Brain Creation Coffee or Cortisol Folding Mirror Poem

This latest Folding Mirror poem developed out of a few articles and documentaries I’ve seen recently; while the screen hypnosis was featured in Moby’s Porcelain memoir, cited here recently; so at least five multi-media sources over a coupla/few months.

A couple were about ideal coffee drinking times, in relation to your cortisol levels, saying you should avoid drinking coffee just after awakening, as your body is naturally producing cortisol then, which has a similar effect as caffeine. Cortisol is produced on average by the body’s circadian rhythm between 8-9, 12-1 and 5.30-6.30 so the article said it’s best to avoid drinking it then.

Another article said that cortisol could actually shrink the brain, which I thought I might have felt during times of coffilosophy, when I was digging deep into the mind to create, and then concentrating to get it down on screen. I’d also feel tired afterwards a lot of the time, needing a nap, which could have been to do with the physical demands I think this kind of creation can impose.

In a Horizon documentary about the body clock, circadian rhythm and sleep, with volunteer, Aldo Kane, locked away from daylight for a month without knowing the time, chronobiologist Professor Jeffrey Hall  said the circadian rhythm is in all animals and was one of the first genetic imprints in us all.

A BBC Click documentary had a nice introduction to a piece about new ADHD technology with roundabout-cars chaos, which reminded me of some coffilosophy times when I’d feel like that. Sometimes the ideas would come together into a poem, story or blog post, like this one; other times I’d forget some of it, like the cars of the roundabout going the wrong way and getting lost!

It was kinda fun, and the best way for me to work, but not really efficient and dependable, which is why I think I’m more suited to this kind of creative writing!!

This is a self-portrait image I created in 2005, when the current mental health initiatives were in their infancy, to try and show as best I could how I thought my ADHD mind worked:

As Brain Shrinks, Squeezed Information Links

I am animal
of circadian rhythm
drinking coffee
for tunnel vision
organising thought
wild ideas pulled taut

ADHD roundabout thoughts, words directed downwards

sometimes converging one way
creation overlay
streamlining writing process
screen hypnosis
natural hormone cortisol
can contract cerebellum

Autumn Leaves Fall Mirror Poem

Here’s a new Folding Mirror poem inspired by the changing season; going to the Rose Tattoo concert, listening to Nick Cave again, as Rose Tattoo vocalist, 71-years-old Angry Anderson, being so engrossed in the music reminded me of the end of Nick Cave’s 20,000 Days On Earth movie (embedded below: especially the last few words about his creative process), and how rock n’ roll should be; and posts on WordPress by those who’ve visited here and I’ve visited there in the last week.

Planetary Journey Around Star, Rings In The Changes

I could live
until summer’s return
hanging in air
moving with wind
within September leaf
riding its veins
with views of
green, yellow, red, brown

but its waving last goodbye,  to its sun cloudy sky

blue, grey, white, orange
falling to ground
remembering budding by
sourcing photosynthesis light
spring was magical
everything was new
but winter’s cold
means colours fade

 

Mirror Poem Book Poetry Reflections 11 – 15

Fifteen reflections from 242 Mirror Poems and Reflections are on the Writing and Poetry blog now, so following on from reflections 1-5 and reflections 6-10, here’s reflections 11-15:

The book’s available from Amazon for under £3 and under $6, and lots of other currencies for the equivalent prices; and Smashwords for other ebook readers for much less.

Mirror Poem Reflections

Reflection 11 mirrored the poem Tale of the Weakness Tail

Limits of Freedom

When birds have freedom
they don’t fly into the stratosphere
but sometimes bump into windows.

Reflection 12 mirrored Human and Society Chicken and Egg Dilemma Oddly Solved

Those who feel hard done by
often seem to want to get even
not necessarily with whoever
caused their upset
but with anybody
who’ll balance the books
return their equilibrium
as they see it
for the unloved to feel love
for the bullied to feel powerful
for the unlucky to feel lucky
for the poor to feel rich
for the insane to feel sane.

Reflection 13 mirrored Mine Bipolar Mind

You cannot escape –
thinking you’re free
one side of the mind
on the same body.

Reflection 14 mirrored All Cooper

The mirror image of personality and humanity has been a regular theme in Folding Mirror poetry. Vincent Furnier‘s Alice Cooper alter-ego allows him to investigate and release his internal demons; demons that once sent him into alcoholism and a sanatorium.

Societies that have the freedom to analyse and criticise themselves, with a free press and human rights, should be healthier in the same way as Furnier is now, while societies that do not have the same reflection and release will probably grow more demonic.

Reflection 15 mirrored Climbing Over the Hill

Did I reach middle-age missing out a couple of lines? How many more lines will I go through and reach? Is middle-age the purgatory of your life: looking back at your life without knowing the future? Or if you have one!

Poems on Site List Updated

The last time the poems on this site list was updated it unfortunately didn’t post on site. Thankfully, there was an autosave available when I checked it. I have now updated it, and added the seven poems since, so there are now 281 poems/collections on the site poetry list now.

274 Mirror Poems and Related Poetry

WordPress kindly wished the blog a happy 5th anniversary recently, so I thought it’d be a good time to count and register the poems on fmpoetry.

I was delighted to see there are now 274 mirror poems and related poetry on this website, as listed in the blog post Poems and Poetry on this Site.

There are now two collections of poetry books containing most of Marc Latham’s poems from this site at: Smashwords and Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/author/marclatham).

2013 WordPress Review for FMPoetry

WordPress.com prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog. It’s summary is posted below. Thanks for all your visits, and I hope you continue visiting throughout 2014.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,700 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Folding Mirror Poetry Article

Back in 2010 I wrote an article for Suite 101 on types of Folding Mirror poems. That article is now available to publish here, and is posted below. Hopefully it might inspire you to write one?

