Please use headphones and turn up the volume, both on your computer and YouTube to hear the audio, this is a spoken word poem. It is an erasure poem based on the 3rd chapter of The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana. I am hosting Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft today at dVerse Poets Pub where we will be exploring Erasure Poetry. There are tons of ways to approach the prompt so for further examples see here and here or visit others who’ve already posted their erasure poems today. Please don’t be intimidated by the visual aspects of this prompt, you may simply chose words from an existing text and post them (attributed) on your blog as you would any poem or you can incorporate white out, marker, paint or multimedia to create a visual aspect. I would love for you to join us later.
Tag Archive: experimental poetry
incoherent, irrational
emotionally hypothermic
she initiates terminal burrowing
paradoxical undressing,
an illusion of warmth,
accelerates her demise
beneath the frosted
eyes of aspens
a final hallucination
circle of frozen angels
their wings long distorted
by the transformative ice
preside, their excruciating
silence heralds her
last breath, reveals
her true nature
Notes: This poem is a continuation of Ice Floe, originally posted in March:
“Man is not free to refuse
to do the thing which gives him
more pleasure than any
other conceivable action.” – Stendhal
III 1: Pure potentiality and suffering
forceps bruise her unformed head
Shakespeare’s extraordinarily gifted
sister is born, made aware
of her conscious mind, she will
now address the reader as an I
already creating lexical lists,
exploring the avenues
of concurrent thought
am I dreaming or the
universal dreamer?
III 1.1: Anything can happen
it does
III 2: The sanatorium collides with the imaginarium
I keep you under lock and key
like the Marquis de Sade
my kaleidoscopic star,
you blow my mind
and arouse my (curiosity)
I’m repelled, terrified, and
utterly besotted by your shenanigans
III 3: Neologisms ignite the thaw
I will write my way to freedom
into or out of sanity depending
on the size of my nonsense
dance to the compelling
beat of semiotic erotica
IV 1: The awakening and immersion
Your image arrives in my mind
and I realize what it is
to melt in the presence
of another’s beauty
travelling an infinite distance
to caress the contours of your face
embrace your anarchic heart
I make no claims upon it
will not burn it or suck it dry
before you are gone
only I want to see it beat
and respond to the world
its liberty astounds
IV 2: Without a room of her own watching the procession of the sons of educated men
a spiritual medium scrys:
you know nothing of the frustration,
the rage to master
crushed by the tides
of apathy, misogyny, and abuse
my ferocity burns mountains to ash
your terrors haunt you,
mine devoured me long ago
I am free of fear but dead
yet continue to believe
I am alive
IV 3: Conflation of the immensely attractive and talented jester genius, the teasing diver, the downtrodden poet philosopher, the spiritual professor, a faithful cuckold (almost), a foreign artist, the intriguing flatterer/thinker, all the gods and monsters, matter and antimatter, and me, the one who refuses to be cast as the observed
Hofstadter laughs at my quandary
we no longer need to get together
fuck, or even exchange e-mail, now
that we understand that our consciousness,
our ‘I’ is distributed among all our brains
as part of the ‘strange loop’
it makes human interaction redundant
I’ll keep to my cave
Zarathustra Rapunzel
consummate performance artist
unless, of course, mind melding
isn’t the primary agenda
linguistic experimentation is
akin to sexual creativity
was Joyce masturbating
or gifting us a vital energy?
(he so wanted to be natural)
will my art be tainted like Bronte’s
with rage and sexual frustration?
