H/T: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/medieval-monks-couldnt-cure-the-plague/
Poetry
Hiccupia
Divine Hiccupia (Goddess of the Hundreds)
I used to be a Big Cheese of Creation
The Light of the world
Behold me now: the cheap trickster goddess
Loki? Ha! More like low-key:
I used to be the middle C
of all octaves!
Then the Cosmic Wave crashed
and I splintered
into a tsunami of Fibonacci shards
Travelling into the future
at the speed of light: C?
Here’s my small Goddess trick:
I burp the hiccups from infant universes,
but carbon-based life needs count every C
as a hundred (even the wine-dark ones)
I can but drive the crying ones
deep into their cups.
(Le voilà: 20*C= 2000; done as a flash-forward poem for terribleminds‘ challenge.)
Flashy Poem Monster
Monstrous Mental Gym Poem: de-monstrate, not tell
I have been reading lists of clichés;
listening to talks about random violence-or-not at chuckycheezes
spoiler: it’s usually a domestic affair
Also:
weapons of mass destruction
points-of-no-return
small-step braveries
shooting of mentally ill patients in hospital beds
snatches of gravity’s rainbow
and long re-reads of tortuous tales
It made the time on the treadmill go by somewhat faster
even without stem-cell time crystals
Touché cliché has a bonjour tristesse ring to it, no?
wickéd
like sweat through a lulu leotard
demon straight
demon’s traits
– I am trying to think of a monster-
in 1500 words
Cheesy.
The monstro-of-consciousness
morphs and changes.
Now cooing sweet nothings,
then tearing self-esteem apart-
It throttles the black dog;
tickles the tummy full of cherry pie-
whispers, cajoles, shouts;
pulls at bruised toe-nails.
It pinches off yeasty-dough pizza thought bubbles
and spins and flattens and tosses them.
Some plop down like toe-biter offspring;
take root, potato-eyed spud roots
with leaves and shoots and spider hair.
Others crawl away, skinless, raw, unlit:
shoestring allumette fries.
The stem cell time crystals voice their opinion:
They protest too much, methinks.
Vulture paté, it’s a thing:
They came for its liver, every day
and it grew back by night.
Now, they sit, own talons nailed to a plank; force-fed themselves.
It’s a delicacy, you see.
The post-prandial pancreatic pleasure
of Deliverance
de mon traitor
Ma man,
the good father
That is, the water bug dad:
not a monster, you say.
When you tear the legs off a sea star,
you can grow five new ones.
Twenty-five torn off could soon add up.
High five, oleaginous prince,
you get a five star review!
We’re going on a monster hunt
Mon stêr
Mon star
My stare
I see you now:
You are a true monster,
my monster.
The woke monster
The delicious monster, caught by its tail
of twenty-now’s.
Descend the stairway to hell on tippy-toes.
Apoptosis
(Not halitosis)
tie; grrr
Sorry, Pops, what did you say?
Pop star?
Pop tart?
No: just toast
How can toast be just?
A toast to justness then!
It’s just a lemma after all.
A choice between the high road and the low one:
bract or chaff.
The grass roots of a double-take.
But don’t panicle;
there’s no stigma attached to this ovary,
the anthers in fact a filament of your imagination.
Don’t unsheathe the blade
of ridicule so readily.
True post-modern poetry
is hard to conceive
And readily aborted
No mint will sweeten that breath:
vulture vomit is an involuntary evolutionary un-evil defence mechanism.
You know that.
A sticky wicket, when your software won’t update
Even with the license key
It leaves one vulnerable
to all kinds of unholy trolls
Raging at the fall of the good knight.
Do not go gently.
Monstrosity
Fight that good fight.
Into the night rode the five hundred
their duty done
Screw the one thousand;
we do this for fun
So: nine more words:
it should have been none.
Now: the other thousand words will have to be a picture, because I’m out of time and talent. Hey, it’s pi day today.
It
!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!+!
