Tag Archives: circle

Day 02 – lessons from Constellations 

My housemate & I saw the play Constellations tonight. It was his choice because as the program states: Payne’s script presents a series of vignettes centring on two characters across various parallel universes — the same setting & conversation, but different outcomes each time. This unconventional love story set in the quantum multiverse has us asking: What if there are infinite versions of you & I?  And what if there are multiple universes pulling our lives in a myriad of different directions? — & he has been toying with similar themes in a play he said he wants to call the final last night of our lives. (I think it’s a great title & might even pinch it if he doesn’t produce something soon. Fair warning given!)

Tonight’s play was interesting without being awe-inspiring. But given it explored themes of love in occasionally unusual ways, there was some useful material that had me both thinking during the play & on the drive home. With that in mind here’s a pome-in-progress; structural inspired by the play — ie, in vignette form & using rhythm, repetition & some images from the play.

lessons from Constellations 
(vignettes about love)

i. 
love is knife edge sharp
love is knife edge hard
love is a knife
i am knifed
Et tu

ii. 
the dangerous act
of loving someone 
leaves you alone
with your fragility 

iib. 
perhaps even frail, guilty
for there is always 
one other who comes 
between us & our egos

iii. 
we remain perpetually 
lost among the great 
mechanical quantumness 
of love forevers

we blithely step through
those ever sliding doors 
some into happy afters
some into miseries unending
some into sunlight
some into death
supernova bright 

we still try

iv. 
night ships
titanic dinghies
missing their chance
thieving time
as they crash 
into everything 
but the ice

v. 
always peeking 
doors of death 
despite the possible multiplicities
& symmetry of circles 

there is no formula for love 
all we have are 
our imperfect hearts
& fireflies brief lives

Day 13 – Leaf Cycle

Day two of my residency went well. One more person than last week, but none of them stayed the whole three hours — which was fine by me … my brief is to write poetry while there & to interact with library patrons & to impart (hopefully) some slight dose of poeticking wisdom whenever possible. (I’m keeping notes on each session & my plan is at the end of the month to post something which looks back over all 4 sessions with a quasi-critical eye.)

But the ‘me’ time meant I could play with lots of ideas. I chose about twenty books in under five minutes just grabbing things off shelves that ‘spoke’ to me (apologies to the librarians who had to put them all back the end of the day). Then played a bunch of games based on initially, over half the covers; but eventually my interest whittled down to three or four I really liked. I have a number of pomes either in first draft or partial draft stage at least a couple of which will be fleshed out further for my performance in week 4.

So I had a solid selection to choose from today is what I’m saying. This is the one I chose:

woods: lovely, dark & deep

deep in the forest
someone has left
a circle of leaves
on the path — 55

leaves large & small
in a perfect circle
carved from silver
gems on black cloth

i don’t know how long
they’ve been like this
wind has not disturbed
them — they remain

like the promise
of a child

leaf circle CROP

NOTE: image is a detail of The Promise of the Child (yes that is where the last lines came from heehee 🙂 very handy it was cos I didn’t know how to end it) by Tom Toner

NOTE 2: I also spoke to Musician in Residence, John Denley (it really is a very cool library) & he’s writing three songs as part of his time there … so next week, myself & any interested participants might find themselves contributing lyric ideas to John 🙂 Cross-Pollination, yeah baby!