|
Sure. Non-western burial. 141 ![]() Her death was a release. And everybody knew it. Her face had its last crease. The last sock had been knit. The fam'ly reunited. All petty grudges swept Under, on fire lighted. Two of the women wept. Her waxen face tranquil. Black lustre wooden coffin. The chapel solemn, still. Priest on familiar routine. He mumbled from his tome Farewells said, and tears cried. Launched almost home With boredom guilty ride. A fresh hole in the ground On the edge of the path. We went around and round Dropped handfuls of gray earth. The grave filled by workmen. A squabble over head Or feet cross placement. Communally constructed flower bed. A homeward awkward walk Resentful reminiscence Over a decanter of vodka Teetotaling quiescence. Uneasy brooding under moon. An odd bucket of earth To dump onto the oozing dune. A couple plastic roses.
|
![]() |
|
![]()
|
# ? Feb 16, 2025 03:19 |
|
Etherwind posted:Betrayed they both had been, and now the beast There's even some (Heaney) Beowulf in there. You are some kind of crazy poetic juggernaut, man. I think you should take this down to your nearest Spoken Work night and show them real talk. On Thunderbrawls: My tuppence is that they only really 'work' if they're special, and that's only if you get the sense that the thread is watching. If they're not, we might as well play email chess. Same goes for a sub-thread, I don't think everyone would check it. Sure, it's good to find more excuses to write, but this thread can only provide so many at a time. My vote would be one brawl allowed per week, one round maximum, in this thread.
|
![]() |
|
Symptomless Coma posted:
This has a good ring to it. I also like the idea that anyone can leap forward to judge, unless the contestants want someone specific. Judging is fun.
|
![]() |
|
I think thunderbrawls should be in-thread, and there should be no limit to how many you can do. You just have to pay X money to do them. A tab is kept until the end of the month, and you must donate that amount to a charity of our choosing (must provide screenshot proof) at the end of the month or face a ban from TD. Maybe forever, maybe for the next month. Something along the lines of $1 USD to challenge someone, and they can pay $1 to accept on their tab or you can pay $2 to cover their tab and yours (along with picking the prompt), and they're the dick for not writing for charity. If someone wants to sponsor a fight, they can put it on their tab. It's a great idea because it's FOR THE CHILDREN, you greedy hacks.
|
![]() |
|
Hahahaha writers having money.
|
![]() |
|
The successful ones do ![]() But if you can't spare a dollar to feed a starving African child for two days because you'll have to drink a glass of purified, delicious tap water instead of Mt. Dew... I don't know what to tell you ![]()
|
![]() |
|
Dammit I forgot there was going to be a new Thunderdome thread and never checked beyond my bookmarks. I'm not a poetry person anyway so I guess I'll wait for the next prompt. ![]() SurreptitiousMuffin posted:"I THINK THE SADDEST RHINO IS A BAD RHINO AND I CHALLENGE HIM TO A LOVECRAFT-HORROR-3-PART-OFF" Etherwind posted:Saddest Rhino, you gonna take that poo poo? He's calling you out! WHAT IS THIS ![]()
|
![]() |
|
![]()
|
![]() |
|
HiddenGecko posted:GeckoBrawl Round II Iroel I'm awake now, so you basically have until I get tired of trying to get my TD submission to 350 words to get in here and post your Thunderbrawl response.
|
![]() |
|
Alright, this poem is bumming me the gently caress out, so I'm posting it now even though it's only 267 words. Eat it, Benagain, you monster. 267 words - Flash Rule: can't use the word "death" Every Day After I was drunk at your funeral strung out at half-mast while your brother administered the eulogy, as dry and creased as the maple leaves that hung, limp around the memorial garden. After the service the others wouldn’t look at me, their eyes fluttering away from mine like frightened sparrows as if the loss were contagious, a widowhood of the soul and your urn a strange trophy of my survival. At home in the bed I don’t sleep in I press my body into your outline pretending I can still smell your scent on the sheets,searching out every last particle and pressing them into my skin for safekeeping. And now the phone bring brings an anniversary every time someone calls up; the memory of that Monday and the measured tones pouring bad news down the line followed by the steady drip drip of condolences, like an icepick between the eyes. I didn’t cancel your newspaper subscription, kept your name next to mine on the mailbox as if the entity called you and me still exists. I only keep the crosswords though, filled in and folded into paper cranes that roost with ghosts of your cup on the coffee table. The last note that you wrote me lives in my wallet, folded like stray DNA your essence pressed into the paper so that as I stand on the shoreline and watch yesterday’s sand sink back in, and even as the wind separates your ashes from my hands and the last strands of you unwind and disappear into the substrate I can still pretend that I’ll see you again in the morning.
