The Plague Diaries and the Annals of the New Utopia (IFT)

[Scrow]

Hello BrianIsSmiling,

I'm so sorry for your loss, and for your family and Mom too. Your elegy is beautiful, and somehow strikes the right balance between empathy and sharing the emotional difficulties but also looking forward in some kind of hope.

I also thought 'Mea Culpa' was a hugely poignant and thought-provoking image/picture of a complex woman. I agree with Sorella - your Mother is very lucky to have you with her.

'To Clear the Air' is another lovely poem, which shares the narrator's reflections on the ambiguities of both personal and global ethics through a global metaphor.

Good Luck, and again, sympathy for your and your families loss,

Sarah

[drumpf]

Eye Deaf

Ok, I mght come off as a stickler here, but sonically, there is a difference in pronouncing "your" vs. "you're". Where the former can be said without stretching the "you" sound, the latter stretches "yooou-ooor". In any case, I love the melodic arithmetic of truth-false and add-subtract, including the ending that brought everything together.

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Sorella, thanks for the condolences.

PClem, thanks for returning, your comments are much appreciated.

I'm glad you like Eye Deaf. It was a bit of a switch from recent stuff.

drumpf - thanks for reading The Fateful Mistake, a difficult piece to write, and probably to read. Same with your reading of the limericks. These were a bit of fun, but far cleaner, and far less outrageous, than the ones I wrote in 2009 (loads more naughty words that year). Thanks for your comments on Eye Deaf. Interesting. Where I come from, I generally hear no difference in "your" and "you're" unless someone is making special emphasis. Interesting to hear alternative perspectives.

Scrow - thanks for the condolences, and for the kind words on the elegy. I drew on my experience with the tanka stanza from my Hokusai days, and from the more recent stuff I did in Sevens and more. It seems a suitable way to contain and shape my thoughts and emotions.

Thanks for the comments on some of the recent Plague Diaries entries, Mea Culpa and To Clear the Air. I've tried to continue the more focused approach that started about a week in, after the chaos of the opening days was over.

More to come!

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

His Head Was a Planet



His head was a planet,
but he did not know it.

She was a Sun and knew.
He circled—one of two.

His planet was the Earth,
aswarm with death and birth.

The other, full of gas—
no lad for this Sun's lass.

She shifted her Sun's rays
from gas, and bent her gaze

upon the one (though small)
she wanted for her all.

The gas bag blew away,
bereft of light and day.

A single Earth now swirled
about her Sun. This world

now knew she was his Sun,
and he was Planet One.

---

BrianIs AtYou

[avalanche]

Oh I liked the limerick best, must say - pango-boys makes perfect sense....and yes, pity the soul of the pious.
Av

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Thanks, avalanche. The limericks were a fun diversion.

More to come.

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Welcome to the New Utopia!


(for animation of image, see https://www.slsc.org/wp-content/uplo.../comet-gif.gif)
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Comet Atlas was discovered
on December 28, 2019.
No one in the science community
took it as an omen of ill fortune
or of anything else,
merely something to be observed,
studied and reported on.

But scam artists and click-bait websites
touted it as meaningful and portentous.
Comet Atlas will be
the brightest object in the sky
after the Sun!
It will herald a New Utopia!

Meanwhile, the science community reported
that Atlas had commenced to disintegrate,
a common trait of Kreutz Sungrazers,
shrugging pieces of itself away
as physics demanded,
heedless of mythic claims.

Like Icarus, it had come too close--
speed, gravity, friction, heat--
all of these will lead
to its eventual demise.

By April 6—Mom's birthday—
it had broken apart
into at least four pieces,
while Mom still held together.

All four pieces continued
to move in a near-parabolic orbit,
just as cars in a sideswipe crash on the motorway
continue on their trajectories
after colliding—

just as the ejected bodies
of those who did not take care
to wear seatbelts
provide a stunning,
ballistic, balletic display.

You can buy a t-shirt
with the Atlas Mountains
of northwest Africa,
emblazoned with a figure
of the Comet, and the slogan:

Welcome to the New Utopia!

---

BrianIs AtYou

---
PS

https://www.cnet.com/news/comet-atla...wards-the-sun/

[Donner]

Brian,

I'm so sorry for your and your family's loss. They often say to let time and distance give some perspective before writing about such things, but they were wrong this time - no amount of time could improve on your lovely elegy for your uncle.

"I Had a Thought" - Excellent adaptation of the AS incorporated into the image of the flag. It adds an extra dimension. (I'm glad to see you're still working with images.)

"To Clear the Air" - I really like how you bring out different aspects of "clearing the air". Clever and very well done. (Although, I would argue S8&9 are pure fiction; some things will never change, virus or no virus.)

"Limerick Mania" - HA! And again I say HA! HA! (Although, I kind of like these Pangolin Men better.)

"Mia Culpa" - I like the tension between the psychiatrist and the priest, that her first instinct is to speak to the former as she perceives him as less judgemental. N's insistence that she has nothing to ask forgiveness for shows his understanding of her situation despite her never speaking about what happened.

"Eye Deaf" - I read this as a journey going from "imagining" and all the emotions in between until forgiveness and "holding".

"Piety" - All I can say is that you showed great restraint. (Maybe this is where that advice to wait a bit before writing was a good idea.) The age-old problem of pseudo-piety/Pharisees is well-dealt with.

