flutter of white wings across regency ballrooms no butterfly hunt fragments of that belt adorn the highway behind no drive to move on follow a bright star and find only your own face nightly illumined flow of tresses share a river of light and air never still somewhere fury of high noon appeased for a cool meanwhile not a long-term fix
image: The New York Times
inspiration: fan from https://randomwordgenerator.com/
Q. Why are limericks like buses?
A. Sometimes they come in threes!
Replying to back-seat cries,
our driver shouts Yes, soon! and sighs –
until passing just then
that old signpost again,
everyone thought he was wise.
Righto! (said the leader one day)
out of lockdown let’s make our way –
unless cases rise
to scary new highs,
ending the urge to make hay!
Rambling wild was our style
on explorings mile on mile –
up to half-way,
thrills ruled the day –
everything homeward was mild.
inspiration: Route from
Random Word Generator
In reply to my previous post Like Starting Again, Mike Halliwell has come up with this elegant one-word-per-line acrostic poem – a timely thought when the only way he, I and so many others can contact our grandkids is online:
Never
Underestimate
Reading’s
Supreme
Effect:
Reassuring
Youngsters.
Now there’s a happy marriage of subject and sense! Wanting to try something similar, I visit my go-to word-generation site in hopes of inspiration.
I get dash.
That’s not to say my hopes are dashed, of course, because the big idea behind random generation is to make the best of whatever comes one’s way. Life skills and all that. And what is a word, I ask myself, but a web of fruitful associations … language …. culture ….. evolution …… ?
I wake up twenty minutes later and decide to consult the dictionary. Too heavy to lift off the shelf, alas, so I google the word instead! Ah yes, many meanings, and three of them feature below …
drive
at
several
hundred
debonair
as
swanky
harpo
don’t
abandon
social
happiness
Inspired by a reply to my previous post, I resolved to write an acrostic verse with just one word per line. Here is Michael Halliwell’s succinct poem, itself inspired by this charming photo:
Picture
Us
Sleepily
Surveying
You –
Come
And
Tickle
Purr-fect, isn’t it?
I think the art is in its simplicity. Often harder than it looks to marry grammatical sense and apt comedy in a few words!
So when I hit https://randomwordgenerator.com and got discovery, well, my quill wilted. So to speak. It’s not a very funny word.
But then again, just now, it’s not a very funny world.
I try to be hopeful, of course. But in case hope should fall short, this post ends with another cat picture.
Dare I suggest a caption competition? Or even some more one-word-per-line acrostic poems?
disaster
is
sudden
creation
of
variable
economic
responses
yesterday
images: Pamper My Pet and Reddit
There’s an interesting report in yesterday’s Guardian Review of a new book about word games and literary puzzles which certain authors have used to generate writing. Here’s a link to it – The Penguin Book of Oulipo – and reading this review was food for thought because of my curious preoccupation with ‘found’ words, those that appear whenever I click on https://randomwordgenerator.com
I never let a word go by without trying to use it. Of course the results can be patchy – some words trigger more ideas than others – but I always resist the temptation to skip through for ‘better’ words. Language is a currency which can, all too easily, become devalued.
It’s also a democracy – so here are three recent acrostic poems which I haven’t the heart to turn away from the door. Clerk, Twitch, True. Each little effusion is a poor thing but mine own …
crack open any word like an ancient egg and recover long lost meanings killed by thoughtless custom
triumph was finally within reach as I presented His Majesty with my pièce de résistance - the delicious dish that would introduce my hitherto criminally-ignored culinary genius to le beau monde after way too many years in potwashing obscurity - chacun à son goût, I chortled, just before the sudden bite of a horsefly made me dump my steaming-hot chef-d'oeuvre into the Royal Lap!
tell me what you really think unless you feel empowered by drink
One poem per post? Who says? Here’s three for ya!
R ather than just cruise on autopilot to any and
e very old theme-park they choose to send you,
b etter by far to stick a pin in the map –
e ach surprise destination a new tomorrow. Best of all,
l earn to map-read. Real places are out of sight, off-piste.
R epeating pure guff off a page
E arns many a lackey their wage,
B ut let them once spy
E very word is a lie –
L oad up paychecks or lock the cage.
R emember the stroppy guy at the back of the room that nothing suited?
E ven the most obvious, trivial truths were grist to his tricksy mill.
B lack was white, he’d say, or maybe an undiscovered shade of grey.
E veryone else wanted to move to the vote and go home, pub, anywhere!
L isten, he’d say, get this wrong and out there could disappear …
Image: Twitter
Stimulus: WordPress Daily Prompt Rebel
B ig me
U p, Promoter Man,
B oost my image if you can!
B ring me
L oads of ready cash –
E xtra cushions when I crash!
Easy enough target, of course, the pursuit of short-lived fame by people – often young and low on self-esteem – who are easy prey for the cynical Svengalis that feed the ever-hungry maw of modern media!
