Late Sunday Afternoon

[MystyrMystyry]

No worries now
just drifting beneath
silky milky cloud
formations

Slow animations
evolve following the
tradition of all previous
Sundays on the porch

Dragon with a torch
twists into a lion
spiralling outward
until a two-headed platypus

A whale and octopus
becoming each other
as a crab rips itself
apart to nebularise

Towards horizon-wise
a cat chases a dog
slow motion crash
into an giant troll face

Then two crocodiles race
as a gorilla eats a crippled
turkey with swiss cheese
a cosmic hammer smashes

A tidal wave lashes
the new-formed rocks
atop which a castle and
lighthouse bright

Two boxers fight
a school of fishes
an enormous ogre
with an axe to grind

Peering closer and I find
a different one swinging
behind a door about
to chop the first in half

A caterpillar having a laugh
barbershop quartet or
monster wooing a princess
as the clouds grow dark

A forest of trees with shiny bark
the vision of a dinosaur
a squadron of fighters
and a bomb gets dropped

On a battleship - but I opt
to go inside before the
storm grows near - and
there's a drip upon my brow

[Delta40]

I like the rhyming links between each verse but I have absolutely no idea what this poem might be about. A journey to everywhere on Sunday arvo I suspect!

[MystyrMystyry]

Nothing more complex than just cloud gazing on a porch before the storm Delta

[Dark Muse]

A very idyllic and whimsical poem. I qute like the use of the rhyme here. It is true, clouds can be such interesting things.

[AuntShecky]

Aha! I've read your reply #3 and I'm after pattin' meself on me back for guessing right!

It's a whimsical reverie about forming pictures in one's mind from otherwise amorphous cloud formations.

My fave was the line about the caterpillar having a laugh.

Yet the last line --the drip on the brow --brings the narrator, sadly, back to reality. Nice touch!

This posting was very sweet, giving us some much needed levity in heavy times. ("Heavy, Man!")

[MystyrMystyry]

Thankyou Delta for showing it to me in a different light, like daydreaming in the garden

Thankyou Dark Muse for your appeciation

Thankyou AuntShecky for appreciating it without overt criticism.


I actually like thunder and lightning, and sat through the storm, but I needed an ending so thus the 'going inside', and leaving the storm for another day. But the main thing was finally giving myself a couple of hours to kill. No electronic communication, no music, no anything except a notebook on my knee and a leaky fountain pen (silver. present, broken, ill-repaired with glue) and scrawling down the images as they occurred; there are a lot more but there's a limit to how long - just til it felt right

[deryk]

The word "slow" gave it away for me. This poem is such a sensory overload! It reminds me of something childish Keats once wrote in subject matter and relentless imagery. I really like how all of the images are bombastically creating each other. Very imaginative!

[everyadventure]

Love this one, it has an underlying beat to it that begs to be put to a Jamaican reggae song... ;)

[MystyrMystyry]

deryk - I can't find the Keats poem you referred to, but it wouldn't surprise me that something similar has been done countless times before - though it does seem like the 'trivial' subject a mature poet would avoid once attaining 'major' or 'great' status - but as that's extremely unlikely to ever happen in my case, bring on the clouds!

[MystyrMystyry]

every - yes, it was a groovy kind of day, and your suggestion of a reggae rhythm would seem to be a suitable fit, and something I'll certainly keep in mind for later

[GEETASHREE]

Plural of fish is fish and it should be a giant. Sorry for nitpicking. Were you chasing the clouds? The first stanza has a promising beginning but the rest is totally different from the first in thought, theme and mood.

[MystyrMystyry]

Plural of poetic license is poetic licence, and an giant is fine as it is both an' giant and a giant - the reason the fist stanza is different in mood was to create a circular feeling of inside outside inside outside

But thanks for reading (and nitpicking)

[everyadventure]

Plural of fish is fish and it should be a giant. Sorry for nitpicking.

Bah, I have to weigh in. Merriam-Webster says:
1fish noun, often attributive \ˈfish\
plural fish or fish·es :cornut:

Besides, I liked it because it sounded childish, and fits the overall mood of the poem :)

[MystyrMystyry]

Thanks every - I think the word has poetic origins, though I'll have to check

My thinking is that it goes back only to the King James Bible in which poets were hired for the translation from the Roman and Greek versions, though in written and spoken English prior it was only fish - Shakespeare may have used fishes too but off the top of my head I can't recollect a quotation featuring the plural form

[deryk]

deryk - I can't find the Keats poem you referred to, but it wouldn't surprise me that something similar has been done countless times before - though it does seem like the 'trivial' subject a mature poet would avoid once attaining 'major' or 'great' status - but as that's extremely unlikely to ever happen in my case, bring on the clouds!

Most of what Keats wrote was pretty immature, but it didn't stop him from being a great poet. I'll PM you the poem if I can find it.

[AuntShecky]

Thankyou AuntShecky for appreciating it without overt criticism.




Once in a great while, there doesn't seem to be any "overt criticism" to give. Then again, maybe yours fooly had just swallowed her "shut up juice." (Time for another glass!)

[MystyrMystyry]

Okay - now you're just getting back at me for confusing Gregory Peck with Cary Grant - it was an honest mistake, honest!