|
![]() |
|
Erik Shawn-Bohner posted:I think thunderbrawls should be in-thread, and there should be no limit to how many you can do. You just have to pay X money to do them. A tab is kept until the end of the month, and you must donate that amount to a charity of our choosing (must provide screenshot proof) at the end of the month or face a ban from TD. Maybe forever, maybe for the next month. Something along the lines of $1 USD to challenge someone, and they can pay $1 to accept on their tab or you can pay $2 to cover their tab and yours (along with picking the prompt), and they're the dick for not writing for charity. If someone wants to sponsor a fight, they can put it on their tab. No offence, but I honestly think this is a terrible idea for a whole variety of reasons. Bullshit ahoy: Firstly, who picks the charities? What if the ethics or institutions underlying the charity conflict with those held by one of the writers? This is more likely than you think, especially the more one knows about the charities in question (Amnesty International springs to mind as an example). Secondly, introducing money to things complicates them really quickly, as with it you introduce the inherent social imbalance on which capital is predicated. While I could afford to pay that, I know people who couldn't afford it given how tight their margins are (enough money for simple food, rent, gas, electricity and Internet and little else). It puts an opportunity cost - no matter how minor to you and me - on what should be undertaken freely. Thirdly, it distorts the competition. It's one thing to let the contestants sort out the details, and quite another to say "He who writes the cheque picks the prompt." Fourthly, as foreign as it may seem, some of us prefer not to talk about our charitable donations publicly as a matter of principle, and participation would force that. Fifthly, I'd be prepared to bet it'll put new people off participating in Thunderdome. Last I heard, that was still a concern. Lastly, there's the issue of monetising what should be a conflict of honour. ![]() All of this seems reason enough to not do it, especially since there's nothing stopping a pair of brawlers from agreeing to do charitable donations. They could even agree to make it a wager! Etherwind fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jan 13, 2013 |
![]() |
|
I think that's a joke. I know it from seeing quite a few jokes in my time.
|
![]() |
|
Humour will not be permitted after the revolution, comrade. ![]()
|
![]() |
|
These are all petty concerns considering the massive cash flow it would generate. We could point it at a world problem, and this thread could have it solved in a couple months. But for the sake of arguing in good faith, I'll address your points: 1) It shouldn't be hard to pick one organization that everyone can agree on. Something that wouldn't cause any moral conflicts like donating to the IDF. 2/3) While I see your side, it's simply the way of the world that the fiscally responsible have put themselves in the position where they have the best resources to make informed decisions. 4) I wouldn't consider it so much a donation as a tax on the privilege of self-expression. 5) To groom a proper community, it is necessary to keep certain types from jumping into the middle of things without having first proven themselves capable. Much like keeping a country club running smoothly, it's best to let them serve the community so they can have an up-close view of how everything works. In reality, it's offering them a grand opportunity. I hope I have answered your questions fully and we've come to an understanding.
|
![]() |
|
And now, the Ceremony of Ascension. Begin the Sausage Tossing Ritual!
