Tag Archives: poem

I Should Never Have Started This Villanelle

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Thinking of it now, truth to tell
I should have said goodnight, turned out the light
I should never have started this villanelle

now I am stuck in verse form hell
everything I write seems totally trite
thinking of it now, truth to tell

I can check out but I can’t leave this hotel
(the Eagles, you get the reference, right?)
I should never have started this villanelle

mission bell, tinker bell, death knell
I’ve started to write total shite
thinking of it now, truth to tell

I have to get off this carousel
it’s been a struggle, it’s been a fight
I should never have started this villanelle

I need another word that rhymes with ‘elle’
final quatrain, the pain, the urge to yell;
thinking of it now, truth to tell
I should never have started this villanelle

 

Ha…so this all started about a week ago with a challenge on dVerse to write a poem using a verse form that incorporated repetition. I posted 3 poems that were essentially chants but I felt that this was a cop out so I decided to write a villanelle. That was a mistake, that’s all I worked on all week. I felt like I was in a creative straight jacket, that I was wearing one of those ankle bracelets that would alarm if I tried to escape the villanelle. It didn’t help that I got half way through one attempt before I realised that I had the wrong structure, the wrong rhyming scheme.

That poem was built around two lines:

a villain in a villanelle
a doomed lover in a sonnet

It will never see the light of day.

Of form and free verse……..

Free Verse

free verse, let
it roam, far
from all rhyme
and reason

The irony is that this short poem actually has a form – 4 lines, 3 syllables per line. It’s called slim verse. It was invented by my friend, Slim Volume, and I. Of course Slim Volume is not his real name; he used to play in a punk band, The Working Stiffs, and that was his stage name, not that they appeared on many stages. You may remember their seminal album, ‘ Anger and Acne’, but you probably don’t. My all time favorite stage name belongs to the bass player in the Boomtown Rats, Pete Briquette. You’d have to be Irish to get it…..peat briquettes were used as a substitute for coal in open fires. Where was I…oh yes..slim verse..this was meant to be a form designed for the attention span of internet users, problem is I got tired of its limitations. We were churning out aphorisms not poems. We don’t talk about it much anymore, too painful.

…taking part in Open Link night over at dVerse, check them out, well worth the visit!

 

 

 

And Sometimes I Wonder (poems)

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The challenge from Jilly over at dVerse is to write a poem using repetition, the snag is that the poem has to be written to a particular form; the forms being either villanelle, terzanelle, pantoum, triolet or chant. Check out Jilly’s fascinating post for examples and definitions of these forms. I have to admit, having never studied poetry beyond high school (and not much at that) I find these forms intriguing and a little daunting, so I decided to go for what I thought was the easy one – chant; this proved to be a bit more elusive than I had imagined. Here are 3 attempts, the first one is new, the other two are edits of previous posts.

And Sometimes I Wonder

and sometimes I wonder
why it’s easy to curry lamb
but hard to curry favour

and sometimes I wonder
would a defibrillator
stop Donald Trump lying

and sometimes I wonder
are all Donald’s lies
by definition, white

and sometimes I wonder
living comfortable lives
can we legitimately claim suffering credits
from our parents, the past.

Smart Phone (with apologies to Dickens and Darwin)

’twas the best invention
’twas the worst invention

’twas communication’s new dawn
’twas the end of communication

’twas a pain in the neck
’twas incipient myopia

’twas why we evolved
with opposable thumbs.

Auto

auto-didact
auto-deduct
auto-redact
auto- instruct
auto-emphatic
auto-erratic
auto-erotic
auto-neurotic
auto-symbiotic
auto-despotic
auto-dramatic
auto-Semitic
auto-semantic
auto-romantic
auto-demonic
auto-symphonic
auto-bubonic
auto-ironic
auto-motive
auto-emotive
auto-mobile
auto-labile
auto-manual
auto-mandate
Otamendi*
Otamendi
Otamendi.

 

*plays centre half for Manchester City.

 

 

Porphyry (following the sound)

23 Replies

 

 

Porphyry

porphyry
por favor
perfidy
pertain

profumo
pas de fumer
profundo
profane

periphery
prophylactic
peristaltic
purloin

 

In the construction of the Basilica of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona , red porphyry from Iran, was used as a symbol of the blood of Christ, because of its red colour.

The theme over at dverse is “The music of alliteration, assonance and consonance”, this poem overdoes it a bit!!