"Welcome to the New Utopia!" - Comets do tend to bring out the loonies (think Heaven's Gate cult). These lines in the middle:

By April 6—Mom's birthday—
it had broken apart
into at least four pieces,
while Mom still held together.

made it personal; the sideswipe crash image makes for a great ending.

Donna

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Donner, thanks for the detailed fluff on my various recent poems.

The AS was fun. I've decided that this is a new form, called an American Flag.

13 lines that are nominally American Sentences (17 syllables each), with 4 more syllables to round out the pole.

An American Flag does not have to be repeating and cyclic, as this was. Nor does it have to actually incorporate itself into an image of the flag, though that is a plus.
I am tempted to write another American flag, that is not a repeater, and to see if it is viable as a form.

Interesting commentary on "To Clear the Air", especially the ending strophes. (Ha!)

Limericks are pretty much mandatory each year (along with Haiku, Sonnet, etc); this year was fun.

Mea Culpa was difficult. It continues the theme of Dreams that has run through The Plague Diaries, and is part of a phenomenon that has been reported on as symptomatic of the COVID crisis.

See https://www.vogue.com/article/corona...ard-researcher

Eye Deaf was a weird exploration that kind of wrote itself. I live the journey that you hint at as I wrote it.

Piety - yes. I had the conversation with the Sister over Facebook. I did not go back to read the exact words of the conversation when I wrote the poem. I let my memory and the Alliterative Accentual form guide me.

Welcome to the New Utopia - Yes, I found that personalizing of this essential. This almost made it into The Plague Diaries, and could equally well have gone there, except I like the idea of the charlatans using the comet as an omen of the New Utopia.

Thanks again!

More to Come!

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

XIX. (No) Words for an Unreal World



The child contemplates an imaginary and incomplete world
on a wall of plastered brick.
I sit beside him, in a complete and unreal world for which I have no words—
and where I must hide my face—
or face retribution.

I cannot see his face—or his world—
as he does. His father, the Artist,
is one whom I know. I’ve written words
for his art before, and he has been kind
to my nieces and nephew,

going so far as to place them in the world
of this fantastic mural,
where history meets the unwritten word
of the artist’s imagination.
I’ve wandered here at night

beneath strings of lights—a vibrant, colorful world,
with Einstein, Edison, Twain, and Thomas Mundy Peterson—
the first African American to vote after the Civil War, when the words
of a new Amendment gave him that right. Change can be real here,
as people and places grow from sketch to color.

This is now the only part of the world
where I can socialize
without distancing, as not a breath or a word
passes from the lips of the painted figures
on the wall.

Someone passing by in the real world
sees me squatting on the ground next to this contemplative child—
communing with art, wordlessly—
I point to my mask, and to the unconstrained
and fortunate faces

on the wall. They live in a world
of artifice, but they seem freer than me—
their faces open—even though no words
shall ever pass their lips,
silent witnesses.

I will speak for them.

---

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

I figured I would try another "American Flag", but more generic, as I described it to Donner above (13 American sentences, plus the first 4 syllables from the first sentence repeated, going down for the flag pole) This is without the gimmick of the actual flag superimposed on it, as in the previous American Flag entry that introduced the new form. I am trying to see if it is viable as a new form on its own.

----
I Want to Live (American Flag)

I want to live in the New Utopia, but it does not want me.
My presence would upset the social order, so I am forbidden.
The social order is already upturned, so why should they worry?
Alfred E. Neuman would not worry in this grand New Utopia.
Yes, one would have to be Mad—mad enough not to take it anymore!
The New Utopia asks that everyone remain calm at all times.
The transitional period does not permit one to remain calm.
There is no “calm before the storm”, only rain, thunder, and tornadoes.
In the New Utopia, they can predict the weather perfectly.
Umbrellas and raincoats are still needed, however, when you go out.
Playing in puddles is prohibited in the New Utopia.
One must do serious work in the puddles to get properly wet.
I hope for sunny skies, but they tell me I must wait for forty days.
I

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---

BrianIs AtYou

[DeniseD]

Hi Brian, this is just a fly-by, I'll be back tomorrow with proper fluff but XIX is just so great and powerful I couldn't leave silently.

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

Thanks, DeniseD, for stopping by and giving a nice fluff. I'm glad you like XIX.

More to come.

BrianIs AtYou

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

XX. But the Dandelion



A dying dandelion
waits for the wind.

I could be the wind,
if not for my mask.

The New York train
rumbles past.

A brisk wind follows,
but the dandelion

still waits.

---

BrianIs AtYou

[Dunc]

Brian

Silence ─ Ah Brian, death is the biggie, isn't it. Very sorry your uncle's story has come to an end. I must hold your hand / after the words that we know / will be followed by silence.

His Head Was a Planet ─ I can see a number of ways to interpret this, but they all come round to the happy ending. Or what I hope is the happy ending.

The New Utopia ─ I like your well-structured moral and your 'trajectories after colliding' metaphor too. I'm not ready for the New Utopia t-shirt yet ─ I'm still looking for the Old Utopia.

I Want to Live ─ Hmm, imaginative. I have the feeling that the AS, being a self-sufficient idea captured and completed in its ration of syllables, could maybe be used eg three in a row like stanzas of a poem (and separated by a blank line); but that at this sort of length the jerky effect is noticeable, and the lines are of uneven weight of input. Whereas those wouldn't be problems with say a sonnet (even of 17 syllables a line) where the line and the sense can be enjambed or divided. You could add an acrostic for the first-letter effect. But then again, challenges are there to be gloriously triumphed over.

Regards, as ever / Dunc