Isms

[Mark]

.



Always, there are more days than keys to find
better ways but never the time to see
any other pattern than that in mind
because no one really thinking freely
can be any wiser without god-laws
drawing subtle subtext variations
closely related to the random scrawls
doodled in the margins of creations
ebbing into drains at city corners
full of hate and robotic citizens
enrolled by corporate flags and bankers
for the empire and its carcinogens
glistening on brain maps blooded with oil
guilty of war crimes left on foreign soil.

 

[indar]

Yo Mark! Up the political protest poem!

full of hate and robotic citizens

I will return when time allows and talk up the good parts    Right now I need to say that "hate" is the same kind of language as "love" in a poem. I wonder if there is a more imagiste way to express this sentiment.

[Matty11]

14 lines!

carcinogens
glistening on brain maps blooded with oil

seriously bleak

blooded with oil
guilty of war crimes inked on foreign soil.

A thread of colour with the oil?

You push the boundaries, good to read you again.

best

Matty

[Tracy Mitchell]

I confess I gave up on trying to read sentences and instead saw line after line accumulating toward a bleakness infused with passion, irony, and inevitability.   I recall a movie scene where a crop-duster is plummeting toward earth and a voice yells "pull up! pull up!" and as this poem reaches its conclusion, I am hearing the same voice.

Thanks for posting.

T

[Mark]

Thanks for comments, indar, matty and Ty. This was a one -session write and more an exercise in form than content, with one sentence, one comma and one full stop. The fourteen lines follow a Shakespearean sonnet rhyme scheme, illustrated by the first letter in each line. The lines are metered with 10 syllables per line. The feet are mostly iambic but not properly stressed throughout. 

[indar]

I never recognize forms that don't hit me over the head--a sestina for instance. I love the challenge of writing to a form but its sad I don't appreciate the work other writers put in on theirs. Next time let me know

I liked the poem anyway--now I like it even more.

[Matty11]

illustrated by the first letter in each line.

Like it

[Tim J Brennan]

I weep b/c we have moved ideologically to this point in our country. And no one but the Common Man seems to know this.  Yet they "ism" along their merry way like train wreck and are bound and determined to crash and kill us before putting up the proverbial stop sign.

History is such a waste.    

[Mark]

Thanks for comments, indar, matty and Tim. As I said, this more an exercise in form, the content is weak, really. And it could be any ism from fascism to communism to capitalism. But yes, the petrodollar. I like Ty's analogy of a diving plane - must be the run-on sentence - but I'm thinking more of a Stuka that does pull out... after letting go its 500 lb bomb. 

I wonder about the paucity of political poems in general during these extraordinary times. Sometimes I think poets are cautious about future retroactive laws that may turn them into punishable dissidents should they write political poems now. But there's no need to worry about this - it's sort of traditional for totalitarian police states that lose their gloves to round up all the poets and routinely shoot them as a matter of general housekeeping.   

[Matty11]

Political poetry is out there Mark eg

https://newversenews.blogspot.co.uk/