A traditional sonnet has 14 lines of 5 iambic feet each. Each iambic foot has 2 syllables for a total of 140 syllables. This form gives the poem a “rectangular” look. But let’s suppose instead that we try a form that is triangular in form. That’s still an underspecified design constraint, but let’s try one that is 14 lines ending in a single two syllable foot. We will start with 28 syllables and each successive line will have two fewer syllables; thus, lines of: 28, 26, 24, etc. ending with 6, 4, 2.
Human auditory memory being what it is, 20 or more syllables is a long time to “wait for” or perceive a rhyme. I may put internal rhymes in some of these lines. Let’s see how it goes.
As for topic, October 10th will be celebrated by some as “Columbus Day” and by others as “Indigenous People’s Day.” That tension seems like a good way to begin.
Columbus sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred ninety two; enslaved and killed for profit, fame: The Glory Game.
Columbus knew the world was round; his sense of distance — not profound. He called the natives Indians (so wrong!)
So wrong about so many things — the Europeans of his time; believed a King’s most holy name
Had rights conferred by God Himself alone to do just as they willed so killed with God’s own song.
Poetic Commentary: I’m trying Sonnets and variations on Sonnets on Sunday. Here, I used the traditional iambic pentameter but slightly changed up the Shakespearean rhyme scheme ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG to ABBB, ACCC, CDDD, EE The idea of rhyming lines one and five is to reflect some unity among those five which deal with fairly direct perception of the here and now. In line six, I begin to move into “conceptual” shadows. Line nine rhymes with the previous three because this is meant to unify those lines more. But line 10 begins a contrasting thought. Though the couplet introduces a new rhyme, it is also a restatement of lines 10, 11, & 12 so the long “e” is kept and repeated internally as well (“me”, “thee”, “De-“, “sweet”, “de-“).
Political Commentary: In the photo above, you will see shadows of leaves and shadows of birds, though without movement, it may hard to tell which is which. But birds and olive trees are not the only shadows here. We are here at this particular spot partly because of our puppy Sadie. But how did Sadie come to be? Dogs were bred over thousands of years and while Sadie is still a puppy and very uncivilized as yet, she’s learning and a lot easier to deal with than her wolf ancestors. It isn’t just our training that helps Sadie live with us. It also depends on thousands of our ancestors taking the time to train and breed dogs to be our companions. There is a slab of concrete. Where did that come from? When did people invent that and perfect it? There is also a railroad tie. Railroad? Without early scientists and engineers and mathematicians, how would that have happened? And, of course, there are the builders who put this here and did not “cheat” so that the concrete was improperly made. Some other hundreds of folks arranged systems of commerce and government so that all this was possible. And how did you come to be looking at this photo and reading these words? Wait did I mention reading? You & I can read or write because someone took the time to teach us. And seeing it across time and space? Taking a picture with my iPhone? These depend on millions of people working in tech. But how could people spend so much time working on tech unless farmers made the food and truckers brought the food to a convenient place? But none of that system would work without government and police and armed services.
There are many shadows here and most of them are thousands of years old. The truth is that we are vastly interconnected. We have what we have and can achieve what we achieve because of countless others alive and long dead. Setting citizen against citizen is a ploy so that a very small number of people can end up controlling everyone. It’s an old, old cancer of society, but that makes it no less deadly.
We’re all in it together.
Those who would tear us all apart do not admit to their outsized greed. Instead, they wear camouflage of “patriotism” or “religion” to try to fool others into helping them steal. The plane hijackers who wreaked destruction were convinced they were doing it for “God” not for their pocketbooks. To be radicalized into killing others is to be blinded. At first, people are told to tell a little lie for the good of God. And, a little later, they are taught to believe a slightly bigger lie. Until, in the end, they are willing to kill hundreds of innocent people and give up their own life as well. It’s all based on lies. One way you can tell they are lies is that the lies must never be questioned. Not to believe the lie is to be punished or even kicked out of the club.
I’m mainly a visual person. I’m much more distracted by, for instance, a butterfly wafting by than a truck backfiring. Like nearly everyone, I love music. But I don’t go out of my way to hear it nearly so much as do many others. But there are sounds that I love: Simple sounds. That is why the poem itself needs to be short and neat. Those are the kinds of sounds I’m talking about. Discrete.
And some of these sounds I think I inherited a love for. Others, I grew to love. And some sounds I believe have elements of innate beauty and of learned significance. The sound of a well-hit baseball is satisfying in some deep sense over and above the significance in terms of the game. It has a resonance of beauty beyond the even more important sense that it shows what humans are capable of. All of us feel pride when we watch an athlete perform some amazing feat of strength and skill and training and will and concentration all coming down to a moment of truth and *CRACK!* there it is and you know long before it clears the fence because you heard the Home Run first.
So, there’s that. But I can’t help wondering why we can’t find a way to also feel pride in all the accomplishments of all human beings. They’re all in our family. And, we recognize that, at some level. See paragraph above.
The snapping sound of a puppy’s jaws “missing” a toy is something I haven’t heard for many decades. Sadie reminded me of that sound from more than a half century ago. Some sounds you remember your entire life.
As a ploy to prod productivity, I often write with a different “theme” or “genre” for every day of the week. Today is “Sonnet Sunday.” The basic idea is to write a sonnet every Sunday. Lately, in light of the Extreme Court ruling that states cannot enact laws that abridge the rights of guns but they are free to enact laws to abridge the rights of women, I decided that instead of the traditional five feet in every line of the sonnet, I would put an extra foot everywhere it doesn’t belong — just like the Extreme Court. So, instead of writing in iambic pentameter, I’m going for iambic hexameter.
