New PC Chant

Okay i will admit it.. I am a technophile. I have invested a huge amount of my time into my pc writing, creating, ideas, photos, video etc.. Well recently my pc crashed and, mainly due to a lack of back up measures I lost helluva a lot of stuff. PC technology is a boon, but you need to realise it’s limitations. It fails occasionally  and takes everything you have invested in it to digital purgatory. Oh well.. lessons we learn. Anyway off to get a brand new shiny pc on the weekend. Wrote a poem about the anticipation of new pc ownership.

New metal pet
Skin is red
PC needs met
Gadget lust fed

Morsel – Visiting Crescent Pond – Chinese Sung Dynasty Poem

I like all sorts of poetry from all sorts of cultures and times. Tang and Sung Dynasty poetry is elegant, brief , full of allusion and symobology.  Seemingly simple  and short verse can be a thinly disguised criticism; a reference to another classic poem; refer to a historical event or legend; or even be a mini philosophical treatise.

The poem I have selected by the Sung Dynasty poet Ch’eng Hao (1032-1085) is a bit more straight forward, but has some nice imagery in it:

Visting Crescent Pond

We circle the shore of Crescent Pond

to the north is a tower that touches the sky

the world has changed in the autumn air

we pour a cup for the evening chill

the image of a cloud pauses on the water

the sound of a stream lingers beneath the trees

our tasks are endless there’s no need to count

let’s meet again our next day off

 

Ch’eng Hao Poems of the Masters 205, (trans.) Pine, R. (2003) Washington: Copper Canyon Press, pp. 422-423

Zombie Dreams

Okay had a dream the other night in which I was fighting off  Zombie hordes led by Bruce Campbell aka Ash from the Evil Dead films. I admit the poem is a tad weird and all over the place.. but so are dreams.

Zombie haunted sleep
Packed doorways, broken windows
Space contracting, life on threshold
Shambling hordes closing

Hackneyed plot, mono-syllabic script
Undead Bruce Campbell leading legions of living dead
While Iggy Pop warbles in the background movie score
Singing for Brraains!!
Soft shoe shuffle of Doom!!!

Unfazed by falling from bone maggot ripe flesh
The only thing I fear is the death knell click of an empty shotgun
Holding my own in lurid dream carved rooms
Never winning, not losing

Metaphor, symbol and Freudian nuance
What moments are being trawled by the subconscious
Sitting staring blankly at a thought-leech screen?
Automatic pilot everyday life?
Or mundane routine monster of the known?

Eyes suddenly flick open
As morning smashes night fed shows
Memory switches to backup before the virus of the now corrupts all
I awake amused and bemused
While my muse groans in her grave