the light comes earlier, dawn grasps at clouds
who yield their shrouds and pass on
the night: gone
Category: My Poetry & Fiction
Caveat: Poem #626
My houseplants grimly
await my failure to give
the water they need.
Caveat: Poem #625
Some streams flow mindward
waters gather at edges
where thoughts touch atoms
Caveat: Poem #624 “Iuriong’s second stanza”
ㅁ Almost a ghost, and just drifting through time, Face made of bones and untouched by the grime, Nevertheless, like a fighter he came, Stories and prophecies spilled out like flame.
– a quatrain in dactylic tetrameter, about a fictional character.
Caveat: Poem #623 “Third stanza”
Kiamon never once thought on her fate Episodes happened that sometimes did grate: Cruelty is not something done without need... Cut with a blade, then, the soul can be freed.
[daily log: walking, 7.5km]
Caveat: Poem #622 “Classroom happenings”
ㅁ One day there was an alligator who lived down near the warm equator a monkey came along and sang a stupid song so with a grin the reptile ate her
– a limerick.
Caveat: Poem #621 “Headlong”
ㅁ Consciousness derails, off track it will fly... I feel it, a kind of lack: only black.
– an englyn of some kind.
Caveat: Poem #620 “Demonstrated wisdom at age 13”
ㅁ I put her there, in front of class. I said, "You're teacher - boss!" The boys in back were bad, They joked, and made the rudest sounds. She stood, With folded arms and grave aplomb and verve: "If you don't mind, I'd like to go on now." For all the world an old hand at these things. In fact she showed more wisdom than I do, In such soft voice, at such an age - thirteen.
– some lines of blank verse (iambic pentameter).
Caveat: Poem #619 “Things the weather’s changes bring”
ㅁ Two days ago, there was snow. A freakishly dry and feverish wind thrust hard from the west. Early spring blossoms fled torn from their hospitable branches, disconsolate. Young men strode uncoated, with wild hair flailing like cut tentacles. And garish bits of paper breathlessly licked at the sides of insentient buses. Four hours later, there was a warm drizzle falling.
– a free form poem.
Caveat: Poem #618 “Second stanza”
Kiamon never once thought on her fate
Gamely she played along, planning to wait
Patience came easy when dreams were all clear
Doubts never showed themselves; neither did fear.
Caveat: Poem #617
Well, snow in April!
The bold flakes tasted the air…
but spun out, failing.
[daily log, walking, 1.5km]
Caveat: Poem #616
Cohut: she played in fields and sands,
and knowing only love and games,
until the day when warring bands
with swift, hard strokes revoked her names.
Caveat: Poems #614 and #615
There once was Moby, a white whale and some narrator named Ishmael and these guys on a boat that soon failed to float with digressions, and prose that was stale.
– this is my own “retelling in limerick form” of a well-known work of literature, quite inspired by this post on the languagehat blog, in turn inspired by some discussion on a site called wordorigins. I spent a good hour browsing the comments and links for these two sites. Entertaining. My favorites, seen at those links:
There once was a girl named Lenore
And a bird and a bust and a door
And a guy with depression
And a whole lot of questions
And the bird always says “Nevermore”
… and:
“Utnapishtim,” cried Gilgamesh, “Why
Do you get to live, while I die?”
“I can see that you’re vexed,”
[There’s a gap in the text]
The walls of Uruk are quite high!
I also enjoyed this observation, by a commenter named Trond Engen:
“A limerick needs a dose of offbeacity or else it will often sound flat.”
That comment, in turn, inspired another work of my own:
If you want limericks to have a capacity to show anything more than verbosity and to thusly afford some readers unbored Then they'll need to include some offbeacity
Caveat: Poem #613
cold rain, breath in puffs,
sound of car tires on wet roads,
childhood in shadows.
Caveat: Poem #612
The thing about rain
in the springtime: birds like it;
they make noise and play.
