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.
April 11, 2019
Excessively Diffused
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.
A 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
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.”
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.
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
February 11, 2019
Cuckold
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.
February 6, 2019
swans
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.
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.
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!
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.