Everyone else's less wonderful poetry thread

[luka]

There's a strangeness about poetry in translation that becomes part of its poetic effect.

 

[luka]

Like a musician playing an instrument hes never encountered before

 

[Benny Bunter]

Very nice, I'm impressed.

 

[okzharp]

 

[okzharp]

Could be borges. Even reads like it's translated from spanish!

This is another one...


The Book of And

Time,
That bored architect,
Assumes the condition
of its constraint.

It must obey its master’s shape.

Once, a ghoul brushed lids with sleep,
Spilled lullabies into the bones of children.
But the Sandman -
Reshaped, remonstered -
Now moves like famine in folklore’s skin,
Footsteps sowing drought.

The world rewords its fables:

Welcome -

To the Desert of the Real.

The harvest spoils in its cradle,
Fruit - fermenting on the vine -
That tongues will never taste.

And we, circuit worshippers,
Summon monsters again -
Now crowned in code,
Canonized in data.

Gospels of visceral logic,
Of algorithms like angels fallen into function.

Behold:
The Book of And.
A volume without volume,
Infinite in refusal.

No page is first.
None is last.

I held it.
I thought of fire.
But feared that an infinite book
Burning
Might birth an infinite flame,
A smoke to suffocate the sun.

The kindest mercy:
To correlate all contents.
To chart the horror.
To translate the stars
Even as they blink out
One
By
One.

We: small islands of knowing,
Adrift within oceanic penumbras.

But sometimes -
The tide parts and we glimpse
The terrifying vista
Of what

is.

The light, when it comes,
Comes in a knowing
That opens the chest
From the inside.

I buried the book - the leaf -
In the only place it could be hidden:
The impossible forest
Of all other books.

Where it waits.

Welcome -

To the and
Still.

 

[okzharp]

@luka I'm still slightly unsettled that you spotting the ref/inspo...

 

[luka]

Im a man of letters

 

[sus]

It's got some nice bits lots of promise

One
By
One
...is a bit cute tho isnt it?

And I wonder if it's too easy, invoking mythic and technological diction together, algorithms like fallen angels is a lovely phrase, and implies a pure rationality fallen in a muddy world. but I wonder if crowned in code / canonized in data holds up under scrutiny

 

[sus]

I like "to the and"

The first stanza is lovely and I like the way the singleton follows it

But the lullabies bit is clunky isnt it? Feels all awkward and clumsy in my head

 

[sus]

Can you make that stanza half as long and say the same thing?

 

[sus]

Cut the harvest cradle line leave the bit about vines and tongues

 

[sus]

Cut everything in the stanza after "correlate all contents"

 

[sus]

Of what

is.

^^ I think any discerning reader doesn't need to be hit over the head like this, youve already got the desert of the real bit, and the stuff after makes it clear. Plus too cute no? Like one by one

 

[sus]

And end at "From the inside."

This is what I'd do if it were mine anyway. I enjoyed reading thanks for sharing.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Alright, Ezra!

 

[woops]

^^ I think any discerning reader doesn't need to be hit over the head like this, youve already got the desert of the real bit, and the stuff after makes it clear. Plus too cute no? Like one by one

I shall now enumerate the faults I find in this post:

Confused syntax in your opening clause.
Tin-eared assonance of "hit", "bit" and "it".
Careless punctuation throughout.

Go to the bottom of the class @sus.

 

[version]

@luka I'm still slightly unsettled that you spotting the ref/inspo...

Im a man of letters

Baudrillard and Lovecraft in there too. "Desert of the Real," "correlate all contents", "terrifying vista".

 

[moonsow]

Last,
Its subconscious ashore
Overwhelmed, the night blinks
A star drops,
Looking down the opening between my eyes and their skin domes
Into where whence no returns

 

[sus]

Alright, Ezra!

I shall now enumerate the faults I find in this post:

Confused syntax in your opening clause.
Tin-eared assonance of "hit", "bit" and "it".
Careless punctuation throughout.

Go to the bottom of the class @sus.

At least I engaged. I read it twice and closely and spent some time saying what I thought. A feat I've seen no one else on this board accomplish in the last month, save the newguy Kinski.

 

[sus]

interesting stuff, thanks!

Dissensus in Dante's nutshell