All 11 entries tagged Poetry

Pantoum or just pants?

On the roof of the world the bears are waiting

On the roof of the world the bears are waiting,

for when the ice sheets shudder like a wind-shot tablecloth across the land

and we part ice-torn mouths, hungry for the surf, lash dogs to makeshift sleds

and scatter like marbles, rotund with fox fur and whale skin, a feast for sweaty paws.

The ice sheets sweep a loving shroud over lonely cities,

We bind up our children, our treasures, our dead, tote them across continents,

scatter like marbles, glut our frozen skin with fox fur and whale skin, and feast

on the eyeless carcasses of vulture-torn cattle. The birds wheel endlessly in the frozen sky.

We bind up our children, hoist the dead over our shoulders, and hunt

an eider for our bellies, our fingers fumble rosaries over the bones of a narwhal.

The eyeless carcasses watch us toil, endlessly beseeching the frozen sky:

the sea sings a sweetness to the ears of hungry fishermen.

Fingers fumble rosaries over the bones of a narwhal. Wind-bit and bound

the dead call us to the sea; their voices ring hollowly across the lowlands.

The sea sings a sweetness to the wave-licked bones of the wicked.

As the ocean hugs the lonesome earth, the fishes leap at the edge of the world.

Falcons drove us to the sea; their wings squeaked hollowly across the lowlands

and we parted ice-torn mouths, hungry for the surf, as the dogs loped and the wind sang.

Where the ocean hugs the aching earth, our dead kissed the bitter waves; and sank.

On the roof of the world the bears are waiting.

Kirsty Judge

Kirsty Judge : 26 Jan 2012 00:21 |  Tags: Poetry Terrible |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Desperation, Performed by a Poem as an Interpretive Dance.

Rice Dream Boy

I remember this much

On good days we drank rice milk from scarlet cartons

Cupping the sweetness on our eager tongues,

And sank grateful hands into cereal boxes,

Running granola mulch through our fingers,

Like soft expletives round broken teeth. It was

A better time.

I remember this much

The velveteen truffle hound in a wicker prism,

Snuffling over ankles in the dusky afternoon.

The conservatory veils, intervals in sunlight

flickering across your face; a tinted lantern

Knocking against tarnished glass,

Unbroken.

I remember this much

Painted eggshells on the Easter table

And the whisky-spiced musk of your holiday suit.

Crisp cinnamon biscuits with spun sugar constellations,

Parted lips at midnight, and finding home

In the taste of lucky strikes and raspberry,

Snaring bliss from the precipice,

I remember this much.

Kirsty Judge : 22 Feb 2011 03:23 |  Tags: Assignment Modes Of Writing Poetry Ridiculous Last Ditch Attempt Velveteen Truffle Hound |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

莊周夢蝶, or Zhuangzi Dreamed he was a Butterfly

莊周夢蝶, or Zhuangzi Dreamed he was a Butterfly

Is it a dream

when startled wings scatter livid dust

across an infinite sky?

Or is it when sticky lids unslick themselves,

exposing the midnight impotence

of some starless dark?

I cannot say; I can only hope

that delicate feelers,

softened by some rich fuzz

of dust or delighted fur,

might someday belong to me, again.

Kirsty Judge : 21 Feb 2011 23:34 |  Tags: Assignment Modes Of Writing Poetry Scatter Livid Dust |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

It is a Poem About Batman.

I am Batman’s apolitical elbow, restless-Lee

high-kicking to the beat of the Krakatoa dragon Heap-ing

hannibal piles of miscreants on the Gotham city floor-Ring

tossing with Robin for the rebirth of Marvel-Louse

picking the remnants of King Kong’s mane Concerned

about the barefoot vested ecstasy tablet discount-Less

than a thousand feet from ordinary; but I’ll jump.

Cause in the incandescent bat light of Gotham City Station

I'm a monstrous human construct or a misappropriation

Of the million million heartbeats sucker-punching expiration

To the underbelly innards of some mafia affectation

I'm no crystalline avenger or arachnid radiation

I'm a capitalist metaphor for phallic masturbation

I'm the wet-dream of geeks, check my bat-ejaculation

Or just subscribe to my blog, it's got all my information.

I am Batman’s apolitical elbow, shuttered in my bat cloak

Folded round a bat-ladder, practicing my tennis stroke

Brooding batlike vengeance in the gloomy batlike dark

Punctuating violence with my exclamation mark

I am Batman's apolitical elbow

I am Batman's incurious shin

I am Batman's black and grey basque

I am Batman's bat-rolling-pin

I am not walking home from a party at nine

Wishing I hadn't thrown up on the spice rack.

Kirsty Judge : 21 Feb 2011 21:31 |  Tags: Assignment Bat-Ejaculation Modes Of Writing Poem Poetry |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Crouching Sniper, Hidden Flagon

His trouser tips just hovering

a hesitant five inches

above the parquet floor,

not quite touching, even

squatting

over trainers,

I think

he will stand too close,

Pisa-towering over;

and tuck his shirt into

his camouflage

pants.

