Challenge: Full of Sound and Fury

[champagne1982]

Avoid the 'stache. Excessive facial hair traumatizes LeBroz. We must be kind.

bj

It's fun to watch him twitch though.

 

[LeBroz]

It's fun to watch him twitch though.

It is? An overly hirsute face makes me cring; a twitch happens during La Petite mort — so, you're a secret voyeur?

.
.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

It is? An overly hirsute face makes me cring; a twitch happens during La Petite mort — so, you're a secret voyeur?

.
.

Not that secret, really.

bj

 

[champagne1982]

It is? An overly hirsute face makes me cring; a twitch happens during La Petite mort — so, you're a secret voyeur?

.
.

Tsk! Imagine <shocked innocence>moi, une voyeuse. C'est impossible</si> Does it hurt when you make that face?

A poem for upbj

there are frilly edges draped
at this portal that frame
the liquid harbour
sheathed in dark satin
shirred shimmer
matt against the oily
silk that clings to bathers'
porpoise splashed against
hot orchid pink lips

 

[Angeline]

Not unless you make it cross-eyed with a 'tache. I thought it vaguely Benazeer(sp)-ish.

Ah yes, I suppose it is. Sigh.

Anyway is there any other way to do it than cross-eyed, mustache, goatee and buck teeth? My kids would add zits but they're mean.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Ah yes, I suppose it is. Sigh.

Anyway is there any other way to do it than cross-eyed, mustache, goatee and buck teeth? My kids would add zits but they're mean.

How bout Groucho Marx glasses, with the eyebrows and stuff? Course, that involves a moustache too, and the eyebrows are hairy enough that that alone might send LeBroz into Aesthetic Dismay.

Antlers?

Pointy ears?

I'm just in a helpful mood today.

Champagne:

A poem for upbj

there are frilly edges draped
at this portal that frame
the liquid harbour
sheathed in dark satin
shirred shimmer
matt against the oily
silk that clings to bathers'
porpoise splashed against
hot orchid pink lips

YUM!

I dunno. This made my mouth water. A lot.

bj

 

[champagne1982]

<...>
YUM!

I dunno. This made my mouth water. A lot.

bj

It's a good thing there's an all-u-can-eat buffet on this cruise ship... CCCruiselines... yep, sail me.

 

[LeBroz]

How bout Groucho Marx glasses, with the eyebrows and stuff? Course, that involves a moustache too, and the eyebrows are hairy enough that that alone might send LeBroz into Aesthetic Dismay.

bj

Oh but Groucho's okay - the real one, at least. He's practically clean shaven. But I must admit to a far more pleasurable reaction to your current AV.

.
.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

It's a good thing there's an all-u-can-eat buffet on this cruise ship... CCCruiselines... yep, sail me.

Don't you go getting all suggestive and flirtatious with me, missy. You don't know how I get on a Friday night.

*reckless eyebrows*

bj

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Oh but Groucho's okay - the real one, at least. He's practically clean shaven. But I must admit to a far more pleasurable reaction to your current AV.

.
.

So hair's okay. Just not on the chin. Or in overly artistic arrangements that win contests. Right?

I'd hate to traumatize you.

unintentionally.

bj

eta: oh, and thank you. shucks.

 

[LeBroz]

So hair's okay. Just not on the chin. Or in overly artistic arrangements that win contests. Right?

I'd hate to traumatize you.

unintentionally.

bj

eta: oh, and thank you. shucks.

Do I detect a hint of a mental sadism streak bubbling just below the surface?

.
.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Do I detect a hint of a mental sadism streak bubbling just below the surface?

.
.

again, not that secret, really.

y'all really don't realize how diligently I work at behaving like a responsible grownup around here. it's all a huge scam, trust me.

But yes, a hint.

I only traumatize people I think need to be poked, however. It is nice to know that if I ever really need to shake you out of some complacency or depression I can just go find my Moustache Contest links...

bj

 

[Angeline]

How bout Groucho Marx glasses, with the eyebrows and stuff? Course, that involves a moustache too, and the eyebrows are hairy enough that that alone might send LeBroz into Aesthetic Dismay.

Antlers?

Pointy ears?

I'm just in a helpful mood today.




YUM!

I dunno. This made my mouth water. A lot.

bj

Just to keep everything in perspective, some Groucho Marx Quotes:

Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?

Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

My mother loved children - she would have given anything if I had been one.