Caveat: Poem #611
Spring
was out
and about
today, showing
trees all a-flower
and announcing magpies
among the fallen needles
of past years' silhouetted pines
beneath gray skies of filigreed time.
Caveat: Poem #610
Softly, trees will bend
Gently, the moon might part clouds
Darkly, orange ghosts…
Caveat: Poem #609
Aochra fought his way across the steppes,
Not once pausing. Sand and stones just watched.
Fearsome was his wrath where'er he stepped:
Each one killed, his counting stick was notched.
Caveat: Poem #608 “First stanza”
Kiamon never once thought on her fate
Grimly she battled to push down her hate
Hoping perhaps to at last find her goal
Kiamon willingly gave up her soul.
…Recently I tried something new. As some of you know, I have a rather wide set of “novels in progress,” none of which actually progress, much. I’m bad at these wider, longer-scale projects. So I decided to take this slightly more successful short poem-a-day concept and “hijack” it for the novel thing. I have been writing little “character-building” quatrains, where I try to encapsulate some aspect of a story’s character. This is one of those. In general, don’t be surprised to see the names of fictional beings begin to populate some of my poems.
[daily log: walking, 1km]
Caveat: Poem #607
The moon presented silver face,
and hid her broad coquettish smile
Behind a veil of springtime smog.
Caveat: Poem #606
I spilled some water
there on my floor. Then I stepped
in it. What is that?
Caveat: Poem #605
Thirst.
Some nights…
I wake up
from restless dreams,
my mouth dry, broken.
So I get some water,
and pace my apartment's floor,
digesting the dissolving webs
of grimly inchoate chimeras.
Caveat: Poem #604
Sometimes the day starts
with a sense of frustration
but ends feeling fine.
Caveat: Poem #603
The night is too thick:
Highrises' lights vague and dim;
Air stiflingly chill.
Caveat: Poem #602
A corporeal rebellion arose,
demon king goes cell by cell,
whom body could not expel.
Caveat: Poem #601
the brownian drift
of the gray bubbles of smog
scale to atmosphere
Caveat: Poem #600
my nam yu no
alligaytur
i want tu ete
a mungki, shur,
or stoodents, yum,
in ther nise haus
but meenwile tho
i lik the maus
– This poem is in a completely new form, recently emergent from internet memedom, called "bredlik." In fact it's a pretty structured form, with requirements of rhyme, meter, theme and even a kind of anti-spelling convention. You can read about it here - linguists have been observing its development. As that summary notes, the misspellings are not meant to seem illiterate or childish, rather, they in fact somewhat emulate the fluid orthographies of Middle English. I would add that the deliberate misspelling also successfully conveys the orality of the poem in the context of the overwhelmingly textual medium of internet-based forums and chats. So I decided to make my own, about my classroom ubiquitous alligator character.
Caveat: Poem #599
I got home feeling so very tired.
I boiled some water to make tea.
The tea bag hung in a glass.
Hot water put off steam.
Time gnawed the edges.
In the water,
tendrils of
crimson
fall.
Caveat: Poem #598
The first day of spring
delivered snow with the rain
but the snow melted.
Caveat: Poem #597 “An unnourishable soul”
ㅁ And I awoke: the air was viscous dust, athwart my jaw reclined some ghosts who had a blurry taste, frustration edible.
– a tercet in blank verse (iambic pentameter)
Caveat: Poem #596 “Memorializing great floods which were not in fact real”
ㅁ The sea rose up and swallowed the land immersing the empty spaces with a tide of blue pixels seething around houses always behind things under features pale blue dots here there here
– a nonnet
Caveat: Poem #595
I'll write this "englyn penfyr" for Dylan:
may this young man know no fear,
may his wisdom grow each year.
This englyn was written to commemorate my nephew's upcoming graduation from 8th grade.
[daily log: walking, 2km]
Caveat: Poem #594
In fact I don't much like crowds, they press in…
I prefer to be with clouds –
unholy shrouds.