|
![]() |
|
Twice now did the prompt and challenge defeated me. Death on Death (351 words) Goodbye to you Yes, hello, hello I am here I’m sorry to bear bad news: You’re no more, you’ve passed, You’ve gone and spent your last Moments of life. No, there aren’t any games Miracles or second chances Once you died you remain In that state, forever lifeless, forever over! Don’t start to cry now You’re many years too late! Look, there isn’t anything I can do to help, I am just Carrying you to the next World of wonders Probably. I have had enough of this Crying and sobbing At time around death Why can’t you smile for Once when you die Or be happy As I welcome you I hate that you’ve feared Me; I hate that you have Feared a force of nature With a personality Likes and needs So much that you named ‘It’ the ‘Grim Reaper’ I much prefer ‘Death’! I didn’t start off reaping I didn’t start off grim! I started off picking I started off grinning! I am sick of you Being scared of death When it is only the briefest Seconds at the end. People resist being taken As if moving on will hurt As if I will hurt No, I don’t have A loving scythe. I don’t cut you off Your own body did that! I just pick you up So you get on To the next world! I don’t have a steed Of burning skulls I don’t need a ride Of magic bones To bring you out From this place. Do you want to stay Here in this void? The sizzling, swirling, Swaying darkness? Didn’t think so! So shut up and walk With me. No, there is no light, No tunnels either. It’s easy to get lost In the realm of after Death. What’s in the world beyond This realm? I do not know Nor do I care Notice I handle deaths What’s before, What’s after, What do I care. Here at last we reached The end of our team Just give a step Now go on then! Move past! Your life had ended Your death had too
|
![]() |
|
EPISODE: XXIII: DIE FOR YOUR POETRY assigned mission- twinkle cave: have at least 5% of their final wordcount (do the math yourself, gumling) comprised of neologisms, or newly coined words. Think Jabberwocky and nonsense verse. AND+ I originally started the wrong prompt so also "written from the perspective of a dying man" which actually belonged to Your Sledgehammer. (word count: 826 including inextricably intertwined header statement) = Pedro’s is a real place. It’s located in North Carolina along I-95 off Exit 1, just south of the Virginia border. A way-point since 1950 for Northerners vacationing to Florida, it isn’t what it used to be. Ben Bernanke is said to have worked there as a carney in his youth, though officially he was a poncho wearing waiter. Exit 1 Pedro’s South of the Border looks like poo poo. Class warfare prints were found at the scene, and suspected. as in gender warfare, as in substance warfare, as in ideologue warfare, as in junkies will forevermore go there to die. But once Bernanke worked there, and VCR repairman conferenced three days vacation away, sniffing over-chlorinated pools wasted next to the interstate. Where station wagon’s trolled the super lots to embattle in mediocre joy and check-in to future-now’s past radtainment of the new. Envision Pedro’s asiatic stereo-caricature apologetic retarded buckteeth greeting, inviting to make sepia toned humor, as skin sticks to synthetic upholstery, debonding upon arrival, wife slowly fantasizing lonely suicide in floral prints against a like floral print patio chair cushion against like floral print highway scrub and all the silent dually cruel squelched dramatic night sex squeezed out in the otherness of tin-pan boxed AC motel leisure. The coarse enunciation of racial slights before we had a black president would qualify, “People who have nothing don’t know how hard it is,” unpacking excessive compression from the modeled weight a husband wore in the days when they came with hats and women gloves. Above Virginia there is gene mutation from richy people overfucking expressed in adults with small childly white teeth belonging to vampish ravenous empowered ingrates. Below is evidenced gene overlap/cancellation resulting in wide-set eyes letting-it-all-hang-out-to-never-be-put-back-in. “I-95 is an accelerated axis of mutation polarized with opposing filthy indulgences”, I mutter to floorboard, and break slowly into the only stripmall stripperclub I might ever hope for, shouldered to a “Spa” with blacked-out windows. In my room are cardboard furniture melted by nicotine, silhouette-thin walls, (The real barrier; mutually assured horror of counter-occupant’s addle) skeeve carpet like a deficiency rash on the lower abdomen etching downward. Out the window, past skin peel curtains, lot lizards slouch into their next mouthful, (walleyed high-headed backwoods snake church scags with a little t and a big A corralled into motorcade spooge glamour by determined trust in humanity and a tingle in their cooters no amount of hair-tightening bun twists ever dampened) wiping up whore bucks from whore masters, having the full rompleshit, cause no attractive woman has