My favourite poem is the one that starts 'Thirty days hath September' because it actually tells you something.

If you've heard this story before, don't stop me, because I'd like to hear it again.

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it.

Before I speak, I have something important to say.

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

Go, and never darken my towels again.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

A favorite of many:
"I married your mother because I wanted children. Imagine my disappointment when YOU came along."


LeBroz, I've just noticed that in the last short while you've suggested voyeurism in one case and sadism in another. Do I detect a slight longing for some kinky women of one sort or another?

you seem so... normal....

As for me, I'm no more a fiendish and gleeful sadist than I am a masochist pain freak with a thing for being tied down. That oughta clear things up.

bj

 

[Tzara]

The challenge for this thread is both formal and informal. Informally, I dare you to find more examples, and figure out why they work, if they work, and what exactly it is they “do” that “works” or “doesn't”.

Well, since I have been caught out being obnoxiously opinionated again, I guess I should crank this thread back towards something like what our threadstarter might have meant, maybe.

I really like this poem. I've quoted it before:

Drunken Memories Of Anne Sexton
Alan Dugan

The first and last time I met
my ex-lover Anne Sexton was at
a protest poetry reading against
some anti-constitutional war in Asia
when some academic son of a bitch,
to test her reputation as a drunk,
gave her a beer glass full of wine
after our reading. She drank
it all down while staring me
full in the face and then said
"I don't care what you think,
you know," as if I was
her ex-what, husband, lover,
what? And just as I
was just about to say I
loved her, I was, what,
was, interrupted by my beautiful enemy
Galway Kinnell, who said to her
"Just as I was told, your eyes,
you have one blue, one green"
and there they were, the two
beautiful poets, staring at
each others' beautiful eyes
as I drank the lees of her wine.​

So, hey, first off I want to say this is an effing fabulous poem—emotional, expressive, erotic even. What is so great and so "wrong" is the line breaks, which convey the drunken rantishnessliness of the narrator ("Dugan") on the helplessness of his desire for Ms. Sexton and his rage at the easy relationship Kinnell forms with her, bonded as they are by their easy beauty.

Shit. I identify with that, surely.

Oh, such lovely stuff as "first and last time... my ex-lover" and "I was, what, / was" makes this poem special for me.

Guy wrote great poems. Oh, and Anne Sexton, poet and suicide, was most certainly sexy.

God ye good den.

 

[LeBroz]

LeBroz, I've just noticed that in the last short while you've suggested voyeurism in one case and sadism in another. Do I detect a slight longing for some kinky women of one sort or another?

you seem so... normal....

bj

Me? Normal? {Whatever the hell that is} One never knows what's in the package until you open it.

You've obviously never read my bio.

.
.

 

[FifthFlower]

I really like this poem. I've quoted it before:

Drunken Memories Of Anne Sexton
Alan Dugan

The first and last time I met
my ex-lover Anne Sexton was at
a protest poetry reading against
some anti-constitutional war in Asia
when some academic son of a bitch,
to test her reputation as a drunk,
gave her a beer glass full of wine
after our reading. She drank
it all down while staring me
full in the face and then said
"I don't care what you think,
you know," as if I was
her ex-what, husband, lover,
what? And just as I
was just about to say I
loved her, I was, what,
was, interrupted by my beautiful enemy
Galway Kinnell, who said to her
"Just as I was told, your eyes,
you have one blue, one green"
and there they were, the two
beautiful poets, staring at
each others' beautiful eyes
as I drank the lees of her wine.​

So, hey, first off I want to say this is an effing fabulous poem—emotional, expressive, erotic even. What is so great and so "wrong" is the line breaks, which convey the drunken rantishnessliness of the narrator ("Dugan") on the helplessness of his desire for Ms. Sexton and his rage at the easy relationship Kinnell forms with her, bonded as they are by their easy beauty.

I like this poem also, but think it would look better without any line breaks at all. Then there is no pretension about it being "poetry" and one can read it for its painfully honest content.

Drunken Memories Of Anne Sexton
Alan Dugan

The first and last time I met my ex-lover Anne Sexton was at a protest poetry reading against some anti-constitutional war in Asia when some academic son of a bitch, to test her reputation as a drunk, gave her a beer glass full of wine after our reading. She drank it all down while staring me full in the face and then said "I don't care what you think, you know," as if I was her ex-what, husband, lover, what? And just as I was just about to say I loved her, I was, what, was, interrupted by my beautiful enemy Galway Kinnell, who said to her "Just as I was told, your eyes, you have one blue, one green" and there they were, the two beautiful poets, staring at each others' beautiful eyes as I drank the lees of her wine.

