Tag: free verse

Way Out

You develop an
instant global consciousness,
a people orientation,
an intense dissatisfaction
with the state of the world,
and a compulsion to do something about it.

From out there on the moon,
international politics look
so petty. You want to
grab a politician
by the scruff of the neck
and drag him a quarter of
a million miles out and say,

‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’

Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell. By Marika Rose.

This Is That

Do you know why teachers
use me? Because I speak
in tongues. I write metaphors.
Every one of my
stories is a metaphor
you can remember. The
great religions are all
metaphor. We
appreciate things like
Daniel and the lion’s
den, and the Tower of Babel.

People remember these
metaphors because they
are so vivid you can’t
get free of them and that’s
what kids like in school. They
read about rocket ships
and encounters in space,
tales of dinosaurs. All
my life I’ve been running
through the fields and picking
up bright objects.

I turn one over and say,
Yeah, there’s a story.

Taken from an interview with Ray Bradbury. By Marika Rose.

From H– to L–e.–

Your letters are destroyed
and you have nothing
to fear from my indiscretion.
Your ring, &c., is ready packed,
and will be sent when
opportunity offers or
you choose to indicate a way.

Your ‘ever’ lasted five months
and I was a fool to expect
it would be otherwise.

An advert in the Times, some time in Victorian London. By Marika Rose.

Into what is the universe expanding?

Our universe
is all of space-time,
and space-time
is all of our universe.
Our language,
with the possible exception of mathematics,
is rooted in space-time,
and we have
no language
for that-which-is-not-space-time.
There is no what
that the universe is expanding into
because what,
where
and when
are properties of space-time,
not that-which-is-not-space-time.

So where does that leave us?

Unfortunately,
it leaves us with Wittgenstein:
What can be said at all
can be said clearly,
and what we cannot talk about
we must pass over
in silence.

From the Guardian’s Notes and Queries column, 13 April 2011. By Ailsa Holland.

Elysium

James Ensor, in a letter to his friend,
Jules Dujardin, mused:
To live in a big bathing hut
whose interior is clad
in mother-of-pearl shells,
and to sleep there
cradled by the sound of the sea
and an indolent
blonde beautiful girl
with salty flesh.

From the book Ensor, by Ulrike Becks-Malorny, published in 2000. By Robert.

The eye of the beholder

Ugly is in the eye of the beholder.

Grey skies,
Grey streets,
Grey grass.

Chimney stacks, factories.
Everywhere a factory.
Belching smoke. Black gates. Brick walls.

A wretched dog.
And the brilliantly
red nose of
the heavy drinker.

The industrial landscape of
1930s Salford wasn’t a pretty one.

But one ‘clumsy boy’ grey up, looked beyond
the bleakness and saw something beautiful.

Grey skies became
A silver canopy
undulating over a sea of red brick.

Factories became cathedrals of industry
with soaring chimney spires.

Crowds of workers became colourful, matchstick people
And black smoke became the
breath of a city alive with hard graft and banter.

A full page advert for an ITV documentary on L S Lowry, spotted in the Observer magazine on the 25th April 2011. By Marika Rose.

Marine Drive

O we do like to be beside the seaside
Voulez vous promenader avec moi?
Kiss me quick!
Come unto these yellow sands and then take hands
O we do like to walk along the prom!

Words written along the seafront in paving stones in Bridlington, East Riding of Yorkshire, spotted 11 April 2011. By Marika Rose.