Tag Archives: poem structures

It is far better to refine than revolt

Sand Gazes Out of Hourglass, Wishes Put Out to Grass

D’ evil to fill lower void
life’s gra-in-dients to avoid
thinking it’ll fall straight under

sands of time, yours and mine

learning too late gravity rules
never seeing glass controller
meaning one becomes two added time

*The heading paraphrases “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” I thought it was Shakespeare, but attributed to Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain!

*The Poem
D’ evil wordplays devil.
gra-in-dients: grain and gradients.
yours and mine: everybody.
gravity rules: double meaning, rules of gravity and gravity rules! exclamation.
one becomes two cross references ‘yours and mine’ and how evil multiplies the ‘sand time’ already given, and can become a part of you, such as time in prison being an all embracing main ‘partner’; or just guilt/regret in the brain.

Hourglasses have been written about quite a lot on this site, as you can see by searching, and are in my last poetry collection.

They’ve probably been of renewed interest to my neurons since one was featured in the The Pretty Reckless song/video 25:

I Criticise to Keep Consonants Company

I: Only Vowel for Criticism

    crit-i-cism
i: 33.3% recurring
central
i two more, either side i
stand beside
another letter
third – i – seventh
like sent-i-nels guarding flanks
right – left
i: only vowel
without i
there would only be
consonants for criticism.

If you want to criticise the last four lines (putting a positive spin on it, and not wanting to waste the extra work, as in a state of coffilosophy {with Nordic chanting music] I  forgot using criticism at the start of the poem, and used criticise, making me second-think I’d got it wrong about i being the only vowel!):

i: 75% of vowels
if i buzzed off
there would only be-e
four consonants to criticise
reminding me of the film:
Four Weddings and a Funeral!

If you liked the above comedy wordplay letterology poetry there’s loads more in these super-duper books:

 

Lie within Believe Great Example of Shenel

To be-lie-ve agnostically
is always to remember
most likely current option
could be proved wrong
sometime in the future.

Believe is a good example of a perfect (same number of letters each side of inside word) shenel (word with another inside, like a nut’s shell and kernel I invented, without naming it after myself) with related words on outside and inside.

See the source image

For more pre-shenel wordplay:

 

Moonday Poem for Pagans

Grilled tomato smoke
wafted greyer than air
as sunlight broke
through window to evoke
before Venus rose
a female soprano voice
emitted from the TV
triggering thought energy
in my brain synergy
the power of three…

to be remembered
half the day later
after seeing Venus
now bright in night
clear as day, as they did say
above new crescent moon.

27 Jan. The Moon returns to the evening sky and appears just 6o from brilliant Venus in the west after sunset. Today, the planet Neptune is less than 0.25 degrees north of Venus. If you have a telescope, try to see these two worlds in a single field of view. As January ends, Venus rises nearly 3.5 hours after the Sun and reaches well above the western horizon at sunset. Other than the Moon or Sun, it’s the brightest thing in the sky.

The Night Sky This Month

If you liked that poem you’ll probably love some in this:

Poem Inspired by mistYmuse on Day 4 of Longest Festival

Where there is mist

Y, there is muse

Tryst In Me, Sky Birds Tree

grist to the mill
mist on the hill
words enter mind
meet-up maybe rhymed

then they chime, clickety click time

sub-lime olive green
branch bells ringing
nest like ancient amygdala
mirroring brain stripped bare

I wasn’t going to write a poem until seeing the misty weather forecast; even though I could see the mist! so the above poem could definitely be said to have been inspired by the mistYmuse, although it was more about seeing it in writing and having the proof to display.

A couple of links I used:

grist to the mil definition 
brain and trees similarities

A couple of books I wrote and recommend:

Poetry in Motion Princess Kate Remembers What Made Her Great

I was disappointed Princess Kate seemed to have become a Calamity Kate recently, buying a shotgun as Britain goes weapons crazy!

See the source image

Kate Returns to Form

So I was delighted to see Princess Kate return to great greenYgrey form on a visit to Blackpool recently (maybe tangerine would have been more fitting though?), sporting big green and grey, and a little yellow in the arrow symbol of her handbag and the umbrella handle.

So I wrote this Folding Mirror poem to celebrate, adapting it from a spontaneous poem that seeped down effortlessly from the unconscious, and that is included below the FM one.

 Swapping Shotgun for Umbrella, Remembering gYg Princess Era

Princess Kate taking up shooting
was like a poisoned ↑
through my greenYgrey wolf ♥.
Seeing  symbol on handbag
like Y in disguise
deflated, like crushed umbrella.

is T a good umbrella symbol, between windy Y and deflated ↑

Thankfully, brolly she’s holding
in stormy Blackpool photo
sheltered her from rain.
One day when sunny again
Kate will consider birdsong celebrations
more important than dinner conversations.

The original poem posted on Facebook.

Princess Kate taking up shooting
was like a poisoned arrow
through my greenYgrey heart
but seeing the symbol on her handbag
I see it’s just like a Y in disguise
deflated like a storm-broken umbrella.

Thankfully, the brolly she’s holding
in the stormy Blackpool photo
sheltered her from the rain
and one day when the sun shines
Kate will consider birdsong celebrations
more important than dinner conversations.