The "just as I was just" and the "I was, what, was" could stand improvement, but the story flows better, and the readers know they can expect content rather than dangling images.

 

[bluebell]

This may seem facetiously overstated at times, but I'm really trying to get at something important here, so bear with me.

We all seem to agree that images are essential to poetry. They are almost as essential to poetry as the words themselves. But if poetry does nothing but communicate an image, albeit with emotional overtones – if it does nothing but show a picture or series of pictures that have an underlying meaning, then really it is a secondary medium and simply a poor substitute for visual art. Paintings, photography and film all do the same thing even more efficiently, by actually showing a picture and adding a story, an emotional overtone, an implication. They use color, focus, shape and even, in the case of film, sound, movement and dialogue to do many of the same things we claim to want to do with a poem: put a reader into an image, a scene, a situation.

So why bother writing words on paper to communicate an image? Why not just communicate the image more directly, with, well, an image? Or a whole scene, scripted and directed, with special lenses and sound to add all the information and meaning you want to impose?

Which is the sort of thought process that leads me to the whole question of language and whether or not it's a virus from outer space.

What are words for, anyway? What do they do to, and for, an audience that visual art and film cannot do, if anything? Why use words alone, if the goal is merely to tell a story, describe a scene, display an image, imply a meaning or context or conclusion for these things?

I suggest that words can work on the brain in ways that move entirely beyond, underneath, their actual meaning.

The first levels of that argument are obvious. They have to do with the sound of a particular word, and with its connotations. If I'm writing a poem about falling heavy rocks, I generally choose words with a particular assonance, and if I'm writing about falling delicate snowflakes I'd probably use different words. Okay so far? And obviously, one does think quite deeply beyond the denotation of a word when it is used in a poem. “Light”, “pale” and “white” all have different tones within a poem.

Nu?

Okay, what I'm getting at is that sometimes words work even more deeply than that. Irrational syntax, weird portmanteau words, phrases chosen MORE for sound than meaning, MORE for their rhythm, or their impact on the other senses, or perhaps for something they do to the hindbrain.

Coming to the discussion late. Okay, really late.

These are really cool thoughts, bijou.

-Forgive me rambling here, I'm going to indulge it a little-

I've always read, loved, and written poetry (or, what I call my feeble attempts at writing). I felt it supplied something that prose could not. Each offers a different connection to the reader. But as much as I've admired poetry, it seems vastly unknown to me; I can't really quantify it, or feel I have the wherewithal to wrap my arms around what it is. Like Poetry was just this strange thing floating around out there, its letters being grown on trees and sold in a marketplace like in The Phantom Tollbooth.

But I felt like I had some clarity about it yesterday, thanks to the things said in this thread and an extended linger in the poetry section of a really busy Barnes & Noble.
I guess I've been a little scared of poetry, like it was a cool kid at the party who would definitely NOT want to hang with me. I felt I couldn't own it, take it inside myself and really feel it- that if someone caught me reading it they'd know I was a faker who usually grabbed for prose first.
Fear doesn't usually have to accompany prose or visual images because they fill in much more detail for you. It's the difference between pouring water through a bucket which only has six holes and a bucket that has sixty holes. The filtering is different.

I think a lot of poetry is about space. Space around the words, space in what the words are saying and what they aren't saying. The phrasing, the style, the way the words are placed on the paper. All about space. Visually, that is. And mentally. When you read to yourself it's just you, the words, and the spaces.

Reading poetry aloud is a completely different kettle of fish. It changes how you write the poem. Perhaps with really excellent poetry, it can be both visual and verbal without being mutually exclusive? Or is that insulting?
While she was writing her best poems, Sylvia Plath was insistent that they were to be read aloud. Publish them, yes, but on first experience she was adamant that she read them out loud herself. So what happens to the visuals of poetic space when the poem becomes a verbal endeavor? Can a poem be as successful visually if it is primarily meant to be aural?

What we always bring to the table as readers or viewers is our own viewpoint. A unique collection of all our opinions, experiences, sights, sounds, likes, dislikes, pains, joys, fears, loves. Those things combine to become our lens. It almost guarantees that each person will see/read/hear something individually- absorb it in their own way.