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Fertilized human egg above. Having trouble seeing it? Look more carefully! It’s a person, a person with more rights than you have. Unless, you’re a guy, of course.
You ever see Alito’s photograph with egg?
I speak of human egg of course: unscrambled dot.
Or, even posed with toddler twins who peed his leg?
“A rose is a rose is a rose.” — Gertrude Stein “A fascist is a fascist is a fascist.” — Anonymous
I had a dream, American, (But now I can’t),
Iconic and ironic in its inner core.
The Founding Fathers, somewhat smug & ignorant
Of Life and Love beyond the European shore
Unwittingly might see a noble people dark
As less, and bless twin evils: Slave & Masterhood.
Yet dimly saw perhaps a democratic arc.
Provide for ways to grow a land of humanhood.
Remember to find the light — wherever you can. And then add to it. No matter how small, it helps.
Alas that dream seems dashed upon the rocks of creed
A manic sycophantic oliphant has come
To overturn both logic, love with crap & greed.
Pretending not to notice what we’ve learned; plays dumb.
It tramples rights of non-white, poor, and double X’s.
Projects itself upon a pedestal, and hexes.
The real strength of the oliphant is less than you think; because it is fragile as anything based on a lie inevitably will be. Strength requires being tied to reality without being enslaved to it. We can imagine and strive toward something better.
Endless support of nature means endless support of beauty. The value of natural beauty on this earth far exceeds even all the wonderful works of artists and artisans in every land. That’s not to say such things aren’t wonderful and up-lifting. They are. But if we destroy the natural world, even if we could somehow live, we would be immensely poorer no matter how “rich” we were.
They practice witchcraft of a very shifty sort
And thus, with evil devils, they themselves consort.
The logic they pretend to worship, they contort.
They gorge on earth and every shred of life they can.
They cite the lies with which our history once began
Ignoring all the truths since learned so they can ban —
All life is not black and white. In fact, very little of it is.
The lives and loves of what they do not understand.
They stuff their ears to drown the sound of those they’ve banned.
They cover eyes to blind their brains to flames they’ve fanned.
The air and sea are fouled: – by blood-soaked, unlearned hand.
They point their blame toward each direction in the land.
If everyone caves, they’ll expand their demand. We’ll all be damned.
Even at sunset, find the light. Even after sunset, find the light. The light will lead to truth and the truth will set you free.
It cannot stand. Fallacious fascism falls and fails.
It won’t be folx, but traitorous cheats who’ll fill our jails.
The Fire of Love is Fire that Works: The Fire of Life.
Fulfill America’s Dream. The Dream beneath the Dream.
Help everyone see and feel the Theme beyond the Theme.
The Fire of Love is Fire that Works. The Fire of Life.
We need a land that works for everyone who’s here.
For rich, and poor; for men and women, straight or queer.
For blue, for yellow, red and white. Behold the Light!
For each heart knows that “Cheat and Lie” cannot be right.
Divide’s a trap for fools. It’s history that schools:
Don’t follow those who promise jewels then break all rules.
Silver buttons, golden boughs, ornately jeweled fingers.
Adorning ditches alongside random tires and used syringes.
So much depends upon a little red gully
Filled with muddy, bloody, rain-water.
“There is always light if … ” – Amanda Gorman
The demagogue was not a demigod after all.
Dictatorship turned out not to be so much fun after all.
And after all, after all the joy of wanton cruelty faded
Survivors just got jaded and all the joy faded.
After all the promises unkept and all the lies exposed,
After all the hypocrisy grew like hairy poison vines
And after all the trees were felled, life itself rebelled.
After all the hate replaced each and every seed and every need.
It wasn’t so much fun after all. Not to die nor even to bleed.
“There is always light if we are brave enough…” Amanda Gorman
They shoot horses don’t they?
Yes — Buttheyshootdogsandcats and anythingtheycan. Food is scarce, for sure. But it isn’t just for food. It used to be for fun.
But now it’s just another humdrum way to fight boredom
Laced with randomness and ruin and rum.
“There is always light if we are brave enough to see it.” Amanda Gorman
Even the scab-faced Bannonites. And the golden calves of sanctimonium, Radioactive to the core,
As is the mango pit they still adore, Even they who wanted check and slay,
All are nothing more than shadows on the dead and empty warscape.
Killing off the ecosphere had all the “inconvenience” of a rape.
“There is always light if we are brave enough to see it. There is always light…” Amanda Gorman
This was the summer of our discontent.
Too hot to live, the grid had nothing more to give.
Lack of AC proved a prize for everyone!
Not just those too poor. Surprise!
The greed, after all, charged its own lightning fast steed
Of the apocalypse.
After all the trials and after all the errors, After all the pilgrims and their progress. After all the pillage and the patriots No-one was saved, after all.
There was only the infinite regress —
Not to the mythical fifties,
Not to flags Confederate,
Not to ages medieval
Nor even to Empires Latinate
After all, after all the shattered dreams of millions,
Just aching to be free,
We let it all slip away;
Pretending not to know our history,
Pretending that there is no devil to pay
When we cheat each other day after day after day after day.
“There is always light if we are brave enough to see it. There is always light if we are brave enough…” Amanda Gorman
It doesn’t make anything great, after all.
It doesn’t make anything better, after all.
Being a baby that fusses and musses
Isn’t so wise after all
When there are no adults left to clean up the messes.
“There is always light if we are brave enough to see it. There is always light if we are brave enough to be it.” — Amanda Gorman
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