Self-consciously Poetic Haiku referencing Greek Mythology
twixt deck and deck post
Arachne’s tremulous web
shimmers with wet pearls
Self-consciously Poetic Haiku referencing Greek Mythology
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Category Archives: Poetry
Two Bros at the Art Gallery (haiku)
Two Bros at the Art Gallery
v- necked, buffed, burnished
pumped, pectoral, and puzzled,
aerobatic hair.
Sgt. Pepper Mashup (Art, pop and found poetry)
Sgt. Pepper Mashup (a found poem)
Made passively tolerant by LSD, he was happy to sit back
endlessly recombining like some insoluble chemical compound
all he really wanted was the cyclic cloud drift of his verse.
The song never relinquishes this staccato dominant
played by Harrison on his Stratocaster with treble-heavy settings
making the most of McCartney’s rich ninth’s and elevenths –
a brilliantly whimsical expression of period burlesque.
It is impossible to conduct a revolution without picking a side
like a comic brass fob watch suspended from a floral waistcoat
objectivity is illusory and all creativity inescapably self –referential.
The track is whipped to a climax by a coruscating pseudo-Indian guitar solo.
Lennon grinned sardonically, as he walked past Aspinall,
requesting from Martin a sound like the end of the world.
I have always felt that found poetry is a form of theft. Yet, here I am with my first found poem. It all started with listening to the remastered copy of Sgt.Pepper, ( a vast improvement on the snap, crackle and pop of my old vinyl version) and in particular, the guitar solo in “Fixing a Hole”. Paul McCartney played lead guitar on a number of tracks on the album, but the style of playing on the solo sounded more like George Harrison. So, I consulted the bible – “Revolution in the Head”, by Ian MacDonald, a track by track analysis of 241 Beatle tracks and essential to any Beatles nerd. Yes, it is George’s solo!
I read a couple of other track analyses and found myself enjoying MacDonald’s writing style, a number of phrases jumped out from the page and the idea of a found poem formed. The result is the above poem. It has, believe it or not, a structure: each line is a direct quote from an analysis of an individual Sgt. Pepper track, and the lines are sequenced in the same order as the tracks appear on the album.
Buy Ian MacDonald’s book, you won’t be disappointed and I will feel better about stealing his stuff.
The subject over at dVerse is Pop Art, I can’t think of anything more pop art than Sgt. Pepper from the cover to the content (the Beatles turned pop into an art form) plus found poetry is a form of collage, so I thought I would link this one!
Northern Ireland – The Morning after Atavism (redux)
hard men, old hatred,
prod, papist, patriot games
I thought you were done.
**********
haiku prompted by
the pratfall that is Brexit
and the re-entry
to my consciousness
of the DUP, Sinn Fein
and Gerry Adams.
Redwood Haiku
Redwood Haiku
new shoots from old roots
deep in the cedar forest
I’m birthing clichés
End of Summer double septo (redux)
End of Summer double septo (redux)
like a wasp in late August
circling a bin of regrets.
This poem is a double septo also known as a quatorze, it consists of two seven syllable lines.
Boris Johnson at the G7 (a sort of triple tanka)
Boris Johnson at the G7
Can’t believe I’m here.
Oh! The joy of dissembling!
Japes, pranks and capers!
What is Macron looking at?
I think Donald might like me.
There’s Melania!
Those cheekbones, the north face of
the bloody Eiger,
scale her promontories, what!
No time for rumpy pumpy,
lots to do! Trudeau
is smirking, colonial
prat! I think Merkel
wants to spank me, go nanny!
Concentrate! Now where was I?
Two Poems Published in The Galway Review (Naming Things and….)
The nice people over at The Galway Review have published two of my poems: Naming Things and Having a Coffee and Reading Tom Wolfe on Chomsky in Harper’s.
Check them out here.