parted pedro’s grime non-ironically in a lifetime except the death seekers flogging for ruin porn. Me, deep now, beyond raising, plumed in Pedro’s musky crotch where the heat is ripping sweat from my rear end (that crease of fallow housing where the MD crammled the nuke). Half-life. What bullshit. What an rear end in a top hat. The garbage human race lives too long, with dick-to-rear end cancer the leading edge of quickly deluding machinery. No need to patch a wounded wound, while the aged rape the young by clutching the vine withering it downard, soaking nutrients, from salve to succubus they change, and I saw the magazine face of our 43nd and knew “He’s praying to the devil, that shitteration.” I hear the trees boughing and black, down to swat me from the stage. No parlor tricking to a lower level to duck pre:/man descending stair behind couch/ And I’ve seen the eyes of gently caress buckets that breed the world with stains. Eyes that will love no one ever, the same I waited for but never paused on me. Gasolining the room brings to mind that first beaterbox propelled by my spit and ingenuity, and I pause, but no, this show will close. There are always reasons for the weak to grasp; I want to spread a few minutes across Pedro’s face, swat pinballs into twitchy arcing elements pocketed in his sombrero topped arcade, run a hand along a poolside wrought iron fence, bumble through the fuckwits and doofus hoarders. But the fire is hot already, laid up licking at the fungled shower board as if it where the cancer coring my vitals. Suicides crouch in a dark corner festering like harmed animals, but I stare at the mirror, extending the distance between my vertebrae, and look at this blue eyed sack of creature, and no nothing of it. Life meant nothing; less than the crumpled black edge of a dead leaf pasted to a storm sewer wall. Leaving behind only rear end in a top hat’s tainted radiation pellet, which will rapidly approach zero but never zilch, outlasting this earth and all in it. Organism vapid and dispersed beneath the trailing edge of poo poo drug futureward. Disgusted by ceremony, the handbag of sociopaths, I’m torching the evidence. Pedro’s going with me. I burn this mother fucker to the ground. twinkle cave fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Jan 13, 2013 |
![]() |
|
Welp, Iroel didn't post anything yet, and it's like 20 hours after I said you guys had 14-16 to get it done, so I'm awarding HiddenGecko the sweetest victory of all, a win by default. Hooray for you! ![]()
|
![]() |
|
Admiral's Grove (358) By the sea is where I was born, In a saltbox house, battered and worn. My home, my life, around the bay, The gulls swoop through the ocean spray. There I lived since I was young, Til a sickness seeped into my lung. Though I lay in a hospital bed, My thoughts travel back home instead. I don't think of the smell of the sea, Or the wood stove or a warm cup of tea Not my family, wife or even my son, Of all the moments, I think about one. I cannot help myself but think, Of the time I bought that girl a drink. It was up the bay, Little Grouse Cove, In a run-down bar called Admiral's Grove. A pretty young thing, up on a stool, Watching Big Paddy playin' some pool. She was almost done the last of her beer, So I sings out, “Another one here!” Dark brown skin, her hair all black, None like her up the shore and back. She danced with Dick and John and Rod, But she had me hooked like a jig in a cod. So I stands up and asks her for a scuff, And she sticks with me till she has enough. We dances around, b'y I spose tis a crime, But can't a married man have a good time? I takes her up the hill and onto the head, And treated it like a wedding bed. Never felt better me entire life, But I had to go home, cause I had a wife. Didn't seen her atall after that night, I got her address, but I never did write. I thought about her, week to week, But I got me doubts we'll ever speak. I figured that fate must be unkind, I'm married, so I puts her out of me mind. Never did tell me missus the truth, I 'spose if I did she'd knock out me tooth. But I tells ya, on me way to the grave, I'm not thinkin' of Jesus or if he can save. I thinks of the girl with dark-brown skin, And cries cause I'll never see her again.
|
![]() |
|
Oh god what have I done. I have constructed a poem. I have not even attempted this, ever, at all, in any serious fashion. But it's done. After two separate rewrites, it's done. I hope you're happy, Thunderdome. This is what your have wrought from my mind. I had to do it, though. I knew if I chickened out on poetry week that I'd chicken out on every week thereafter, and I can't have that. I was born to be here, in the Thunderdome. If nothing else, this experience has given me newfound respect for those who try to write poetry seriously. Enjoy. Jerks. Flash Rule: Poem must be an acrostic poem that spells out "ONLY DEATH IS REAL" Word Count: 377 Mountain Climber code:
|
![]() |
|
6 hours to go. Get crankin', versifiers.
