Featherless Biped's "The boi in the belfry is crazy" Thread

[Sorella]

Back for now eek! the Sevenlings continue till they are seven: I echo the praise. chuckled at the very FB "I'll write my own!" And loved the Gor volume

Edit: Still here, so let me add kudos for the parable of hens against the harem-owning rooster (do they like fascination then?)

[Scrow]

Hello!

Oh, I love the chickens, totally love the chickens. All of that is good - from the 'invisible line' to 'nine-volt mines' and the 'head of a mop'. Love the bothered rooster, love the okay chickens. Love also that I think this is real. One can hypnotise chickens, although I've never managed to do it (yes, lived in the country, yes, I was frequently bored). As a companion piece to your 'teaching your sweetheart to swim' it is especially gorgeous. More than a little surreal, which I like, too.

Kinky VII - Very, very, very funny. You had me at the first line, and when you got to 'fetch the strigil. call the classicists' …oh, just all the rest of it had me laughing. Like proper laughing, so my cover of doing marking was rumbled and I had to stop reading and go watch TV with my family.

Sarah

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Enjoyed the humour in the last two KS's

KSVI the Gor novel. Ha! I remember reading one of these when I was way too young to make much sense of it.

KSVII love the punchline, it made me smile!

My sweetheart teaches me to hypnotize chickens in Little Valley Loved these lines: "The Polish hen dies for a minute and half, / cycles through the Wheel of Time as the head of a mop,". And now I know how, how am I going to stop myself trying that? Good job there are no chickens in the city ...

This is my favourite ever song to contain a reference to hypnotising chickens.



-Matt

[Featherless Biped]

Thanks, guys! Sarah, we totally hypnotized chickens! I'm amazed at how easy it is. Matt, that's a great story about the Gor novel. (I remember discovering that Richard Adams, who wrote Watership Down, had also written an erotic novel about a slave girl. I found it as a kid and was disappointed about the lack of animals. In retrospect, I am relieved.) Keeping my head above water at work, so it's a lousy bunch of sketches from the MOOC today.

[Featherless Biped]

Bird Sketches

Two barred pigeons bob through the courtyard cafe.

Small warbling and quacking of magpies.
Overhead, a cockatoo screams large.

Iron sculpture of an eagle, rusted to match the color of the wooden bench.

Green explosion! Rapidfire rosellas rush past your face.

A crow sails by, slicing a black hole in the sky.

What? What? What? What?
Mynah Bird repeats himself.

[Featherless Biped]

Orpheus

A shiny coin to pay the ferryman.
A sugar cake to please the panting cur.
A shaky key to pass beyond the bars.
A shattered cup to pour the souring wine.

A landlocked road with graveyards at its edges.
A lonely rock with gravel in its ears.
A loamy orchard, overgrown with pears.
A lofty ridge with granite in its judgment.

A single note, and hell transforms to harp.
A sudden want as dream departs from sleep.
A singeing wind. A horror at the nape.
A singer turns, and wife returns to wept.

[5th column]

S1/2 set the scene but the skill in converting this from myth to poem is in S3. The half rhymes and transformations at the conclusions of L's1,2/4 are really quite special and the fact you didn't overplay the hand in L3 is clever and accentuates the rest. Pretty good considering we've just turned for home in the NaPo marathon

[Dunc]

Rachael

Now where was I? Ah, KS III ... It's a bit confusing. Whose is the voice in S1? The author? An aside by Alice? I take it S2's spoken by HD? Alice as blonde ingenue is a fine idea. At least S3's straightforward.

KS IV - fun wordplay, lighter than the previous ones.

KS V - is another strong one, wry, fast, and that sharp wit.

KS VI - beautiful punchline!

KS VII - sing along with G&S! Good fun.

Overall I thought I, II and V were the biggies.

hypnotize chickens is curious for content and discursus. Maybe an extra line or two for the rooster in perplexity?

Bird Sketches - these are all great (but do magpies quack?)

Orpheus - elegant narration, nice structuring. (Incidentally, have you come across Rilke's Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes?)

Always a delight to catch up on your thread.

Regards / Dunc

[Featherless Biped]

Neil, Dunc, the fluff is much appreciated. (I am woefully behind on everything because have a big job-related event this week, but I'll be trying to catch up.)

Dunc, the voice in KS III was definitely meant to be the author, and a continuation of the thought in the title ("I could tell you things about Peter Pan, and the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man!"), but I'll think about clarifying that after the dust has settled. Will catch up on my Rilke. (My German is shoddy; it'll have to be in translation.)

[Featherless Biped]

The Unravelling Scarf as a Model of Time

Suppose you spill lime soda
down the pulsitronic nebulizer of the TARDIS
and it jams the ultrasonic harmonizer.

Or suppose your friend
in a fit of irrational pique
disables the memory on your emotional storage device
so that all the harpsichord songs of history
are overwritten
by ten million copies of REM singing Everybody Hurts.

Or suppose some purely hypothetical person
were to lose the only key to the heirloom chest
where you keep the flashlight
that shines backward through yesterday
illuminating the corridor of time.

What happens to the past, in that instance?
Is it gummed up forever
by sugar gone rotten?
Is it overwritten?
Spooled away on a string of zeroes and ones?
Or do the oil paintings remain
pinned to the walls of the empty hallway,
their pigments glowing red and gold
beneath the dropcloths
amidst the dust
in the dark?

