updated Thursdays and Saturdays
Spontaneously composed poetry from a flash prompt “endless coeans”.
Ascent
|
This is where the universe begins;
With pounding screams and endless oceans Of stars strewn across the sky. A feint lined white moon, Tossing the cursed comets, inconstant twilight Rain washes with solar wind, o’er tides |
-Azuire//lastfactor&c.
A cento is a patchwork poem, of sorts, it’s verse composed entirely of lines or phrases from other authors. It can be rhymed or unrhymed; it can be assembled with emphasis on lines, or because of a specific word. It’s not enough to choose random lines and jam them together, the poem should make some sort of sense. The trick is to create new verse while saying true to the original lines.
The best known English cento is called “Familiar Lines”, google it.
Here’s one I wrote in the group, it makes no sense:
PV=nRT
In the beginning, God made man,
(noble gases are an exception)
wobble-wobble on the walls,
dropped from a zenith like a falling star.
To the left of the reactant arrow,
please allow 2 weeks for processing.
The material girl look is back,
(oh my stars, it’s full of gods!)
Dream, you pea-brained idiot,
awake, arise or be forever fallen,
You know you’re not supposed to terrorise innocent people on Thursdays,
you should be looking for a golden bottle with a diamond stopper,
just as there are no ideal students, there are no ideal gases,
each one is a barcode.
SOURCES (in order of appearance):
The Sandman: Book of Dreams
5 Steps to a 5: AP Chemistry
Lewis Caroll
Paradise Lost
Elle magazine
DBS Bank brochure
Stargate SG-1.
-Azuire//lastfactor&c.
9 Things Every Writer Needs To Do Every Day
by Scott Ginsberg
1. Morning pages. Sets the creative stage for your entire day.
2. Making lots of lists. The ultimate (scientific) practice for organizing your ideas.
3. Reading for at least 15 minutes. Because writers are readers. Period.
4. Writing down ideas, scraps, quotes, one-liners and other notes. Because if you don’t write it down, it never happened.
5. Journaling in some way, shape or form. You MUST capture your thoughts.
6. Have a daily appointment with yourself. It’s the most important appointment you’ll have all day!
7. Create some form of art, first thing in the morning. Doesn’t have to be good, it just has to get done.
8. Exercise. It’s called “Solvitas Perambulatorum,” and scientifically, it WILL increase your creative output.
9. Interact. With other creative people, that is. Whether it’s on the phone, online or in person, creative people need to be around other creative people. They’re the only other people who will understand what you’re going through.
© 2008 All Rights Reserved.Scott Ginsberg, aka “The Nametag Guy,” is the author of seven books, an award-winning blogger and the creator of NametagTV. He’s the only person in the world who wears a nametag 24-7 and teaches businesspeople worldwide about approachability. For more info about books, speaking engagements or customized online training programs, call 314/256-1800 or email scott@hellomynameisscott.com.
Writer’s Block
inspiration tends
to fall out of the sky and
land rather hard
(thud).
-Azuire//lastfactor&c.
Cyberman: Daleks, be warned. You have declared war upon the Cybermen.
Dalek Sec: This is not war. This is pest control!
Cyberman: We have five million Cybermen. How many are you?
Dalek Sec: Four.
Cyberman: You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks?
Dalek Sec: We would destroy the Cybermen with one Dalek! You are superior in only one respect–
Cyberman: What is that?
Dalek Sec: You are better at dying.
-Doctor Who, “Doomsday”
An experiment with long and short rhyme.
Azrael [Grave Of Ghosts]
A mournful song, grey twilight weaving, scarred towards the shores I reach
So fleet and misty haze receding, the cold sand dollars locked in bleach.
Have I prized a ghostly roaming, passive waves approached in blue
Spectre’s day and haunted gloaming, enchanting wind bids me adieu.
But against the hull the syrens shrieking;
And a shrouded sun fails to take its rays
Dusty bells toll for the wounded
Battered mast for dead they raise.
Mysteries deep and frozen cold, grey tremors mount the storm
Haggard laws and salt spray behold, the flag my heart transform
By frozen doors and switching clocks, the fall of swords bellow,
To thunderous coast and jagged rocks, the blasts of cannons, ho!
And dare I seek that spectral tone
That whispers in its sleep.
Towards the crimson flows on home.
The cries of nightmares weep.
But the morn a moonlit wishing, arcane the dawn rays in the east
There my ropes lay gently swishing, to tame a foul and darkling Beast.
My glass fey worn in boundless shatter, no harbour drank awash in green
And whitish whispers seethe the latter, toward a shore my orbs a scene.
When the night a star hath fallen
Nothing dwelt of pier or port
And streams of sorrow slow
Black-tipped gulls and phantasmal memories,
My corpselike form slumbers in decease.
And where the salt sprays covet below
Lone I know I am at peace.
-Azuire//lastfactor&c.
10,
9,
8,
7,
6,
5,
4,
3,
2,
1.
Goodbye 2008, welcome 2009.
A happy new year from both of us at lastfactor&c.
Oddly enough, written for sound rather than meaning.
Infinitesimal Iliad
Counting the crimson caresses of a castle’s cairn
Existing eternally in the epitaphs of excellency
Thousands of towering turrets titillate the twilight
And shining stars soar swiftly by.
Perfect porcelain pieces on powerless poetry
Make much mayhem in the morning
Quintessential quadrants quietly quote queens
As sighing suns soar shining by.
Overbearing oranges outsource the offices
While working women walk in welcome
Dastardly deeds define despicable dancers
And soaring stars shine with a sigh.
How were the black crypts, ever present
Silently dictating the fates on high
Exploding daily are editorials
Won’t any sun soar shining by?
Iridescent iron instead of illegal institutions
Nitric nauseating nightmares never-ending
Apocalyptic ashes arise from the arena
And swift soaring stars go shining by.
Roaring rockets ring in red routs of reading
Kites of kalium kissing kerosene
Jaded jewels jabber jovially to jackdaws
And shining stars soar swiftly by.
Raining on the black parade of mortals
Grasping out to blue cloudless sky
Blasphemous songs of ecstasy
As the suns go sailing by.
Vile viragos voraciously vivisect the verses
Bailing out boars of baying beavers
Flights of fancy flit through forests
As soaring stars shine swiftly by.
Gales of grasping glory gladly gobble
Upstanding U-graders in the underground
Heists hate horrific holders of heaviness
As sighing suns soar shining by.
Carrying the weight’s no easy burden
Broken glass here so eagerly flies
Seeing as the earth is almost broken
Giving rain back to its skies.
Counting the crimson caresses on a castle’s cairn
Existing eternally in eons of epitaphs,
Thousands of thundering torrents of turrets.
And shining stars soar swiftly by.
-Azuire//lastfactor&c.
And here, ladies and gentlemen, we may observe spontaneously composed poetry in its natural habitat…
Age
Age: a dozen and three
dreams of youth elected to vanish by the blustery day
idle calls to a half-scoured doom, some wrathful
pirate looks at the sky and wishes for thunder.
Age: one score minus two
fly me to the moon and back, I long
for escape of
this adhesive world, plastered
push-doors and rubberwalls, ice
on fantasy.
Age: one score and four
I’m too old to play these wretched games, now, under fear and
water, vortex of sharp fading colour, a hologram of some silhouette with
an internet tutorial on life.
-Azuire//lastfactor&c.
Eight Rules for Writing Fiction
December 25, 2008 in Commentary, Writing | Tags: Prose | 4 comments
Eight Rules for Writing Fiction by Kurt Vonnegut
Source: Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10.
Merry Christmas, all.