I generally like to fantasise about the social behaviour of strangers-  I find the gap between the exterior appearance and actual personality really fascinating, so I like to spot people who seem a little out of place and imagine how they got there.

Uhhh basically I saw his man in an elevator, and I bitchily wrote this little description of his tiny trousers. It's supposed to sound a little nasty? I've turned it into a poem because that's the module I'm struggling with right now. So that was my today.

Kirsty Judge : 03 Feb 2011 17:50 |  Tags: Modes Of Writing Poetry Terrible |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Sucking at Sonnets

A sonnet(ish) for an assignment, I can't really do the iambs but I've managed the rhyme scheme, good for me. I don't think much of it, but the story is at least vaguely interesting? Thoughts?

Wife! I Am Risen!

Having quit the business of living, and
With little else to do, Mr Gapdear
Boldly left for the undiscovered land
Wearing his best suit (though rather austere)
Sailing in his coffin, he reached a plateau
A lone pimply youth sat in a hotel
Spluttered Mr Gapdear: "Where did they go?"
"So sorry sir, but they all left for Hell-
Heaven's the dullest place to volunteer:
Hell's got fighting, sex, breast augmentation?"
(Thus Hell-bound softy swept Mr Gapdear.
Landing at what looked like Clapham Station)
"Oh" said his wife "What time do you call this?"
"Dinnertime" he said, bestowing a kiss.

I dislike the sonnet, even if the word sounds like a cross between sun and bonnet, two things I currently crave (I want some sun, but being fair I crisp up from ghostly to lobster in a matter of seconds- thus the bonnet). More bad poetry next week.

Kirsty Judge : 02 Feb 2011 08:26 |  Tags: Assignment Modes Of Writing Poetry Terrible |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Poetry Session Extravaganza

Today marked my first ever poetry seminar, and it was beautiful. Here are the results of some of the workshop type things we did, to peruse at your (nobody reads this) leisure. 

Our first task was to write a poem with three stanzas about a word we liked; the first of which would be an alternative definition of the word, the second being a synaesthetic interpretation, and the third a question to ask of the word and its reply. I chose "fastidious" because a) I really like it and b) I've been thinking about some lines from a Tony Harrison poem: "Paging angels set down this/ Fastidious and human kiss" which I have a little crush on. Fastidious kisses are beautifully tangible. But I digress.

FASTIDIOUS

n. The officious assistant of a catholic priest

whose lack of an acknowledged title within the clergy

leads him to deploy

unwarranted "h"s in his speech.

For example: "I saw the fastidious today

and he said 'Hit hwas quite the hevent of the hyear.'"

A sizable sticky lemony toffee-

or a kind of velvety purple.

Fastidious, where are you going?

To the river in Paris

where I will brush the leaves

from strangers' coats.

I like the last three lines and the word "sticky" for some reason. The second task involved hacking up an existing poem and rearranging the words to make a shiny new one. I'm not sure about the results of this one, but physically the cut-and-pasted poem looks pretty cool.

the great bay

rose

against the flames

tongueing glass

with spiteful eyes,

pinkening

The sudden World.

I really don't like this. It sits inelegantly on the tongue however you say it. But I might mess around with hacking up some other poems because it is refreshing to use a new vocabulary. It's possible to become too attached to certain sounds or images so this kind of restriction shakes things up a bit.

I am making a resolution to do a bit of reviewing and non-fiction work on here because a blog wholly about me and my "development as a writer" is the most boring thing I've ever heard of. So no more poems that aren't assignments unless someone pays me, which seems unlikely. Furthermore I would like to blog less. That's all for now.

Kirsty Judge : 19 Jan 2011 23:43 |  Tags: Modes Of Writing Poetry |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Abort Abort

The result is winking at me through the pinkened narrow slitty eyes of the test window. It has a kind of conspiratorial malevolence, it is glaring with the slickened eyeball of Fate. You and I have a dirty little secret, it says. The pink lines are darkening to an inevitable, undeniable red.

I think of the iChing my father taught me as a child, the lines casting their own webs across the floral tabletop. I think of stealing his Tarot cards, and staring at the gothic eyeless Death card for hours until the skeleton transformed into white holes in a black cloth, consumed by the velvet dark. I imagine disappearing in the same way, by some trick of the eyes, until I am not longer a girl but a girl-shaped gap in the universe.

Umm so this is a fragment thing. I was thinking of turning it into a poem but I'm not sure how to break it up. I am supposed to be doing an essay. Erghhh.

I am so unmotivated. I was talking to a maths student yesterday and he somehow managed to make maths sound cool and edgy. I wish I were doing maths now. It seems to be full of terrifying unknowns and dangerous numbers and mystical coincidences (and I really love mystical coincidences). When I was at school it was mostly full of my maths teacher lounging on top of my desk asking me why I hadn't done the homework whilst we all tried to ignore that his fly was open. Those were the days.