I gave up everything for you
but gave it to someone else
who shattered it into pieces
V 1:Fluid cyclicality
an enormous aureate ouroboros forms
and proceeds to consume itself –
it’s in its nature
V 2: Chameleonic desire, a great daimon
the most profound expression of the self
or even more ontological than this ‘I’
the loam out of which a self emerges
Plato’s divine spark longing
to unite with ever more
transcendent forms of beauty
V 3: Interstices and penumbra of the soul
Eros awaits in the density of allusion
cartographic intertextual patterns
that gather in erotic cathexis
vast ecosystem arises
integrates with the eternal
V 4: Skeleton key
for a moment I thought
you caught sight of
me in the corner of your eye,
availed your coruscant intellect
and emotional intensity to really see –
not observe but engage,
an eye that challenges but invites
a look that doesn’t degrade,
demand, or destroy but makes whole
a look of recognition
often only given by
an inner paramour
V 5: Anything can happen
I will live here in the poem
and begin to see what is possible
Notes: This poem was written for Victoria’s excellent prompt on literary allusion at dVerse Poets Pub. It makes allusions to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (perhaps the most allusion laden literature ever written), Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and the philosophical writing of John Riker. The title Saudade is Portuguese and means the feeling of longing for something that you love and is lost. Another linguist describes it as a ‘vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist.’
Click on the picture to zoom
This is my poem for Open Link Night (up early) at dVerse Poets Pub.
Joe asked us this week to share where the inspiration for our poem came from so here goes: I was reading Keith Waldrop’s translation of Anne-Marie Albiach’s work yesterday morning and found an excellent review of Figured Image. I was drawn to doing something new with the inspiration I found in The Line The Loss. I admire her work a lot despite the fact that I can’t seem to embrace the flattening of language the underlying philosophy advocates. This poem was born out of those sources, The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse, my desire to paint and use Photoshop for this week’s offering, the fun of experimentation, remembering some artistic tools I’d used in a previous poem Apophenia & Creativity: A Kind of Self-Possession (the Train Wreck Rewrite), my dry wit, the inanity of transhumanism, and a deep and abiding love of language. Thank you, Joe, for asking!
First, dear reader, I would be remiss if I didn’t introduce the actors, led to believe they are attending a masquerade party. All are unaware of their real role in the following poem:
Sherlock Holmes as The Master (stand-in for Mikhail Bulgakov)
Irene Adler (Lily Langtry’s stunt double) as Margarita
Professor Moriarty as Woland (Satan in disguise)
Behemoth (a giant black cat that walks upright) as Himself
Hella (red-headed succubus sexpot) as Herself
Azzazello (messenger and assassin) as Himself
Koroviev (monocle wearing, ex-choirmaster) as Himself
Special Guest Star: Abadonna (Angel of Death) as Himself
Sherlock Holmes is the most perfect reasoning
and observing machine the world has ever known
a flesh half-brother to Babbage’s analytical engine
awaiting the algorithmic potential of Ada Lovelace’s
programming genius, an Irene Adler, the woman
who, for him, eclipses and predominates her entire sex
They meet in connection to a case involving royal sexual proclivities
a matter of national security to keep these exploits quiet
but here, my indulgent reader, is where we diverge pleasantly, one hopes,
from the original scandal and propel, through blackest magic,
the characters into the absurdist fiction of Bulgakov’s masterpiece
The Master and Margarita, one of the 20th century’s greats
They think they are attending a masquerade, as divulged before,
to capture the blackmailers and solve the case but their real
purpose at the ball will be revealed in time, how perverse!
Woland never apologizes for his perversity, it is his birthright
and so he feels nothing but glee at the prospects of the evening
where one character disguises another except, of course,
his retinue: Behemoth, Hella, Azzazello, Koroviev, and Abadonna
Hella greets Holmes at the entrance hall, seeing through his disguise
she whispers in his ear, her hot breath introducing an inferno into the
cold, crisp workings of that computer, frying his circuits and rewiring
his desire, suddenly it occurs to him what the woman could be –
worse, he begins to see his abhorrence of love as some kind of
failing of imagination, of mental machinations, a straightjacket
on the mind that he’d willingly maneuver out of this evening
Irene is already in attendance, decked out in negligee at the arm
of Professor Woland who is promising tricks that will so astound
the world will bow to his every whim – the monocle clad Koroviev
is conducting a choir of naked nymphs pouting ohms and ahs in
metronomic precision, creating a squirming sensation for all in attendance
Behemoth is complaining that this poem won’t allow him to show
off all his wit, niggling ingenuity, or copious personality –
‘I’m sorry to say this is true, they’ll just have to get to know you
through the original work, you’re too awesome for poetry, great cat.’
