Advent

Because we no longer believe
we spend months preparing
for a festival
whose true meaning scares us
so we bury it under greed
and gluttony to escape
the cold slanting sadness
that is our fate.

night train -
middle aged commuter plays
air guitar

The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

Anyone who is interested in languages should read this book! It's accessible, informative, intellectually stimulating, entertaining and sometimes infuriating. Pinker puts forward the idea that language is instinctive and looks at the evolution of language, how grammar works and the genetics of language. Academic linguistics is kept to a minimum, instead examples are given of how language works in real life situations. Pinker explored questions such as can chimpanzees really be taught sign language? and is the English language deteriorating?

You may not agree with everything he says, but you'll certainly have plenty to think about....

The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

Citrus Nightmare

oil glazed lasers throb
surreal landscapes, spacescapes video
bass pounds.......drums pound
vibrate through floor.......through legs

pure noise smash
strobe lights crash
slow motion collapse

sensory overload drowning
in red music
of burning glass


(Tangerine Dream in Concert, Sunday 2 November)

Red Music of Burning Glass for Poefusion

hen party -
no one more attractive
than the bride's mother

Misinterpreting the Gothic as Goth.....

The Read Write Poem prompt this week is 'the gothic' but I'll deliberately misinterpet that as goth. After a long break, we finally managed to get to a goth club last weekend (Nervenkreig), so I'm feeling in a goth type of mood - here are links to some of my goth poems on this blog:


Falco
Young Woman in Black
Silk Neon Gothic
Crowded

all fall down

these were homes
just a month ago -
piles of rubble


for Easystreet prompts

Look what someone else wrote for me.....

from the infamous internet spoof anthology For Godot Issue 1

Fear

Our different paradise
More different than a matter
Riding
Forgiving
Importing
Giving
Supposing fear
Pondered
A well
Death
A hopeless thing
Deployed
Strange as a bribe
Fit and unfit
Hospitable as opulence
Joy
Like a small bell
Hidden
Patient as a gaze
Like a distant creature
To know an interview
A salubrious thing


Juliet Wilson
p2275

check whether you are one of the 3,000 poets in it without permission, with poetry you've never seen before attributed to you, read more at the Poetry Foundation website. There's a lot of interesting commentary on it too, as to whether it is some kind of elaborate social experiment. I think I'm choosing to laugh....

after silent months -
a one line mail announces
her visit

Dresden - a reconstructed city

Most of Dresden has been entirely rebuilt in its original style, after being bombed in the Second World War. The original stones were reused where possible, giving many of the buildings a patchwork appearance as the new stone doesn't match the colour of the old.