Automatic Writing
Mar. 18th, 2005 09:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Today I will get out and walk the walk and dislike the first thing I see as I pass through the door. There will be dandelions growing up through the asphalt and the little dogs will sniff and pass on. It is Wednesday in heaven and the free-falling flyers of the Euonymous club are making pinwheels in the air. Blue smoke trails from the heels of the biplanes. The zeppelins rove down the mountain valleys.
And I am young and together and I have a rose in the band of my hat. This is a good day. A very good day. Nothing will stop me from popping into the greengrocers and making a withdrawal. I will point my six gun and demand my money. Ha. You didn't expect that did you?
A strange morning, but not so strange as the sight of the marchers on the high street. There are elephants following the band. Fire eaters and fire walkers and strong men in leopard skin coats. the crowds cheer and the little children wave flags and rattles. Someday there will be a new Jerusalem. It will have pinnacles that break the clouds all scaly with golden tiles and tiles of lapis laxuli.
I have never understood the Queen. Why does she do it? Why do her hands wave like that, all white as lilies, all smooth as goldfish in a pool? Never have I seen so strange a thing as the coal-black members of the palace guard. They carry halbards and the halbards have ribbons tied beneath the iron-steel of the broad headed blades. They dance. They dance on the palace green and the crows and the ravens scatter and fly up and sit on the turrets of the bloody tower and make corvine conversation.
It is Wednesday still. Wednesday in heaven. Tall streams fall from the mountains. The smoke arises and goes. Nothing remains. The meadows are swept clean. The little starry daisies look at the great eye of the sun. Emerald fields and emerald eyes in the heads of the copper-skinned women of the vales.
And I am young and together and I have a rose in the band of my hat. This is a good day. A very good day. Nothing will stop me from popping into the greengrocers and making a withdrawal. I will point my six gun and demand my money. Ha. You didn't expect that did you?
A strange morning, but not so strange as the sight of the marchers on the high street. There are elephants following the band. Fire eaters and fire walkers and strong men in leopard skin coats. the crowds cheer and the little children wave flags and rattles. Someday there will be a new Jerusalem. It will have pinnacles that break the clouds all scaly with golden tiles and tiles of lapis laxuli.
I have never understood the Queen. Why does she do it? Why do her hands wave like that, all white as lilies, all smooth as goldfish in a pool? Never have I seen so strange a thing as the coal-black members of the palace guard. They carry halbards and the halbards have ribbons tied beneath the iron-steel of the broad headed blades. They dance. They dance on the palace green and the crows and the ravens scatter and fly up and sit on the turrets of the bloody tower and make corvine conversation.
It is Wednesday still. Wednesday in heaven. Tall streams fall from the mountains. The smoke arises and goes. Nothing remains. The meadows are swept clean. The little starry daisies look at the great eye of the sun. Emerald fields and emerald eyes in the heads of the copper-skinned women of the vales.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-18 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-18 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-18 05:28 am (UTC)smooth as goldfish in a pool? Never have I seen so strange a thing as the coal-black members of the palace guard.
Maybe you can give us a poem, now you're limbered up?
Here's the title: Wednesday in Heaven.
There you go!
Jackie
no subject
Date: 2005-03-18 05:57 am (UTC)The sharpness of the coelocanth,
The murmurings of the hazy days,
Bring me at last to the lorn view
Of broken valves in radiant days.
I came and went by blessed roads
By lowering branches bravely groomed.
No-one I knew was there to point
Their fingers at the lost entombed.
I took a ship into the night
Of toilsome woes and piquant joys.
Wednesday in Heaven is all I know
Where children falter with gilded toys.
Let go, let go and let me roam
The deserts where no camels dwell.
Is this the site where builders toil
To build new palaces in hell?
Or do the wolves who plod the dawn
Come down the river to the mouth
Of fishes who engulph whole towns
Of earnest partners in the south?
no subject
Date: 2005-03-18 06:05 am (UTC)This is wonderful. And you did it so quickly!
Of fishes who engulph whole towns
--What I like so very much about your poetry is your surprises:
children who falter...with gilded toys...
Thank you! I wish I had your facility and apparent ease of painting a picture of a thought.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-18 07:34 am (UTC)I cheated a little and changed one or two words of the first breathless draft, mainly for the sake of the metre.
Come on, you have a go now......
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Date: 2005-03-18 06:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-18 07:43 am (UTC)I wonder where it all came from......
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Date: 2005-03-18 05:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-18 05:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-18 06:05 am (UTC)Please.
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Date: 2005-03-18 07:31 am (UTC)Anyone can play. Just shut down your conscious mind (as far as is possible) and write without pause for thought.
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Date: 2005-03-18 01:28 pm (UTC)Funny and sad. I particularly like the bit about the butterfly and the shoulders.
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