ㅁ No words for the stones. No words for the resting trees. No words for the clouds.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Category: Book 3
Caveat: Poem #2102 “Fifty-fourth stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon felt slightly positive then, still at a loss as to exactly when winds would begin to die down for a while, ghosts would at last pause a bit, give a smile.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #2101 “Fifty-third stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon barely remembered her name. Trying but failing, she'd ended the game. Tired and broken, she needed to rest. So her antagonist gloated, "I'm best!"
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #2100 “A review of last night’s events”
ㅁ Down in the woods on the other lot's line, Fences were found... and the gate to a mine. Paths wound around topiaries and trees, contractors engineered highways by threes. Dreams can be like that, confusing and fey, finally ending, exposed to the day.
– a sextet of dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #2099 “It’s always about me”
ㅁ I dreamed that it snowed. People laughed at my distress. But I had to cope.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2098 “Brain traffic”
ㅁ The dreams solve nothing. They pile up some fraught symbols and leave me anxious.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2097 “Still too early, maybe”
ㅁ A few carrots sprout but the lettuce, radishes, prefer not growing.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2096 “Find what?”
ㅁ If you can find it, in fact, then you will know how to act, to compensate what you lacked.
– an englyn milwr.
Caveat: Poem #2095 “A parable about lost astronauts”
ㅁ "Look!" they said. "This journey," they continued, "is impossible. The geometry's wrong, and the shape of space and time will soon lead all of us astray." They sat, shaking their heads, crestfallen.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2094 “A parable about found stones”
ㅁ Of course the stones were arreptitious, just existing in the present: a passing truck might raise up their weighty singing souls only a moment then flung sideways they'd lie down with weeds, lost.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2093 “Instant day”
ㅁ Each morning leaps into place through a kind of dreamy space and a rigid, stony grace.
– an englyn milwr.
Caveat: Poem #2092 “Hope”
ㅁ The garden lay, ungrowing (damp, brown earth); it was a dearth of sprouting and a surfeit of waiting.
– an englyn penfyr.
Caveat: Poem #2091 “Prophecy”
ㅁ The house made of trash: I lived there like a prophet. That was a strange dream.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2090 “Arboreal disobedience”
ㅁ And the tree refused. It had its plans: chose to die. It was just a stick.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2089 “Shame”
ㅁ Admitting mistakes is necessary but hard. Shame sticks in your throat.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2088 “Story outline”
ㅁ This protagonist suffers subjectivity till the story's end.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2087 “Sociability”
ㅁ This one bird made noise, so some other birds did too, until it was loud.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2086 “Skewed”
ㅁ The treehouse's thing is a lack of right angles. This is hard to solve.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2085 “Might as well”
ㅁ I woke too early but there was light in the east, so I went with it.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2084 “Debatable”
ㅁ Poems are good, or they're bad - you decide. Take a position, defend either side. Meanings can bend, semiotics can shift, all in your mind, and the changes are swift.
– a quatrain dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #2083 “Manifesto”
ㅁ Spring is unbearable, just like the fall: seasons do best when they're in one and all. Likewise the sun shouldn't vary each day: better to have it a lot, or away.
– a quatrain dactylic tetrameter. Bear in mind the “narrator’s voice” here really isn’t my opinion. It’s a kind of exaggerated, somewhat facetious narrator speaking.
Caveat: Poem #2082 “While the Men Converse”
ㅁ
While the Men Converse
Went so. / for Wntr.
/ can y. undstd --
In spc. mny types
awt. the end.
|
|
°°° ~ now the
blue/bk. over / turned
the eggs of Tps.
To reveal to me the
Vrts.
That man dwells amidst * - c
? Id.s. ,,, / (,,,) -- ...
/ / / -- \ °°°
Tps Vrts -- flowing like
lamposts on dusty grey
bookshelves --
While the Men.
Converse°°° °°
– A free-form poem, a guest-poem from my past. I wrote this poem in the summer of 1983, a point in time when I was keeping a fairly regular journal (a kind of analogue predecessor to this here blog thingy, right?). It was hard to transcribe – I was experimenting with what is called “concrete poetry” I guess. My handwritten letters and the spaces that I filled with bits of punctuation and pseudo-writing were as important as the actual text. I was being deliberately gnomic with my weird abbreviations and omissions of letters – most of them I can figure out, but in fact I’m clueless about the meaning of “Tps” in the above poem. I’m guessing that “Vrts” is “virtues”… maybe? So perhaps “Tps” means “typos” – that would please my notion of meta-referentiality, anyway. Let it be so.
So transcription is quite difficult. Here is the image of the original poem. And the facing page with its accompanying illustration.
Caveat: Poem #2081 “Fifty-second stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon felt that the dreams were obscure. Meaning was vague and she just wasn't sure. Grandfather's ghost never laid it all out: rather he seemed to throw symbols about.
– a quatrain dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #2080 “Fifty-first stanza”
ㅁ Kiamon never imagined there'd be obvious answers to questions we see; nevertheless she still could not deny ghost-given answers were often quite sly.
– a quatrain dactylic tetrameter.
Caveat: Poem #2079 “What the trees saw”
ㅁ Today the sun came, took the snow, the trees were quite relieved 'cause yesterday they'd seen a lot: in April, who'd believe?
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2078 “Visitation in white”
ㅁ The salmonberry bloom had come to celebrate the mood of spring's return along the road; the snow did not feel good.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2077 “The goose’s burden”
ㅁ I saw a goose down in the sea, it seemed to swim with verve, but on its back a load of snow seemed to get on its nerve.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2076 “A for effort”
ㅁ The birds attempted happy songs to celebrate the spring, but still the winds blew rain and sleet and wrecked the whole darn thing.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2075 “Craig weather”
ㅁ The wind in town was strong today, it spun the dust around; the snow was blowing sideways too, but failed to reach the ground.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2074 “Cage of lions and I”
ㅁ Cage of lions and I we are two things Secure within immutability safe inside my sphere I pound my head against its walls begging to be free. Then a man with silver key cracks my prison sets me free. I grab some glue, I gasp for breath I beg the man to take his key, and go away. Patching sphere repairing cracks I turn around and pound my head against its other walls. I know the answer I have asked the questions but no one tells me how Dog and bug are in a room. A green plant.
– a free-form poem. This poem is a “guest post” from my own past: I wrote this poem while in high school, in 1982. I transcribed to my “retroblog” in 2010.
Caveat: Poem #2073 “Luck”
ㅁ If I get lucky I manage to fall asleep, having woke early.
– a pseudo-haiku.
Caveat: Poem #2072 “So long”
ㅁ In April you would think that snow had finished with its song, but here it seems that winter goes, and goes and goes so long.
– a quatrain in ballad meter.
Caveat: Poem #2071 “Ceci poème n’existe pas”
ㅁ I awoke, and found the blog server had gone down. I'd ceased to exist.
– a pseudo-haiku.