Words are more malleable than fixed images, at least in the confines of the brain. An image supplies you with a whole palette, almost a complete experience to recollect: you're seeing that very same thing. It may distort a bit, or blend with other images, but on the whole I think they tend to remain stationary once seen.
Words are giving you the outline and then trusting you to do the inking. Or allowing you to do the inking.

Phrasing stays in my head. I play with words the same way I get a song stuck on replay in my mind. Misnomer, sesquipedalian, succinct, demoralized, sacrosanct, vainglorious.
I seem to collect them like pebbles and then swirl them around, sift them in my brain. Say them over and over, think about what they mean, break them up into bits. They're flexible.

Then there's phrases. They play on repeat or get called up when I'm triggered visually to remember something I've read and have created a picture for. One of them is this bit from Li-Young Lee's Eating Alone:
(specific phrase is bolded)

Once, years back, I walked beside my father
among the windfall pears. I can't recall
our words. We may have strolled in silence. But
I still see him bend that way- left hand braced
on knee, creaky- to lift and hold to my
eye a rotten pear. In it, a hornet
spun crazily, glazed in a slow, glistening juice.

I need words. I need other people's words. I need other people's words to do two things for me:
1) To say it better than I can, and
2) To keep me from feeling so alone in whatever it is that's affecting me.

To be fair, I also capture visuals and keep them inside.

I guess what I'm trying to say, really really inarticulately, is that it would be a great loss to only experience poetry or prose or visual art/movies. They all create a supporting web; each feeds on each. We don't necessarily NEED each one to understand another, but they enrich the process.
I know bijou wasn't trying to say that any of them were pointless or replaceable, I suppose I just wanted to share my thoughts. Or maybe I just got really excited about my Barnes & Noble epiphany yesterday and wanted to geek out about it.

Art is effective to the extent that it engages the imagination, yes? But what does effective mean in terms of art? For me it's the concept of the willing suspension of disbelief, which is normally used to describe an audience's reaction to a play. If you are in the audience but become so involved in the action of the play that you are, in your imagination, transported into the experience of the play, you have suspended your disbelief. I think this happens when we react to a certain painting or sculpture, when we listen to music that really moves us, and when we read something that really touches us. It's beyond intellectual understanding.

Yes. It becomes something really private, almost like one soul is whispering to another, even without physical proximity.

 

[Angeline]

Coming to the discussion late. Okay, really late.

These are really cool thoughts, bijou.

-Forgive me rambling here, I'm going to indulge it a little-

I've always read, loved, and written poetry (or, what I call my feeble attempts at writing). I felt it supplied something that prose could not. Each offers a different connection to the reader. But as much as I've admired poetry, it seems vastly unknown to me; I can't really quantify it, or feel I have the wherewithal to wrap my arms around what it is. Like Poetry was just this strange thing floating around out there, its letters being grown on trees and sold in a marketplace like in The Phantom Tollbooth.

But I felt like I had some clarity about it yesterday, thanks to the things said in this thread and an extended linger in the poetry section of a really busy Barnes & Noble.
I guess I've been a little scared of poetry, like it was a cool kid at the party who would definitely NOT want to hang with me. I felt I couldn't own it, take it inside myself and really feel it- that if someone caught me reading it they'd know I was a faker who usually grabbed for prose first.
Fear doesn't usually have to accompany prose or visual images because it fills in much more detail for you. It's the difference between pouring water through a bucket which only has six holes and a bucket that has sixty holes. The filtering is different.

I think a lot of poetry is about space. Space around the words, space in what the words are saying and what they aren't saying. The phrasing, the style, the way the words are placed on the paper. All about space. Visually, that is. And mentally. When you read to yourself it's just you, the words, and the spaces.

Reading poetry aloud is a completely different kettle of fish. It changes how you write the poem. Perhaps with really excellent poetry, it can be both visual and verbal without being mutually exclusive? Or is that insulting?
While she was writing her best poems, Sylvia Plath was insistent that they were to be read aloud. Publish them, yes, but on first experience she was adamant that she read them out loud herself. So what happens to the visuals of poetic space when the poem becomes a verbal endeavor? Can a poem be as successful visually if it is primarily meant to be aural?

What we always bring to the table as readers or viewers is our own viewpoint. A unique collection of all our opinions, experiences, sights, sounds, likes, dislikes, pains, joys, fears, loves. Those things combine to become our lens. It almost guarantees that each person will see/read/hear something individually- absorb it in their own way.

