Joseph Spring's Blog, page 6

April 13, 2019

Conceit

Conceit: extended metaphor, hard won.





This overcast windscreen,
a toad's bumpy rump,
ripples and blinkers all else.
He uses his tireless legs to smooth his skin
but like old age
the sifted rain continues
to dimple his flesh
slowly and steadily
a gentle timpani
beating his spurts of youthful vigour
sprinkling wrinkles on skin
becoming a toad.
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Published on April 13, 2019 05:03

April 11, 2019

Excessively Diffused

You know those hyper-neuronic days:
every highway and alley on the connectome
goes up and up and up, and they say
that the end of the day, the peak, is home.
 
Yes, rest is nestled at the very crest
of loose synapses, neural trails,
gravelly, steep and rising to the west
and with sun in eyes, one tries and fails,
 
stumbles, grumbling, wanting sleep.
The sweeping lines of every thought
plod upwards, relentless from the deep
while the daybody crawls its way to port.
 
The view is dark from the nightworld's top
and the muscles rest, though the mind can't stop.





connectome (/kəˈnɛktoʊm/) is a comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain, and may be thought of as its “wiring diagram”. More broadly, aconnectome would include the mapping of all neural connections within an organism’s nervous system.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectome
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Published on April 11, 2019 11:43

April 2, 2019

Flat Ozymandias

Earlier this year I shared my Lipograms, the new form called (ingeniously) “flat poems”. Shortly thereafter, I picked out Shelley’s Ozymandias as a poem which I could try to flatten. Here’s the result, and the original.


once ere our era, a man or woman came:

“saw an enormous carcass, no arms,

near an ear, a nose or sneer

no emo. was carve so

we see ever more.

over a remem-verse

‘name me ozemanus

crown me ever, rex over rexes

woe on mere men – swear

ozemanus owns our arena

oz never wears awae

nor comes over-won’.

no more was seen

save a scar, a crow

an area ever same.”


I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

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Published on April 02, 2019 11:06

March 28, 2019

Ode to Dvorak

Rising before us, the pregnant stage point stands,

every eye and ear awaiting the conductor’s leap

because when that hand swings, the sun will spring to life


and I and my mate, we are swallowed in the sunrise,

carried at the centre of a world awash with morning music,

drowning in Dvorak, Debussy, delight.


The breeze builds,

the wind roars and something explodes.

Violence and love go to war

with untoned arms in tune,

slashing and sawing.

I am attacked.

Ranks of architects, accountants and teachers,

march with dusk-drilled grace,

I see as headless bodies from where I lay slain near the grand legs.

Demisemiquavers quake like a bow

at the sound of a rattling quiver half-full

as the brown bass rolls beneath the army’s feet.


They strike, turn, execute

the music and me,

and I am strung up, unskinned

by, after all the fear,


a slow elbow.

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Published on March 28, 2019 21:22

March alone

Everyone stopped and I,

everyone stopped

and I,

well, everyone stopped

and it got lonely

and all the mutual encouragement

stopped and it got lonely.

Everyone stopped and

I

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Published on March 28, 2019 20:57

February 11, 2019

Cuckold

Barbet
bold,
guarding your hole,
neither your wife nor you
will cuckold the other's colourful soul,
so sit
on your coming two.
 
Trill
in peace
for strife is your least
affliction to fear of in life;
so gaze at the geese, and take time to feast
or go
for a drink with your wife.
 
When
it's dawn,
perhaps you'll mourn
 - to the honeyguide's carefree song -
two eggshells torn, but a third one born
your son
who survived the wrong.
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Published on February 11, 2019 11:48

February 6, 2019

swans

one swan swam on a mere.
we saw one more.



This is perhaps my favourite product from a recent experiment. The challenge involved writing only with letters which had no “heads” or “tails” – i.e. I didn’t use any letters which extend above or below the line. It turns out that this is fully half of the alphabet, and a good deal of punctuation on the side. The constraints of working only with the letters w, e, r, u, o, a, s, z, x, c, v, n and m are quite frustrating, but yield interesting results! The result is “flat poetry”, poetry with both hands tied behind its back, where each line is unerringly neat as a ruler.





If you give it a go, please comment below!





I also wrote a few longer-form story poems in this format, which I’ve shared in three separate posts on my Patreon page. If you’re interested, you can start reading here.

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Published on February 06, 2019 05:42

January 18, 2019

To the Aquarium and Back (or Ten Memories of Durban)

The promenade took

twenty minutes to tramp along.

It took me.


Sand in corners,

beggars and gigglers, such different speeds

of life and a day.


At the end

I lay along as sharks swam longer

than me end-to-end.


In the sun

the curving turquoise noise of kids

ran dense.


Then I walked

past jolly gelatinous girls barely held

in loose black bikinis.


Thanked a pen

from a waitress walking on sand,

and a cider.


I sat alone

drank the insta-golden sea-scene,

and couldn’t shake the sharks.


I ate fish,

full from a drop of the ocean

which is too much.


Then I tired

of flip-flops which wore my feet

to blisters.


And I slipped

past hotel facades with old red years,

back to the quiet.

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Published on January 18, 2019 19:21

December 23, 2018

Annie (or Great Aunt Margaret’s Birth)

As proof of how our family line is made of hearty genes

we’ve got a favourite story, if you’ll let us set the scene:


Our great-great grandma Annie, on our mother’s father’s side,

(and before you ask, we’ll have you know, this story’s verified)

was a-baking in the kitchen on a wintry English day,

in her tiny stone-built cottage which still stands beside the way,

not knowing that her coming child was due that very hour

while the other six were playing round and asking for some flour.


Well, the oven was a-warming and the kneading almost done

when the heavily pregnant Annie felt a change within her tum.

She gave a word to tame the little children running wild

and lay before the fireplace and birthed her seventh child,

a baby girl called Margaret, and then the story’s said

that Annie walked back ovenwards, to go on baking bread!

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Published on December 23, 2018 05:14

December 11, 2018

Four Haikus

I came across a suggestion of going for a “Haiku nature walk”. I’ve never truly understood the appeal of Haikus, as they tend to end just as you get into them. Nevertheless, I appreciated the idea and so took ten minutes to visit our office gardens. Here’s what I found hidden amongst the greenery:





Haikus belong here / in a garden with fountains / where white ripples sway.The first bench was drenched / in a shower of sunlight / but the second, shade.Some Agapanthus… / or are these Christmas roses? / I always forget.The waterlogged grass / has a tinselly shimmer / til summer passes.



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Published on December 11, 2018 23:30