fallen verses

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So, internet-land, thus far our communications have been text-based, and it has been good. But there is so much more available and limiting ourselves to typing is just not taking advantage of all the modern adaptations available on this Web 2.0 deal.

This video includes two sestinas: Sestina for No One and Sestina that I wrote a while ago, but since I have a prompt up over at Read Write Poem about sestinas, I thought I would kick off this vlogging experiment with a reading of those two.

Internet-land, what I would like to know is if you like this idea of both seeing and hearing me. Questions, comments, suggestions, and proposals of marriage all welcome!

(from here via notcot)

Make it big, and it’s art. Make it big, and public, and it’s art people talk about.

I wonder if the problem with poetry is that it’s too quiet now. The maddest among us don’t howl so much as froth. I certainly mumble in the background somewhere about the ephemeral. Maybe it just isn’t enough of a spectacle without obscenity trials?

Dana has had some thoughts about “public poetry” and swimwear in the winter is attention getting. But maybe too small*. Maybe.

Maybe we need to think bigger. Stop thinking about what I can do, and think, “what can we get a thousand people to do.” What makes it big.  Something to think about anyway.

*For the record, on attractive women, I do generally have the opinion that the smaller the swimwear, the better. Tongue-in-cheek sexism aside, it’s not the quantity of fabric, that makes the swimsuit (either much or little) but how it looks altogether.

Among other reasons, my posting here as been… inconsistent because I’ve been spending most of my time learning the UKULELE! I’ve been talking more about this on Ineffably Tom, but it seems somewhat relevant over here. If you have any curiosity on how well I can play, I’m posting the videos at youtube.com/user/tadam3000, I’ll warn you in advance, I’m not expert. I’m not even mediocre.

Zoe, on the other hand, is pretty damn good.

I’d expect to see more videos of ukulele greatness here.

This isn’t a poem, you know.
This is a splash of colour
(black)
on scraps of dirty paper
(suddenly valueless, green, 155.956 × 66.294 mm
when we give up the ridiculous imperial measurements
distributed with foreign government and unrepresented
taxation, which, it seems, we also need to
give up)
saying "thanks for being around.

"Thanks for being
constant as the cloud of
crows at stirling castle
or the voice in Ted Haggard’s head
(he calls it "God," but whatever).
Thanks for lasting
the same 65 million
as dinosaur bones
and not being calcified.

"Thanks for being
the bass line when I
was playing lead
and embellishing the melody
when I couldn’t strum
anything other than
c – c – c – c."

This isn’t a poem, you know.
This is my map of you
and where your bones move
softly through your muscles
and skin into my skin
and muscles and bones
so we vibrate at the same pitch
which is the pitch of grass
growing in a summer afternoon
reaching for the sun.
Shhhhh… Listen closely.

A response to Nathan’s Collaborative prompt #59 where poets donated titles and those titles have been used as the basis for the text of other poems. I didn’t use them all, I slashed them to pieces and added in more words, but I think that’s the joy of these prompts that we start with complete (or nearly) texts and disassemble and re-create in the writing process.  Definitely, if you have not, check out the other responses to this prompt over at Read Write Poem.