Words are more malleable than fixed images, at least in the confines of the brain. An image supplies you with a whole palette, almost a complete experience to recollect: you're seeing that very same thing. It may distort a bit, or blend with other images, but on the whole I think they tend to remain stationary once seen.
Words are giving you the outline and then trusting you to do the inking. Or allowing you to do the inking.

Phrasing stays in my head. I play with words the same way I get a song stuck on replay in my mind. Misnomer, sesquipedalian, succinct, demoralized, sacrosanct, vainglorious.
I seem to collect them like pebbles and then swirl them around, sift them in my brain. Say them over and over, think about what they mean, break them up into bits. They're flexible.

Then there's phrases. They play on repeat or get called up when I'm triggered visually to remember something I've read and have created a picture for. One of them is this bit from Li-Young Lee's Eating Alone:
(specific phrase is bolded)

Once, years back, I walked beside my father
among the windfall pears. I can't recall
our words. We may have strolled in silence. But
I still see him bend that way- left hand braced
on knee, creaky- to lift and hold to my
eye a rotten pear. In it, a hornet
spun crazily, glazed in a slow, glistening juice.

I need words. I need other people's words. I need other people's words to do two things for me:
1) To say it better than I can, and
2) To keep me from feeling so alone in whatever it is that's affecting me.

To be fair, I also capture visuals and keep them inside.

I guess what I'm trying to say, really really inarticulately, is that it would be a great loss to only experience poetry or prose or visual art/movies. They all create a supporting web; each feeds on each. We don't necessarily NEED each one to understand another, but they enrich the process.
I know bijou wasn't trying to say that any of them were pointless or replaceable, I suppose I just wanted to share my thoughts. Or maybe I just got really excited about my Barnes & Noble epiphany yesterday and wanted to geek out about it.





Yes. It becomes something really private, almost like one soul is whispering to another, even without physical proximity.

Wow! Welcome to the poetry forum. You are a welcome addition indeed.

You clarified a lot of what I've been thinking about: the notion of reading to oneself versus reading aloud, and whether it is possible to use line breaks and space to create the same effects reading a poem aloud does. I think not, but I prefer reading to myself because my imagination can do more when I can pause and think and then read on to my next pause. And then I worry that if I only wrote for aurel reading, I'd get more focused on the effect (e.g., shock, whatever) than the words.

This statement of yours really struck me.

I guess I've been a little scared of poetry, like it was a cool kid at the party who would definitely NOT want to hang with me. I felt I couldn't own it, take it inside myself and really feel it- that if someone caught me reading it they'd know I was a faker who usually grabbed for prose first.

I think many, many people feel this way, mostly about poetry, but often about "literature" in general. I think it has to do with the way most of us are taught, as if literature and especially poetry is somehow too profound or intellectual for us regular schlubs, as if all we can do, at best, is have some dim appreciation for it. We need to be taught that all genres are accessible, even if they're written (for example) in Middle English or Shakesperian English, much of which might as well be Greek to a lot of people. So we grow up with this attitude toward understanding or writing poetry that it's impossible. Or many of us who do attempt to write poetry try for this uber-formal voice and throw in as many five-dollar words as possible and it ends up sounding either pompous or incomprehensible. And yet most people, when they speak, can be eloquent at times. I taught junior high, high school and college freshmen and even with the seventh graders, it was too late. They already had this attitude and were afraid (not all, but many) to just write with their speaking voice. That, imo, is the right place to start.

Ok, lol. I'll get off my soapbox. I really enjoyed reading what you have to say.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Me? Normal? {Whatever the hell that is} One never knows what's in the package until you open it.

You've obviously never read my bio.

.
.

He likes blondes .......

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Just to get this out of the way first: LeBroz, doll, I read your bio. You're WAY normal, so solly. Not that that's a bad thing. Eh bien, I'm more redhead than blonde.

anyway...

Bluebell, first of all, welcome. I won't re-quote your post again here, but it's gorgeous and very well articulated. The passage that Ange highlighted really struck me too. I think it's partly why I've always refused to try to define what is and is not poetry, why I won't call what I write poems. I've defined myself as a "Writer" for nearly 30 years now and I still wouldn't dare claim to know what the word "poetry" means. I make things with words. That's as much as I'll ever claim.

Your point about Sylvia Plath is excellent as well; it's the way I feel about many of the pieces I write. I sometimes refrain from posting or submitting a piece here because I am reluctant to let it be ONLY a printed version. I want people to read them aloud, to themselves, to each other.

