Monday, February 28, 2011

Crossout Poetry Reversed

 
I, Joe Cock,
Have stars
in my eyes
Stars at my feet

Sweethearts
Spread out
Gaze on cock
I lie back

To watch the Milky Way
The starscape is vaster than
The musty scent,
That spicy aroma

Stars above,
Stars below
Set near the foothills of
Gold

Gold
Bypassed the town
Misfortune became
Extant


A reverses cross-out, but not a complete inversion
 
I met this old man down at the market flipping fish. He said, “my name is Joe Cock. I have stars in my eyes and stars at my feet.” I puzzled at the meaning of that. One day when out walking with sweethearts at night just after one of those summer rainstorms with electricity still cracking in the air, I gazed down at the street wet in oily slicks and noticed spread out on the ground stars. The pinpoints didn’t come from beyond the sky but were much more local. I smiled as I gazed on Joe Cock’s apocalyptic moment

In the summer, I get away on the high plains where the air is crisp and clear. I like to lie back and lounge against a log. To watch the Milky Way churn across the cosmos through holes in the canopy of Lodgepole Pine. The star-scape is vaster than the sea of juniper and sage I waded through to reach this grove. The musty scent of a skunk blew in from a crow sprayed by that creature’s spicy aroma.

The stars above are street lamps. The stars below are the reflections an old man sees with a back bent double from a century of work on his way home trudging up hills in the rain.

He told me of his home. The sun set near the foothills of Gold Mountain. As a boy and then a man he dreamed of finding gold. He panned for it, but luck bypassed him at the town when he was robbed of all he found. Misfortune struck him again when his wife died with the birth of his son. He moved to the sea to become a fisherman. But poverty became his modus operand. In his dreams he would wake; the cry of his son was still extant in his ears.

Verbal Expression Laboratory


    Time flies
     your father and I
     have decided to
                control you


     I am looking for  
                      
            peace

         again

Mom




 
If this is something you'd like to do(or would recommend to a friend) register by (or before) April 4, use class code 6579 and go to http://www.seattlecentral.edu/registration. The price is a steal at $70.00.





Saturday, February 26, 2011

Triolet Scrabble Poetry Poems


 Julia's Toy Box  
(Scrabble Score 208)

My color’s faded to pale grey
   My brother soldier, robot and me
     Chubby sweaty palms gone away
My color’s faded to pale grey
     We used to fight the daily fray
      Now dust the only action I see
My color’s faded to pale grey
  My brother soldier, robot and me




David Poem That Failed to
Include Birds Flying Above his
Magic Chopper in the Snow 
(Scrabble Score 90)

This grey cast is not without mar
Like an ode ending on an ill note
    I am certain where my flaws are
This grey cast is not without mar
    Like a rifle with an uneven bore
    Here, a devil grips the diodes
This grey cast is not without mar
Like an ode ending on an ill note




Me Mine Mum Moe
Grips the Dripping Noun of Ore 
 (Scrabble Score 145)

Sang cast a note into the dared grip
Cole sat, his ego a noun of ode-ing ore
    He drank, a diode of ale in ill drips
Sang cast a note into the dared grip
    His ho sang notes that marred the cast of rip
    Her jaw a toy, honed by jabs of the bore
Sang cast a note into the dared grip
Cole sat, his ego a noun of ode-ing ore




Ahmed’s Egorical of a Bilocated Jaw 
(Scrabble Score 218)

Why here ego bi me jaw
You’re a grey noun mute note
    A sot bore cub chewing qat
Why here ego bi me jaw
    Vibe, no, not this show your mar
    Casting honing gas like cole
Why here ego bi me jaw
You’re a grey noun mute note



 


I’d like to invite any of the participants of this exercise to comment on the experience of composing a fifteen minute triolet.

But, if you weren’t present today's game and wanted to be, you can still try to  pen one. The words we played are pictured here. Use them as prompts and leave your triolet as comment down there.

Thanks.



