Quincunx

Kikuyu's old sig had some terrific short lines from Pablo Neruda, very much in the same style. That was enough to give me the feeling of familiarity, or more precisely of a poem that escaped the lips when the mind had already been soaked in poetry that day.

Well, yes, separating the lines meant that the repetition of synonyms could be disguised. There's a great poem in here but it's muffled by about three layers too many of repetition. I like moral lessons; I love forceful poems. I want to remove the mufflers which blunt the edges of the forceful poem. First, I'll install a temporary line break every time the topic changes, and no more: 1 Primordial first woman misjudged born of bone dust daughter of Earth 2 she quakes in her own pure sensuality restrained and forced to live in innocent bliss while the folly would blindly follow pre-destined ways 3 she speaks of truth desires more than the flesh of platitude tasting a world beyond her fingertips passion quickens her eyes are determined 4 insensible men mistake for weakness born from their own fear they could not take the first step 5 it was to her burning intellect a wise serpent would appeal 6 heroine in disguise to liberate man born him in the world of knowledge hers was the guiding hand 7 the only curse in their shame that they would remain quivering in ignorance had not woman awakened the soul. Look at the temporary lines 2, 5, and 7. They're complete sentences. They do not have excessive repetition; they're clean and can be left more or less intact; I would excise "blindly" from temporary line 2 and take a sharp look at reducing "innocent bliss" into one word with the same connotations ('innocence'?), but those are minor hiccups. Maybe this poem isn't as swaddled as I thought it was. Oh yes, first she is quaking in temporary line 2 and then the men are quivering in temporary line 7; was that intentional? Temporary lines 4 and 6 are slightly run-on sentences. Either one could be quick-fixed by chopping out the middle phrase, but it would be smoother and probably better to just rework a word or two to knit those dangling phrases into the sentence. Temporary line 4 has no object for the first sentence: insensible men mistake what for weakness etc.? Is there a word or two. . .missing? Temporary line 6 just needs "born him. . ." in a more grammatically precise form. Was he borne or reborn? Was she the midwife (as her "guiding hand" implies) or the mother? Temporary lines 1 and 3 are nothing more than a tumble of phrases, several attempts to define the idea from different angles (and stamp their importance into the reader's mind) but they clamor against each other and obscure the message. Out of temporary line 1, I delight in "primordial", but that word has a scientific aftertaste which is out of place with this theme. "First woman" is culturally neutral, or is it "first woman, misjudged" with a line break where the comma should have been (not culturally neutral in this culture with gender studies) or "first woman misjudged" with no break at all? "Born of bone dust" is biblical imagery; "daughter of Earth" is pagan imagery. All strong images, but dissonant; if you don't tie them together somehow or cut the most unharmonius ones, don't further divide them with line breaks. Temporary line 3 is such a tumble of generalizations that I can't pick out any strong image. You need to find the central image for that line and then prune without mercy. Once all that's done, the poem can probably reassume its original choppy line breaks without harm, more taut and forceful with the central moral bared.

Dashed this off in five minutes on another forum, and dropped it into haiku for convenience: We are not alone In the universe. We are not In this universe when we are alone. Do not lurk in the doorway. It's considered. . .rude. Come in or stay out Of this aloneness. Do not lurk in the doorway. I think there's a scrap of goodness there to expand into a proper poem. There's some poetic forms with repetition and possibly also with three lines to a verse, but without remembering their names, I'm finding it difficult to search for them. The few-years-old What Poetic Form are You? quiz would have been nice, but those blasted HTML result images aren't searchable text.

\o_o? Dear Diary, The dust bunnies have started to spontaneously pop! I wondered what was making that bubblewrap noise, have for a few days now, but this is the first time I've seen one explode. I opened the door to let some nice spring breezes into the house, one got swept out into the living room, and pop! Nothing left but a swirl of airborne dust and the slightest scent of fresh-baked cookies. \o_o! I am quite confused. I certainly didn't cast any spells of the sort. Maybe Starlight attempted to help with the housework magically? --Rydia, pointy-eared shinyhunter

How the Frogloks Became a Sentient Species

Another challenge, another non-PG-13 reply. . .Yes, I have a history.