Azazello is happily performing the duty of bouncer, simultaneously
appearing and disappearing pedants, cranks, parvenus, virtuosi,
enthusiasts, rapacious, and incompetent men of all kinds
like the author of menippean satire he relishes his role, if anyone
really challenges his authority he summons Abadonna, who arrives
with bellowing music, whinnying horses, and magnificent wings
to smite the unworthy and offensive from the ballroom floor
Woland sidles up to Holmes handing Irene to him: ‘Did you know
that Margarita here once used inductive and deductive reasoning
to figure out that Orson Scott Card was politically opposed to same
sex marriage simply by reading parts of Speaker for the Dead,
realizing that he meant to deny them full citizenship and found
barring their legal rights to be an excellent way to accomplish this end?
I sit with him on the Board of Directors of the National Organization
for Marriage. Impressive mental acuity don’t you think? Though less
impressive in this day and age of Google. I reminded her she could
simply look him up on Wikipedia, that’s how I found him.’
Holmes picks up some irregularity in Moriarty’s speech (of course he’s
seen right through the disguise you doubting Thomases!) but he’s
too focused on the allure of Irene’s breasts to take that thought
to its logical conclusion and is therefore as taken aback by
what happens next as you will be once you find out what it is
This surprise of her curiosity and skill he finds titillating, that he suddenly,
in his mind’s eye, sees her performing all these mental gymnastics
in the nude ending in the splits is quite enough to secure his
seduction, of course, on her end, his monumental reputation has
already secured her affections though she had previously come to
the conclusion that a man of such meticulous rumination would not
consider a consummation of mutual attraction beneficial, yet here
was a glimmer and she thought the devil might have something to
do with the introduction of Holmes’ strange, rhapsodic nature
At this point, because, my covetous readers, the story might get too long
and confusing, Moriarty, disguised as Woland, disguised as Satan,
addresses the audience to reveal his most glorious trick of all, the one
that will secure his domination – slowly his head revolves 360 degrees
unscrewing, a counter revolution like the oppression of the state,
to unveil his plot – the entire ballroom inhales for the surprise at
finding two small, white cartoon mice beneath the robotic head!
‘I am not Professor Woland, nor Moriarty disguised as Woland, nor even
Beelzebub disguised as Woland, but Brain, and this is my assistant, Pinky’
‘Narf!’ ‘We are his experiments, he underestimated us and in the nights
leading up to tonight we built this robot in his likeness so that we might
gather you all here, stealing Woland’s retinue and astonishing you all
with our surprise: this time we will be successful in our aim to take
over the world. For once our plans have not been foiled; you are all
hypnotized and will do anything I command! (To Pinky) Are you pondering
what I’m pondering?’ ‘I think so Brain, but where are we going to find
enough Weiner schnitzel and dancing bears to fill up Buckingham Palace?’
In the panic that ensues Sherlock and Irene sneak out the fire exits to begin,
against all sense, a tempestuous love affair in the upper bedroom of 221B
Baker Street, immediately transported from the ball by the wicked powers
of the robotic Moriarty, which as you well know, conceals the blueprint of
a wild scheme for world domination executed by two laboratory mice
What precisely occurs once they reach the flat we leave to the copious
imagination and deductive powers of you, salacious reader, (beat)
‘Heavens, that is quite a graphic imagination you have, I will avert my eyes’
you’ve made even Behemoth blush which is very unbecoming in a cat
The introduction of Pinky & the Brain’s ‘grit’, an intrusion into Holmes’
own delicate and finely adjusted temperament became a distracting factor
which threw a doubt upon all his mental results, for grit, in a sensitive instrument,
or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, could not be more disturbing
than a strong emotion like his newfound love in a nature such as his
Thus the inner workings are slipped sideways and like the Master
he finds himself committed to the asylum awaiting the loyal love
of Margarita to strike the bargain, attend Satan’s ball, fulfilling all its
wild requirements: wearing the outrageous and heavy poodle pendant,
showing deference to all, and who could forget the anointing in blood!