Poetry Research Offers Clues to How Forms Evolve

The Folding Mirror poetry form calls for two halves of a poem to mirror each other either side of a folding middle line. The Palindrome form had previously called for two halves of a poem to mirror each other, but there was no middle line to link them; instead, there was a gap between the two mirroring halves. Since the fmpoetry website was set up there have been over seventy Folding Mirror poems published on the site. After a prompt from Caroline Gill, research was undertaken into how the middle line has been used in this new form: to identify whether poets isolated the middle lines or used them to link the two halves of the poem.

Did the Folding Middle Line Stand Alone or Link the Two Halves of Poetry?

Analysis of the seventy-six Folding Mirror poems on the fmpoetrywebsite at the time of the research found that:

• fifty-one had the middle line dividing the two halves of the poem
• twenty-five used the middle line to link the two halves.

The Stand Alone Folding Middle Line Poems

An example of a middle line standing alone is found in Sarah James’s Caved poem. The last line of the top half of the poem ends in a full stop, the middle line stands alone and the first line of the bottom half of the poem starts with a capital letter:

night, keep my wings hidden.

Unhinged by symmetry or hinged by unsymmetry…

My flightless wings hide me.

Another example is found in the centre of Norman Bissett’s The Grand Old Duke Of York poem:

are ours in abundance.

With the passing years, spirits droop, limbs become leaden.

Weighed down by an excess

The Linking Middle Line Poems

Of the twenty-five middle lines that linked the two halves of the poems, eighteen were full links between the top half and the bottom.

An example of this is the middle of Zoya Gautam’s Priestess poem:

cloistered priestess of the night

embracing darkness

in the scent of her silence

Of the other seven poems, three had the top half of the poem linking with the middle line and a full stop at its end, before the bottom half of the poem starts anew. An example of this is Wendy Webb’sConstitutional Crisis poem:

Martyr him in column ink, for it is better that

one should be sacrificed for the people.

Martyr him in column ink, for it is better than;

Four poems had the top half of the poem ending with a full stop just before the middle line, and then the folding middle line starting the second half of the poem. An example of this is Claire Knight’s Summer Garden poem:

as light breeze dances.

Fragrant blooms of roses scent the warm day

as light breeze dances,

Conclusion

About two-thirds of the Folding Mirror poems had the middle folding line of the poem as a stand alone, while about one-third had the folding middle line linking the two halves in some way. The results of the research will hopefully give inspiration to poets interested in the form, and more Folding Mirror poems will be created.

New Mirror Poem Comments on British Class System

Dedicated to the British class system and Islamic gender apartheid elites: to a decade of cooperation and support against the lower class and gender! (That’s irony by the way!!).

While recently travelling, and having time to look around, Marc Latham sheltered from rain, and saw it was falling as snow at a higher altitude. He thought it could be a subject for a Folding Mirror poem, and when it had absorbed into his mind a little later, he also thought it could be a metaphor for the class system. Here’s the poem:

Essentially Water, Landing Dependent

Snow falls on high
icing the mountains
evaporated droplets
randomly settling
above the dividing line
of temperature

Thirty-two Fahrenheit, Zero-degrees Celsius

longer falling
drop below the cut
driving hard
almost invisible
washed down gutters
rain muddies the ground

Marc Latham’s central site is the Greenygrey (http://www.greenygrey.co.uk), and he has books available on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/author/marclatham).

Poem Linking Shaman Vortex and Space Wormhole

Although in some ways I’d have preferred 242 Mirror Poems and Reflections to be published by a big publisher, self-publishing on Kindle does have some advantages. As well as a quick and efficient service, keeping costs down, and saving paper, you can also edit it after first publishing. And today I suddenly thought out of nowhere that I’d made a mistake, and lo and behold, I had written about documentaries marking the 25th anniversary of punk, instead of 35, which early-bird readers might have noticed. I have now changed it.

Although the above book marks a big milestone in Folding Mirror poetry, I thought that it shouldn’t delay the new era, so here’s Marc Latham’s new FM poem. It was inspired by hearing about wormholes on television space documentaries like How the Universe Works and Horizon, and reading about how our ancestors thought vortexes provided pathways to the spirit world in Williams and Pearce’s Inside the Neolithic Mind. 

English: Deutsch: (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Shamanism and Science

to travel vast distances
in and out
through universes
physicists hypothesise
traversable wormholes

in space future, like ancestral past’s

trance vortexes
shamans’ gateways
into otherworlds
above and below
mind and physical Earth

Sedona Energy Vortex (Photo credit: Al_HikesAZ)

Marc Latham’s central site is the Greenygrey (http://www.greenygrey.co.uk)

Poem about Love being like a Drug

Last week was one of positives and negatives in the creation of the 242 Folding Mirror Poems and Reflections book, with a new poem created, but another duplicate found. That left one more poem to create to reach 121 Folding Mirror poems.  The good news is that it was written today. This is the poem written last week.

It was written after an article reported that the striatum part of the brain is connected with desires for love and drugs, as proposed by an old Roxy Music song.

Sky in the sky (Photo credit: luvi)

Blue Skies, Delta Blues

EUPHORIA
DARLING GLORIA
SWEET MORNING GLORY
SUN IS SHINING
BIRDS IN THE AIR
SKY IS INVITING
WHAT GOES UP…

Try not to stray from the Striatum

must come down…
in a hole
thunder is over there
clouds of despair
dealt the blues
dragon looms
depression

The Greyest of Blue Skies (album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Marc Latham’s Central site is @ greenygrey.co.uk (http:www.greenygrey.co.uk)