Free-verse texticonography

Following a recent workshop on using 'new media' to generate poetry, here's a short one using emoticons and similar, plus its associated explanation...

Took a dip in a \___/
found an old Black Sabbath LP –
playable
\m/>.<\m/
u like CraaAAaiiIIig DaaAAaviIid
:p

Translates as:

Took a dip in a skip
 
found an old Black Sabbath LP –
playable
 
[symbols indicating listening to metal - it's two hands raised with 'finger-horns' either side of scrunched-up eyes]
 
u like CraaAAaiiIIig DaaAAaviIid (mocking Craig David's uppy/downy, oversung-but-bland vocal stylings)
 
blowing-a-raspberry smiley

Wordy workshops and ichthyology

From yesterday's Archimedes Screw workshop on using social media (etc) to create poetry. One exercise was to find a tweet or facebook status update, then use it as a repeated refrain. BTW, Sphoeroides is a genus of pufferfish...

Homo sphoeroides

Platy teeth crush shells and carapaces,
tetrodotoxin awaits unwary fugu-diners
with diaphragm paralysis –
bite me, I’ll bite your lungs,
I’m like a pufferfish in more ways than one.

Hanging boxily in warm midwater,
unhydrodynamic, spines flat for now –
approach with caution,
spikes may rise like the sun,
I’m like a pufferfish in more ways than one.

Slow but manoeuverable, comfort-built,
achieving surprising short-distance speed,
OK – an acquired taste maybe,
floating relaxedly rotund,
I’m like a pufferfish in more ways than one.

I sit at depth, playing in the sand,
making submarine crop-circles,
supposedly enticing new mates,
but spawning’s done,
I’m like a pufferfish in more ways than one.

Trying to avoid excessive use of superlatives

Inspired by yesterday's amazing ascent of the Shard by Greenpeace volunteers.

#iceclimb

One giant shard of city crystal,
six ants,
all queens,
skip security,
slowly swarm up
a thousand sheer-slab feet of protest,
an urban berg,
to fly the Arctic flag in clear skies where
actions
provoke a Twitter-storm,
hashtag, retweet, share
and feelings of vicarious adrenaline.

Outflanked,
Shell fume silently at the Trendmap,
suits, tie-tongued, mutter nothings about safety,
shuffle off to sign
more soulless polar drilling deals,
words
ringing in their shell-likes, change waiting on lines one, two, three…
after fifteen hours of hard-won history,
damn,
but it was beautiful to see.

Watching the watchers

Mocking the snoops of the NSA etc...

Political Spectrum

Apparently you’ve been snooping with your Prism,
Rifling through everybody’s dirty electronic laundry,
Trying to shed light on the reds through greens to violets,
Cyber-paparazzi dredging shredding out of desktop trashcans,
Manhandling rantbook status updates,
Getting overexcited when someone Googles
‘Taliban’ or ‘Jäger-bombs’ –
Does a little warning LED
Flash on a wired black box in Langley or the Pentagon
Every time Monsanto’s labelled ‘evil’
Or YouTube gets another anti-warfare song?

Do you get a tingle
In your standard-issue underpants,
Stealthy teflon spY-fronts,
Watching all the Twitter-chitter-chat,
And amusingly recaptioned cats? –
‘LOLspooks’ –
If it’s me that you’ve been stalking,
You’ll know my taste in music’s loud,
That I’m inordinately fond of bugs,
Rather keen on all things green,
But to bigots, creatively rude,
And so on – no dots to join or evil plots;
My dissent is free for all to see,
So if you want to know,
Up in your silicon-chipped towers,
Just phone me,
(Normal office hours).

Confronting the confrontational

Carrying on with some political verse...

Taking down the fascists

Back then it was all boots in back-alleys,
Dodging bottles and brickbats,
Scanning the passed-round pages of Searchlight magazine
For news of who’s been outed –
Neo-Nazi teacher,
Neo-Nazi policeman,
Neo-Nazi care assistant;
Outed and out,
Hard skins on hard skins,
Abrasive times.

Twenty years later,
Keyboards are weapons –
Explosive blogs and Twitter-storms,
Report-bombing runs in facebook’s
Oh-so-social theatre of war –
Screenshots ring out right-wing alarm-bells,
Sound bigots’ online death-knells,
Watch Hitler-lickers’ mouths go dry –

‘I wuz hacked’,
‘I wuz reachin’ for the phone’,
‘I wuz showing ‘ow tall a sunflower is’ –

No, we all know a sieg heil salute when we see one,
So post, repost and hyperlink;
Hatecrime’s real, even when it’s virtual.

NaPoWriMo day 27

NaPoWriMo day 27. The prompt was to think of a well-known phrase and Google the first three words, taking material from the top however-many hits to create a poem. I went for ‘one man’s meat is another man’s poison’, avoiding paraphrasing the original idiom or pilfering bits from existing works with this title such as ‘One Man’s Meat’ by E.B.White or the Deep Purple song lyrics. This is what appeared:

One man’s meat

On the brink of madness,
I am hopelessly infatuated,
Too personal for an almanac,
Too sophisticated,
Too funny and self-doubting,
Please notice that I'm not asking -
Menace just wants to pick a fight,
And it doesn't matter if there's no issue.

Giving reasons, I puzzled over why
The reasonable, truthful writer
Put an end to all this nonsense
Despite the glamour –
Something to do with the echo of threat,
Being ripped apart,
Chaos popularly expressed
As he investigates the body,
Treasure in the idioms, unlike death,
Remains mere speculation,
Agitation for autonomy,
Meaning, expansion, explanation -
I really hadn't expected this,
A domestic history I'm not good enough to enter,
Sad that a beautiful trip came to an end,
Stories without jargon and without too much weightiness,
Proclaiming this one of the best -
To my mind there is nothing quite so dramatic.

Across the world,
Come home to roost,
Cyclopean gods and monsters
Touch a raw nerve,
Spitting into a test tube,
Met with dread by most,
They have never (hardly ever)
Responded to the assertion
About the futility of a perfect example,
But let's face it,
One of us is missing and presumed eaten.

The strategic end of the New
Carries more weight than meets the eye,
All in a day's work when fleshing out
Any lingering doubts about
The obstacles it faces,
For, conveying the truth,
Few people seem to be rewarded -
It baffles me to imagine how
An imprisoned man is certain
Everyone seems to have at least one tune,
Picked with care and pampered for years,
I have a question for you -
What do you mean you don't?

NaPoWriMo day 24

NaPoWriMo's day 24 prompt was to take the results from putting your name into an online anagram-finder and use them to write a poem about yourself. I’ve tweaked this slightly in the light of the words that popped out and, after some umming-and-ahing, decided instead to plump for pure smut!

Anagram me filthy

A bidden velvet bush,
Shaved bulb evident,
Dubbed in the valves,
Stubbed vein halved,
Behind de best vulva,
Delvin’, have bust bed,
Vend thus, Devil-babe,
Lavish event dubbed
“Have duvets nibbled”