drunk with the great starry void -- jack's napowrimo thread

29 posts1, 2
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Firestarter
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Thu Mar 31, 2011 4:42 pm
Firestarter says... · Thu Mar 31, 2011 4:42 pm
I never do more than 10.

2011 will hopefully be different.
Nate wrote:And if YWS ever does become a company, Jack will be the President of European Operations. In fact, I'm just going to call him that anyways.
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Fri Apr 01, 2011 2:54 pm
Firestarter says... · Fri Apr 01, 2011 2:54 pm
Spoiler
I'm sorry for this.


#1 dry rot

I am an old photograph
buried underground.

By the old brook
between the autumn trees,
if you look, you can see
a freshly dug grave
two years deep.

On the threshold,
time chokes you.
The leaves are green
and brown, or not.

You are a cat in a box,
entangled in a paradox.

Touch the earth
near where I lie.
It lingers in your memory.

Your fingers are slow,
they fail to grasp
the questions your poetry
have never asked.
Nate wrote:And if YWS ever does become a company, Jack will be the President of European Operations. In fact, I'm just going to call him that anyways.
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Sun Apr 03, 2011 3:34 pm
Firestarter says... · Sun Apr 03, 2011 3:34 pm
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I don't remember it being this difficult.


#2 a portrait of a city

Coloured in clandestine paint
dripping
with invisibility.
The
incongruity,
sunshine, dirtying
the leftovers of last century.
A city best viewed with clouds, rain
drops,
mud, the beginnings of a flood
not to wash it all away but
prove the perfect companion.

It is a bright day
and everything looks wrong.
The only friend of abandoned factories,
unused canals, rotting railroads
is deluge.

I watch from the window
and wonder:
weather
it can be wrong.
Nate wrote:And if YWS ever does become a company, Jack will be the President of European Operations. In fact, I'm just going to call him that anyways.
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Firestarter
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Sun Apr 03, 2011 4:12 pm
Firestarter says... · Sun Apr 03, 2011 4:12 pm
#3 tilting at windmills

Let us be quixotic.
Literally.

Let me find a donkey and a list of proverbs
and then we can wander through a void, undettered
by lack of logic. There is something Cervantean
about the way you think.

I have a better idea.
I'll write you something you will never read.

It will be a metaphor.
A tree falling in a fictional forest.
Listen--the sound is groundbreaking.
Nate wrote:And if YWS ever does become a company, Jack will be the President of European Operations. In fact, I'm just going to call him that anyways.
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Navita
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Sun Apr 03, 2011 5:46 pm
Navita says... · Sun Apr 03, 2011 5:46 pm
Why on earth have I never read anything by you before. This is good. Especially #3; I like the way it seems to break rhythm from the rest -- it's punchy and lightly dramatic and clever and humorous...but you knew that.
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Jiggity
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Mon Apr 04, 2011 12:20 am
Jiggity says... · Mon Apr 04, 2011 12:20 am
I've always enjoyed reading your stuff. I don't think anyone is better at evoking nostalgia. Especially when you're writing about a city. What is it with you and cities? :P
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Hannah
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Mon Apr 04, 2011 12:27 am
Hannah says... · Mon Apr 04, 2011 12:27 am
rotting railroads


I never knew that this could be so full of imagery. Two words bring me down a very long train track and the rails can be between anything, so I get to see the rails between the factories, or behind empty, peeling houses, or just running along side one of those empty canals. Very nice phrasing.
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bubblewrapped
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Mon Apr 04, 2011 1:39 am
bubblewrapped says... · Mon Apr 04, 2011 1:39 am
I love #3. Particularly that last stanza; it's a wonderfully effective conclusion. :smt023
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Firestarter
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Mon Apr 04, 2011 8:53 pm
Firestarter says... · Mon Apr 04, 2011 8:53 pm
Thanks for the comments.

#4 science was never my strong point but

let us define perfection. we are made of stars and yet
we teem with disability, not with bad atoms
but with broken anatomy, awkward
and delapidated.

focus from a distance on an imperceptible
scene. I mean, really look and see
something technically the universe
could rightly call undetectable.

and stop before you microscope too far
on particles and tiny quarks. pause
now on the edge of the skin, and feel
two imperfect humans connect their inability.

and view these trivialities,
meaningless in all the breadth
of history, collapse stars in half a heartbeat
and blind galaxies without a breath.

let us refine perfection. let us
defy the universe.
Nate wrote:And if YWS ever does become a company, Jack will be the President of European Operations. In fact, I'm just going to call him that anyways.
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Meshugenah
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Mon Apr 04, 2011 9:25 pm
Meshugenah says... · Mon Apr 04, 2011 9:25 pm
*chomps on*

"stop before you microscope too far" I kind of love. That is all.
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Firestarter
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Tue Apr 05, 2011 7:27 pm
Firestarter says... · Tue Apr 05, 2011 7:27 pm
#5 historical revisionism

Right, let's dispense with the pleasantries.
The peasants scream their righteous pleas
to appease their own discrepancies.

Got that? My name is Tom and I did not peep.

Incontrovertibly
I was there that day in Coventry;
and it's without hyperbole
to suggest I did ostensibly
break the rules and take a peek.

Remember that time with the emperor's clothes?
When the old codger went mad and exposed
himself to the serfs like god only knows.

It was like that but backwards.

Her Lady was draped in black like a nun
and no-one could see the lies she had spun.
My mum always said girls like to have fun.

And this is the bit that the history books
neglected to write in their rush to concoct
a story of drama and legend and shocks.

It's time to confess:
I might have been drunk, I guess,
but I swear nonetheless,
Lady Godiva was never undressed.

It's like this. History is written
by those who like stories.

So smash all my bones and cut out my eyes
but you will be wrong to think that I lied
cos' I never did cop a look at her thighs.

Spoiler
This started out sensibly, but then I lost it. I'll salvage this another time without the need for forced rhymes.
Nate wrote:And if YWS ever does become a company, Jack will be the President of European Operations. In fact, I'm just going to call him that anyways.
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Kylan
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Tue Apr 05, 2011 8:16 pm
Kylan says... · Tue Apr 05, 2011 8:16 pm
#4 - Got tones of Eliot there with the closing line; but in this case, you did disturb the universe, haha. I enjoyed this poem quite a bit. Stanza 1 has a great rhythm and good sounds.

Kylan
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Thu Apr 07, 2011 2:26 pm
Firestarter says... · Thu Apr 07, 2011 2:26 pm
April 6th was a bad day. All I have for you is awful unfinished wordplay.

#6

Across words like a cryptic, a splice
is cake to be eaten. Let them. Eat
your sentences like a good child
and plot your eyes across this tease.
Nate wrote:And if YWS ever does become a company, Jack will be the President of European Operations. In fact, I'm just going to call him that anyways.
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29 posts1, 2


Maybe we're all just complex human beings with skewed perceptions of each other.
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