| Press yes to play here | the balls fall for free | hear them drop and roll | english orb orbit | for texting eddies | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| no to go away | in pool hall heaven | chalk up your cue stick | break like a big bang | syllabicating | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| maybe to come back | no need for quarters | green felt of grass field | consider the balls | men who cut their tongues | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| some day some day soon | 8 ball in corner | in the universe | across the table | gaming without words | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| tonight not that moon | pocket that was quick | full of dandelions | stars stripes black and cue | ball white as the moon | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| semiquantitatively | microdirectionally | yet who can’t get no no no | unsatisfactorily | twisting down the back alley | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| sociodemographic | ideologically | seven syllable word count | so what is the so what here | pseudointellectual | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| imperceptibility | suspicion grows this is all | pseudopoetically | irresponsibility | what can I say you reading | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| waxing then waning away | autobiographical | compartmentalization | social media neither | social nor mediational ideas | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| unsystematically | superficiality | huge lack of self confidence | just give us the artifice | we’ll know what to do with it | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| without rhyme or reasoned sense | oversimplification | he likes unconventional | individuality | cosmopolitanism | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| syllables all connected | he seems influenced by John Cage | and that explains anything | we seem to be moving to | microcommunication | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| We appeal to fruit | the nature within | seeds meat juice and skin | figuratively | and then the real fig | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| banana orange | grape raisin ugli | miracle passion | fruit worms flies mildew | self-preservation | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| and vegetables | puritanism | free love free fruit gloss | dogs and cats and kids | seal it with a kiss | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| cherry red pepper | baked raspberry pie | apple cloudberry | running toward the surf | rub it in your palm | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| garlic and onions | coconut olive | oils and buttery | fat when it is cold | now back to the sea | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Press yes to play here the balls fall for free hear them drop and roll english orb orbit for texting eddies
no to go away in pool hall heaven chalk up your cue stick break like a big bang syllabicating
maybe to come back no need for quarters green felt of grass field consider the balls men who cut their tongues
some day some day soon 8 ball in corner in the universe across the table gaming without words
tonight not that moon pocket that was quick full of dandelions stars stripes black and cue ball white as the moon
semiquantitatively microdirectionally yet who can’t get no no no unsatisfactorily twisting down the back alley
sociodemographic ideologically seven syllable word count so what is the so what here pseudointellectual
imperceptibility suspicion grows this is all pseudopoetically irresponsibility what can I say you are right
waxing then waning away autobiographical compartmentalization social media neither social nor mediational ideas
unsystematically superficiality huge lack of self confidence just give us the artifice we’ll know what to do with it
without rhyme or reasoned sense oversimplification he likes unconventional individuality cosmopolitanism
syllables all connected he seems influenced by John Cage and that explains anything we seem to be moving to microcommunication
We appeal to fruit the nature within seeds meat juice and skin figuratively and then the real fig
banana orange grape raisin ugli miracle passion fruit worms flies mildew self-preservation
and vegetables puritanism free love free fruit gloss dogs and cats and kids seal it with a kiss
cherry red pepper baked raspberry pie apple cloudberry running toward the surf rub it in your palm
garlic and onions coconut olive oils and buttery fat when it is cold now back to the sea
Press yes to play here the balls fall for free hear them drop and roll english orb orbit for texting eddies no to go away in pool hall heaven chalk up your cue stick break like a big bang syllabicating maybe to come back no need for quarters green felt of grass field consider the balls men who cut their tongues some day some day soon 8 ball in corner in the universe across the table gaming without words tonight not that moon pocket that was quick full of dandelions stars stripes black and cue ball white as the moon semiquantitatively microdirectionally yet who can’t get no no no unsatisfactorily twisting down the back alley sociodemographic ideologically seven syllable word count so what is the so what here pseudointellectual imperceptibility suspicion grows this is all pseudopoetically irresponsibility what can I say you are right waxing then waning away autobiographical compartmentalization social media neither social nor mediational ideas unsystematically superficiality huge lack of self confidence just give us the artifice we’ll know what to do with it without rhyme or reasoned sense oversimplification he likes unconventional individuality cosmopolitanism syllables all connected he seems influenced by John Cage and that explains anything we seem to be moving to microcommunication We appeal to fruit the nature within seeds meat juice and skin figuratively and then the real fig banana orange grape raisin ugli miracle passion fruit worms flies mildew self-preservation and vegetables puritanism free love free fruit gloss dogs and cats and kids seal it with a kiss cherry red pepper baked raspberry pie apple cloudberry running toward the surf rub it in your palm garlic and onions coconut olive oils and buttery fat when it is cold now back to the sea
The Coming of the Toads 
P.S. Do realise it is totally interactive and clicking on anything changes everything. Do find this hurdy gurdy you can play (keyboard or guitar) endlessly fascinating for ALL AGES. http://www.michelbergerhotel.com/#/gallery
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I could not find the hurdy gurdy. Maybe after another cup of coffee I’ll give it another go. Meantime, I see they are hiring a roomboy. Maybe I’ll apply. I once parked cars at the LA International. So, there’s that for the resume. But as blogger and poet (not to mention punter and busker) I feel I might meet these qualifications: http://michelbergerhotel.com/blog/hiringchambermaid-roomboy/
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:)
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The pinball adventure reminded me of this strangely compelling graphic originally provided by Ashen of the Michelsberger Hotel. http://www.michelbergerhotel.com/#/rocket
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Yes, I remember that from Ashen’s blog. Very cool. Well, that’s the sort of thing one needs for the poems I’ve in mind, but I don’t know enough computer lingo. I guess I’m just stuck with default words and fonts.