|
![]() |
|
Erik Shawn-Bohner posted:1) It shouldn't be hard to pick one organization that everyone can agree on. Something that wouldn't cause any moral conflicts like donating to the IDF. Bad Seafood fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jan 13, 2013 |
![]() |
|
![]() ![]() on the rooftop we found new names for old stars We're smoking cloves and roses high above the city streets. She says “We're out of beer and love. We did our best and that's enough.” My monsoon girl is in a drought. No fear my son! I stop to measure weather and lose track of time. My head is spinning now- the tremor moving down from head to hands. “It's Audenesque, almost,” she says. Her frown is catching. poo poo, I'm losing track again: it's something about oceans or bad dreams- I never read the books she liked. A shame but time is what you make of it. It seems I've spent what little time I had with her on hurricanes, poems, tremors and sleep.
|
![]() |
|
Dem Bones, Dem Dry Boners Flash Rule: Must be a limerick (197 words) And on that tawdry night ran the skeleton Through the abbey and right into the fountain. Pardon me ma’am I've lost my head But I think that’s better left unsaid. Oh my, what a scamp, that little demon! Right down the road ran that tawdry skeleton Every pub in town was made to hearken. Ma’am! Pleasure to see you on the stool A lady of your caliber is no fool. I’m just lonely, can’t a lady get a swig of bourbon? A bone white finger signaled the barman The skeleton acted the part of a bachelor. Oh this ring? We’re divorced ma’am Stay those heaving bosoms. Why I never, barman! another oily toucan! Somewhere in the night a hat appears On top of the bone white head it leers. Come home with me tonight my lady And don’t think me creepy I’m leaving, I’m calling the police! Stop those jeers! The skeleton left alone that night, back to his grave Feeling right pauper and a little bit knave. The morning is upon me, it beams and smokes! I guess I’ll go lay down with my kinfolks. He just wasn't my type officer, and he just wouldn't behave!
|
![]() |
|
HiddenGecko posted:Dem Bones, Dem Dry Boners The Nantucket Tourism Mafia wants a word about not paying them their due--especially in a piece with the word "boners" in the title.
|
![]() |
|
budgieinspector posted:The Nantucket Tourism Mafia wants a word about not paying them their due--especially in a piece with the word "boners" in the title. That's my boner story and I'm boner sticking to it, boner.
|
![]() |
|
Everyone shut the gently caress up about American dollars and Catholic charities and I don't know what the gently caress, thanks in advance.
|
![]() |
|
Man, gently caress iambic pentameter. My stressed, unstressed are off probably. It's not pretty, but here it is. Flash Rule: Iambic Pentameter Word Count: 415 Death's Door "There's a way to split your soul from body" the note I found inside my text book said. "It's a simple trick that anyone can learn. If you would like I will show you the way." "As you begin to drift to sleep tonight, you'll need to look for an immense, dark door. Passing through will hurt, but then you'll be free. Going through will be just like a death." I found the door - walking up its shadow. To reach the knob, I had to climb its front. Splinters, slivers, cut my fingers and toes. The knob numbed me like my hands were in snow. It opened like a wake in deep water. My chest opened then too and I poured out. My being, thoughts, feelings like a long piss - dilute, expand and drift to find more souls. We sit with our coffees warming our hands. The street out the window is quiet still. Only we're up - not even the baker. Our eyes are low in the heavy morning. Water runs warm, heated by the bonfire that makes dashes into the dark forest. Dirt and stones stick to our many bare feet. We're up when the night bleeds to day, like souls. For a moment it's day during the night. Lightning falls down on the valley below. We point up and light splits sky like black cloth on white screen that shears and shines from behind. Sometimes I shrink, condense - droplets on glass. I funnel to my source, to my body to see how it's doing without me there. It must be hard living without a soul. Soon I find it sitting in a sleek building. It has a crease etched in its brow line now. Its tie cuts off air from reaching its lungs. It's bent over a screen that I can't read now. It forgets what day it is - they're the same. It wakes with a girl who's name he doesn't know and wonders as he walks home, what her days are like and if she still has her soul. Books sit, lonely now. "I don't have the time anymore." I heard it say, Even that text book lies uncracked, spine unbent, words unread. This was something we used to do as one. It sleeps on a couch, bathed in blue light from the TV deep in a beer-sleep, snoring. I should be sad for it, but then I think: If this is life, then I'll choose death. EDIT: Word Count monkeyboydc fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Jan 13, 2013 |
![]() |
|
monkeyboydc posted:Man, gently caress iambic pentameter. Everyone always says that it's Babby's First Meter, but for some reason I'm wired to default to tetrameter. Adding that extra foot makes everything sound off, to me.