Cats I Have Known (poem)
Cats I Have Known
there’s the cat with nine tails
there’s the cat with nine lives
there’s the cat that got my tongue
there’s the cat that is out of the bag
there’s the cat that curiosity killed
Percy was our first
a long-haired white
a tour bus for fleas
he led a long and lazy life
those fleas didn’t get around much.
Next came Sweeney
who left us too early
killed by a car
in the back lane.
Then Sasha the hunter
who brought us daily gifts
of dead birds and mice
and fought an ongoing battle
for ownership of the back yard
with two blue jays.
Sasha, too, fell foul of a car
in the back lane,
I heard about it
while checking into a Holiday Inn
somewhere in Alabama,
the peroxide permed ladies
at the front desk
passed me a note
which simply said:
“Sasha is dead”.
“Sasha is a cat”, I explained,
seeing the look of concern
on their powdered faces,
this did nothing to alleviate the gloom
I couldn’t get my room keys fast enough.
That was enough catastrophe for us,
Sasha’s ashes now rest in an urn
nestled in the bowl of the cherry tree
in the back yard
where she is visited frequently
by her former prey.
Photo : graffiti in Getsemani, Colombia
Taking part in Anmols’ prompt “all things feline” Over at dverse
No anagrams have been harmed in the making of this poem
No anagrams have been harmed in the making of this poem
when Loren
enrolled in Lawrence
she got a Rolex
a Rolodex
and a Grecian urn
from her uncle Lorne
a longshoreman
who lived by the shore.
Haiku overheard at the Day Care Centre (re-post)
Haiku overheard at the Day Care Centre
Brett is sensitive
about his silhouette don’t
look at him sideways.
Toad at the Gates of Doom (poem)
Toad at the Gates of Doom
Outside the Gates of Hades
sits a cross-eyed toad
beside a burnt-out serpent
a broker and a phone
Outside the Gates of Heaven
sits an angel in disguise
beside an incontinent bishop
with ecstasy in his eyes
and the sign on the gate says:
Closed for Renovation
no judgement today
if you’re looking for accommodation
clear off, go away.
God is on vacation
taking a well-earned break
there’s only so much suffering
one true God can take
So, get your ass back down there
be good to everyone
drink lots of water
and try to get along.
(This poem came about because, for a brief period, I was listening to prog metal. Brief because, like all things prog, the talent rarely matches the ambition, the concepts. Pink Floyd were a progressive band but they were successful because they could write songs and had one of the best lyricists in rock, the concepts were secondary. Prog metal players, from what I can tell , are accomplished musicians – the guitarists can play at incredible speeds and the drummers sound like they are descended from the octopus but the lyrics are banal at best and the melodies vestigial. The album titles, though, are always interesting and that’s where this poem started – I was playing around with making up titles for prog metal concept albums…the poem evolved from there.)
Taking part in Open Link Night over at dVerse.
Drain The Swamp Rag
A version of this poem appeared with 4 other poems, a little while back in the online magazine Anti-Heroin Chic
The subject over at dverse today is “Smoke and Mirrors”, so I thought I would give the poem another outing.
Drain The Swamp Rag
(Walk that back
walk that back
I know I said it
but I walked that back.)
Attack dog surrogates
inveterate invertebrates
re-stock the swamp
with old white males.
Post logic, post truth,
snake oil and kool-aid
re-stock the swamp
with old white males.
Mike Pence, John Bolton
Rudy Giuliani
re-stock the swamp
with old white males
Inveterate surrogates
attack dog invertebrates
re-mail the stock
to the old white swamp
re-stock the swamp
with old white males.
The Unbearable Lightness of Verse 2
The Unbearable Lightness of Verse 2
Last mango in Paris
last tangerine in Tangier
last farrago in Flanders
the last, the final frontier.
Last rutabaga in Tobago
last almond in Algiers
last marionette in Mar-a-Lago
the last, the final frontier.