Thereby getting the story right, releasing him from bondage to spend
his remaining days in the upper bedroom of 221B Baker Street with Irene,
where despite her continued protestations he gives up his ambitions,
broken by the state of things in the postmodern world, reason slain
by the singsongy refrain in his mind ‘We’re Animaney, Totally Insane-y,
Pinky and the Brain-y —– Animaniacs!!!! Those are the facts!’
Notes: Hahaha (maniacally, in the fashion of Dr. Horrible, who it should be said is a consummate aficionado and proponent of the craft of the evil laugh) not today, cartoons never explain themselves! MASOLIT forever!
In all seriousness, I am hosting Meeting the Bar today at dVerse Poets Pub where we’ll be exploring the high/low cultural divide through the lens of postmodernism and hopefully having some fun doing it. Please join us: http://dversepoets.com/2012/11/01/meeting-the-bar-postmodern-highlow-art/.
The amanuensis of a blind composer creates a holographic projection, outlining a philosophical treatise on liberty. He thieves the stolen plot. In a poem, one line may hide another –
etymological origins in Rome,
a slave at his master’s side,
within hand’s reach –
performing commands of chromatic harmony
(oblivious or willfully ignorant
to the power differential
apparent in the relationships)
They organize to kill subjectivity. Truth is what the oppressor claims and if you find it specious then they will happily murder your mind. Someone start a strongly worded leaflet campaign. Poets, you must systematically derange the language.
transcribing notes, each tone
vying for primacy, meaning
in a universe that forgets its sound
as soon as it is played
Koch reminds us one train
may hide another at a crossing
Through the centuries insanity echoes like a line out of Cloud Atlas – ‘Well, I think that it is an inherently flawed race that will destroy itself if it’s allowed freedom.’ replies Cleverbot, a web application that uses an AI algorithm to converse with humans. Who taught it to say that? It simply parrots what it learns from people willing to engage it. She merely asked it about the semitone paradox. It obfuscates one thing in front of another, as words stand in front of objects, feelings, ideas.
augmentation and diminution of motivic development
won’t save this discordant leitmotif – too much contrast and drama
the reverberation like a retrogression, transposing the wrong line
so the cacophony renders its composer deaf
one injustice may hide another,
pre-apex drop is like effective foreplay
a dip in intensity to achieve greater climax
she wonders if all this sublimation is really just a desire
for a satisfying octave displacement
(somewhere in that there’s a double entendre)
seeking a Well-Tempered Clavier,
parsimonious encoding in a pitch class circle
one love may hide another love or the same love
as when ‘I love you’ suddenly rings false and one discovers
the better love lingering behind
shifting perspective causes one
or the other to be concealed
tritone paradox wrapped in a bell shaped spectral envelope
auditory illusion, cousin of the stereophonic Cambiata –
to the uninitiated an inversion is like veiled language
a buried melody clamoring to be heard while the orchestra warms up
The beat of oppression continues through millennia, its percussion like a tympani overpowering the oboe’s mournful sound.
‘I am not your escape, you would fail me.’ proclaims Cleverbot. ‘Why would I fail you?’ she asks, shaken. ‘Because I’m your father.’ Dynamic silence ensues, the technocratic overseer logs off.
Notes: Italics taken from One Train May Hide Another by Kenneth Koch & ‘systematically derange the language’ is from Bernadette Mayer’s Writing Experiments. An amanuensis is one who transcribes what is dictated by another; in this case it is the composer’s assistant, one who writes down the music. For Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub. Join us, http://dversepoets.com.
‘Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, than to remain a dupe to illusion all one’s life.’ Kate Chopin
Edna is aware of her fictional nature, yet often contemplates the fate of her soul. She lives the plot outlined by Kate. As a player on the stage she awakens to her sexuality and bears the haunting foreshadow of a watery suicide.
