crafty miles creep up with vital intent,
toeing waved lines.
A pair of vultures glide in lean routes,
marking bold exes across the grain
of age-stained charts.
Their sudden runs on scented organs
made with strong swoops to fleshy thresholds
of life's tipping.
He discovers in this scaled calculus
that distance, moist but listing, travels
in taut cycles.
It can't defeat the curse of lifting
unbalanced loads with back pushed against
jaundiced fingers.
Ten peckish tips, waiting for victuals
they smell buried in gusty legends
of cornered maps.
— Francis Scudellari
This poem is written in response to Read Write Prompt #97 at Read Write Poem. The challenge was to use the "cut-up technique" of picking words at random. I used words from five recent haiku and short poems, so its a cut-up plus a mash-up. The result is pretty abstract.
15 comments:
excellent. hope all is well. have a great day.
I particularly am intrigued by the third stanza. Sounds rather erotic! I like the way you combined the cut-up and mash-up techniques in this poem.
Ten peckish tips, waiting for victuals
Nice!
Strong olfactory sense in this poem .Reminds me of festering lilies,les fleurs du mal,or even one of those Breughel paintings
a social commentary on the black death with carrion,vultures and rotting corpses.Nice!
A fascinating darkness to this. An excellent job.
ohhh, cut up/mash up with haiku no less. I need to try that! Sometimes I write random five syllable and seven syllable lines and then randomly put them together in haiku but this "Caught in the stream" has so many evocative word combinations... I didn't even find it all that abstract, I just enjoyed the process of reading it. Thank you!
Now here's a poem for the senses. Here in Arkansas the turkey buzzards should be the state bird. The Mockingbird is. Although you snipped and mashed I enjoyed the journey this poem took. As I read it I looked out my window and saw vultures gliding on a distant thermal and marveled at the clarity your poem provided with the aerial ballet they were performing. Good work.
Regards,
DH
Hi Francis,
I agree with JJS that this doesn't seem so abstract! and particularly like the second stanza.
I like the way the continuity of the spatial references hold the poem all together. You have done beautiful
work keeping it together and making the ideas flow.
I like the line in the middle.... "distance, moist but listing, travels in taut cycles". Thank you, Francis.
Sensitive, sensual and so very delightful....
Terma Rima: psychedelic pajamas
I like everything here appears to happen in the mirror, thus spied upon and seen backwards and behind the narrator, who has his back to these event. There's great detail and description in the lines about the birds, and love the slant rhyme at the end of maps and tips.
You did a very good job of taking all the disjointed words and thoughts and making them flow. The 3rd stanza from the end could be the basis for a complete poem.
Nice work. The second stanza is particularly beautiful, and doesn't feel at all cut up.
I like what you have done here.....thanks for sharing
I really like the image of the vultures.
from Therese L. Broderick -- I think this is a very strong poem! The fourth stanza, especially, is really great in density and insight. I can't stop hearing all the "t" sounds in this poem -- once I noticed them, I couldn't escape their talons. This is a keeper.
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