We are all afraid of seeing other's words
Other's mark on us,
But we must embrace freely
The past and the contemporary,
Just as we can't all reinvent LANGUAGES independently,  
We can't have souls that rather be silent
Than to create.

I am merely the temporary vessel
Taking whatever is exterior to me
In the river of all the creations
Letting them combine
And
Flow together freely
And pour them back out again
Back into Creation.
Back into the great water of poetry,
Waiting to be fearlessly
Borne
Into another wave.
Thanks to Lawrence Hall for inspiring this!





I think I can safely say all of my poetry are written completely impulsively; I write them all completed in one sitting, from less than a minute, if it is the one-liner that I used to write more, and think might be quite clever, to a few hours if they are those long stream of consciousness that I enjoy more nowadays.

When the inspiration flows, and while I write, I am immediately transferred to a void of pure focus, and I write down whatever comes to mind, though not completely without deliberate structuring. In fact, I think, I am obsessed with making sure my literary technique follows as logical of a sequence of events as my unkempt and constantly confused mind allows.

My mind is quite filled with metaphors, motifs, and symbolisms formed from everything I experience, see, read, touch, or just appears in my mind spontaneous; when I am aware of their origin, I tried to link to them in the poems itself, as with the bees and flies from War and Peace from the last poem I posted, or I tried to explain my exact thought process in the notes.  

Most times, as soon as I have written about something, I do not want to think or read them again, strange, as they are my own words, but I had always felt like vessel, with ideas always coming from beyond me, independent of me, and then passing through my hands into the world, and then I would feel completely strange to them, and utterly empty. Sometimes I do get outside inspirations, but then again, as soon as I begin writing, I seem to forget everything, even myself.

When it comes to writing, I mostly only feel fulfillment and pride at two close moments,  when I am totally immersed in the poetry and unaware of anything else, and right after writing.

Then, when around a day passes, I am already dillusioned and begin to itch to write something better.

I wrote down whatever feelings, and motifs, and metaphors that came to mind without much thought to why them specifically, whether or not they make logical sense, are they contradicting, are they original or cliched, or perhaps even overused.

What you see/read is exactly what went through my mind without much or even any editing.

In fact, I think all of my writing on here is exactly how it is in my mind, straight from the soul;  the poetry forms itself in my head and heart, and I just let them flow out exactly they are, formed by whatever is beyond me.
Yitkbel Oct 2019
I

Men must slumber in the darkness
In order to be truly awaken
Men must be desperately lost
In order to look up at the endless stars

The young love to sing about death
While the old worship life like the sun
The young are hopeless on earth, dreaming of flight
The old fear to be parted from the land without a raging fight

II

Who wants to be from War and Peace
The Fly against the loft sky
But we are all just flies
Traceless, each life in a dream it lies
Always to be awakened, bringing nothing and taking nothing
Why must we seek truth in a dream?
If we will forget them when we finally open our eyes
With joy, with sorrow
We witness death
Just so we would strive to stay alive
But why are we alive?
To prepare us for what?

III


Is it just for that half asleep, half awake
Shadowy, faint, and veiled memory?
Is it possible that when we truly open our eyes one day
We would still feel all that we’ve felt in the dreams?
Yes, in my brief nightly drowsiness, I have felt
Despair and happiness
And existed so profoundly!

Slumber or Awake, Illusion or Truth
Reality or Dream
There never was any true death or an end
I was always
Alive Alive Alive

I

Life is the only route
Between nothingness and the endless
Our birth on earth, and our perishing to dirt
Are both equal ends for the existing

And fools will simply rejoice in the illusive brevity
While sages prepare for the everlasting dance
And fools will take comfort in the darkness obscuring his sins
While sages prepare for the brilliance of the yonder light  
By already shining and basking in this life

II

I want to be from War and Peace
The Bee of such trivial and insignificant life
For we are all just bees
Unnoticed, but must exist
Why were we ever born to fly,
When true height is beyond this life?
Just for the pollen and nectar, taken and given?
Till bees return to the impermanent or the forever?
We will regret their absence then, bitterly and barrenly
Witnessing loss, just to learn to cherish
The existing.
But we exist, for what?

III

Is it just for that half asleep, half awake
Shadowy, faint, and veiled memory?
Is it possible that when we truly open our eyes one day
We would still feel all that we’ve felt in the dreams?
Yes, in my brief nightly drowsiness, I have felt
Despair and happiness
And existed so profoundly!

Slumber or Awake, Illusion or Truth
Reality or Dream
There never was any true death or an end
I was always
Alive Alive Alive

Conclusion:

Being alive
Is not just so we can die
That is completely meaningless
Being alive,
Is the only route
From nothingness to endlessness

Only having been once alive
Can you be resurrected
Only when you walk this road to the end
Will you find and continue the pave to the
Neverending Land
Alive (Resurrection)
By: Yue Xing Yitkbel ****
Original in Chinese written on:
Sunday, October 20, 2019, 6:20 PM
Translated on: Wednesday, October 23, 2019
11:43 AM
---
Notes written: 2019/10/25
This was originally another stream of consciousness written in Chinese in a much more organized lyric form spontaneously. Parts of it were a sort of commentary and reaction to poems, songs, and other works I read from both young and old, where the young tend to write about death with a fearless and almost welcoming embrace, and the old refuses to "go gentle into that goodnight."

The rest of it, I wanted to use two very striking metaphors from Tolstoy's War and Peace, the fly and a bee. I set up them as foils of one another, though both to signify insignificance; one represents the isolation of an individual, while the other is of the obscurity of the mass.

Both questions why are we alive? Why are we here just to leave so immediately? Then, both a revelation and answer came to me suddenly.

The revelation being life is the inevitable road between the nothingness of being, and the endlessness of being.
So the answer is, as this road seems to be the only and continuous road, we must cross it to the end of the section we call life, in order to reach the rest we call the neverending.
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