Day 18 — a whispered love letter + piles of books

Pretty self-explanatory: a pseudo-letterpome.

whisper


dearest love : though : you : cannot hear me : nor feel me neither : (i fear) : i’m only a little : behind you : close enough to reach : out : to clasp your hand : if i could : (if i was allowed) : if the sensation : of my white hand : passing through yours : did not eerie me out : so i silently : wait : stepping softly : behind you : (waiting, hoping ) : for day light : to appear : (perhaps) : for you : not to despair

Day 18 – TIL about my relationship with books

Tsundoku 

the joyful gleeful wonderful
act of acquiring books 
& not reading them

           … yet …

i’m a tsundoku sensei
believing there’s always tomorrow
& failing that — next life

Day 17 — Orpheus’s last song + Grandmother Fact #1

The poetry volume I read today had several Mirror Cinquains in it. This is a mix of a standard Cinquain & a Reverse Cinquain. So, using the usual syllable counting convention, a mirror cinquain = 2,4,6,8,2 blank line 2,8,6,4,2 syllables. I’m not usually a big fan of form poems, they feel too forced unless you’ve got a lot of time to tweak them (which you don’t get in a NaPoWriMo when you’re working). Nonetheless I thought I’d give it a bash. There are lines I wish I could alter (ignore the scansion) which might happen in a future version.

Orpheus’s last song


lament
sad bobbing head
song sung sans vocal chords
always singing his beloved’s name
loudly

even
death could not prevent him from it
despite decapitation
sings as it floats
to sea

Day 17 – TIR my gran

It’s the anniversary of my gran’s birthday today. To remember her, I looked for some Facts About Grandmothers & found a variety of sites ranging from dry statistics “78% read the newspaper” type thing to wildly subjective. However the one I have chosen appeared on several pages & is without doubt, true. (I have not chosen the most obvious fact: No love is as special as grandmother’s: it truly is unconditional.)

Grandmother Fact #1: 
they cook the best food

christmas lunches
tuna mournays
corned beef swimming 
   in white sauce
thick pea & ham soup
egg sandwiches, taken 
   from the freezer, then toasted
even just Continental Hearty Beef soup 
   straight outta the packet tasted 
   ambrosial from her kitchen

what would this vego grandson give
for the chance of one more meal
with his gran

Day 16 — nightingale + a trilogy of flamingo fun facts

Just playing round with a passage from Book IV of Virgil’s The Georgics where he describes an incident surrounding the Big O following his failed attempt to restore Eurydice to life (he claims he that O lamented for seven whole months).

nightingale


a nightingale nightly cries
amongst the shadowy poplars

lamenting the loss of her chicks
stolen as i saw by some hard-

hearted ploughman (what need 
has he of three featherless chicks

callously snatched from their nest).
the mourning songstress weeps 

her song throughout the night
all night, every night, repeating 

her miserable notes relentlessly
pierces all peace with her pain

wails all night, fills air all around 
with melancholy protestations.


unlike Orpheus, she has not forgotten 
how to sing

Day 16 – TIL a lot of flamingo related fun facts. (In point of fact I have lots & lots of bird facts, that I almost put a dozen of them into one megapoem, but this flamingo triptych seems to work quite well…)

flamingo triptych

i. 
there are more fake flamingos 
on Earth than real ones

ii. 
flamingos pair for life
some stay mated
for 50 years or more

nice that flamingos
are 12.5x better at 
partnering than i am 

iii.
you probably know 
a crowd of crows is called 
   a murder

& an assembly of owls
  is a parliament 
  (or wisdom, or study)

but life gets really joyful
the day you discover a flock of flamingoes
   is a flamboyance

Day 10 – Acrostics & Golden Shovels

Sunday fun & games again … today’s task involves the use of acrostics & pseudo-golden shovels; forms I haven’t played with much. I tried complicating this (with mixed results) in the middle stanza, but overall, it holds up okay. The melancholy mood seems apt given the songs I’m playing with.

for the love of Murray 2
Acrostics & Golden Shovels

unfinished 

waiting forlornly
for you to realise
this is a one time
love offer

if you decide again
we are meant to dance
never not ever no never
dance together we
again end with if

so i must let 
my soul release you 
& gently watch love go

Day 18 – poem about gloamings

golden_autumn_ii CROP

Today was a tiring day with a meeting in the morning, work on technical/production documents, phone calls & planning, pulling information teeth from my reluctant-to-divulge-information director, along with a printer cartridge which needed replacing at a crucial time, all meant my brain wasn’t really in a poeting frame when 8 o’clock rolled round & I realised I hadn’t written anything postable yet.

Feeling uninspired, I used an old trick — flicking through an art website I like, typing in keywords (like “firefly”, “serenity”, etcetera) until “autumn leaves” brought me to a website of a lovely French photographer who was obsessed with both the season & the “golden hour” which meant her page was full of golds, & glowing light, rich decaying reds, browns, & yellows.

So I assembled a page & a half’s worth of picture description (me describing what I see in the photo), photo titles (or parts of), & words/phrases lifted from the mostly French comments below the photos & run through google translate, which I arranged, tweaked, edited & tried to shape.

The result is this narrative through images. I know it probably needs a solid edit to help make it, make “sense” — & I’m not sure about the last line which originally I took out because it felt like it was from another pome, but I missed what was lost & so put it back — anyhoo, NaPoWriMo is about writing a pome a day, not about masterpieces. (At least that’s my excuse, & I’m sticking.)

Autumnus

your hands : overlap : your face : letting go : the place remains : imaginary : you handstand : in puddles : hair caught on blossoms

the leaves of my manuscript : waterfall over the balcony : stare at blank pages : sunbeams on my skin : my house : then the sky : pity the sun : that must go down : every night

we look at the stars : & talk til 2am : different themes : on the same thought : the same person : yearning for sunshine : in different clothes

wildness in your eyes : crackles through : everything seems to be twirling : ambiguous : diminished

i lay in the field : among flowers : asleep : my book : across my face

this is the link : to us : i am me : & you are nobody

you could : hide beside me : & i could : hide inside : maybe we just like fixation : this is the madness : melancholic nostalgia : beautiful : but full of sad memories

please don’t : wake me up : i need time to dream : everything deep : so i’ll remember forever : the days we spent : together

child of the autumn : child of the leaves : child that can never be