God hates bellies with dewlaps, flaps without flesh, aging cobwebs, candles furred with dust, and glissande laughter dripping from the fallen cup.

Gold The birchwood glows with age, the speckles splash, and the dasher soars up and down in gold and milk; scent flashes in the sun, bees scatter light. I am the golden, the morning, the fiery song. The morning shines pale as the dasher leaps up, feathered with speckles of cream. All else is gold: the birchwood and the bees, the wings which catch the spilling sun, the floating flakes of fire. Did Parsifal stop, and rest his white-winged shield, to sip the milk that shines in the cup of the sun? Or did he stay his path under glittering bees, taste the morning, shake his head, and travel on? I am the fire that quenches the watery morn. I am the honey that rings the neck of the swan. Writer's Workshop thread

Tzimfemme pinches up a stray cheese dude by the back of his collar just before he skitters over her foot, then whisks him clean with the end of one of her finer braids. Artificial cheese powder flies every-which-way, uncovering. . .a locust? "You again?" she inquires, and tries to uncrimp her facial expression. Artificial cheese powder has locked onto it like stage makeup. You know how your mother said if you keep on making that face, it'll freeze that way? She left out the bit where artificial cheese powder set like plaster when it came into contact with sweat. "What else is a bug gonna do in this lousy economy?" The locust folds up its front four legs and seethes. "And don't go whining to the FDA neither. See if they care! Great-Grandmaw lost her only son to a vat of Fig Newtons and did they stop the conveyor belt? Acourse not!" It doubly points to the right. "Them jerks in the kitchen promised time-and-a-half for every time we escaped and got back to the kitchen so's we could be served again. Like we're gonna see any of that!"

If I could flick over this in a brief, omniscient, immersion-breaking manner--Finnius, how do you manage to keep convincing women that you need to be killed? You're such an affable type.