Lines randomly composed while listening to a band from the Maritimes in the Dubh Linn Gate Pub, Whistler, British Columbia
Lines randomly composed while listening to a band from the Maritimes in the Dubh Linn Gate Pub, Whistler, British Columbia
Oh. the herring were running wild and fast
as we sailed out from St. John
and the cod were plump as Mary’s arse
on a Sunday morning after early mass
with sausages on the griddle, rashers in the pan
with a whack fol de diddle dairy oh
with a whack fol de diddle dan.
(my first and, hopefully, my last attempt at a seafaring song…a note to my readers:
please drink responsibly or you will end up writing rubbish like the above…)
Garbage Day (haiku)
Garbage Day (haiku)
mayhem in the lane
all the bins have flipped their lids
Jack has left the box.
Oh Say, Can You See? (an anthem of sorts)
Oh say, can you see?
Oh say, can you see
that beacon of hope
guttering
in the magaleptic breeze
Oh say, can you see
the white horse
has lost its rider.
Oh say, can you see
by the dawn’s early light
how God’s face changes
with the angle we choose.
Don’t Play in the Traffic (again)
Don’t Play in the Traffic
they met on a zebra crossing
it was a pedestrian affair
she had an air of competence
he…just had an air
they went downhill from there
to her house
in the middle of a roundabout
near the station
one morning they looked out
and the cars had changed rotation
the clouds were tinged
with a tawdry shade of orange
the sky was diffident
the sun judgmental
things would not be the same
would not be the same again.
I’ve posted this one twice before, but I kind of like it. Participating in Open Link Night at dverse.
Oil Tanker Tanka
Oil Tanker Tanka
you know what they say
fossil fuels for fossil fools,
that’s why we’re out here
cruising the Strait of Hormuz
with our hydrocarbon load.
(Wait, what’s that helicopter doing?)
taking part in open link weekend over at earthweal, check it out
If Robert Mueller Wrote a Tanka (plus Mr’s Mueller’s haiku)
If Robert Mueller Wrote a Tanka
Why the long face, Bob?
always that same damn question
since I was a boy,
and always the same answer:
it is long because it’s long.
Couldn’t resist reposting that one. Okay, just one more……
Mr’s Mueller’s Haiku
You’re disappointed
you don’t know disappointment
you don’t know damp squibs
Photo: English Bay, Vancouver, A-MAZE-ING LAUGHTER, by Yue Minjun.
There’s Nothing Like Being
There’s Nothing Like Being
There’s nothing like being
in a crowded bar
in a foreign city
on a Friday evening
just after five
and you don’t know anyone
but it doesn’t matter
and you can’t speak the language
but it doesn’t matter
it’s enough to be there
to breathe in the relief
to share the belief
that Monday morning
is a life time away.
The prompt over at dVerse is to write a poem about movement, where am I going, where have I been.
Speaking as the Moon
The challenge from Sarah over at dVerse is to write a piece of prosery, of flash fiction (limit 144 words) incorporating the phrase “I dreamt I was the moon” from a poem by Alice Oswald.
So here goes:
Speaking as the Moon
I dreamt I was the moon, a cheddar searchlight in the sky waiting for the arrival of man with his small steps and giant leaps, his garbage can machines, his religion, his culture, his competing ideologies, his self-aggrandizements, his bragging rights, his racism, his greed, his pomposity, his self-importance, his astronauts named “Buzz”. I tell you, colonization never works out for the colonized. Speaking as the moon, I have no desire to be turned into a destination for space tourists or a land fill or, more accurately, a moon fill, then to be compensated, to be re-moonerated (a bit of lunar humour) some hundred years later by some conscience-stricken liberal prime minister of Canada. They say that nature abhors a vacuum, well, speaking as the moon, I can handle a vacuum quite nicely, it’s vacuity, I abhor.
Trumplings (A Retrospective and a quote from T.S. Eliot)
The other day, I was looking back on the number of Donald Trump related posts on this blog and a pattern emerged. In 2015, there were 3 posts; in 2016, 10 posts; in 2017, 23 posts; in 2018, 19 posts; in 2019, 2 posts so far.
