Tag Archives: trash

Day 09 – sparkling + dires

I had an idea for today that I’d been contemplatively considering in the background for the past few days. In fact, by mid-afternoon, I’d finished a poem. A reasonably serviceable poem. That just didn’t do it for me. It didn’t work. It was too prosey or something. Too literal. Too didactic. Too first drifty. Decided to leave it for a couple of hours & revisit with a clear head.  Upon returning an hour ago I abandoned said previous draft & had this lovely simpler shape poem whipped off in about 20 minutes (chosen because I don’t normally do them, cos I think they’re a bit gimmicky; but after reading the always fabulous Jude Aquilina’s On a moon spiced night a couple of days ago, I realised if the content is right they can work).*

The Poetic Factoid was unexpected & chosen a result of about the second thing I saw on my news feed this morning.

*****

sparkling 

that snob 
who scoffed 
at bestsellers 
blithely mocked 
popular titles
just for being
too popular  
loudly claimed 
certain books 
were pure trash
& the readers 
of such books 
ignorant slobs
was me—once
i now
U
N
D
E
R
S
T
A
N
D
all reading is good if the book
makes the reader’s mind sparkle

*****

Day 09 – TIL the truth concerning dire predictions 

dire consequences

eagerly at my desk at 9am all ready to write 
any of the wrongs of the day that come my way

second webpage that pops up, the somewhat unpopular 
Game of Thrones guy George R.R. Martin announcing

— ie, he who began writing ASOIaF aka A Song of Ice and Fire
otherwise known as A Safari of Incest and Fighting

35 long summer-filled years ago but gave it up sometime
after cashing his fifth 10 million buck check from HBO —

that he’s contributed 1.5 million research dollars so he can hold 
the first dire wolf born in 10,000 years (cute pics at 6)

immediately I imagine all the ragetweets forthcoming:
“they re-invent dire wolves before you write the last book”

“he held a dire wolf before we held Winds of Winter”
“T-Rexes will chase SUVs on a rainy night before we see WoW”

& sure enough … #finishthefuckingbook




*I want to take a moment to acknowledge that the architecture for collectabilia: pet loves
from 3 days ago was also inspired by the way one of Jude’s poems was laid out.

[Street Fabric, 10; her visual poems Tree as Saviour 24 & Feet, 27]

Guilty Pleasure or Blatant Disregard for one of our Most Valuable Assets?

On Day 15 of NaPoWriMo15, I posted that I only had (by my conservative estimate) 2,376 books left to read in my life. Over the last 2 days I have perhaps wasted one of those books by flicking into a work of pulp fiction adventure thriller technobabble; an airport novel; a bestseller in other words, read by millions. Sure the characterisation is thinner than the paper it’s printed on, the dialogue clunks along like my first car did & the plot, well actually the plot was a bit thin in this one — which is a shame, cos that’s kinda what you read these type of books for. Evil brother & sister wanna restore the Ottoman Empire, blow up Istambul, find Christ’s sandals — sorry dude, but I need a mite more than that…

In order to try & salvage some redeeming merit from the six or seven hours I gave to this brick, I have created a short yet whimsical piece of poesy.

The author, whose name will be revealed shortly, seems to think the only way to communicate emotion is through the eyes (this only gelled into realisation for me on pg 210, after which I started to take notes heehee).

For this exercise I replaced all sight related words with scent related ones. See mate, you can communicate stuff with other senses …

*****

Clive Cussler Nose (Eyes) Best

some worked (well one did):
his nose instantly flaring in horror

some sort of work (varying degrees of sense & successability)
his nose lost and soulless
cold determined odour in Marie’s nose
a scent of anger searing his drowsy nose
a stern sniff from his dark nose expressing his will
tall tall pale-skinned men with hardened dark noses
the red-nosed anger in the man bordered on the psychotic

one was poetic, if strange
falcon-nosed man

some were silly in the original, & remain so
he would sniff at Dirk with rage, then his nostrils would pong over into a thousand-mile whiff
he calmly smelled back at her with a scenting nose that danced above a deep scar on the right side of his jaw

& one was so silly in the original, no change was need
a dull light seemed to burn through Dirk’s eyes, though his lids were tightly closed

*****

owen___the_nose___wilson_by_rwpike-d39der7

PS Happy Birthday Buddy