Friday, February 25, 2011

Triolet Pre Scrabble Poetry Post (ABaAabAB)

 
This Saturday (11:30 AM @ CafĂ© Racer) in Scrabble Poetry, we will be constructing a simple eight-line form poem (related to the pantoum form) called the triolet. The great thing about it will be that an eight-line form fits in perfectly with the arctic tundra nature of words generated in a scrabble game. Another selling point of the triolet is that it fits the description of scarcity (which also happens to be what Ahmed and mine’s workshop at Seattle Central Community College explores; if you’re interested you can always sign up for it; the cost is only 70 dollars per person for six two hour sessions of self discovery; it is class code number 6579).

Since we live in the contemporary age and not thirteenth century France, we will not have to concern ourselves with the rigid meter of a ten count syllabic line length. However we will have to rhyme. Let’s see if I can write this out the form in a non-confusing manner before I start in with the diagram and examples.

Line one is repeated as line three and line seven. Line two is also the last line. Line three and five need to be of equal syllabic length as well as rhyme with line one. And lastly, line six rhymes with line two. Clear as mud? Let’s try an example coupled with a diagram. For line one and two I’ll sample dorky pop song lyrics. This should be fun.


Line Patterns



Syllabic count
1A

"So you think you know the answers – oh no"


10
2B

"‘Couse the whole world has got you dancing"


9
3a

Don’t you know dog, it’s a spinning – yo-yo

10
4A

So you think you know the answers – oh no

10
5a

It’s a challenge to remember you hoe

10
6b

When I’m out thrashing the floor, I’m bashing

10
7A

So you think you know the answers – oh no

10
8B

‘Couse the whole world has got you dancing

9


Apparently, this travesty was a hit in December 1986. 
If you click on a hyperlink you can refresh your memory
read the lyrics or listen to it. I thought Lionel Richie toy train set?




Ok that wasn’t very good. It was almost like what I witnessed at Ozzie's singing Karaoke last Wednesday: two people not at all easy on the eyes bump, hump, and grind on the dance floor while a screechy guy spit out a hip-hop pop song. I wonder where I was when "Say you, say me," was released? Oh...I know...in my VW baja-ed out bug racing up I-5 to Portland with Iron Maiden Number of the Beast, Black Sabbath, or that protogoth band Soft Cell screaming into my ears and seeping out the metal of the car. Perhaps the prompt I chose was too horrible to behold, but look it is almost in that rigid 13th century ten syllabic count per line form.

I’m positive that the poem you come up with (should you join us at CafĂ© Racer this Saturday fifteen or so minutes before noon) will be a masterpiece of theatrical lyrical scribblery.

Should we try one more example using a less horrible prompt? OK. You convinced me. So, for this last example, I’ll use two consecutive lines from a Men At Work Down Under song which goes back to good old 1982 when the best beer on the market tasted just like Schlitz Malt Liquor. Which was my beer of choice at fourteen years of age while skinny dipping at midnight slipping bare-ass down a slide. Yes, I remember that song by Men at Work. My family had an exchange student from Paraguay living with us for a year. His name is Angel Ortiz. Also, that year Scorpions Black Out was released. And I discovered metal that year, I threw away my Thriller album, I started using Copenhagen (I eventually quit), and started playing electric guitar. Yep...I remember good old 1982.


1)         I said, “Do you speak-a my language?
2)                  He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
3)                  Nodding like it was rotten carrot salvage
4)                  I said, “Do you speak-a my language?
5)                  Do-ah-week a mo-won gan-ga dosage
6)                  Ah boo da woo Fahrenheit baggage
7)                  I said, “Do you speak-a my language?
8)                  He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich


Alright, there ya have it. The exercise is set for this Saturday morning at Cafe Racer (in the Ravenna neighborhood next door to the Trading Musician) at 11:30 in the morning for a friendly match of scrabble followed by writing triolet utilizing words generated in the game. See ya there!