(Emily Dickinson, via Biblioklept)
Emily Dickinson Poems Book Cover (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Related articles
- I’m Nobody! Who are you? by Emily Dickinson (ipseand.wordpress.com)
- Can we grow ‘accustomed to the dark’? – Emily Dickinson & facing your fears (theterraceclinic.wordpress.com)
Susurrus
Susurrus (SussieRus)
Let the mindpebbles mollyslip
on the smooth sand
do not probe
do not stab at the shark pups through the bars
do not step harshly on the
coral fingers of the skull cave
softly softly catch the sea monkey
don’t go diving in that submarine
its 533 gauge torpedo tubes
have little tolerance
for the clownfish
of inquiry
slide smooth along the seabed’s undulations
embrace the susurrus
of silence
Related
- The Black and White Clownfish Have Eggs Again (nhillgarth.com)
- Finding Nemo Lied to Your Kids…(thefisheriesblog.com)
- Susurrus (AllPoetry.com)
Strident Shadow
No woman deserves a wimpy shadow.
Hat Tip to Alberto Giacometti Walking Woman, on show at The Tate Modern.
An interesting discussion: The Human Race, handled with care, by Laura Cummings in the Guardian.
Un Petit Peu de Pushkin
Perplexing
Apparently, today is Take-your-poet-to-work Day…Well, it would be pretty crowded in the studio then. I have been meaning to read some more Pushkin. I have unfortunately not seen the Eugene Onegin opera, but you can listen to it here! Just as delicious, you can listen to the translated poem here, read by the inimitable Stephen Fry. The poem has been translated by various people, including Vladimir Nabokov and Douglas R. Hofstadter (of Gödel, Escher,Bach).
There is a beautiful ink self-portrait of Pushkin on the Wikipedia site:
English: Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) Русский: Русский писатель и поэт Пушкин, Александр Сергеевич (1799-1837), Институт русской литературы, Санкт-Петербург (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This poem seemed apt:
MON PORTRAIT
Vous me demandez mon portrait,
Mais peint d’après nature :
Mon cher, il sera bientôt fait,
Quoique en miniature.
Je sais un jeune polisson
Encore dans les classes :
Point sot, je le dis sans façon
Et sans fades grimaces.
Onc, il ne fut de babillard,
Ni docteur de Sorbonne
Plus ennuyeux et plus braillard
Que moi-même en personne.
(from Poems by Alexander Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin– January 1888, Cupples and Hurd- Publisher on Google Play)
(Another interesting resource I found, as translated by G.R Ledger: Pushkin’s Poems…)
Related articles
- Mumbai University remembers Pushkin on Russian language day (indrus.in)
- Pushkin’s descendant keeps poet’s name alive (rbth.ru)
- Poets and Czars (newrepublic.com)
- One fish, two fish (dubih.wordpress.com)
- Russian Cotletas (hague6185.wordpress.com)
Kokkerotte en KafKattery
Kokkerotte en KafKattery
(h/t to Kafka and Cockroaches)
Related articles
- Kafka Birthday: A Letter From Franz Kafka To His Father (huffingtonpost.com)
- Franz Kafkas Geburtstag (keepthings.wordpress.com)
- Today’s Google Doodle: A Tribute to Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (newsfeed.time.com)
LobTail Regrets
(h/t to Vintage Printable)
LobTail Regrets
Since changing into a cat
I cannot read anymore
The world has cats
and dogs
Cats that vomit up hairballs
in slime
Dogs that gobble it up
with glee
I wish there were more whales
that vomited verdigris
Is that green-grey?
(green prom dress made with love
to match my eyes
the wrong green
the wrong green
not chromium oxide green
not sap green
not olive green
the colour of seared leprechaun green)
No, Payne’s grey, verdigris
a mix of fine ash and bees wax
with kernels of golden squid beaks
Those whales, how they
spy-hop and make sweet!
I am hungry for
whale vomit
(via The Uffish Thumb)
Morbid Spiritoïdy
The Vague Curve
Today’s poem:
A Ballade of Suicide (G.K. Chesterton)
The gallows in my garden, people say,
Is new and neat and adequately tall;
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbours–on the wall–
Are drawing a long breath to shout “Hurray!”
The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
To-morrow is the time I get my pay–
My uncle’s sword is hanging in the hall–
I see a little cloud all pink and grey–
Perhaps the rector’s mother will not call–
I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
That mushrooms could be cooked another way–
I never read the works of Juvenal—
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
The world will have another washing-day;
The decadents decay; the pedants pall;
And H.G. Wells has found that children play,
And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall,
Rationalists are growing rational–
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray
So secret that the very sky seems small–
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
ENVOI
Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,
The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;
Even to-day your royal head may fall,
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
Well, okay then, I’ll try a sonnet:
Suicide Sonnet
(Hat Tip to this Cyanide and Happiness)
Related articles
- Quote for Today: G.K. Chesterton (synkroniciti.com)
