Isms

[Tracy Mitchell]

While iambic pentameter was the gold standard, I find a subtle coherence to a meter consisting of 10 syllable lines without attention to accents, as you write here.  I use this meter more than occasionally and find it beneficial. 

T

[Dave]

Hi Mark
Glad to see you write, glad this is a political poem but (sorry) it lacks punch for me. Maybe because in itself the subject is a bit tired.

Dave
 

[Mark]

Thanks for further comments, matty Ty and Dave. I had a look at your link matty, thanks, some nice poems but nothing worth getting shot for.
Maybe 'political' is a dated term, I agree, maybe it's more social commentary, whatever.
That bastard Shakespeare wrote his plays in frigging IP, I didn't know that.

I called this a form exercise but the sneaky fun part was seeing if I could get away with hiding a tweaked sonnet in plain sight... 

Interesting exercise, the form features I ended up with made it quite difficult to be coherent, and it got tedious real quick. The most interesting thing to me was about the cadence, I couldn't find a good beat when I read the ten syllable lines, more just like a marching drum but vaguely. I dunno about you guys when it comes to cadence but I want to imagine something with a back-beat from the Doors or the Stones.

Apologies for my absence- I've been sulking/working/playing. I picked up an old-school wave ski from a junk shop a while back. Good paddling sessions. Out solo on the sea till 7.30 pm yesterday, smooth swells of cold green water alongside a rocky point, surrounded by a sky and sunset like all the artists in heaven were on a day trip. 

I digress. What I want to know is, how does this free piece's cadence compare to the other one's ?



Graffiti Jesus

Someone painted Jesus on a rock outside of town.

...don't be absurd. You know what I mean, a five letter word ten feet high.
I picture a pair of mouth breathers, armed with ladder and brush
and the need to proselytize. Or maybe the Son of God
was cruising by for cigarettes and tagged it like
some Heysooz dude from the hood.

...but I choose it as exclamation, a counterpoint commentary
in blasphemy on a ghost civilization. There are wounded orphans
in bombed out streets, rebar bones and chemical lies, nanny states
and so watchful machines of loving grace, Ferraris and elegant whores;
the white noise in your head-space.     



 

[indar]

Mark you really need to post this as a separate entry--its fabulous and I wonder if its getting enough play. I'll wait until then to comment except to ask:

some Heysooz dude from the hood.

Is this some South African thing?

[Mark]

Thanks for commenting, Linda. Heysooz is the phonetic pronunciation of the Spanish first name Jesus (with accent) so not a Saffa thing. Think it's fine posted here. Just going to change one word to keep the bounce (and slant) going. 

[indar]

I was joking---I live in California---land of surfer and Heysooz dudes

[Mark]

Ah. Sometimes my sense of humour is not very sensible.

[Mark Hoffmann]

For one terrifying moment I thought this was going to be a poem about ISO 27001.

I don't have much to say about Isms other than I liked the opening line. The Jesus one though is fab; especially S1.

Mark H

[Mark]

Thanks for your take, Mark. I'll get to the ISO 27001 poem once i figure out what that is - in the meantime I hope you'll drop a humour piece soon...

[Amie]

ISO 27001 is the standard for information security.