(Leave a comment if the explanation is understandable or not)




Saturday, February 19, 2011

Pantoum Scrabble Poetry Post 1

 
Dave Played the Best Words

Chopper Dave’s Razor Edged (Scrabble Score 62) Pantoum

Like a gun to the ear
Or a moue of the heart
I bundled with death’s house
For a peak into her sex

Or a moue of the heart
I slept beneath the roof of stars
For a peak into her sex
But more so beneath her hex

I slept beneath the roof of stars
I sacrificed my last ploy
But more so beneath her hex
And watched as my dreams were razed

I sacrificed my last ploy
I bundled with death’s house
And watched as my dreams were razed
Like a gun to the ear



Julia’s Wild Nerdishly Modified (Scrabble Score 156) Pantoum

One bundle of flesh
Fits nicely inside
But don’t arrive too early
To the bone gin

Fits nicely inside
A ploy for safety
To the bone gin
Arrives the loser son

But don’t arrive too early
Or she can smell her future
It takes quiet to become
One bundle of flesh


Ha! Look at my Score beotches,
I razed Ahmed in this game!

My brilliantly Dreamed (Scrabble score 146) Pantoum

Aa Lot boned the loser
After peaking off the roof
The heart ploy was simple
to arrive at the id

After peaking off the roof
Yaza bundled the hex
to arrive at the id
Cod said, “hit me and drink gin.”

Yaza bundled the hex
Lot razed the gun
Cod said, “hit me and drink gin.”
The sow ate bundled mint

Lot razed the gun
Into the maw, a bone fit in
The sow ate bundled mint
It is hard to peak at death or whit

Into the maw, a bone fit in
The writ of sex was gay
It is hard to peak at death or whit
After sending one under the moue print kilt

The writ of sex was gay
The heart ploy was simple
After sending one under the moue print kilt
Aa Lot boned the loser



Ahmed’s Pending Musical (Scrabble score 87) Pantoum






If you get the gist of the form, give a pantoum a writ?
If you dare to stare into the maw of this ploy






Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Duet Slam Bruce Bracken and Performance Poetry

 
On Tuesday, February 15th, I performed poetry with my friend Bruce Bracken at the Duet Slam. I met Bruce seven years ago at the Through Traffic Molly and or at the Homeland open mic which met biweekly, sharing the same place and time-slot, at Onthe House. Onthe House (now an ice cream shop called Bluebird) is no longer extant, but it was a community living room in the evenings, a photographic studio during the day, and a church on Sunday's. It was operated by a Nazarene couple who happened to have the same Alma Mater as my mother. 

Through Traffic Molly was emceed by Martin Martin Marriott and some lady I can't remember (maybe some nice person out there in cyberland can help me out) and Tom Ring emceed Homeland. Both of these open mics do not presently exist. However, Tom Ring is still emceeing an open mic, in the same space, at the Blue Bird with Chase Evans every Monday except for the first Monday of the month at 7:30 / 8:00 pm.

We did two poems last night (all ten teams did two each). We didn't win. First place was 250 dollars and second place was a used DVD. At the end of the first round, we ranked six (with 26.7 points) and by the end of round two we fell to 9th place (24.9 points), which consequently, is the place we finished at with a combined score of 51.6 points. All in all, I was pleased with my performance. I didn't think I'd be able to do as well as I did and connect to the word, because I've been on the dee-el for several weeks feeling like an old man.

The top place scorer was team Amber Flame & Roma Ray with a whopping combined score of 59.8. In case you didn't know, the maximum score in slam is thirty points. Thusly, with two rounds the max possible score one could achieve is sixty. Team Daemond & Roberto and team Oscar & Rachael tied for second place with a combined score of 57.1. They respectively won the used movies Serenity and Clone Wars.  

Morris Stegosaurus, who is my second favorite performance poet just happened to be the featured poet at this event. Morris is an absurdest poet. And he was the one to prime the judges. This gave me hope for a higher score, because today's contemporary slam style is very much so hip-hop-ish. And I don't understand how to construct this mode of poetry. The material that Bruce and I cobbled together (less than two weeks ago), was more in line with traditional form poetry. 