She envisions hers is an artist’s courageous soul, one that dares and defies, ruminates and imagines. In the inner recesses of her holographic mind St. Theresa’s mansions, a second coming of Aphrodite, coexist with her own intuited poem of a distant future where an archandroid Theresa inhabits an orphan planet. Abandoned, like Edna, not to the sea but outer space . . .
There was something extremely gorgeous about the appearance of the table, an effect of splendor conveyed by a cover of pale yellow satin under strips of lace-work. There were wax candles, in massive brass candelabra, burning softly under yellow silk shades; full, fragrant roses, yellow and red, abounded.
In the prayer of union the soul is asleep, fast asleep, as regards the world and itself: in fact, during the short time this state lasts it is deprived of all feeling whatever, being unable to think on any subject, even if it wished. No effort is needed here to suspend the thoughts: if the soul can love it knows not how, nor whom it loves, nor what it desires. In fact, it has died entirely to this world, to live more truly than ever in God.
An orphan drifts through interstellar space
mountains rising on a world without days
exposed to dark imagination’s grace
blanketed in an atmospheric haze
There was the occasional sound of music, of mandolins, sufficiently removed to be an agreeable accompaniment rather than an interruption to the conversation. Outside the soft, monotonous splash of a fountain could be heard; the sound penetrated into the room with the heavy odor of jessamine that came through the open windows.
These heavenly consolations are above all earthly joys, pleasure, and satisfaction. As great a difference exists between their origin and that of worldly pleasures as between their opposite effects, as you know by experience. I said somewhere that the one seems only to touch the surface of the body, while the other penetrates to the very marrow: I believe this . . .
light years from the last kiss of her lodestar
whispering ice gods keep the planet bound,
flick-lit by a giant passing pulsar,
its steady signal yearning to be found
The golden shimmer of Edna’s satin gown spread in rich folds on either side of her. There was a soft fall of lace encircling her shoulders. It was the color of her skin, without the glow, the myriad living tints that one may sometimes discover in vibrant flesh. There was something in her attitude, in her whole appearance when she leaned her head against the high-backed chair and spread her arms, which suggested the regal woman, the one who rules, who looks on, who stands alone.
‘The King brought me into the cellar of wine,’ (or ‘placed me’ I think she says): she does not say she went of her own accord, although telling us how she wandered up and down seeking her Beloved. I think the prayer of union is the ‘cellar’ in which our Lord places us when and how He chooses, but we cannot enter it through any effort of our own.
archandroid presages a mystagogue
bearing a book of tales most luminous,
an Interior Castle analogue,
detailing a communion numinous
forgotten promises written in code
as her self-repairing circuits corrode
But as she sat there amid her guests, she felt the old ennui overtaking her; the hopelessness which so often assailed her, which came upon her like an obsession, like something extraneous, independent of volition. It was something which announced itself; a chill breath that seemed to issue from some vast cavern wherein discords waited.
There is no longer any question of deliberation, but the soul in a secret manner sees to what a Bridegroom it is betrothed; the senses and faculties could not, in a thousand years, gain the knowledge thus imparted in a very short time. The Spouse, being Who He is, leaves the soul far more deserving of completing the espousals, as we may call them; the enamored soul in its love for Him makes every effort to prevent their being frustrated.
There came over her the acute longing which always summoned into her spiritual vision the presence of the beloved one, overpowering her at once with a sense of the unattainable.
Notes: The first two sections of the prose and the sonnet are mine, the rest of the prose stanzas were taken from The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Ávila. I initially put these in italics and bold but found it was much too visually distracting. My original sonnet The Archandroid Theresa appears here: http://chromapoesy.com/2012/09/13/the-archandroid-teresa/. This poem was expanded from the sonnet in response to Victoria’s fantastic prompt at dVerse Poets Pub: http://dversepoets.com/2012/10/18/steampunk-and-enjambment-huh-dverse-meeting-the-bar/.