|
![]() |
|
budgieinspector posted:Everyone always says that it's Babby's First Meter, but for some reason I'm wired to default to tetrameter. Adding that extra foot makes everything sound off, to me. I think most people are wired to tetrameter, but that's what makes Iambic Pentameter so strong: it forces you to think hard about what you're writing, and to include enjambment. The real difficulty lies in making sure the regional stress pattern you follow when speaking actually corresponds to English proper, since there's substantial variation between how stresses are placed on words regionally and how they're supposed to be placed. Case in point, "frequently". FRE-quent-LY, right? Turns out that it's meant to be pronounced fre-QUENT-ly: the confusion comes from different accents elongating the first "e", which makes people pronounce the "y" to match. This is apparently incorrect. You can imagine what a pain it is for a Scottish English speaker (from near Glasgow) to write stressed poetry: we pronounce "computer" as "c-mpu-r." Means loving going over that poo poo with a fine-toothed comb. Etherwind fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jan 14, 2013 |
![]() |
|
Flash Rule: Must contain the words "Mouth-friend" and "Frigorific." Extra Rule: Do not use the same word twice. Word Count: 288 (It took on a meaning and I wasn't willing to pad it just for a number.) Commentary: Poetry is hard. I Cannot Say Shifty persuasive mouth-friend Selfish bold striped candy cane Wanton gulping Thorazine Homemade sub sea jellybean Sickly hormone rocket rise Judgment backing terrify Perversion cunning evident Blaspheme courted malcontent Highlight reel regarded box Gypsy teepee floodlight thoughts Silver desperate trusting thread Passive sugar freckle red Pheromone doorway strangulate Needless belief captivate Corded constant transferring Regarding dammit blasphemy Soaking disregard hard press Early stealthy slight suggest Danger lingual cool direct Defying thoughtful wrong select Gimmick satin classic split Discover mashing cushion trick Frenzied failure obvious Cursing freeing never reach Thumping concerned mockery Prone compulsive sweeping string Overdoing confession Clawing fighting keeping none Musky bronze indigo eyes Decided cherry pie surmise Deep eternal glint headway Willing fight enduring play Murder conscience heavy rain Placate affable one way Illusion scaffolding deny Consumption decayed butterfly Verbal hold anticipate Instinct intellect explain Gifted unappreciative Duration qualify believe Conquer obstacle despite Thorny dedicated light Stubborn envy peer around Devotion static swinging trowel Twinkle furnace genuflect Groping buoyant curling tech Crustacean symbol integrate Solid burnish granting weight Fitting boundary overlap Dark wire frozen windblown slant Decisive cold diminishing Extend persuade long filigree Crispy darting submerge slick Costly upright misplaced script Dogged dangerous display Distance fogging andalé Echo bourbon takeout pop Anti-fugal airborne drug Mysterious soliloquy Summit chest belittling Surprising bolster masticate Languid oral deafening Frigorific seas shut it down Amusing punishments astound Ten ton onslaught in the wings Hair trigger golden mecanique Gerrymander cross-stitched thighs Supported flesh thick white zip tie Collapsing space infinity Pockmarked distant tragedy Gasping only shrieking clown Context rules crushing abound Mourning fabric disappear Tenuous skinny prudence beer Handful sheep proselytize Deceit construction netting lies Depth charge invitation true Milky ordered posse queue Coaxing flight path genuine Careless caustic end of line
|
![]() |
|
Oh, crud. Requesting permission to add my flash rule to my submission.
|
![]() |
|
toanoradian posted:Oh, crud. Requesting permission to add my flash rule to my submission. DENIED.
|
![]() |
|
Okay then.toanoradian posted:Death on Death Flash rule:
|
![]() |
|
2 hours remain. Mojoman, shoot me your email in case Benagain disappears for another thousand years.