[5th column]

That's no hypothetical - it actually happened to me! I was livid I can tell you and also that you're close but the sugar actually just congealed in a solid lump, rolled off of the sideboard, landing on a random spade that collected the zeros and the majority of the ones and threw them into the air where they remain to this day

They really are very long scarves (I'll leave the exact length to Matt who seems to be an expert)..

[Featherless Biped]

Neil, I was afraid of that! I'm in an airport lounge, jetlagged and behind on everything; it's time for the writhing thin mints.

NaPoWriThiMi

1. Lonely

I miss you and I miss you and I miss you.
That is my poem.

2. Airport Lounge

They joined the mile-high
1,000 mile-apart
and therefore not really anyplace
(maybe Platonic heaven?)
club

3. Self-Censorship

Would it be an overshare
to tell you that XXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXXX?

4. Anger

I have been carrying it in my breast pocket
for safety.
I shiver at the feel of its steel against my skin.

5. Guilt

I have been carrying it in my backpack.
I have a lot of books in there too.
That's why my shoulders feel messed up.

6. Power

is a book deal and a job
is standing in front of a room of first-years, blowing their minds
should definitely be kept separate from sex

8. The Lesbian Separatist Colony

I haven't got their secret password
or directions to there from here
but I send them love letters from time to time.
I hope they don't mind the girly handwriting.

9. Science Fiction Utopias

Don't give me the scrubbed light-brown androgynous faces
the identical jumpsuits, the hygiene.
I want ideal citizens
in a million colors of turban and caftan
who like the taste of blood.

10. Loneliness

Is perhaps the tinniest recorder
or the saddest sonata played on its tiniest violin
but it's music for all that.

11. The Misogynist Tripe They Make in Hollywood

I just want to ride in on a fire-breathing horse
and rescue the actress.
Is that problematic?
It's probably problematic.

12. Selling the Rosellas of the Mind

Bleach your blues brighter!
Make those reds pop!

13. Halfway up the Hemlock Tree

You stuff some needles in your mouth and chew
because you heard the story from Thoreau.

14. Whitman

is everyman
which is why beards are back in fashion

15. Pain

Pain feels good
except when it hurts
and dishing it out feels cathartic
except when it hurts others.

16. Fear

I would rather be set adrift in the middle of a huge ocean
than locked inside a tiny cabinet and sawed in half.
Worst of all is the prospect
of being locked inside a tiny cabinet and sunk in the middle of a huge ocean.

17. Shame

how fairies feel about their wings
or timber wolves about their teeth
it's pride transmuted through the lens of wrong

18. Necessity

It's the same in every world
but it doesn't have to be.

19. Possibility

If it's annoying you by scratching at the door
just ignore it, and it will go away.

20. Logic Class

Chalky hands are honest.
If is not plus or.
Ought is made from goodness.
Two and two is four.

21. Hourglass

Filled it with honey
to stretch out the time
but nobody listened.

22. That Black Dress

from the thrift store
cost me a mint
plus a bucket of lint
plus the coins
that I dug from my pocket.

23. Pocky

Food of wonder!
Nice to eat!
Food of royal beauty sweet!

24. I Miss Bagels

Hot Vietnamese Bread
Organic Vegan Spelt Multigrain Sourdough
not the same

25. Can Pain Persist?

Past a fluffy chicken?
Through an entire vegetarian dinner?
Into Easter Weekend?
How?

26. Implements for Scrubbing the Mind

Exercise
Cuddling dogs
Writing short lists

27. Finish Line

Why does this tape
say "Caution"?

28. Lost My Metronome

I have a total lack of meter;
I have lost my rhyme.
Among the things I have no longer:
skill for keeping time.

29. Automatic Writing

Finally! A labor-saving device
That also eliminates pesky uncertainties and insecurities.

30. Sorrow

He arranged the flowers for his own funeral.
He lived a secular argument for the immortality of the soul.
He was the only one not crying.

[Scrow]

Hello!

The birds are nice - I like the juxtaposition of 'real' birds with the sculpture, and the question in the middle. It reminds me of your 'Aliens' poem where something momentous has happened between the two women, but we don't know what.

Orpheus is very clever - the way the words transform as they cross that particular passage. There might be more in that? Boundaries are interesting things.

'Unravelling Scarf' has to get my vote as it references Dr Who, but above and beyond that I like the use of Sci-Fi as a vehicle to express hurt - the undoing of things that cannot be undone. The destruction of what we perceive to be tangible expressions of faith? A kind of meta-questioning of the questions that are 'normal' in Sci-Fi? Those damn Eels have caught me now. Sorry.

'Whitman', 'Shame' and 'Hourglass'. They're my favourites. But I need more time with them all, really, especially with 'Unravelling scarf'.

Keep writing. Keep writing. Keep writing.

Sarah

[Featherless Biped]

Sarah, I appreciate the encouragement very much! Lots going on here (campus visit), but I'm going to get something written before bed.

[Featherless Biped]

True Story

The famous statistician
is studying how potatoes cook.
It depends on slice morphology,
stirring,
and the breed of potato.

The famous economist
explains his views on homosexuality.
I do not explain
my views on his views on homosexuality.

The secretary brings me coffee
and is the best person on campus.