Everyone else's less wonderful poetry thread
- Thread starter poetix
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@dilbert1 (and probably most certainly others) - you can probably guess what caused my stream-of-consciousness spontaneous riffing when you look at the artwork that I first started thinking about drawing (that's with the hope that the drawing isn't so bad that you can't make it out), before getting side-track into writing that
Post your paintings
Drawings, paintings, it's all the same thing. Post the drawings when you feel ready.
www.dissensus.com
The light turning off
Changes things quite a lot
You are alien mother
And stern rabbit
I hear voices
Coming from the stream
I see the spring clearly
I see the train by its lights
So many people passing through
I touch ice to my cheeks
And think of you
I touch inside you
Feel your fibres
And hang from you
I touch you
I go deep down
Inside you
I touch you
I take from what's inside you
I smell you
I breathe you
I pull the stones out from under you
And smell my hands
I smell the frost from the snow
Can I taste you?
So spongy and elastic
I gather frost from you
And place it inside my mouth
In the shining light
I projected emotion onto your face
You smell alive
I wipe the frost into my eyes
And now I can see you
I can see through you
You are something else from each direction
Changes things quite a lot
You are alien mother
And stern rabbit
I hear voices
Coming from the stream
I see the spring clearly
I see the train by its lights
So many people passing through
I touch ice to my cheeks
And think of you
I touch inside you
Feel your fibres
And hang from you
I touch you
I go deep down
Inside you
I touch you
I take from what's inside you
I smell you
I breathe you
I pull the stones out from under you
And smell my hands
I smell the frost from the snow
Can I taste you?
So spongy and elastic
I gather frost from you
And place it inside my mouth
In the shining light
I projected emotion onto your face
You smell alive
I wipe the frost into my eyes
And now I can see you
I can see through you
You are something else from each direction
it sort of came to me spontaneously.
if you want to hear me saying it, it's here https://www.mfetzcalatto.com/alienmother.html
if you want to hear me saying it, it's here https://www.mfetzcalatto.com/alienmother.html
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
My first poem. Inspired by Larry Eigner and Jorge Guillen.
A correr por el aire,
Por el agua
Que pide pies
Corrientes.
Te sostiene
La fuente.
A correr por el aire,
Por el agua
Que pide pies
Corrientes.
Te sostiene
La fuente.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
version
Well-known member
I think it's good, although I'm going by that translation above. How close is it?
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
More or less, more 'fountain' rather than source, to keep the water theme. You can't translate it, it's a Spanish poem
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
I got the the 'sustaining' air/water idea from eigner, and I was thinking of my partner who's a runner.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Pies Corrientes is something like 'flowing feet', running in the air, sustained by the upward force of the fountain beneath her feet.
jenks
thread death
Perec: Un Homme Qui DortNo it's an ode to this incredible tree
You are only occasionally fascinated by an insect, a stone, a fallen leaf, a tree: sometimes you spend hours contemplating a tree, describing it, dissecting it: the roots, the trunk, the branches, the leaves, every leaf, every rib of every leaf, every branch again, and the unending play of the indifferent shapes that your eager gaze solicits or conjures up: a face, a town, a maze or a path, coats of arms and cavalcades.
As your perception gets sharper, more patient and more versatile, the tree shatters and then reforms, a thousand shades of green, a thousand leaves, identical and yet all different. You think that you could spend your whole life in front of a tree, never exhausting it and never understanding it, because there is nothing for you to understand, just something to look at: when all is said and done, all you can say about this tree is that it is a tree; all this tree can say to you is that it is a tree, a root, then a trunk, then branches, then leaves. You can't expect to extract any other truth from it. The tree has no moral to offer you, no message to impart.
i've been writing some bits again.
The Circle (Madrid, 1782)
Quietly, through the breath of lemon trees
And with the sun brassing palace tiles,
The summons sent out: let the painters come.
Carlos, King -
Father of order and oil and frame -
Desired a countenance shaped in fleshless pigment,
His court immortal in visaged varnish and gaze.
And so they came.
Great men with great names,
Canvases like banners unrolled in battle,
Each work a salvo of colour and conceit.
But one - young and dumb,
Rome still drying behind his eyes -
Came empty-handed.
No scroll. No proof.
Clothed only in silence and becoming,
And a stubborn, unseen flame.
The King, amused, indignant perhaps -
“What work have you to show?”
“How shall I judge?”
The boy answered
As if to time itself:
“All that I’ve made is lost to the world - sold, hung, owned.
But give me chalk. Give me paper.
I will show you.”
Indulged, he closed his eyes.
In that moment -
A trust in memory deeper than vision,
A muscle guided by the ghost of form -
His hand moved
As if it had been waiting to move forever.
A single line.
One stroke without tremble.
A circle -
Drawn, known.
Understood.
And when it was done
He placed it in the hands of a King
Like a secret.
“Bring your mathematician,” he said.
“Tell him to prove it wrong.”
So the geometer came -
With compass, ruler, blade-mind honed -
And studied the mark as if it might speak.
It did not flinch.
It did not lie.
The instruments bowed before it.
The numbers confessed.
As far as proof could reach,
The line was perfect.
No flourish.
No gilding.
Just a shape
That asked nothing of the world
But to be believed.
Later came the commissions:
Floridablanca,
Then the monarch himself,
Then all of Spain, draped in velvet and oil.
But it began here -
A hand, a chalk,
A silence unbroken
By doubt.
And the circle -
Beyond geometry,
Beyond faith.
The Circle (Madrid, 1782)
Quietly, through the breath of lemon trees
And with the sun brassing palace tiles,
The summons sent out: let the painters come.
Carlos, King -
Father of order and oil and frame -
Desired a countenance shaped in fleshless pigment,
His court immortal in visaged varnish and gaze.
And so they came.
Great men with great names,
Canvases like banners unrolled in battle,
Each work a salvo of colour and conceit.
But one - young and dumb,
Rome still drying behind his eyes -
Came empty-handed.
No scroll. No proof.
Clothed only in silence and becoming,
And a stubborn, unseen flame.
The King, amused, indignant perhaps -
“What work have you to show?”
“How shall I judge?”
The boy answered
As if to time itself:
“All that I’ve made is lost to the world - sold, hung, owned.
But give me chalk. Give me paper.
I will show you.”
Indulged, he closed his eyes.
In that moment -
A trust in memory deeper than vision,
A muscle guided by the ghost of form -
His hand moved
As if it had been waiting to move forever.
A single line.
One stroke without tremble.
A circle -
Drawn, known.
Understood.
And when it was done
He placed it in the hands of a King
Like a secret.
“Bring your mathematician,” he said.
“Tell him to prove it wrong.”
So the geometer came -
With compass, ruler, blade-mind honed -
And studied the mark as if it might speak.
It did not flinch.
It did not lie.
The instruments bowed before it.
The numbers confessed.
As far as proof could reach,
The line was perfect.
No flourish.
No gilding.
Just a shape
That asked nothing of the world
But to be believed.
Later came the commissions:
Floridablanca,
Then the monarch himself,
Then all of Spain, draped in velvet and oil.
But it began here -
A hand, a chalk,
A silence unbroken
By doubt.
And the circle -
Beyond geometry,
Beyond faith.
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
Some very nice lines there