Mad-lib poetry and ad-lib with instruments

I've been doing some experimental twanging with no talent.

But at least it's different.

Take a listen

Based on the structure of e e cummings' poem 'all in green', I wrote this mad-lib using nouns, adjectives and verbs that have appeared in my writing prior to this. Make sense of this if you can:

all in imaginary

all in imaginary went my spills wondering
on an inevitable chance of scared
into the unheard senses

uncertain gilded goodbyes inelegant and trying
the nervous song before

sudden be they than cracked fears
the wayward tiny song
the nervous tiny song

uncertain tiny wishes at a little dust
the forced minutes before

kisses at teeth went my spills wondering
wondering the dream down
into the unheard senses

uncertain gilded goodbyes inelegant and trying
the dark refusal before

heavy be they than immeasurable tiny pockets
the gilded warm song
the golden inelegant song

uncertain golden years at a scared wall
the vulnerable clocks before

stars at retrospect went my spills wondering
wondering the time down
into the unheard senses

uncertain gilded goodbyes inelegant and trying
the vulnerable discourse before

frightening be they than glass universe
the mistaken strange song
the scattered breathless song

uncertain scattered telephone calls at the imaginary  time
the breathless smile before

all in imaginary went my spills wondering
on an inevitable chance of scared
into the unheard senses

uncertain gilded goodbyes inelegant and trying

my sleep to find stars before.

Techniques & experiments

Trying out writing techniques so that I can devise my own experiments and such (watch out Charles Bernstein), I came up with a few ideas. For this first one, I wrote an acrostic poem (the lines beginning with letters that spell out a word, usually a name, so my lines start with the letters in my first name), and each line is actually a line taken from a reference book that contains an alphabetical index of many everyday phrases, with information about their origins and how they entered our vernacular etc. But I ignored that, just took the phrase itself and disregarded both meaning and explanation, and tried to pick phrases that, when arranged int the acrostic, would make some sort of sense or convey an idea, not entirely nonsensical:

Darkness and gnashing of the teeth.
And so it goes-
I never promised you a rose garden,
Streets paved with gold-
You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

The next technique I used was a standard cut-up but the text I entered to be cut up was that of a few of my favourite writers. There's part of a poem by Alice Oswald, a poem by Adrienne Rich, some Jack Kerouac words and a poem by Catherine Piece, along with Meditations in an Emergency (Frank O'Hara). I tried to stick to the rearranged words as much as possible:


Clouds scampered, prowling at an afternoon distance
hung-up and mad, moving between the vague world
and rain-coloured skies.Whiteness
pouring into backseats- dreaming a sparkler for remembrance.
Somewhere in that huge wilderness of stars
and dark things and lost pieces are missing wings,
once spare parts of your adventurous past. Forgotten now,
loneliness polished  hearts- small stones.
Galaxies shaking, whispering echoes.
The clouds keep their contours, reddening with suntans.
Nobody paces at night.

Poem pieces

A poem about Judith Roberts, my ex-therapist, now retiring

Words in my head grew into my throat,
violent and teeming as weeds
but the moment they disguised themselves with petals
you uprooted them,
pulled out a thought so it wouldn't deceive,
and then

a sigh, tender, as dandelions.
Blown away with a wish.

A cento poem

Have you forgotten what we were like then
A prism of delight and pain
only for one another.
And now: it is easy to forget
we are dismembered.
Your hand in mine
on cold trains and windy platforms
fragments of a jigsaw puzzle
hand-size and never seeming small.
And I'm startled awake by the sound of creaking glass
between me and the morning.

while you, of course, had vanished without a trace.

A spontaneous poem, Forest Hill, about 1pm today

Out in the very middle of the intersection
where there were no cars coming through
as they normally would do, hectic, cross and crossing
from different directions,
there was just sun.
We had to stop for a moment and acknowledge
how unusually peaceful it was
standing in the middle of the road

but not getting in the way
of anything but sun.

A poem for the past

When night came your eyes would turn
on the clock, into tombstones
and in a manic sort of prayer, you'd bow
your eggshell bones
that never did break
and I never knew how

or why I so stubbornly chose not to learn.

i am, i am not, i am, i am not

haiku

untitled

rock meets horizon, blue on blue

(remember to remember, me and you)

sun-bleached rock and grains of sand

(promise - do you understand?) 

i would, in time, but then didn't know

(take me with you when you go-)

thank you for no longer talking in the night

(- too late, too early, time is never right)

you whispered write for me into my ear-

a postcard for you, i wish you were here x x 

fragments

 

Searching through old notebooks, old unfinished drafts, scribbles on scrap paper and also patchwork pieces from cut-up technique exercises, here are a few fragments:

Sitting on the train, underground where it trembles and

sways at the sound of its own clattering,

I try not to watch as a lady 

sitting across from me

picks at her purple nail varnish.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Under my tongue, tender and burnt, are the unwritten and unspoken 

poems meant for August and meant for an audience.

They don't bud with the rest. They were blossom mid-February

at some sunset and nobody told them that Spring wasn't on its way.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

I never could avoid the deepest low after feeling any high.

I never learnt how to fall apart, and only with a sigh/

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Do you feel the day break across your window 

then leave a bag of bones beneath your bed? 

resentment

With such an aptitude for framing all else so pristine and faultless,
it is both amazing and upsetting to see this-
ugliness and prejudice and dismissal of one, preference for another,
where equality is supposedly universal, surely not expected
and certainly not spoken of-
to see it lined up and so thinly veiled,
any coverings transparent,
and it was just lazy not to hide it
between the lines or at least try.
Do not wonder why I do not reply.