The first poem was a sestina; where we transformed six innocent words into pure absurdest debauchery. I composed stanzas one, three, five plus the envoy and Bruce wrote the rest. On stage, I read his stanzas and he read mine. It was fun. Each of us acted out what the other was reading. However, in the second poem, Bruce's pen seemed to channel Morris and (another of my favorites) David Christopher la Terre. The prompt we redacted material out from was a magazine on early childhood education that I found a few weeks back (at the joint I go contra dancing at) called Seattle's Child (the 1/11 edition). Bruce skimmed through an article, page 11, regarding organic farming and I pulled catch phrases (the bold faced print in an Ode to Morris la Terre Bracken bellow) out of an article on how to stretch the dollar to it's nth degree page 18

What I wanted to do that didn't happen was to assemble a cross-out poem where we would utilize the exact same article and combine whatever words/phrases our eyes deemed as relevant. I'll have to try this exercise out on Ahmed before we begin teaching our workshop Item 6579 at SCCC this spring (If you want to sign up for it, it's only seventy bucks)!



Mango Foodmart Fudge on Noodles with Table Olives

The porn star ate a blue mango
purchased at the king city food-mart.
It was so juicy, he imagined it was gooey brown fudge
dribbled over a heaping bowl of Kimchi flavored noodles.
He devoured his dinner on a dusty table
in his ol’ lady’s garage with a handful of green olives.

He sued Johnny and Jane Q Public after biting the olive      
pit; then he had a farmer killed over a bad mango.
He adorned his head with foil at the kitchen table,
that he brought at the local food-mart
to keep talk radio from boiling his noodle.
He says that aliens communicate through the fudge.

Packed into little boxes moving down the belt, fudge
is cheaper to manufacture than are jars of olives;
however, gluten free rice-paste extruded into noodles
is far les exciting than sugar coated mangos
hanging in (those) little plastic packages at the Easy Access Food Mart
a mile down Kimchi Drive on Flathead Table.

We drove a mile down Kimchi Drive on Flathead Table,
when she told me that she adulterated the fudge
with Everclear, in the alley behind the food-mart.
This turned me on, so I fucked her under the olive
tree; her delicious vagina was (warm) like an overripe mango.
She had her own name for her snatch: noodles!

Named after the warts she got from a porn-star named noodles.
He laid his big slab of meat on the table.
She ate it like a juicy mango.
He packed into her like a heavy pan (or tin) of fudge.
She sucked into her mouth one of his big olives.
He said she was better than the attendant at the food-mart.

Who counted his genital warts behind the food-mart
by two and fours, by outdated chicken noodle
soup left in boxes next to cans of olives.
The alley was the examination table.
He cursed him, then wept into the fudge.
Regret turned in his gut like a rotten mango.

The porn star failed to get olives on sale at the (back alley) food-mart
He purchased the last mango next to a package of dry ramen noodles
His ol’ lady sat the table waiting, her fingers smeared brown with sticky fudge.




An Ode (that is not really an ode)  to Morris la Terre Bracken:


Celebrate The Cows!

The People are looking

See if they'll celebrate you back!
Organic farmers will own the planet,
Working you over
You organic farm fiend, you!

The People are looking
Today!
Physical!
Occupational!
Speech!
Language!
Behavioral!!
Throw it out

All will be mulched, consumed
No alternative!
No Communication!
Destroyed by the Loud!
All will go away in the AM!
The Bringer speaks!
The Power
The Seventh Sign
The gun will attack
The Luxury
The work and the money!
Throw it out

Father gun speaks the revolution! 

The Power
His defining is irrefutable!
The Luxury
Father gun is the source!
Throw it out

Every day, tie yourselves to his hit, Man!
He will punish you for your work!

The Rich Get Richer

For identity!
Yoke to his course!

Break the Bank

See if he'll yoke back!
The old ways,

The Rich Get Richer

The years will be injured!
Throw it out
Bow to disability!
See if it bows back!
The People are looking

The struggled fact for the work,

The Rich Get Richer

The house,
The furniture!
The Luxury

Father gun will de-fact the material!

The Power

Father gun will de-fact the man!

The Power

The people will not work,
They will be worked!