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Hi Joe: When I first glanced at this post of yours, scanning the words, my attention moving like a pinball, guided along, then being released into the spaces or gaps, loosely bouncing around, before catching and being guided again, I was still in Chicago and had just returned from The Museum of Science and Industry, where the following whimsically delightful Rube Goldberg-esque contraption put together with pieces collected from junkyards is, entitled “Swiss Jolly Ball.” There is more than one recording of this on Youtube, none very good, shaky camerawork, but I chose this one because I love the kids in the backround exclaiming excitedly watching the ball go around.
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Thanks, John. Quite the pinball edifice. Love the train. Voices of kids. Pinball a fitting read for the Big Haiku Excel format. Now I’m considering a Pinball Poem. Just googled that, and only got 186 “results,” most probably using pinball as content, not necessarily form. The thing about pinball is you have to start at the bottom and send the ball to the top, random enough, then the fall, all to a theme. Not sure that can be programmed with the simple WordPress theme I use. A pinball poem might be easier to draw. Maybe you’d like to try that. Meantime, Thanks for reading and comment.
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I don’t know what a “pinball” poem is or what it may be, but it would have to utilize logic which contains the laws of mechanics, gravity certainly an essential part of the movement and equation. Deeper thought and consideration would have to be had for choice of words. Randomness or chance doesn’t make a game go, but rules and regulations do. Release and fun is found in the designated constraints, the hashed out or defined areas. There’s no excitement in the pinball game without that space or “drain” between the bumpers where one can lose a “go” or a ball. To write a poem corresponding to that, mimicking or reflecting that, would have to take that into consideration.
One could just as well write “machine poetry”, where parts fit into a whole, mechanistically logical, running like an engine in a vehicle. I suppose an entire book of poems may be written, sections: the pinball machine, the penny arcade, the slot machine, and breaking off into another section: the bike, the automobile, the airplane, the space ship. A writing which captures the movements and rhythms of these things, the mind of the reader directed into identifying with the inner workings or “engines” which make these things go.
Your introduction of the ball in your loose haiku arrangement here is what made me think of the “Swiss Jolly Ball” contraption, how you use images in this miniature theater way, and your structuring of the words into an equally “visual” poem, harkening back perhaps not only to John Cage and his writings but also to Mallarme’s “A Throw of the Dice” and Apollinaire’s Calligrammes. Related to this, have you ever seen the collages, assemblages and shadow boxes of Joseph Cornell? Really fantastic, magical. Cornell begins with what we’re talking about here and progressed in his associations to certain “constellations” of meaning and created out of them these occult and mystical boxes, strange kinds of dream catchers, which still resonate somehow with the charming miniature dollhouse or circus, the pinball machine, the penny arcade, etc.
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“Always gets a replay,
Never seen him fall.”
Yeah, Cornell, the box, like the bar, the stage, three walls, the fourth open to an audience.
A pole in air. Where did I see that?
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“Always gets a replay,
Never seen him fall.”
Yeah, Cornell, the box, like the bar, the stage, three walls, the fourth open to an audience.
A pole in air. A pole in ear.
Where did I see that?
April in air. Ferlinghetti wrote “A Coney Island of the Mind.” Could have been maybe a Penny Arcade of the Mind.