Odd. I went into this expecting to do a review, but instead the result was a snippet of crime fiction as well. Wetwork The ache crept along my shinbones, eased near my ankle and foot bones, but it only hurt where my toes were pressed flat against the floor. Better not flex them. If there's anything I miss, it's the days when I didn't have to polish my shoes-- "Waste of time, Chaundry." I watched sensible sneakers (white polished) and slacks circle around the furniture. She half-squatted, half-knelt, keeping her slacks off of the floor, clicked her pen closed and pointed at the hair swirled around the rubber-capped chair leg. "Tile floor." She tapped her pen on it to make the point. "The janitors mop it clean, but they don't water the mops more than once, twice a room? So every time hair gets snagged under something, they'll just tug the mop free and keep cleaning. That hair's probably been there for months. Years." I stretched out my hand and grabbed a plastic baggie. "Do you think they came in here and mopped afterwards?" She pushed off of her knee with both hands, looked over me at Numbers Twelve through Thirty, then to the opposite wall and Numbers One through Five, then back to me. Aisha's the only woman I know who'll refuse to talk to you if she's not facing you. I didn't think that up myself, that was what someone said in the sensitivity training, and the only real, usable info to come out of it too. Shame my sisters didn't share that conviction. . . ". . .ago at most. Where do you think that hair came from? Students! Teachers!" "Lieutenant--", I pointed with the tweezers, "--does this hair look like it was tangled in with the others?" I slipped one side of the tweezers underneath the hair where it looped up and over the metal chair leg; she nodded, beckoned to Charlie and got the tag and the photographs. Number Sixty-One. After Charlie had finished, I unwound the hair, bagged it, and handed it over to Aisha. "You've got better eyes." She scrutinized it, let her eyes go out of focus, shuffled through people with them like a dealer shuffling the deck, the same twitchy motions--and then looked at my hair. "It doesn't look like the teacher's or any of the students' hair. It looks like yours, even if it's five times too long. Very fine. Black hair is usually coarser than other colors. Dyed?" I took the baggie back, and the pen also, labeled the baggie Sixty-One, opened it up under my nose, and waited. I can't sniff. I'd get too many scents, from outside the bag. The best possible result is when the scent is almost all baggie, and just a hint of something else. "Not dyed, but. . .What's it called when you girls get your hair curled?" "A perm." "It's been 'chemically treated'." Quite a look from someone who has a pink stripe in the middle of her shoelaces. "That isn't the smell of dye; I'm certain of that. It's no scent my sisters have applied." I looked up and could just see the edge of Number Fifty-Eight's tag, so I tapped that a bit further onto the desk. Aisha picked the pen out of my fingers, looked at Number Fifty-Eight itself, then stood up to inspect it better. I closed baggie Sixty-One and stood up myself--not carefully enough. I'll need to polish my shoes again, tonight. Aisha snorted. "Look at this!" She jabbed the pen at the cell phone, turned it on without picking it up. I expected text, maybe even a cheat sheet. Instead it showed a picture: what looked to be on its way to becoming Number Seventeen, the body which produced it, and the final touch, the only thing in focus was the textbook with a ragged-edged bullet hole burnt through it. "Callous! Stupid! If he hadn't stopped to snap his hilarious picture, he might have escaped! This was the seat of a cross-country runner. Ex. Got caught with marijuana." "Is that a calculus textbook? I thought these were juniors." "Mixed classroom." I stopped looking at the picture. Aisha, thinking, is worth watching. "It doesn't fit. Our killer selected the target classroom, slipped in, and killed everyone professionally. Ask Charlie, he might have finished reconstructing the sequence of events by now." I wouldn't. I'd wait until he finished the diagram on paper or until he realized that not everyone understands blended military and fantasy football terminology. Diagram would be first, probably. "Everything planned, so either the killer committed suicide and we haven't realized it, or he escaped. With all that forethought, he then selects a random sample of students?" An escape plan. . .I opened Sixty-One again. Bad practice, but I needed to know. ". . .It smells like Halloween night. . .I think it's glue, like you use with fake noses." "Spirit gum. A wig." Aisha, coming to a conclusion, could strike the gods blind. Her eyes stopped moving, and glittered. "Find the nearest surveillance camera. Find people who go out that haven't gone in."

The editor in me wants to take an axe to the splintered lines, or maybe a broom--something, anything to make the English language read horizontally instead of vertically. However, since it's a free-write, I shouldn't.

Only make eye contact if your entire body is turned towards the other person. Off-center eye contact is ok in some cultures, but not this one. Full-face eye contact is only acceptable when the rest of the body is busy. Off-center eye contact combined with a directed torso is to be reserved for special occasions. Eye contact is an excellent substitute for understanding the language. The smile is an excellent substitute for communicating in the language. Deploy as necessary. A watched god never stays apotheosized.

The muse has a thousand hands radiating in all directions but up, beating against our flesh but not penetrating. Its hands have been empty of late, and the palms paler but without light. Its body is a sovereign object. It's jolly well here. If someone has sighted the narrative beast lately, I'm offering a bounty.

In answer to Rook's "Realize that you're being too honest with customers when you tell them that they make you uncomfortable?", and several other Have you ever? . . .s in the same vein--I only wish my social sensitivity had a lag of seconds instead of hours (days/months/years). . .

Have you ever burned homework? Have you ever burned a book? Have you ever burned a post? Have you ever burned a forum?

