Asymmetrical Tygers (and other unwanted creatures)

[Sorella]

John,

YOu are impressive -- and I say this every year -- no less true now though.

I shy away from cat poems, but A Passing Conversation bowled me over: That waiting of the neighbour while N chats on, with such awful news. Ouch!
Morning Radio is a treat, the Sestina and that latest Pantoum make me long for your energy and talent -- a tour de force, again!

Will try one of your forms this NaPo. Now I have said it, I will be forced out of my laziness, I hope.

Sorella

[Sorella]

Oops, forgot what I really came for, to add you to the list of smutty (but deliciously so) English poets, and when Gardener's Lament combines naughtiness and gardening, well, the eptiome of you guys, innit?

[JFN]

Thank you Sorella. Always appreciated.

[JFN]

Company

I climb onto the sofabed and curl
myself around the foxhole sunk
upon a broken slat, and I unfurl

my legs, stretch out across the frozen bunk
looking for warmth, but I find none;
truth slowly dawns, I am a lonely drunk,

and dawn itself will wait upon the sun
who has no time for me tonight.
I stalk with stealth past floorboards that are known

explosives, laid during some other fight,
and find my son has claimed my place --
my bed is lost to his oedipal right.

I turn about, retreat at quarter pace
and peer around my daughter's door;
the faint blue night-light flares across my face

as I drop down to curl upon the floor,
able to sleep within her gentle snore.

[JFN]

Things I Have Come to Understand

I am the spit-coated irritation
in the centre of your mollusc shell existence,
salt-smooth and iridescent as lead
you lap me to your phlegmy heart
and coat me in nacre
to protect me from this brackish world.

I am the six foot length of cast iron fence
echoing the damp scent of rain soaked rust.
The edelweiss will outlive the mountain,
the sweetpea will outlast the fence,
for all fences will fall
and all mountains will sink ---
only flowers know the power of gentleness.

I am Rambo zig-zagging through the firefight
and the fire, Sylvester Stallone
trapped in Hope, Washington.
If the pot is boiling over, use a long spoon.
If the house is on fire, warm yourself.

I am the pot.

I am the house.

I climb into the belly of the tulip.
Inside every flower it is possible
to hear the gert murmuration of immortality,
a thousand vibrating stamens of honesty,
tenderly chanting
tenderlying"Ni neart go cur le cheile,"
there is no strength without unity.

A single length of fence protects no man.
A single pearl has no intrinsic worth
save the money of a fool
and the love of its mother.
The pot does not boil,
the house does not burn,
there is no Hope in Washington.
There is no fire
save the flames of the sweetpea.


__________
Thanks to Rachael for letting me know of the Twenty Little Poetry Projects. Not really a form as such, but it has rules. I think I managed each of the twenty in one way or another.

[Angela]

JFN,

I just read through your entire thread and I have to say, I DO NOT Know how you manage all the forms! Reading your work is like taking a poetry class. So, so many interesting and fun (and naughty) things happening here. I loved the shelter in fledgling, the flight and color in Perigrine and the order of Migration. (My brain is urging me to try my hand at this, darn you! Ha!) Gardener's Lament (I like turgid. Heh.)Gave me the snickers... Your pantoum Our love is like an exhausted mine shaft, baby also had me snickering. With every turn, oh, how how I longed for them to get it right! Ha! This one was really fun to read and I read it twice!

Good stuff going on here!

Angela~

[JFN]

Thanks Angela, really appreciate you dropping in. Struggling to keep up with the fluff and forms due to other, should be prioritised but aren't completely, things. You happen to be next on my list though (yes, I have a list. Bad idea because then you know how far behind you are).

As I say, struggling with the forms, so going for another excuse, the list.


Edit: Just re-read what I wrote as I was falling asleep last night. Apologies in advance. We agreed nonsense counts, right?

[JFN]

Several Things I Repeatedly Get Wrong, and One I Never Will Again

There are words I know I know,
but still read wrong despite the knowing:

Maya Angelou --
she was a pheremonal woman,

Yusef Komunyakaa
camouflaged the chiminea --
hide the fire, hide the fire;
I think that's what he meant.


Then there are those that I mishear:

I never knew poor Sylvia
was so enamoured by the clamour
of the beatbox. (Seems quite wierd,
the form post-dates her twenty years.