Caye Caulker Chronicles (poem)

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Caye Caulker Chronicles

1

skinny backpackers
tumble off the water taxi
clutching Lonely Planet guidebooks,
in the café below
Bob Marley’s still jammin’
the locals talk of Paradise spoilt
of Eve, Adam and apples bitten.

2

Out on the coral reef
tiny organisms
fret about climate change
and carbonic acid
(I fink the pH is dropping, I really do);
while over in San Pedro
on the Redneck Riviera
soccer moms mingle
with sun-damaged matrons
dedicated to the preservation
of floral print muumuus.

 

…participating in open link night over at dVerse (thanks Mish), check them out.

Heavy Metal Heaven (Edit)

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Heavy Metal Heaven

Slim plugs in his guitar
sets the dial on his amp
to “heavy metal”
hits an E minor seven
walks out of the room
makes a cup of coffee
drinks a cup of coffee
checks the football results
texts his brother in England:
what’s up, mate?
his brother doesn’t answer
he starts writing a novel:
The sun –
a red ball of anger on the horizon –
shouts through the brown chemical haze:
“that’s it, I’m outta here”.
Then, and only then, they hear a baby cry.
That’s all he’s got
He returns to the room
that E minor seven
is still going
but faint now
like a rustle of paper
like the distant chatter
of dead drummers
in heavy metal heaven
he picks up his guitar
hits an A minor seven
walks out of the room
starts his taxes……

 

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taking part in Open Link Night over at dVerse

Poem: Loophole (Time, Space and “Interstellar”)

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Thought I’d give this a second outing!

Interstellar

Once on a bus
across the Altiplano
from Puno to Cusco
I watched the movie
Interstellar, starring
Matt McConaughey.
Matt’s a clever feller,
I just said that
to rhyme with Interstellar
no one
says feller anymore
anyway, it appears that
time is a line
our lives are
moving along
and we can only
move forward along
that line, never back,
but there is a loophole
or a wormhole,
to be exact,
way out there
in outer space
and if one travels
to outer space
and passes through
that wormhole
one can visit
the multiplex cinema
where one’s life
is playing
and view
any previous point
on the line one’s life
is travelling on
problem is
when one returns
to earth, it’s fifty
years later and
everyone one knows
is either dead or dying,
thus the line one’s life
is travelling on
is irreversibly altered
that’s the catch
which by the way
is different than
a loophole.

 

Poem: Tar Macadam (following the sound)

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Tar Macadam (following the sound)

tar macadam
John Macadam
Hussein Saddam
Gomorrah Sodom
Hillary Rodham
Jason Bonham
Glocca Morra
Rooney Mara
how are things?
Connemara
hound of the sea.

I got the idea for this little sound poem while reading Eilene Lyon’s excellent post “The National Road” where I discovered that tar macadam was invented by a Scot, John Macadam. Like all of Eilene’s posts, it is very well written and researched and packed with interesting information. Unfortunately, she is taking a break from blogging for a while, so head over to her blog and enjoy it while you can.
Other Notes:

According to Wikipedia: “’How Are Things in Glocca Morra?’ is a popular song about a fictional village in Ireland, with themes of nostalgia and homesickness. It was introduced by Ella Logan in the original Broadway production of Finian’s Rainbow”.
My mom used to sing it. I always thought it was based on the Gaelic phrase “glaoch na mara” meaning “call of the sea” but it’s probably just a made up Irish sounding name. The Gaelic translation of Connemara is “hound of the sea”.

….also participating in Open Link night over at dVerse.

 

Between (Everyone’s got something to bring..)..Poem.

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Between

Between the caucus and the carcass
between the chaos and the calm
between the fracas and the ruckus
between the righteous and the damned

Between the priest and the sermon
between the singer and the song
no one can determine
why we all can’t get along

Between the question and the answer
there is a life time of space
between the dance and the dancer
there is beauty and there is grace

Everyone’s
got something to bring
affect one thing
affect one thing

Everyone’s
got something to bring
affect one thing
affect one thing

Between the caucus and the chaos
between the crack house and the calm
between the raucous and the ruckus
between the righteous and the damned

Between the priest and the sermon
between the lawyer and the law
no one can determine
what is right and what is wrong

Between the question and the answer
there is a life time of space
between the dance and the dancer
there is beauty and there is grace

Everyone’s
got something to bring
affect one thing
affect one thing

 

In response to the dverse prompt to write a poem using repetition (thanks Jilly). I had the first 3 verses for a while..the prompt spurred me to finish the poem!

 

Early Bird Special (quadrille with bonus haiku)

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Early Bird Special

unlike the midnight special
there are no songs
to celebrate the early bird special
no IHOPian bard,
no poet laureate of the blue plate
no bargain basement Dylan
no cut price Cohen
to extol the digestive
and economic benefits
of getting an early start.