The search for novelty is relentless. Get famous and instantly the hunt is on for new (and now not-so-nice) things to say – scandals, skeletons-in-the-closet, stylistic faux pas – and if there is any dosh most of it will go to publicity agents, libel lawyers and anti-stalker security protection.
What do I know about it, you ask, whose only brush with fame was the soft brush I once wielded when washing Bert Weedon’s car as a Boy Scout during the fund-raising Bob-a-Job Week? Bert who, you inquire? Ah well, none other than the man who shifted a million guitar-tuition books entitled, somewhat optimistically, Play In A Day. Made it sound easy, you see …
And how much did this guitar megastar fork out for his carwash? A bob. Twelve old pennies prised with some difficulty from a battered leather purse. It was clear fame hadn’t turned his head.
Actually, I’m glad it never came my way. I’d only have gone off the rails. Mind you, it might have been a hell of a way to go …
Nowadays, of course, the high-point of hubris is looking up my Stats when I’ve linked to the WordPress Daily Prompt. Today it was Bubble. A celebrity bubble may go pop but if you live in one it could be suffocating. So there! Usually my posts go pop but I’m letting this one run on a bit, if only to prove I’m no flash in the pan … though it could be smoke and mirrors if I don’t come up with a subject soon …
Yeah, fame for its own sake is a dead end. Famous for fifteen minutes, anyway. Famous for being famous, even worse. But fame that’s earned, well, that’s a different story. Last year I posted a list of my personal heroes – Guiding Spirits is the link. Perhaps you share my belief that we carry within us everyone we’ve known or been influenced by. It’s not a religious idea but it is, nonetheless, an idea I think of as sacred. If we are not guardians of the past and gatekeepers of the future, we are nothing.
Something of this is behind the poem in my previous post:
Avatars
M any selves set out at first
E xploring many lives.
N ot one returns without a tale
T o tell of hates and loves.
O ne story holds them all at last –
R emains until one leaves.
There’s a slight tension here between the acrostic word and my interpretation. I made it plural. Having a single mentor has sinister overtones – makes me think of weird cults – whereas a range of influences orchestrated from within speaks to me of freedom.
Any culture worthy of the name encourages a multiplicity of viewpoints. At the risk of repeating myself – and what old codger isn’t? – coming of age in the 1960s was a gas because so many new voices exploded on the scene all at once. OK, maybe under the shadow of a bigger explosion but still …
Such a heady experience of freedom stays with you and any subsequent limitation of liberty always sets off alarm bells. Any attempt to put people in pigeonholes, niches, corners, classes, bags or boxes always gets my goat – maybe the mountain kind that leaps from crag to crag!
Which somehow reminds me of the Lakeland hermit who wrote on the wall of his cave: Don’t waste words, jump to conclusions!
Haha, am I any nearer that subject yet? Let’s bring in some big guns …
Trust
Oh we’ve got to trust
one another again
in some essentials.Not the narrow little
bargaining trust
that says: I’m for you
if you’ll be for me. –But a bigger trust,
a trust of the sun
that does not bother
about moth and rust,
and we see it shining
in one another.Oh don’t you trust me,
don’t burden me
with your life and affairs; don’t
thrust me
into your cares.But I think you may trust
the sun in me
that glows with just
as much glow as you see
in me, and no more.But if it warms
your heart’s quick core
why then trust it, it forms
one faithfulness more.And be, oh be
a sun to me,
not a weary, insistent
personalitybut a sun that shines
and goes dark, but shines
again and entwines
with the sunshine in metill we both of us
are more glorious
and more sunny.D. H. Lawrence, 1885 – 1930
Compare this with the spotlight of fame which fixes people into set positions, rather like jelly moulds. A famous star is often called a ‘personality’ – perhaps the ‘weary, insistent personality’ that Lawrence so dislikes? Such a person lacks the facility to reflect others and thereby engage with them. They become a closed book and their life a frozen repeat performance.
A book that remains open for me is The Diceman by Luke Rhinehart. This tells the story of a psychiatrist who, feeling bored and unfulfilled in life, starts making decisions based on the roll of a die. We are all, the novel suggests, restricted by our culture in the choices we make and must take active steps to break out of a straitjacket we may not even know we are wearing.
Our current climate appears to engender fear of the unknown, the unfamiliar, the unalike. Labels and soundbites swirl around the internet like the swarm of furies unleashed by poor Pandora. Superficial judgements are the order of the day and the sensitive feelers of empathy are withdrawn out of harm’s way. The big question becomes Whose side are you on? Unfriending is the default act of a faulty, fragmenting society.
Bluuurrrggghhh!
Do you know what? My bubble has just burst. Outside the sun is shining and I’m off to catch some calming rays. But soon enough I’ll return to the fray in Part 2, my stubborn and perhaps dangerous openness to new ideas symbolised by the next WordPress Daily Prompt – whatever it turns out to be.
Will I fly high or crash and burn?
Click on Pop Music (Part Two) to find out …