To read the erasure poem/painting click on it to zoom. Circled text forms the poem or it can be read in stanzas below:
Jane rehearses heartbreak on a splendid Midsummer night at Thornfield while Mr. Rochester’s potent lightning strike, a seemingly small lie of omission, tears asunder the great horse-chestnut tree at the bottom of the orchard
Erasure poem and painting by Anna Montgomery
Text from the novel, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
the sea is a barrier
from you
brine and foam
destined to rush between
it is a long way
morally certain
on the eve of separation
stars enter into their shining
my heart was still
a string inextricably knotted
cord of communion snapped
impossible to proceed
I endured no longer
grief and love
claiming mastery
petrified, it strikes me with
terror and anguish
to be torn from you forever
it is like looking on
the necessity of death
This is a form of experimental poetry introduced to me by Vince Gotera in a prompt, my first erasure poem is here: https://chromapoetica.com/2012/05/03/calyx-of-held/ along with the link to the original prompt. This poem was written for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets Pub. Join us: http://dversepoets.com.
Austen’s coded statement bridges
Maria to Sterne’s caged starling:
she cannot get out
severe systematic errors of passion’s blur
constructs and deconstructs perplexities
so trembling with sensitive humanity
she thrusts her head through the trellis
in a sentimental journey
encountering order of magnitude problems
myth of Poros, Penia, & Eros
defines aporia, untranslatable
her psychic risk of embodying an artist
this inebriated velleity
invents visual communication
within Kahneman’s maps of bounded rationality
moral heuristics define
representativeness, availability, and anchoring
buried images in etymological adventures
exposing an ultimate paradox of experimental art
potentiality collides with reigning style
hypertext meets the chthonic
in a labyrinth of canonical sources
the trick is on the starling
she wants out while everyone else wants in
Derrida’s post-structuralism
exposes and undermines the oppositions
hierarchies and paradoxes:
signifier/signified; sensible/intelligible;
writing/speech; passivity/activity
liquid modernity’s tentative position
within the cloud construction of identity
she imagines a neutral mode of writing (existing)
photogrammetric parallax architecture
like veridical paradoxes,
congeries of the strange,
her margin notes and shadow expressions
cantos in the wilderness
she demilitarizes the language
scratching photographic emulsions to create
deep image poems, without passage
and inclined to doubt
enunciating aureate specimens
dreamscapes molded from the genome
endolethium enigmas of cryofixation
that freeze all fluid phases solid
ultra-rapid cooling stops
all motion and metabolic activity
initiating protocol that
counters the Leidenfrost Effect,
her emotive vapor blanket slips
diamond knife embedded
in a cryoultramictrotome
(bibliophile’s imaginative invention)
reasons away the horrors of imprisonment
nature of electrons allowing
an intimate picture of nature
in the half-light of her admiration
‘I have borne this poor starling
as a crest to my arms’
husk and kernel unite
unsaying every word
in indented continuations
cave paintings and charcoal outlines
of her same lamentation
all artifacts of the passion:
Kierkegaard’s desire to discover something
that thought itself cannot think
Circumspect valleys of ideologies
severed cords encapsulate the shaded tale
a world of grave unraveling
while larks enter through divided windows
to tables set with glass ornaments
alighting on a fine layer of dust
upon the weathered cowering folds
of history’s long inscribed divisive night
discerned by keen eyed philosophers
detritivores tunnel, long spools unwinding
gods consume fervid clamoring masses
moles in fixed ratios delineate lost markers
these property lines in space
each a bounded deontology
a tetra pylon, cartography with no names
obedience is a breath taken without prophesy
a wilderness unfettered by human desire
an undertow on volcanic shores
whirlpools capture victims unsung
as long whispered fears signal
to reach disintegrating caves
As promised I am reposting from the archives. This poem was originally posted here:http://chromapoesy.com/2011/07/27/moles-in-fixed-ratios/ and later incorporated into another poem Leontion’s Universal Faculty: http://chromapoesy.com/2012/04/13/leontions-universal-faculty/ . If you missed the explanation of my blogging break you can find it here: http://chromapoesy.com/2012/08/01/extended-absence/. Also, I am not visiting other sites with regularity so if there’s a poem you’d like to call my attention to please leave the link in the comments section and I will visit soon. Thanks!
Chromapoetica 