[split] The Nothing

[Brownlie]

Well here, is my entry into this (complete with all the problems of an unedited work).

---

What do I know of breathing pastures?
When has the heifer or the blade of grass
Surprised the naked flesh across my neck?
My summons to immortal spirits of the ode
are echoed dead amidst a host of marble shades
I’ve conjured chasing mythic skylarks.
I’ve watched the airy nymphs of natal text
As fireworks that blow like Pleiades
In July fourth barbecues .
And now the very ornate trim which issues from my lips
is begging to a version of a summer wind,
assembled in a human thought machine,
to morph into the furnace of a human mouth.
 
Yet, all of this seems trite when one is gazing on the heifer.
A scene of rusty gears on flesh I’ve never seen
May grind the bidden cow to be devoured by a mechanistic monster,
and, for a moment, I  will ask,
What silent bovine moan is this,
it seems to hum the still sad music of humanity?
 
The question of my status as Poseidon, or as
some vampiric fiend of modern evil  
must be put away for now,
and I hear the absence of a southern drawl
as I wear a hardhat dripping with an ivy tendril.
Set to work, I build my inner mansion which consists
Of Redman’s chaw and rolling tumbleweeds.
Possibly the Ozarks loom amongst the marble shades
And Oh Death never breathed or died.
Perhaps the summer wind is there,
blowing up in some conflagration.

---

Now, I will say this, and I think in the process I will agree with Dale on some of his points. Every deviation from sense or the truth seems to weaken many poems. Linguistics can be played with, but metaphysical conceits based on nothing don't seem to work. To get a concise statement of meaningful "show and not tell" (to use a tired adage) is something that may take work. On the other hand, there is still some stuff I just don't get. For instance, there is this book Chasing Ghosts The Remix by Kevin Young what is going on there?

---

Ah yes a child with a gun.

Since it will not matter what I say, I give you a poem for my rebuttal.


Wordsworth

Youth returns not at the ticking of the clock:
nor Passion its ship again brings to dock.
Unnoticed has Lust gently faded away,
just as did spring, summer has not stayed,
nor shall He return upon another day!
When the blush has faded off the bloom,
and life is now in the evening gloom
of this ancient heart’s approaching doom
in my ears the resounding tock.
I the last, with balding head and graying locks,
find no reprieve or hope of salvation.
---------------------------------------------------------  -- So, studying a book on sonnets by Wordsworth may be somewhat useful if you want to learn how to write.

Ironic, laconic, iconic, despondent,
so weary and dreary and old.
At the turn of a phrase to be forward and bold
and make young girls crave,
this flesh, “I” with one foot in my grave,
they offer nothing to tempt me.

Samuel, Robert, my old friends
we were you know ‘til the end
it’s just the end came to soon, --too
it was not even noon
when you found your Brigadoon
and left me here alone.  -- The end of the rhyme is what seems to work here.


Then new friends I found,
I gathered them ‘round,
but then Percy drown, -- There is a problem with the sentence structure that makes it read fragmented.
Lord George Gordon also went down,
with and to the Greeks.
Then also gone was Keats,
and once again I am the last
and the least.

Was I prophetic, or was it a slip of the tongue,
When I wrote, “only the good die young?” 
I linger on, while they are done.
I sit here amongst my gold plated dung,
these medals around my neck are hung.
Lacking in nothing but the slightest lust
my gold shrivels into bullion of rust.
Better to have already been dust
than a Robin without his good fellows.

Thou Good fellow great Robin Puck,
“Flower of the purple dye,” pluck,
then call to your Lord Oberon
and bid him let us be gone.
Let us board the ship to Avalon,
where my friends have already fled.

There, I can rekindle my long dead fire
now I the craft my words to inspire.
As the whirlwind within builds ever higher,
I care not if it is my funeral pyre.
Weave the circle round me thrice
one time alone will suffice.
Then let it truly be said,
he on greatness at last has fed,
before he lay down his head,
and entered into paradise. -- Playing with Kubla Kahn, maybe add quotations around some of it.

–Erthona

I'm having trouble understanding some of this due to the syntax and whatnot. However, it could be tryptophan symptoms.
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