Sometimes, like wind caught up in the trees,
I can't breathe. I'm afraid to breathe
Brittle, granite, expansion, explosion
of heart right through rib cage,
to follow erosion,
slow, sandpapering of bone marrow.
I am afraid to breathe.
There is silence roaring from depths of shallow
ends and exits that leave me hollow.
I am too afraid. Don't call me on the telephone
because I will pretend I'm not there,
but please, keep hold of my backbone.
I'm not asking for yours to borrow.
Pull my strings, because everything
is so terribly still sometimes.
I am not asking much, just
that you will be here tomorrow.
If you can, I'd love you to stay until next week,
and those after that. I'm an excellent listener.
It's just, I am afraid to speak.

I want to throw rocks at every one of your windows to show you

how sorry I am, and just how apologetic

I have been for being, and for being here,

the point at which monotony meets frenetic.

I am sorry. Tell me what you want from me

and I can change until that's who I will be, 

eventually.

Muted cacophony I am habituated to

at five in the morning

after all the fives 

in all the mornings 

I've seen come and go, 

and birdsong

in my ribcage,

I notice too, 

unsure intentions

knotted with knuckles as fists

take up their resting positions,

tangling with the threads of these

wordswordswordswordswords

(not yet spoken) 

but they are clattering 

behind my teeth,

they are faltering 

syllables I fall into, or falling 

out of tune with me.

Could I ever really sing?

Do you laugh when I dance

because you mean it?

Because days are falling off the calendar

and I am very, very tired.

out of time, 

and I am dropping plates
(I do not expect this to be understood but

you can rest assured I have a broomstick).

birthday snaps

I am finding it very hard to breathe
because I am looking
at what happened
and I am looking
because I have to look
and I have to say aloud
that I say forgive forgive-
that the words I live by follow as
forgive, do not forget,
and forgive everyone your own sins
and their sins and give away chances,
second chances, fourth chances,
nth chances, like they are balloons-
but I have to confront this
and the truth of it is
that I do not forgive this
and I never can and never will
and this is because
I do not understand it
and I did not understand it then
and I did not speak
and I am amazed at how I managed it
but I remember how the telling of it
felt on my tongue, in my mouth
so unbearable that I could not
get the words out
and the secret did not come out
and when it did it got no better
and when I told therapists I was over it
they never believed me-
they just did not understand
that there is no choice in the matter
like there was no choice in that one-
you have to move on
and there is no other way
but saying I was over it
was a lie I couldn't face the other side of
and saying I was over it
never made me forget it
and learning to forgive
and the importance of forgiveness
may have healed and helped
infinitely, immeasurably,
but I can never forgive this
because I do not understand this
and it is not with me sometimes.
It is with me all the time
and it is now a part of me
that I can't even resent or regret
because look at me now,
I want to say, but who is listening?
Because for some people
a night is a lucky night
and for others, that same night
is the night that everything changes.
I was better, I was better,
I was going to be okay.
With the absent space
where blame should be placed
I point my finger in mirrors
and hate and want to break
right through into upside down world
on the other side where I was the one
who took everything
because on this side
everything was taken
and then I didn't know how much
or what it meant but now
in retrospect I can see huge gaps
hollows and deficiencies
and a part of life that people love,
some even live for, something important
and that part of life was not left for me.
Maybe it makes up for everything
I was born with, the silver spoon
in my mouth, but now I'm choking
on apologies and trying to rationalise
why it might have made some sense,
somehow, but what I've lost
I can ever get back
and I have so much more in life
yet for the rest of it, I'll also have this:
it's left me with hollows
but it's a phantom limb, the memory,
and it's changed the way I see,
the way I speak, and feel, and trust,
and give, and take, and have, and hold.
I was seventeen, now I'm 24 years old
and always say forgive forgive.
I will always forgive. But this,
just this, I have realised now
that there is no way I can figure out how
as it's the one thing that will be
the black echo, staying with me.
The black echo, and the irony
for the name, being Tom Jolly
and within the family
we say love and live and don't be sorry
but I am always sorry
and I am sorry I have the inability
to let this one go so gracefully.
Now I'm all torn strings and scorn
and scratching my way into another dawn
with shatterings and chattering teeth
and shatterings and chattering teeth
with a pile of papers to sit underneath.
I have resorted to rhyme, it seems
so to keep myself from releasing the screams
it's the right time to right myself
and stop the feeling of sick and dizzy
by turning forgiveness into poetry:

You cannot illuminate answers out of shadow|
looking back into the places you'd not want again to go.
Don't ruminate, do not relive.
Forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive.
Don't contemplate, you've got a life to live.
Forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive.
And when you do, do not forget, 
for something good will come of all things yet. 

My hands digging trenches after they failed
at pointing my features inward to protect me from affection,
my words tilted on their axes of truth
and lies faded into grey areas, and some sort of vague
feeling

but the only thing in all those flickers
of falsities and fright and fantasy, the only thing
between the fault lines, the pale on pale,
was the certain distinction of a not vague
feeling

a feeling I could be sure of

but now nothing is certain

not even the following seconds are certain

no one to love me, I'm certain

so how can I be certain

that I am not just a prefabrication, an illusory depiction
of a girl someone once loved, a desperate piece of fiction.

electronic poetry

suspended nerves

thoughts in passing