This one isn’t that silly, Dominic; it has its real demands, & you rise to them well.
I like the shifts, of situation, & tone.
I did not ‘get’ this line, the ‘the’ seems off?
the clouds my bathrobe and my happiness
But the rest moved my mind right along…
Doug
> On Oct 19, 2017, at 9:32 AM, Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Another silly formal exercise, this one with word-endings suggested by
> Kathy Bell. Once again, it strangely self-organised into meaningfulness as
> I wrote it.
>
> D
>
> ---
>
> SYNAESTHESIA SESTINA
>
> In dreams there sometimes comes the taste of chocolate
> spread out across the senses, a blue-sky
> thinking that gluts itself on inspiration.
> Take that for starters, and then visualise
> if possible a citrus tang of fright
> with creamy undertones of happiness
>
> as shampoo adverts picture happiness:
> a lustrousness, like that of melted chocolate
> swirling with comfort, dissipating fright,
> as aromatic as an autumn sky.
> It's with the tastebuds that I visualise,
> as through the spinal nerve romps inspiration.
>
> Fresh produce is my greatest inspiration:
> the pears and artichokes of happiness.
> To bite down is at once to visualise,
> through insta-filter granting hue of chocolate,
> the softly rippled surface of the sky.
> (I do not know why raisins taste of fright -
>
> something hard-pressed, as though the taste of fright
> were always against the teeth of inspiration.)
> My bare feet press against the chilly sky,
> the clouds my bathrobe and my happiness
> as, opening the fridge for last week's chocolate,
> uneaten bacon makes me visualise
>
> a bristling pig who could not visualise
> that outcome, who once oinked devoid of fright,
> as happy in the mud as I in chocolate.
> Bless you, dear porker, for this inspiration,
> and for your insolent piggy happiness
> beneath a fatty rasher-streak of sky.
>
> Deny the senses? Would you live on sky?
> I lack the mystics' knack to visualise
> in squalor their eternal happiness.
> The smell of deprivation gives me fright.
> I would much rather have for inspiration
> A solid, hand-felt monument of chocolate.
>
> This glowering sky gives me no cause for fright
> when I can visualise, for inspiration,
> the earthly happiness of lovely chocolate.
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Listen. If (UofAPress):
There was the usual amount of corruption, intimidation, and rioting.
Sir Charles Petrie
|