Matrix, Matrix, Matrix. Perhaps I've listened too much to old songs, but why o why did they re-awaken in a lived-in room? Why weren't the dreamers suspended from neck collars upon honeycombs stretching to the ceiling too distant to bring into focus, beads on a series of immense vertical abacuses? Where were the gentle bamboo-chime slaps of flesh upon flesh as the horrified observer pushed the hangmen aside in order to pass, or does flesh sound more sharply when it's withered down next to the bone, barely sustaining life? Why were their limbs not darkened with thirst and their necks too weak to support the head's weight? Would the hangmen be blind to the outside world, or would their eyes swivel to follow the observer despite the bypass corkscrewed into the optic nerve--could the matrix hijack ten thousand thousand arms and legs to defend itself?

(Minta sails over the wall, tumbling end-over-end, and crashes into the center of the discussion in a rolling stop. The gnomie uncoils, sticks another twisted light green gem into her mouth and slurps until it dissolves, then pops back to her feet unhurt.) Waterlily didn't wanna be reanimated. Has got a really strong throwin' vine. . .

Hestia is the only goddess of the Greek pantheon where I wonder if the normal cultural flow reversed. She was once there, but displaced for Dionysus--but what if the faint flicker of religious feeling that was once Hestia was completely extinguished in mainland Greece, and only survived in the westward colonies touching Italy? Vesta was a strong force in Rome, at least in imperial Rome, which needed to flaunt family as family's worth waned. Did the Romans retroactively restore Hestia to a place of honor? Nonetheless, let's assume for a moment that, this being pre-history, the force of the Hearth was present, starting at the clay toes of Pandora, a warmth migrating upwards until it settled on the fine features. Nobody looks at their finest when the firelight flickers upwards so, but appearance was never Hestia's function. Besides, her worth had magnified a thousandfold when the idea of a hearth became lit, a place of warmth and light. . .and food. Why punish Prometheus? Why man? Why, especially, Epimetheus? So she whispered, in Pandora's ear, the secrets of barbecue.

*a light green twist of a gemstone gets tossed back over the wall, with a reply* I could but skellifyin' doesn't stick the way plantifyin' does, an' skellifyin' is only a cosmetic change anyway. Um. Maybe plantifyin' wears off, but I dunno. . .An' dead plants don't count as corpsies so I can't raise them. There's no spot to put an animatin' force I think. Maybe if they were special plants while they grew an' had somethin' like a soul, but I doubt it.

I remember Prometheus deciding to give the gift out of pity, and add in Epimetheus shrugging his shoulders and grunting sure, whatever you want dude. Maybe once his brother had gone down the mountain, reed in hand, and the scent of charred wood curled back up to the brothers' home--maybe then, Epimetheus removed his feet from the wall, and the couch went crashing back down onto all four legs, and he realized his brother was going to be in some deep doo-doo with The Man. Epimetheus might have spoken up about it, but then he caught a whiff of fat and bone sizzling on the coals, and tipped his chair back onto two legs, dreaming of barbecue and a woman around the house to cook it for him. Aha! It's the 'we' which bugs me! Why is the 'we' coming in at the last stanza? What'd the poet do on the level of Prometheus to sympathize?

Ah, yes, something I should have thought to ask earlier--did you remove that pesky Russian flag up there at the top of the world or what?

Undead PLANTS? If any of those rotten druids turns my skellie into a PLANT, I'm gonna bonk them over the head! Didya know they can DO that?! *more zapping noises from the garden*flash of green light* I got another one!

It's early in the year to get in the annual agreement with Wyvern's poetry assessment. (Long-running joke, don't mind it.) The narrator's essential to the poem, and (ah, there's the contrary opinion!) I like the image of splashing water. The rest of the narrator's participation lacked the imagery though, and since the rest of the poem was so focused on vision, those lines were blurred by comparison--on one reading, I'll chop out a pair of the narrator's early lines, and on the next include those but cut out a trio. Out of curiosity, have you watched a bird take a bath?

My brain isn't operating at full capacity, so I am reading the last stanza as a new poem in its own right, since I cannot for the addled life of me connect it to the previous parts of the poem. I like all of it, pared down to the essentials as it is, but would someone please confirm or deny that gap?