Make the Mandala Great Again

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Poems of the pre-post apocalypse era

December

1) Bad Poet
2) Farewell Mariana
3) Further observations
4) In case of the moon
5) The Monarch in decline
6) For you
7) Parklife II

November

1) Waves
2) Still on one foot (+bonus limerick)
3) Low Tide
4) Untitled Trump Poem
5) Sea flowers
6) Twitching
7) Sr. Beatrice among the trees

September

1) Instructions for an Alzheimer's poem
2) River waltz
3) Sestina: Ocean dreaming
4) Manatee, asleep
5) Park life
6) So many dead poems
7) Night and the sea


August

1) Housework
2) Molar
3) Three myths of his passing
4) My usual riddles
5) Holy Orders
6) Fictional world experiments
7) To the memory of Charles Crane


May

1) Peace poem
2) Outpatients
3) After my dream of peace
4) Cloth cat metaphysics
5) A long silence
6) The deckchair drudge
7) In passing

April: NaPo!


March

1) Withdrawal
2) Winter's reprise
3) Arboreal
4) Flob-a-flob-a-dob
5) Magma
6) Sisyphus Online
7) When I am old


February

1) In February
2) Seven years at sea
3) What we know about the gods
4) How I rock it
5) Metaphysics
6) After Dessert
7) Local interest limericks


January 2018

1) Sophie in the drawing room
2) Hedgehogs are more successful at living solitary lives
3) Wall
4) Romantic Poetry 101
5) A photograph of her voice
6) Seascape
7) In the Garden

December

1) Just a little bit longer
2) How I read your words
3) You may even have horns
4) Hibernation
5) Things that stay the same
6) Once
7) Another poem about the rain

November

1) I have stopped writing my journal
2) Staring at the sea
3) Lost Dog
4) Double Dactyl
5) Shopping
6) Solid
7) Ode to the lovely Lipoma

September

1) Love in the time of zombies
2) Some reasons
3) untitled
4) Superheroes I have never been
5) Uphill
6) Sometimes
7) That oceanic feeling

July 2017

1) Still life with waves
2) Seascape with a background of austerity
3) Though there are only days
4) Floating
5) haiku
6) Beginning after the end
7) Bird

June 2017

1) My own worst elegy
2) The mimic octopus
3) Regarding Emma
4) Last Days
5) An admission
6) Out of the green
7) Passenger


May 2017

1. Under the sea
2. Manageable work
3. Ex-girlfriend
4. Ahem
5. Night's geography
6. Write your own poem
7. Not out of the woods

March 2017

1. Dawn prayer
2. Promenade
3. This dewdrop world
4. Leader sonnet
5. Hidden
6. Detonator
7. But as foam after the ocean's wrath


January 2017

1. Rose Motif
2. Villainelle for Atos, Capita and the DWP
3. Not me
4. Dreamships
5. Grey against grey
6. Anniversary Remix
7. Mass Extinction

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Listen. Something is trying to grow here.
Beneath this mound of muck and noise,
small notes of buried life remember air.
It’s not a fancy tune: a simple rose
is struggling to be heard, is holding fast,
sustained for now, at least, by pot-bound roots;
its single bud clenched hard, a mottled fist.
But even tired symbols need the light.

The memory of beauty will not suffice;
it’s time to dig the garden once again,
scrape back the layers that left us deaf,
impale ourselves on thorns so that each pin
can pierce the noise. Let’s bleed forth melodies
until we sway in time, caught by the breeze.


----
or maybe: "drunk on the breeze", but that might be the wrong sort of swaying!

[5th column]

Matt, v early in the morning here and I've not yet had coffee so what little wits I have a re still scrambled so when I say I've not a clue what's going on here then that probs down to me not the poem but I like it a lot. A realmseparture from the norm and enjoyable to read.

[Donner]

Hi, Matt,

2017 already and here we go, we few, we brave.

Around here, February (around President's Day to be precise) is when we prune our roses and trees. I'm reading this as something related to spring waiting its seasonal turn, anthrophomorphised by the rose's wish to bloom again.

Donner

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Neil and Donner,

Thanks for your fluffery. It seems I was way more obscure with that first one than I thought. I was thinking of a relationship in which that which is alive gets covered over and needs to be reclaimed. But looking again I see I didn't give many clues. Too many metaphors in the bonemeal. Ho hum.

Nearly didn't play Sevens this month, and may well wimp out as the week progresses and time gets tighter. Still, since I've never failed to finish before, pride may well see through.

Here's number 2.

Matt

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

It’s not just coins we want, the boatman said,
his creaking ferry drifting through the murk.
We’ve found a way to profit from the dead.

Those who come for rest, have been misled,
(and in the darkness we could hear him smirk)
it’s not just coins we’ll want, the boatman said,

Deadbeats and scroungers think the grave’s a bed,
but everyone down here’s found fit for work.
That’s how we turn a profit from the dead.

A sick note’s not accepted here, just dread.
No overtime, no breaks, no kind of perk.
Lost souls are coins to us, the boatman said.

And thoughts of freedom here will sink like lead:
There is no chance to organise or shirk.
The worm can’t turn. No prophets for the dead.

I’m sure together we could forge ahead.
So are you in or out? No need to lurk.
There’s coins enough for all, the boatman said.
It’s down this way. Let’s profit from the dead.

[5th column]

Looks like it was a good idea to hi the Sevens trail Matt as these are both a departure from your normal style which is always interesting as a reader familiar with someone's work. I like this, it's in-keeping with your theme for the week. I have a feeling that if the Donald could monetize the dead he would...

[Sorella]

ok replied to Rose Motif January 2017 thinking it was 2018!

[Sorella]

of course, with barriers mandatory, Americans will become extinct, not in Trump's
lifetime, but he won't make it great again--that is the joke for me!

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

Thanks Sorella, Donna, Maggie

So yes, babies. 4 million is (roughly) the number of people born in the U.S. each year. Immigrants one all, in their own way. I don't know that the form gave me quite enough space to set the jokes up well enough. Or even just a title "Trump on birth control", say, would help.

Maggie, thanks for the photos. The ocean looks great.

-Matt

[GreaterMandalaofUselessness]

The sea has a man inside it.
It holds the man like a crocus
as if poised to place him in a vase.
The man has reached that state of cold

in which he feels the salt water
as if it were the midsummer air,
turns his petals toward the sun
and opens himself up wide.

Within the man there is a sea,
a sea that’s shifting, cramped
inside the cavern that sits
within stem of the man.

It's too dark for a shoreline,
but cold on the silted basin floor
a ring of bivalves open like a star,
each shell, a crocus petal.

[Maggie Lawson]

Hi Matt,

"Sea Flower" feels kaleidoscopic or like that slow motion tumbling of shells and such on the sea floor as it turns the the man/sea/crocus imagery. I really enjoyed that experience as it shows how effective narrative agility and imagination can be when they're choreographed.

"Sr. Beatrice among the Trees" is calm yet strong in its imagery! I immediately felt the lull of words like water colours that have no hard edges but extend beyond themselves. I love love love the "confusion of angels".

I feel quite privileged to have been part of this sevens with such skilled writers such as yourself. Thank you!