That’s when I thought of T.S. Eliot:
“And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned wriggling on a wall”
It seems, looking at the above stats, that in my mind, at least, Donald has been formulated and there is little more to be said creatively, even the outrage has become stale. He has the approval of over 40% of American voters and maybe now that is the subject, the man himself has been defined and will not change.
These are the Trump posts I had most fun writing , they rely a bit more (I think) on language rather than straight polemic. They are arranged somewhat in chronological sequence
“Agent Orange has a dark Moment” was published in Rat’s Ass Review” ,and “Donald Trump – On Reflection” was published in “Oddball Magazine“. “Trumputin” was published in Anti-Heroin Chic .
Inauguration
it
does
not
augur
well.
Donald’s Early Days
A farrago of fiascos,
banishments and bans;
weekends at Mar-a-Lago
the world in his hands.
Agent Orange has a Dark Moment
Do you know who I miss? Jeb Bush. I miss Jeb Bush. He was my first. When I hit him with that low energy jibe and he fell apart and all the Bush family could not put Humpty together again, I knew I was on to something. Then Little Marco and Lyin’ Ted, I miss them too. But most of all, I miss Hillary, Crooked Hillary. Man, she was tough, had me on the ropes. It took Comey and Vlad, that pointy headed villain, to get me back on my feet. I was nearly out for the count, which might not have been a bad thing. Who needs this shit! I should give Vlad a call, I’m a bit worried -there’s no such thing as a free hack.
Reince Priebus – what kind of fucking name is that? It sounds like bad news from the doctor. “I’m sorry, Donald, you have a Reince Priebus on your rectum and it doesn’t look good”. Ha, I just made myself laugh. And Bannon, I’ve seen sofas on the side of the road in better shape than that rumpled fucker. Spice Box? Hardest job in the world – explaining the unexplainable. That Melissa Mc.Carthy just slays me. How come all the cool people are on the other side? Who have I got? Ryan and Pence? Bland and Blander? Where did Pence come from anyway with his brush cut and his antediluvian politics? The best surgeons in the world couldn’t remove the poker from that guy’s ass. Antediluvian, you didn’t expect that did you?
Talking of cool, I should give Barack a call, ask him down to Florida for a game of golf; check his birth certificate again (Joking! How I miss those days). Man, I hate this fucking White House furniture, is it Friday yet?
Haiku for Donald
petulant pillock
postcranial curmudgeon
bombastic buffoon.
On Reflection…. Donald Trump
America has given birth
to a giant orange child
a zaftig infant Gulliver
striding the ravaged earth
of his own imagination
trampling whole villages
swallowing villagers whole.
Trumputin (a romance)
Don loves Vlad
Vlad loves Don
Love as big as
A nuclear bomb.
Front door, back door,
Kremlin, tower
Nuclear love
Nuclear power.
The Toddler King (excerpt)
5 am. in America
the toddler king
checks his Twitter feed
in the empty parking lot
of a big box store
a plastic bag pirouettes
on the halitotic breeze
national monuments
fear for their lives
the adjectives – good, bad, great-
drop in value again
the toddler king
picks a fight with himself.
Anderson Cooper’s Hair (updated)
Anderson Cooper’s Hair
There’s something comforting
about Anderson Cooper’s hair
its quietude
its insouciance
its unabashed whiteness
no Paul Manafort chocolate brown
no Clooney dusting of grey
no Pavarotti boot polish black
just plain white
lightly cropped
a hint of a comb over, maybe
but that’s ok
and it does not move
Hurricane Barry
a Midwest tornado
vile invective
a blast of foul air
from the president’s mouth
nothing moves Anderson Cooper’s hair;
to misquote Paul McCartney
and triple down on a preposition
in this ever changing world
in which we live in,
there’s something
comforting about that.
Blood Orange 2 (a slimverse)
Blood Orange
Blood orange
smoke-filtered
a Beijing
Mumbai sun.
Stopdraggingthepanda 