The Rich Get Richer

They will be the cow!
The Power
They will not sense!
The Power
They will not purpose!
The Luxury

Father gun will de-fact the world!

The Power

Father gun will de-fact, not protect! 

The Power

Father gun will provide families
Throw them to the mulch pile! 

Throw them out
Love will be organic!
The People are looking

Friday, February 11, 2011

Chocolate Ginger Candy Experiment

 
It's a few minutes after midnight. Soon I am going to turn the heat on and melt these ingredients together from a recipe that I've been contemplating for over a month.

On January 6th, I began this experiment with the purchase of a bottle of Everclear and a 1/2 pound of ginger root. I peeled the root and shredded it in a blender. Half of which I covered in booze the other half in water. But for this experiment, I am concerning myself with the ginger and the booze. My aim was to make a tincture. I know that this works with flowers like chamomile or st johns wart.

In Washington state, the sale of 190 proof alcohol is illegal. Thus, Everclear sells a dumbed down version of its moonshine for us Washingtonian wimps. I'm hoping that 75.5% alcohol will be pure enough to suck the ginger soul out of the wood and infuse its unique boldness into the booze. I guess, I'll have to wait and see.

Here is the recipe that I conjured out of the moon from a talisman and a stray black familiar. I rolled a ten sided dice and this is the magic that appeared on the parchment:

  •  3/4 cup dark brown sugar
  • ~2 tlbs butter
  • 3/4 cup heavy cream
  • ~8 oz marshmallows
  • 1/2 cup ginger booze
  • ~2.5 cups 60% Cacao  bittersweet chocolate
  • 8 oz 100% Cacao Unsweetened chocolate
  • 1/4 cup boozed up ginger chunks
  • 1/2 cup dried cherries
(the elements in order of entry into a bubbling wizards black iron cauldron)





{For the results of this arcane experiment, scroll
down to the depths of that dark oblivion
called the bottom of the post}



The 36 day old everclear ginger brine & hmm

















Simple Just Butter & Brown Sugar

Add the Cream. It's heavy like my music
 
Cherries, Ginger chunks, and Ginger Booze


It's thick like honey...not really

An overview of some of the ingredients


Look at the chocolate beotch


the butter is starting to melt into the cream & sugar

Looks like Alien guts...almost time to add the ginger booze


It's almost ready; everything is in the pot
 

the molten madness poured out like a flow of obsidian
 



All gone. I hope it sets up
  
..... eight hours later ...




peeling off the tin-foil hat reveals a solid stream of chocolate madness




the final product


I am slightly disappointed. It is creamy and (too) sweet like a fudge. Some bites taste more like ginger than others.I was hoping for the texture to be more chewy like a three Musketeers or a Mars candy bar, but not taffy like a Charleston Chews. The batch I made at the end of December / top of January was perfect; unfortunately, I forgot the recipe. It is lost someplace in annuals of my head---I should have written it down. I am a poor scientist in my old age.

For the next time, I need to decrease the sugar and cream to a 1/2 cup and increase the ginger booze chunks to over a 1/2 cup and allow some of the booze to plump up the other added dried fruits.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

A Publicly Constructed Scrabble Sestina

 
 
From a game played on 2/5/2011
Thus far asking the public to help out hasn't worked out too well, but I am both persistent and hopeful. I will start this Sestina out by constructing the first stanza of six lines plus the first line of the second stanza of six lines. Before I get ahead of myself, I'll explain (to the best of my ability) exactly what a Sestina is and its most basic form.



A sestina is a thirty-nine line structured poem built out of six preselected words. It contains six stanza's of six lines (a six line stanza is also called a sestet) plus a three line envoy (also called a tercet). Throughout the structure those six preselected words will each be repeated seven times. In each sestet stanza, the last (or end) word of each line will be one of the six preselected words. In the envoy tercet, two of the six preselected words will be repeated in each line: one near the middle and the other on the end. Now the only aspect of a sestina that is not structured is the length of the line. They can be as long or as short as you like.

I hope that my directions are comprehensible. If they are not click on the hyper-linked "sestina" above for another set of directions as well as a boring illustration of a sestinic narrative (prose) poem.