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The Unmade Bed poem, that idea, should be mentioned too, in a relation to an object poetically depicted and expressed. Shucka Shucka. You broke your idea of the Unmade Bed down by describing kinds of beds you’ve slept on in the past. Ball rolls down straight-away, right flipper released: ball shoots back up and moves in a slow arc along the top, before dropping back down through a chute. Putting the Unmade Bed up for sale kind of failed. Sleeping in a bed isn’t a game. But if it was I’d win prizes for insomnia and bad dreams. Ting Ting, goes the bell; radiating yellow and green lights alternate with red ones, all up and down the game. Points for witty retorts. My own unmade bed came apart and ended up as wreckage floating down old man river, a wet dream. Ting Ting! Ball rolls up and slows down before dropping into a maze, spirals around through three glowing spinners, rolls up a narrow incline, then disappears into a miniature house and the windows light up as it bounces down the grand staircase and, a door-bell suddenly ringing, it pops out the front door. “Welcome home!” I exclaim laughing, going nuts with the flippers, my feet dancing, feeling pretty good now. Someone in the background warns, “Don’t get too high, don’t get too low. Be steady or you’ll lose your concentration, and at your height, out of the blue, you’ll surely lose.” I ignore the advice, now feeling I have telekinetic control over the ball, that I can move it with the power of my mind, guide it to targets I want to hit, racking up points at will. I speak out of turn, thinking I know everything. I’m riding the wave and hanging ten. I spin around and work the flippers behind my back, then jump back around and sing “Hey Joe” by Hendrix in parody, working the flippers in percussive rhythm, until I get the ball out of danger. As it rolls along in a safe zone high up in the machine, dinging back and forth away from the gutters, a kaleidoscope of lights flashing, like a kid taking his hands off the handles of his bike and riding with no hands to show off, I turn cavalier. Here in your loose haiku experiment you’ve taken another kind of shambles, a scattering of words, a wreckage loosely carried along and out the river’s mouth, back out to sea. And just like that, with my head turned and when I least expected it, no longer paying enough attention, I find myself in deep water. I frantically move the flippers to no avail, shaking the machine – using my life preserver, but it doesn’t work – a loud bell ring-a-linging and the word “TILT” appearing, the ball rolling straight between the locked flippers into the drain, and the game suddenly goes dark. Damn it! After a long pause, blue lights equally spaced all around the perimeter of the game flash in unison ten times, then go dark, after which a single large bright white light at the top turns on, flashing me in the eyes, and a foghorn blares.
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Ah, the TILT! I had forgotten the tilt. It’s like the wipeout on the wave. If only 6 really was 9, I could get rid of all my ties. The pinball machine might make for a serendipitous life preserver. You might consider going into the flash fiction business, John. Effective piece.
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I see. I think I do. Full of Dandelions
Twisting down the back alley
Ball while as the moon
some kind of start?
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…and circular finish ‘:|’
(that’s supposed to be a repeat sign)
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Cerainly inspired by John Cage :)
BTW, have you come across the children fantasy, ‘The Little Grey Men Go down the Bright Stream’ by BB – Denys James Watkins-Pitchford (1948)? There you find characters like Dodder, Baldmoney and Cloudberry, creatures who live by a Warwickshire brook, forced to move on …
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I’ll check it out. You may have mentioned it before? Anyway, I got to thinking about Haiku after your last post! I know the traditional ones usually emerge from nature, from some reflection on nature, but what is nature (particularly when it comes to poetry)?
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Compulsive writing exercise on speed with a paucity of verbs meaning meaning is derived developed and observed shattering or smattering in the splinters of glass mind where you tread making for the door first circumnavigate a room spreading lavender for scorpions lurking in the curtain Okay hit it! Shall I stop …?
Best bit was back to the sea. Just shows what may be done with a diuretic verbal facility unhitched from grammar. Why didn’t I think of that?
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I wanted to create a Haiku builder in Excel, but I don’t know how to get the Excel file to function with a macro in WordPress. The idea was to allow readers to select their three lines of haiku from the three sections of the builder as shown, the first section consisting of five syllable lines, the second seven syllables, and the third five again. And the whole building block as macro would itself be a giant haiku, built on the foundation of the 5/7/5 format: 5 syllables in 5 lines of 5 haiku in the first section (line), then 7 syllables in 7 lines, then 5 again. The macro would allow readers to build a three line haiku of 5/7/5 syllables, the lines being selected from the builder randomly via the macro. A factorial would tell how many possibilities there are, but enough to say, as you said, “Shall I stop…?”
And as I tried to paste the thing into WordPress (from Excel), I kept getting these different outcomes, so I decided, John Cage style, to let the I Ching decide.
But writing to achieve a chorus effect as in music doesn’t work, because it’s impossible to read in unison different words (“unhitched from grammar” they become) without confusion that simply distracts and alienates and ends up a kind of anarchy of meaning.
Joyce came close to succeeding in Finnegans Wake with the pun, the layering of simultaneous meaning or suggestions. Close, because most readers give up on it, seeing in it, as you seemed to have into my dog haiku, a kind of incontinence. Though I did acknowledge or suggest the pseudo at work throughout. And that for me is the real problem. And so you think, why bother? Maybe that’s the compulsion.
But we all see different things when we look at the clouds. God bless the child who just sees clouds.
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