Perhaps each time she met the oven
the gas echoed in heady rhythms.)


And so I listened, so I learnt
it's good to ride a Grecian, um,
Walt Disney sang songs of mice elves
and clowns are lonely wanderers
(unlike those slutty daffodils).


And so I read, and so I learnt
that it is rime, it is not rhyme,
and it is thyme, it is not time,
and it is read, it is not reed,
and it is read, it is not red,
and it is right to write a rite,

and there are ways
and they're our wheys
and their arrgh weighs
and there are Tygers
(but they never holiday near Lyons).


I discovered that a syllabub is not a baby syllable,
and that a syllabus is not the way they get to school,

but I know that look on your face, it's unmistakable,
and I'm telling you now babe, that this ain't hyperbole.

[5th column]

As someone said recently 'awesome sauce' for making me laugh out loud - Sylvia, queen of the beatbox

[Mike M]

Just read "A Passing Conversation" (linked from the cat contest - I'll come back and read the rest.) I really like the way you turn the tone of the refrain slowly, as the N who is joking about death comes to realize the presence of actual death - always awkward. Skillfully done.

[Scrow]

Hi John,

I agree with Sorella – you are impressive.

26^th January – moving, clever, and intricate how the rhyme scheme echoes N’s crumbling, circuitous mind. Brilliant, that one.

The form you’ve constructed in ‘From my window’ is very, very interesting – like a kind of reduced sestina? I ike the question/ answer in the last stanza, and the compression of meaning within the piece.

A Passing Conversation – a shocking twist in the ending, and nicely written (of course) too.

Gardener’s Lament – this is lovely. I think it’s my second favourite.

Our love…lovely, sad, real. Universal experience (for those who have had children) voiced beautifully, perhaps?

Company – that’s my favourite so far. Sad, provoking immediate empathy with N by invoking an experience that most of us might have had – beautifully written, clever. Love ‘foxhole sunk’ and the ‘blue night-light flares’. Really very, very good.

Things I have come to understand – claver, interesting, it builds on itself and is thought-provoking.

Several Things – Love this – funny and clever - and sad, too – a bit like a witty elegy that plays with perspective.

A truly brilliant thread – I’ve loved reading this. Keep writing.

Sarah

[JFN]

Neil, Mike, Sarah, thank you all so much for the encouragement. Just had one of those weekends, hit that NaPo hump, and have an exam in two weeks, so may be churning out drivel in sort forms for the rest of the month, if at all.

The next two I was half working on Saturday and Sunday, finished off on the bus this morning. The first of these was meant as a rebuttal to Angela's If my clitoris could bitch and moan..., originally titled If my penis could talk, he wouldn't, for fear you'd bite his head off, but it went in a marginally different direction. Also, not sure sonnet purists will consider it a form, but it will do.

[JFN]

Let there be Light

One does not view an orchid in the dark,
nor hide a lily beneath linen sheets;
God kept all perfect things within the ark,
but come the time opened the door, released
them two
them two by
then two by two plums will provide juice enough
to quench a thirst, but left engorged the fruits
will surely rot -- so squeeze the flesh, be rough,
but not so rough that the sweet syrup shoots,
misses your mouth
misses your mouth and
misses your mouth and face the hard and naked
truth that sometimes a man may stop to stare
at art, appreciate the curves of red
and pink, the tender brush strokes, moistened hair,
the tip wetted
the tip wetted with
the tip wetted with oils keep the lamp through night,
all flowers, fruit and art, like love, need light.

[JFN]

Revisiting Galilee

After a long and fruitless day
I could not cast my nets in vain
into that Galilean bay,

nor step out of the boat and weigh
myself lighter than falling rain.
After a long and fruitless day

of pouring wine from jars of clay,
I would not drag them, would not strain
into that Galilean bay,

but drink the wine. And when they say
of mustard seeds and sowing grain,
after a long and fruitless day

I would, by myself, row away
to be alone, alone profane
into that Galilean bay.

And come the storm, the skiff would sway,
and I would be lost once again
into that Galilean bay
after a long and fruitless day.

[Jee Leong]

"Several Things I Repeatedly Get Wrong..." is very funny. Self-deprecation rhymes with manly pride.