If you liked the above, and love birdy animals, you should be very interested to know it’s the last day or two, depending where you are, of my latest poetry book and second of the greenYgrey trilogy – fantasy fiction parody comedy Australia travel -being free on Smashwords:

Werewolf of Oz: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/325567

242 Mirror Poems and Reflections: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/321583

 

Why I’m a Creative Writer Poet: Stream of Consciousness Poem

I removed some mental clutter on the travel25years.wordpress.com site yesterday, my mind’s been enthused by reading about UFOs recently, including photosynthesis on Earth in a scientific one, and the latest NASA’s Unexplained Files (series 2, episode 2) last night (which featured orbs amongst other things, saying they often happen above geological fault lines before earthquakes, so they think they could be created by the same tectonic friction that causes earthquakes. My ‘experience’ was of course in Iceland, famously home to one part of a fault line, where you can swim between the North American and Eurasian plates. Thankfully, an earthquake or volcanic eruption hasn’t followed, and it’s now over a year later.) If any photography experts think it is a camera light trick please let me know; it certainly wasn’t mine!

Poetic Inspiration

I think I’ve just about recovered from a cold I’ve had all week, and I think recovering from illness can provide a little ‘high’. I’ve done the ‘right thing’ and tried to avoid other people as much as possible; but tend to do that now anyway!

Moreover, the sun is shining on snow-covered roofs, providing more mental stimulation, as it differs from the norm. I was also looking back with nostalgia at the Y-day week of celebrations, and especially how T had unconsciously found a place in Oates’s final quote: ‘I may be some Time.’

While you may look on me negatively, celebrating my own work, to me, my conscious as I write this, it doesn’t even seem my work; rather it’s my hidden unconscious, which is like my ‘twin’, or the muse. We are of course now in the muse half of the mistYmuse new-age winter festival!

While there are lots of new-age pagan bands, titles and themes I like in rock now, I was particularly poetically impressed by Earth’s album title: ‘The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull’!

I could make my new poem below into a Folding Mirror poem, but for now, here it is stream of consciousness style. While it’s probably covered old themes of mine; something I’ve criticised rock bands for doing before!; it does have some new and updated material, and the biggest new innovation of having the title at the start and finish; kind of Folding Mirror style…

When Time Stopped, Trees Breathed Photosynthesis, Aliens Returned Requesting…

that moment you don’t remember happening
when you’ve worked up enough steam
and you can freewheel
as if you’ve climbed the steep hill
and now you’re racing down the other side
or struggled upriver against the tide
and now you’re rushing downriver
with the tide washing over you
driving and covering you
so you just have to breathe and steer
but while in physical activities
you just have experience and memories
here you also have
‘genius’ word connections
popping out of
synchronicity in motion
like atoms reacting
creating electrical charges
brain freeflowing
open to cosmos
like puddle to cloud
ocean and rain
no need for devotion
pure pleasure
zonal leisure
this is the moment you write
like the times you feel like flying
when running or cycling
having warmed up on the day
after years of training
the sun is shining
words are flowing
and when you review
they sparkle more than you
remember writing
or even think
you’re capable of
producing, creating, painting
while the conscious has the here and now
the unconscious has past and present… future?..

Humanity, put a stop to this.

P.S. Notice that last line fitting finale little bit of self-proclaimed genius wordplay – which was the unconscious in control as I wrote about times when the unconscious is in control – ‘put a stop to this’ before the full stop!?

Poetry On Site Updated

I just updated the poetry on this site list, taking it up to 312. I’ve written and posted seventy-one Folding Mirror poems since self-publishing my 242 Mirror Poems and Reflections (121 each) second poetry and philosophy collection in 2012… at the cheapest price possible.

If I hadn’t written it I’d be wanting it for Winter Solstice Christmas!:

Poem Philosophy: Questioning Human Evolution Monarch Butterfly Solution?

While watching a recent episode of The Living Universe they said that to travel beyond our solar system is a multi-generation project, with the next solar system 170,000 times as far as Mars; the first of billions in our galaxy, with billions of galaxies in the universe.

Of Monarch and Man

It reminded me of the monarch butterfly migration, which takes several generations to complete the long round trip; a few generations heading north, and then one long trip south for the last.

Humanity always seems to have had the urge to travel; sometimes from necessity, such as ice ages, but other times seemingly just out of curiosity.

Unknown Past, Future Uncertain

Is it just the way our brain has adapted to circumstances, or is it something embedded in it since creation; as each generation of the monarch butterfly plays its part without seeming to know why in the bigger picture – as we know the world and universe?

Is this age of humanity, between ape and AI, according to evolution theory, like one generation of monarch butterfly pre-programmed to play a part in a much bigger space time picture?

See the source image
National Geographic photo of monarch butterflies migration.

Physical Gravity, Dextrous Mentality

Am I E.T., Yeti Discovery
my humanity distant memory
mind travelled deep in space
escaped the human race
for a finishing line?
I’m inclined to decline

seeking future,  fearing dystopia; already here, passed utopia

as if in DNA
higher order at play?
like generational butterfly migrations
their trees our space stations
not knowing reason why
just feeling urge to fly

Not very Chrismassy, but a great present for lovers of poetic philosophy, at the cheapest Amazon price possible.