|
![]() |
|
Etherwind posted:The real difficulty lies in making sure the regional stress pattern you follow when speaking actually corresponds to English proper, since there's substantial variation between how stresses are placed on words regionally and how they're supposed to be placed. Really, though, why would you do this? It's not like any of us is born region-less, and though I'm hardly well-versed (Ha! Ha!) in prominent poets, I imagine a great loving many of them write to a local idiom and gain recognition as a poet from x. Sure what you describe may be the correctest possible approach to English, but at the same time it suggests that only English speakers of a certain region and class are capable of natural, fluid self-expression and everyone else must imagine their words spoken in such a tongue, and that can't possibly be right, can it?
|
![]() |
|
This was much harder than it ought to have been. Poetry is the elephant in my room. Flash rule: Must contain a geologist I didn't kill mine, instead I took inspiration from a founding father of modern geology and the idea of deep time. Time Vaster than Death ~385 words Death waits like the jaws of a shark at the bottom of a rowboat tipped on end. Between sweat-soaked sheets at night, you contemplate how everyone you know will die. Their neurons will go dim and the latticework shadow that makes up their very selves will dissolve and run like ink into a drain beneath the great faucet of inevitability. But lest ye despair: James Hutton was a man who's long since met that dark and endless end. First a farmer, then a turner of stones, he found death in the bed of every creek, river and gorge. Man thought the world young in James Hutton's day, young enough to fit inside our pocketbook minds. It was off the coast of Berwickshire that a different tale was told, not a tale of man but that of stone and detritus and ruin and decay. Once, a continent bled mud and sand onto the floor of an ancient sea, sedentary grit like so much sloughed off skin, a slurry of things not living and things deceased. James Hutton, when he looked upon the rocky shore, saw a wrinkle in the gown of great mother earth, one wrinkle from one swirl of her green and blue ball gown and stole of clouds, one turn in her long and stately dance. Deep time, James Hutton named the rhythm of the planet's slow song, and he traced her steps backward through plodding, calamitous prehistory. Whole lands swallowed back into mother's skirts, children called home by the light of her fiery core to pay the debt of their birth. And so there you sweat, and there you agonize in a world of concrete, wood and petrol, that your essence will someday not be your own, that your life is so sacred, that your love is so profound, that you should continue where all else is given back into mother earth's fold. One hundred thousand pictures embroidered in the pattern of her dress, and you've been them, you'll be them as strata in stone, as lichen and moss; as the mud between a child's toes in generations to come, and sandstone in sublime and majestic cliffs. Living and dying, we feed the dance and as James Hutton penned: We find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.
|
![]() |
|
STONE OF MADNESS posted:Really, though, why would you do this? It's not like any of us is born region-less, and though I'm hardly well-versed (Ha! Ha!) in prominent poets, I imagine a great loving many of them write to a local idiom and gain recognition as a poet from x. Well, it's for this reason (among many others) that I prefer a descriptivist view of language. Unfortunately that presupposes an audience familiar with the patois with which you are writing, and unless you're fortunate to start with one that's very widely known, you're necessarily restricting your audience or otherwise rendering your work parochial. Like, for my poem, if I'd gone with the rhymes and rhythms that feel natural under Scottish English I'd probably alienate most of the readers in this thread unless I also specifically adopted a Scottish style or setting to contextualise it. Like, how many Scottish novelists or poets are you familiar with? Now, of those, how many's work does not predominantly involve Scotland in some form? Of those remaining, how Scottish is the voice they employ?
|
![]() |
|
Bad Seafood posted:2 hours remain. BONUS HAIKU sleep is a tunnel a shortcut we take through the ever-dreaming earth sebmojo fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Jan 14, 2013 |
![]() |
|
![]()
|
# ? Feb 16, 2025 03:19 |
|
Etherwind posted:Points, all of them valid But still, what is the point of being a poet? Is it a) being a conduit for the automatic speech of the culture (your culture) b) casting a spell of words to lend your speech a mystical, hypnotic effect (see above) c) adhering to the rules so that you technically achieve a recognised form of poetry d) success I mean, there have to be heaps of American poets that don't give a poo poo about proper English stresses, right?
|
![]() |