Inspired by the dVerse prompt to write a quadrille using the word “early”. Thanks to Kim for the prompt.

sunrise-3-5

Bonus Haiku

dawn breaks, early shift
at the haiku factory
counting syllables.

Photo: Sunrise on Planet Cistern 2

 

The Chester Beatty Library (Poem)

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A slightly different version of this poem was published a while back in The Galway Review .  I am posting this edited version as part of dVerse’s open link Thursday.

The Chester Beatty Library                                   

In the Chester Beatty Library
Four elderly ladies
Permed, perfumed and powdered
Stroll past the ancient texts
The papyrus and the parchment
Seemingly unimpressed
By the evidence before them
That ever since we could stand upright
We have tried to leave foot prints
In the wet cement of time.
What intrigues the ladies,
Is how these fragile treasures
These artefacts and amulets
Were safely transported
From their exotic homelands
To the airless glass cases
In which they now reside.
They explore this theme together
In intertwining solos
Like a modern jazz quartet
Like mythical creatures
Compelled to talk forever
Because they believe
That to stop
Would be to die.

 

If you are ever in Dublin, the Chester Beatty Library is well worth a visit. The photo below is not the Chester Beatty Library, but it was taken in Dublin in September. I am including it here to show that the sun shines in Dublin but the clouds are always on the move.

 

Radisson

An Open Letter to Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, Don Lemon

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An Open Letter to Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, Don Lemon

Dear Anderson, Jake and Don
full disclosure, I’ve always been a fan
but lately I find (maybe it’s a phase, a stage)
I’m getting tired of outrage
could we just agree that some truths are self-evident
that yes, Donald Trump is a disastrous president
that yes, he’s a congenital liar
that yes, his pants are on fire
yes, he’s a fascist
yes, he’s a racist
yes, he “grabs pussy”, cheats on his wife
but, here’s the thing, he’s having the time of his life
he’s hosting the biggest reality show of all time
and you are playing your part, falling in line
it’s not that you are dupes, puppets, complicit
but do you have to analyse every tweet, every snippet
do you have to report every rally
every blundering sally
into global politics
every outburst of fustian rhetoric
why not talk about detention of children, the environment
deregulation, the threat to national monuments
why not talk about hope, democracy, activists, action
and ignore this preening prat, this abominable distraction.

Home (from Oscar Wilde to Bono, haiku’s)

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Oscar (3)

Conversation (hibernoku)

a low Dublin sky
a sentence hangs suspended
cut off in its prime

interrupt or die.

‘Hibernia’ is the classical Latin name for Ireland. A hibernoku is a haiku (seventeen syllables, 5-7-5) with an additional 5 or 7 syllable line, because for the Irish, seventeen syllables is a cruel limitation. The poem must contain an Irish reference and must allude to the weather in some way. In most parts of Ireland, ‘hibernoku’ is pronounced ‘hi-bern-o-koo’, except in West Cork where it is pronounced ‘hiber-nok-oo’.

Photo: Statue of the eternally quotable Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square, Dublin.

 

Sandy Cove

 

Weather (abandoned haiku)

an easterly wind
clouds move in convoy ‘cross the blue dome of the sky.

This started off as a haiku, but I felt like letting the second line run.

Photo: A sunny mid September day in Sandy Cove, Dublin.

 

Vico

Family (haiku)

yep, had a few drinks
with my brother, my sisters
sibling ribaldry.

Photo: View looking south along the coast, from Vico Road. Dalkey, Co. Dublin. Bono owns a house nearby ……where all the streets have names….I checked.

 

Down and Out in Idabel

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Pigments (2)

 

Down and Out in Idabel

How Myron found himself in the parking lot
of the Holiday Inn in Idabel, Oklahoma
looking out at the road
on a Saturday morning in April
– after a breakfast of brittle bacon,
sausages slick with grease,
dry fluorescent scrambled eggs –
is not important.

The road pauses, a skittish dog roams.
Myron’s eyes are drawn to a dead armadillo
upside down on the hard shoulder
an empty beer can in its claws:
Old Milwaukee, prehistoric drunk,
someone’s joke.

A pick up truck passes
a pick up truck passes
a pick up truck passes
over the fence a cow chews grass
and makes a meal of it.
Dogwoods bloom.
The cow moos like a reluctant foghorn.
Myron’s mood turns
he thinks about the cow,
Manifest Destiny,
the plight of the bison
our lust for red meat
while greenhouse gas
shimmies upwards
ice caps melt
glaciers retreat
and looking down
the road to Shreveport
buoyed by the prospect
of seeing Idabel
in his rear-view mirror
he quietly resolves
to recover what he was
before sadness lodged
like a wet sack
in the back
of his head.