And your relationship to words and phrases, as well as the sort of auditory feel that Ange talks about, is very similar to mine. The sound, the sound is everything for me. That's why I keep going back to the example of Stein's Susie Asado, because that just demands to be spoken aloud. It just isn't the same otherwise; it doesn't have the same impact.

Not all poems are like that, obviously. There are pieces that are very successful as printed words. But some, and certainly the ones that attract me most, are primarily auditory experiences and I can't find them just reading, just with my left brain.

Of the authors on this board, I've noticed this quality most in both 4degrees and vampiredust's work - sometimes I read them first just for the sound; I may not even engage the "what is being said" function immediately. Their phrases are just explosions of sensation, of image and idea and sound. Only on a second or third reading can I get past that auditory high and begin to find meaning, to evaluate on a more rational level, to look at the Idea or the Story in the piece.

Never would I say that this characteristic is the most important one in composition. I've read more 'story-like' poems here that had a powerful effect on me as well. But the sound, and innovative uses of language, is what I've been focusing on lately, and in this thread.

Thank you so much for your thoughts. I hope you try for an entry in the challenge part of this thread as well. That feeling of intimidation you describe about poetry is part of the issue that I keep trying to address by taking these challenges to Regular People, Non-Poets, for their response. If we as "poets" really want to stop being an insular little ivory tower society, that's going to make a difference.

peace
bijou

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Well, since I have been caught out being obnoxiously opinionated again, I guess I should crank this thread back towards something like what our threadstarter might have meant, maybe.

I really like this poem. I've quoted it before:

***
Shit. I identify with that, surely.

Oh, such lovely stuff as "first and last time... my ex-lover" and "I was, what, / was" makes this poem special for me.

Guy wrote great poems. Oh, and Anne Sexton, poet and suicide, was most certainly sexy.

God ye good den.​

T, darlin', while these are excellent points, they make me giggle in one sense: for someone named after a dadaist, you're terrifyingly left brained.

Okay, this is a brilliant piece, and I'm glad you put it up here. But what I'm really looking for is more the sort of things your namesake is saying about poetry. Radical, non-traditional use of the words themselves, beyond their meaning and into their pure emotional impact. I know that not everyone thinks that's a valuable pursuit, but in all those examples I posted there are words being used in weird, wrong, but highly effective ways. I figured that the dadaist would HAVE to weigh in on this one.

What really surprises me is the absence of posts claiming that all my posted examples are just crap and Not Poetry At All. Not that I was looking for that. Just rather amazes me that it isn't happening. I picked some pretty controversial stuff there.

Let's prime the pump a bit. Here's another piece by Tristan Tzara. Someone needs to explain to me what exactly is going on here and why it turns me on so much.

I'll appreciate it.
bijou



Vegetable Swallow
by Tristan Tzara

two smiles meet towards
the child-wheel of my zeal
the bloody baggage of creatures
made flesh in physical legends-lives

the nimble stags storms cloud over
rain falls under the scissors of
the dark hairdresser-furiously
swimming under the clashing arpeggios

in the machine's sap grass
grows around with sharp eyes
here the share of our caresses
dead and departed with the waves

gives itself up to the judgment of time
parted by the meridian of hairs
non strikes in our hands
the spices of human pleasures​

 

[champagne1982]

I'll go you one better about the Not Poetry But Crap thing... I didn't read them. I couldn't concentrate.

Sounds and the shape of words as celebration in a gorgeous aural arrangement, I can appreciate, but I can't read it. Speak it to me, recite or perform and I'll be awed, but make me read it and I just avoid commitment and either skim or skip.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

I'll go you one better about the Not Poetry But Crap thing... I didn't read them. I couldn't concentrate.

Sounds and the shape of words as celebration in a gorgeous aural arrangement, I can appreciate, but I can't read it. Speak it to me, recite or perform and I'll be awed, but make me read it and I just avoid commitment and either skim or skip.

So is that shifted at all if you read it aloud yourself? That makes a difference for me, but I don't know if it does for anyone else.

*sigh* Sometimes you're all alone and you just have to do it for yourself if you want it done...

bj

 

[UnderYourSpell]

If all around is music ... will everyone
hear melody
or a cacophony a crash of sound ?
Do words fall like lifeless leaves when you have
no ear to hear?
Or bear fruit in someones garden, plucked.
If no .. play not your music
undo your weft of words.