Diagram of the preselected word placements:                                                

                                 6 stanzas of 6 lines
     1 2 3 4 5 6 - End words of lines in first sestet.
     6 1 5 2 4 3 - End words of lines in second sestet.
     3 6 4 1 2 5 - End words of lines in third sestet.
     5 3 2 6 1 4 - End words of lines in fourth sestet.
     4 5 1 3 6 2 - End words of lines in fifth sestet.
     2 4 6 5 3 1 - End words of lines in sixth sestet.
                                + the 3 line envoy
    {6 2} {1 4} {5 3} - Middle and end words of lines in tercet.                  
                                                                                                                    




The six preselected words were chosen from this oozing cesspool

The scrabble word pool we are going to choose from are the following: cow, god, dote, tire, see, she, files, seer, road, box, yid, and lab. (Ahmed and I didn't get a chance to finish the game due to work issues, thusly, these will have to do. Just in case you were wondering at the time we quit, I was ahead by 27 points, but that doesn't mean I would have won). The words we will be using were chosen at two o'clock this afternoon at Cafe Racer in the Ravenna neighborhood. I chose four and Ahmed chose two of the words. Thus, the words below, with their corresponding number, will be repeated seven times each throughout a sestinas 39 line structure.


(1) Cow, (2) Box, (3) Seer, (4) Dote, (5) Road, and (6) Lab


Next let us begin composing this poem. As you can see below, the line length is all over the place. Also, you do not have to concern yourself with rhyming words. Further, in penning a line you can change the tense of the preselected word or make it plural or add prefixes and suffixes in order to fit the word into the narrative. (FYI: I spent about five minutes on these first seven lines and almost eight hours writing this post)

At Yid’s market Za’er bought a half dead cow.
As Za’er opened up Is'eem's gothic box
to crack open a fortune out of a cookie, Is'eem, a mystic seer,
gave Za’er a stern warning about the practice of doting
on strangers. As Za’er drove down Turnbuckle Road
she thought about George the bull being chased by Charlie, her big black lab.

Yesterday, there was this funny incident that happened at the bovine laboratory.
Kassiopeia, a narcoleptic mucker, fell asleep on the job and the cows
escaped. All thirty of them were found wandering down the road
Milky, the prize milker got hit by a tractor and was put in a coffin shapped box.
by Mo Ron the trucker. Kassiopeia felt so guilty she doted
on Milky until she was so exhausted she received a vision like Nostrum the Seer.

{(: Some Nice Person named Carla from Facebook added these lines 2/21}

She told her boss, who nodded sympathetically while seeing the future as his own seer.
This was not a job for the laboratory.
  As much as he understood on her cows she doted,
 in the end, a cow was just a cow.
 After sending her home, he removed Bessy (because Milky sucks) from the box,
And loaded her on the butcher's truck and waved it down the road.


{Yeah!!! stanza 4 was added by an unknown viewer see comment #1}


But this was no healthy, sylvan road;
Tight-lid skies had turned it harsh and seer.
The dust, noxious and aggressive, seeped into the truck's gearbox.
The machine faltered, spluttered and then died. Driver Jack Ennui climbed from the cabin and up a nearby hillock, atop which perched a federal lab.
Through the heat, his secretary's nagging hit his ears; she'd been right, the cow,
It was foolish for him to shun the engine and always on the lacquer dote.  



(Anonymous added this stanza June 20, 2011)


Do you remember what it meant to be a doter
a hitchhiker wandering down stray desert road
Leading on a long chain a mad cow
If you went to the psyche seer
She flipped a card that sent you to the lab
that’s not the worst of it she said reading from the Wheaties box





The final six line stanza will have these end words:

(Line 31 ends with the word: Box)

(Line 32 ends with the word: Dote)

(Line 33 ends with the word: Lab)

(Line 34 ends with the word: Road)

(Line 35 ends with the word: Seer)

(Line 39 ends with the word: Cow)

Bon appetit. Write me some delicious lines. Thanks!! Please have fun with it. And look we are almost done....