This poem originally appeared in issue 38 of The SHOp poetry magazine (print) which was a fine magazine, unfortunately they closed up shop a few years ago.

 

 

 

 

Five Miles Outside of Austin (Rhymes and Tropes)

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Listening to alt country on Spotify I begin to wonder….

who are all these country boys
with their cowboy hats, pickup trucks and beards
staring clint-eyed into the mythical distance
listening for the call of who knows what
a phantom cattle drive, perhaps,
anything at all to git them
back on the road again;
and who are all these country girls
left behind or waiting
and why the hell do they care
about these feckless drifters
who love their whiskey
as much as they dread commitment
and why does all this happen in Texas?

rhymes and tropes, folks
rhymes and tropes

and slowly through
a Spotify fog
a Spotify trance
in the distance
a song emerges…..

Five Miles Outside of Austin

I’m five miles outside of Austin
with a pounding in my head
full of yesterday’s whiskey
and wishing I was dead

I left a girl back there sleeping
as dawn began to break
I gave her all that I could give
and I took all I could take

and I wish I had done better
that I hadn’t stayed so long
now I’m five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.

Five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.

II
Down the road, a girl is waiting,
drinking beer and playing pool
waiting for deliverance
waiting for another fool

and I’ll dust the road off of my coat
and walk through that door
she’ll say “howdy stranger,
I ain’t seen you before”

but now my head is beating like a bass drum
there’s stubble on my tongue
I’m five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song

Five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.

 

Photo (by Marie Feeney) of Lukas Nelson and Neil Young at Desert Trip

 

Of Statues and Limitations

2 Replies

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Of Statues and Limitations

As we round Lee’s Circle in New Orleans
talk turns to statues
and the topless monument;
the shuttle bus driver tells us
that Robert E. Lee’s statue was removed
under the cover of darkness
by a crew dressed like ninjas,
to avoid recognition.
People woke up the next day
to find the statue had disappeared.
A photograph on Wikipedia
shows the statue being removed
in broad daylight by a crane;
reality is nearly always more prosaic.
She also tells us that she grew up in the neighbourhood;
as kids, they just called the monument,
“The Statue”, they did not know or care
who Robert E. Lee was.

In 1966, the IRA blew the statue of Horatio Nelson
off its pedestal on top of Nelson’s Pillar
in the middle of O’Connell Street, Dublin.
To my parents’ generation
Nelson’s Pillar was known simply as “The Pillar”.
(Dubliners are very fond of the definite article:
“How’s the head?”
“Are you still playing the soccer?”)
To them, The Pillar was a landmark
a place to meet your date
en route to one of the cinemas
on O’Connell Street to catch a film (2 syllables)
and perhaps a humid snog
in the back seat when the lights went out.
To the IRA it was a symbol of British Imperialism
of British oppression,
an insult to our patriot dead;
blah, blah, blah, boom!
The IRA was a particularly unsubtle organisation.

Is all this just facile juxtaposition,
chopped up prose
masquerading as a poem,
or is there a point?
Yes, yes and yes:
see what I think is
there are people who look up at statues
there are people who believe
statues are looking down on them
and there are people
who look straight ahead
and keep moving forward
into the future,
leaving the past
to its state of disrepair.

 

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Top photo taken at the Takashi Murakami exhibition (The octopus eats its own leg) at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Bottom Photo taken in Medellin, Colombia, statues by Fernando Botero.

If a Relationship is a Bus (Poem)

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Folf Fest (2)

…the task of the day over at dVerse  is to create unique metaphors and incorporate them into a poem…I think this post from a little while back fits…thanks to Bjorn for the prompt

If a Relationship is a Bus

if a relationship is a bus
why then sometimes
does the bus leave the paved road,
the beaten track,
the path most trodden,
and bump off across
a corrugated desert
complete with tumble weeds
and plural cacti
(the wind is howling
at least, it sounds like the wind)
and that bus keeps bumping along
until it coughs, sputters to a stop,
and the occupants reluctantly step out
onto the desert floor
which is really an ancient ocean bed
strewn with the fossils
of forgotten fish
like the back lot
of some prehistoric sushi bar
they step out
breathe the bone dry air
and ask themselves how,
how the hell
did we end up
in this fucking bus metaphor?

.