Kirsty Judge : 17 Jan 2011 20:30 |  Tags: Flash Fiction Modes Of Writing Planning Poetry Terrible Velvet Dark |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Clumsy Experimentation is my Game.

So, as part of my ongoing rough-draft stream extravaganza, here is a very, very tentative early draft of a poem. Please be gentle with her, she is undergoing surgery. I have included some notes and links that might help anyone interested in subject/context, but try not to read biographically into it, it hurts my feelings. I feel nervous enough posting this as it is.

References have been very carefully chosen. It's probably not meant to be read aloud- I tried to write it to be read, like a secret diary entry, rather than said. Perhaps that is a mistake and all poetry is meant to be spoken aloud, but the is the purpose of certain punctuation and formatting contrivances is to make it difficult, to express something that would be difficult to confess. There's some other rule I imposed on the formatting as well, about linking directions and alignments of texts to each other and to areas of thought, but it's too hazy and unrealised right now to explain coherently. Anyway, here it is:

TITLE???

What small monster is this?

Scraped from a cauldren, Thing,

     Some lovely bean, some token of bliss?

     Some treacherous creature            /sly delight/

Some weird

          Frankenstein       or scattered dream?

Some [moroi alp-begat mære] entwining membranes about my heart

Some shame

Some splot, perhaps.

                                     I greet you:

It is either you or me, splot

       Cancer, minnow, lizard, embryo, prison.

Some vampire

Some single eye tossed between sisters

Snipping hair from my head

      Painted in Rorshach shades of black and white.

I am not ready to wear blue for you.

I cannot wear white with you  

                                                    [Nor black for you]

I cannot sup the poisoned dugs of state

for a splot.

Perhaps, you say, in morse-code kicks

-no-    twinges aches, blackened tongue hacked coughs disgust disgust

              Perhaps you say I am a        chrysalis

                                   dirty husk cocoon.

What then, splot-moth?

What do you become?

My current issues with this are: I don't like the beginning, I feel it jumps in clumsily and too soon into the repetition.

I feel as if the repetition of "some" is at odds with stanzas three and four where the word does not appear, but at the same time the word is distinctly linked to describing the splot, not the subject of these stanzas. I might add on a new stanza at the end once again relating to the splot?

Unhappy with question marks

Feel it should be more obscure. It generally hints towards one reading when in fact several are supposed to be possible.

Ummm meter?? Never understood this. Realise there's a rhyme at the beginning but I do not carry this all the way through- does this make it a bit of an anachronism in the poem?

I worry about it sounding feminine.

Tried to hack away some of my tendency towards floral description- is it now too bare?

Is it even any good???

Possible titles:

Splot (obvious)

????

Links for the Lovely

I try not to use wikipedia to inspire me, but I do find it is much better at plainly stating things than me. So here's a bunch of wikipedia pages if you're interested in allusions and stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself

http://lib.byu.edu/sites/sc/files/2009/09/The-Thing.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alp_%28folklore%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mare_%28folklore%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moirae

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria

It's been a really pretentious day for me.

Kirsty Judge : 05 Dec 2010 17:33 |  Tags: Draft Planning Poetry Splot Moth Terrible |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Rhyming and Reason

If I want a poem to rhyme, does that make me the Devil? Not just in a last-two-lines-makes-the-whole-thing-sound-neat kind of way, but throughout a poem. Is that clumsy and infantile and limerick-like? Am I basically confessing to being the kind of girl who still has some beanie babies tucked away somewhere in a dark cupboard, carefully arranged so that they appear to be playing tiddlywinks with each other? Am I senselessly twee and do I deserve to be shot? Do I enjoy otters in booties?

Okay, so I actually know the answer to the last three questions, but that doesn't make the first two invalid. I am THINKING about experimenting with rhyme. I usually over elaborate and fluff things, might it help to enforce some structure?  I'm also considering sapphic verse a la H.D. or William Carlos Williams? What DID happen to my beanie babies?

You decide, faithful reader (I know I don't have any, but it's comforting to pretend, particularly since this blog is much easier to use than my notebook which is full of doodles of the food I wished I were eating during lectures).

In other creative news, I have a massive creative crush on Mervyn Peake, specifically his nonsense poetry. Have a look at the sexiness HERE: http://www.mervynpeake.org/nonsense.html

AUNTY FLO

When Aunty Flo
Became a Crow
She had a bed put in a tree;
And there she lay
And read all day
Of ornithology.

By Mervyn Peake

He also was responsible for some lovely illustrations I saw once in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. I'll post these separately so that people who are bored of this long and pointless post will be tricked into looking at them.

Kirsty Judge : 25 Nov 2010 22:47 |  Tags: Creative Crushes Mervyn Peake Planning Poetry Rhyme |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem