Be my god
and I'll be yours,
and we can make
each other miracles.
Reciprocal Gods [Free Verse]
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Tag Archives: poetry
We Are Makers [Free Verse]
Are we Makers?
Yes. We are!
And damn good ones at that.
We can turn a planet
into plastic trinkets.
We can use every last morsel
to make stuff:
bright & shiny
or
loud & colorful.
We can even make ideas:
good or bad,
true or false,
but always 100% believable.
We're the ones who invented Evil.
Yes, that whole toxic notion
is brought to you by us.
And Left-Wing & Right-Wing...
It used to be just a bunch of people
trying their best to understand
and to get by.
But we built mental / conceptual corrals,
corrals good enough that we
could no longer recognize each other
as part of the same species.
We are Makers.
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BOOKS: Echo & Critique by Florian Gargaillo
Echo and Critique: Poetry and the Clichés of Public Speech by Florian GargailloMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Amazon.in Page
Out Now (May 10, 2023)
This book examines seven poets’ attempts to halt the proliferation of clichés, euphemisms, doublespeak, etc., words and phrases that not only corrupt the language but are often used to disguise bad behavior or to camouflage dismaying truths. It focuses on a technique, echo and critique, in which the poet employs one or more of these disconcerting words or phrases (or clever variants of them,) but does so in a way that reveals the chicanery within them.
The poets whose work is discussed are: Auden, Randall Jarrell, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Robert Lowell, Josephine Miles, and Seamus Heaney. These poets go head-to-head with cliché and doublespeak in the form of bureaucratese, propaganda, political speak, and business talk — with particular emphasis on war, race, and politics.
The book makes some interesting points. There are more readable discussions of the subject of corruption and manipulation of the English language, though none that I’m aware of on this particular approach to combating it. This volume is largely aimed at scholars, and not so much the popular readers. That said, I found it well worth reading.
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Jewelwing [Haiku]
on a maple leaf, a jewelwing stands - still. it'd blend, if not so blue.
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A Dog Day Ends [Haiku]
a dog day ends, pine needles silhouetted against orange sky.
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Autumn Shore [Haiku]
cool blue skies, & dry grass on the hillside -- seashore in Autumn
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Footprints [Haiku]
footprints in stone -- outside the temple; how do Buddhists step so hard?
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Hit by a Hard Word [Free Verse]
How is being hit by a hard word different from being hit by a brick or a bat? To burn, the spark of a hard word must find some kindling inside the recipient, elsewise it can't ignite. If someone points at me and screams: "YOU ARE SUBPAR AT ALGEBRA!" I remain unwounded. [I'd like to say that it doesn't burn simply because it's true, but the truth or falsity of hard words is -- perhaps sadly -- not a major ignition factor. The kindling is a thing that sits inside one -- something that makes one care, probably a complex mélange of factors. The truth of hard words? That is an outside factor.] Even if I were to discover that, to the person who issued the insult, there is no greater disparagement than to cast aspersions upon a person's middle school-level mathematics competency, I would remain unwounded. If I were to feel any sort of way about uncovering that knowledge, it would be to feel sort of bad for the person who issued the taunt. Now, how to burnproof one's soul, that is the question?
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Imposing Clouds [Tanka]
imposing clouds seem to hover over the palace, but then one sees the drift, and they are drifting nearer.
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Jung Limerick
There was a psychiatrist named Jung who thought the Unconscious was far-flung -- like Sandman's "The Dreaming" that you've seen on streaming: farfetched and fictional -- with heroes, unsung.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 