Jane Dougherty's Blog, page 21
February 23, 2023
Artificial Idiocy
AI would not be my first port of call if I was looking for inspiration, but I’ll try anything once. I didn’t use Verse to Verse because you have to sign up to it, and because it only draws on classical American poetry of which I am not a fan. So, I tried out this one
https://www.poem-generator.org.uk
I chose free verse, put in a few options and let it do its thing. I think you’ll agree, this load of cobblers is not a poem. It’s not even worth fiddling with to turn it into a poem. It’s the antithesis of a poem. Cobblers. Flocculent cobblers.
For dverse.
Night
Pay attention to the supper,
the supper is the most splendid repast of all.
Are you upset by how resplendent it is?
Does it tear you apart to see the supper so magnificent?
I saw the the last repose of my generation destroyed,
How I mourned the sleep.
Are you upset by how worst it is?
Does it tear you apart to see the sleep so close?
Event is, in its way, the great students of physical phenomenon.
Never forget the flocculent and woolly event.
Never again (all lines by Jane)
I let a computer write me a poem.
I didn’t choose a model
so it didn’t wander lonely as a coconut
or walk in beauty like the north circular.
It went its own sweet way,
followed its own mechanical muse.
it took some decent words
from the beautiful English language
but discarded the rules of grammar,
added a dictionary of words no one uses
and a school text book or two,
mixed, shook, and spewed,
as you’d expect,
utter drivel.
27. (seven lines)
27.
Too many yellow blades
among the green,
dark clouds glower,
no glitter replies from empty ruts.
Carts ran here once
and spring water,
some still remember.
February 22, 2023
Winter drought
Thirty-third day of no rain, and the promised ‘rainy period starting on Thursday’ has shrunk to isolated patches of drizzle with a bit of rain in the course of tomorrow. Sunshine back on Friday. Not even enough to wet the plants. But the freezing nights will be back. Looking bleak.
Winter drought
In the desert, this sprinkling would blossom
in furious colours, ephemeral green,
lives of flower to seed in acceleration.
This yellowing green, damped
by ephemeral showers is tired,
sprung already parched, sprung too soon,
like butterflies, bees, ephemera
around too early flowers,
and when the frosts return, what then?
February 21, 2023
First
For the dverse prompt.
First
Dim-lit shadows bouncing back
and forth, a beat bouncing off the walls.
You had such a lack of rhythm it seemed
another music bounced in your head.
Thick smells of beer, sweaty perfume,
your laughter, eyes close and bright
in Ziggy’s beer light, a stumble closer
took me by surprise (not you),
into your arms, and the beer, the light,
your laughter, exploded on my lips
what I had been waiting for
all my life.
No rain to wet the spring
No rain to wet the spring
First the thrushes with cock-crow and dog-bark, then wood pigeons wooing and the churn of tractors. Dead leaves rattle on their hanging trees, and the wind turns to the north, skims milky cloud across the sun, and a chill crawls from the yellow grass, waiting for the blackbirds’ lament for the day’s ending.
Muscari haze banks with blue
but the banks are dry—orange
clay crumbles. Dust.
No sleep
Written to the dverse quadrille prompt.
No sleep
the sleeve of care still tight-shrouded,
an empty head rings with bell-notes,
but how much is music,
how much nerve-endings whining,
and do the birds even know?
I hear, in the greatest bird-notes,
genius-plucked from the sky and staved,
the anguish in their core.
February 20, 2023
Rex tremendae majestatis
It would have been my dad’s birthday. He died thirty years ago but like my mother, he never left.
Rex tremendae majestatis
Chords and voices crash
to the coping of cathedrals,
roar of storm seas against cliffs,
the clash of brass and musseled rocks,
tongue words from celestial throats.
Listening to this staved majesty,
I hear too the low boom of your voice,
reciting your words, fiercely angelic.
Rex tremendae majestatis.
I know who I see, smiling
from the golden coping of the sky.
Tripadi
The tripadi was Paul Brookes’ chosen form last week. It is deceptively simple, tercets in lines of 8 8 and 10 syllables, end rhyme on L1 and L2. The third line breaks the rhythm of the first couplet and has no rhyme. I read on one site that the strength of this third line is in its difference, drawing attention by other means, like internal rhyming, alliteration and its message. Also, that each stanza should read like a single thought, which means no run-ons.
I admit that this form didn’t much appeal to me. The examples given on various sites are clunky, syllable-counting but with no rhythm. I never understand why we count syllables but not beats, especially in rhyming poetry. The first couplet was easy enough, but the difficulty came with the third line, and how to give it a sense of purpose rather than having it sound like an afterthought.
In my first attempt, I added a variant, an end rhyme to link the third lines of each stanza. The second poem sticks to the rules.
Wishing for better times
I see the dark behind the light,
the glint of silver in the night,
the moon and stars when all the world is grey.
I see the hollow in the tree
the fallen flower, silent bee,
and wish the night would blossom into day.
Within the confines of the glade
the spread of oaks the gentle shade
I hear the sea storm’s voice, the lash of spray,
the salt that clings and turns to rust,
the rotten timbers beached, the dust
of aeons in the foam, a star astray.
And reaching out to catch a beam
of sunlight, pearl light, golden stream
I wish this spectral calm, this peace would stay.
Frozen
These days of sun and nights of frost
revolve until time’s meaning’s lost
in oscillating fears and floral joys.
These morning fogs that freeze the grass,
that coat the pools in sunless glass,
the birds still sing, dance wing-tip tail to toe.
Pearl silver colours of the night
linger shadowed in the half-light,
and sink to snowdrop bells’ pale-chiming chill.
February 19, 2023
A day
A day
Today there were butterflies and triumphant silence when the hunters left empty handed. For the second time the wily pigs had eluded them. They hide in the bramble brake on our side of the stream. We hear them at dusk. Dogs watch, listen, ears raised not wishing to get too close and in the morning we find the meadow peppered with holes, and we smile indulgently.
Beagles trot back to captivity
jays shriek the all clear
pheasant shakes out
his rumpled feathers
life beneath the willows resumes.
Today there were the first muscari, the first daffodils and a displaced hyacinth blue-blooming in the grass. There were bees and birds in the honeysuckle, fox behind the barn and the stripped and shredded bark of an alder sapling that the hare had left.
Quiet lies heavy
as feathers blue and yellow
as morning light.
Dogs bark ringing the hills with echoes cocks crow and something is on the prowl. Evening silence draws them out from their lairs and nests and dens. I wish I could walk with them, inconspicuous as a brown oak leaf.
Night falls without fuss
with the gentle sound of owls
the spring singing of blackbirds.
