van Gogh Gone - Version 2 - A re-Write

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JohnLott
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Wed Mar 09, 2011 5:35 pm

V2.1.8 (beta)


Night can be mysterious and dark.
So dark a black alley cat can drift by,
As dreams in a dreamless sleep might.

A thief with scissored hands,
Can make a floppy rent in the chain
link security fence and enter
Art Gallery land.

Infra-red sensored cctv,
Can be looking far away
when the ladder is lifted from the roof rack
of the careless maintenance van.

Around the corner and in full view,
Of the public that can be in the queue
Monday to Friday ten ‘till two.
No active cameras here for him to care
about being seen.

Against the wall the ladder can become
the hypotenuse for him to railway track it
to a window station on the up line.

A window, a fused silica gateway
now lightly obscured with time-lapsed grime
can be scored, tapped and ventilated in part;
and a bypass can be inserted from contact to contact
to maintain unbroken voltage flow.

The catch can swing inwards,
like a railway crossing gate.
The sash can rise as the sun will do
in three hours time and access
for the thief is gained.

Lifeless, hanging, swatches
of mixed oil blotches of Jonquil wheat,
Interspersed with smudges,
Supposedly cornflower blue:
Maybe next time van Gogh
paints this he can get it true?

The Stanley knife blade can emerge,
Like penile projection from its sheath.
It can thrust into the painting with ignoble lust:
Violated virginity.
Then to slide around the edges.

Rolled and tubed and like the thief it can be gone.
On the ladder track on the down line.
Legs can take them to the Underground.


V1

Duck!
Hovering Hawk.
Wait!
For glaring error to de-conflagrate.
Train on tracks on the hypotenuse,
Black gold grit adjacent
to opposite red brick netted
by sand lime rules.
Flat, fused silica,
Time lapsed grime,
Gone, to statistics of crime.
Left hanging, Jonquil yes but
Cornflowers where?
Double trapped by gilt edges
and canvas bind.
Released but trapped again
in tube train flown.


[I think I have found out you don't do very obscure -and V1 is so obscure. Almost as bad as Plath.]

:)

J.
Last edited by JohnLott on Tue May 03, 2011 11:19 am, edited 6 times in total.
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Suzanne
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Wed Mar 09, 2011 6:19 pm

Do you mean Van Gogh?
JohnLott
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Wed Mar 09, 2011 6:25 pm

Suzanne wrote:Do you mean Van Gogh?
Absolutely - Well spotted and thank you.

J.
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David
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Wed Mar 09, 2011 8:17 pm

Is this the life, John - either yours or his - or a picture? If a picture, which one? Interesting stuff. I like Jonquil yes but / Cornflowers where? Jonquil's a lovely word. I don't think I've ever used it, but I shall now. (Do you know, I thought it was a kind of blue.)

Cheers

David
JohnLott
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Wed Mar 09, 2011 8:42 pm

Hi David,

Theft of a picture, the 'Wheat Field with Cornflowers'

In the painting, the cornflowers are hardly 'Cornflower Blue' - hence the question.

Jonquil is more 'European': 'Yellow' is more Wordsworth English

J.

P.S. Please do not assume this painting has or was stolen. Poetic licence on my part.
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David
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Wed Mar 09, 2011 8:48 pm

Right. Found it. Image processing commenced.

Do you have to say "de-conflagrate"? If it's a word at all - which I doubt - it's a pretty ugly one, and it's not helping me to get your meaning across to me there.
JohnLott
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Wed Mar 09, 2011 8:59 pm

Ok David.

Glaring error is thief inadvertently triggering the Security Light.
The Security light glares on. As it dies the incandescence goes from brilliant white to dull glowing red: The dull glowing red of the filament before the moment of 'gone' is what I call de-conflagrate - The flame goes out. Deconstructed fire - because if he had been caught in the light, the 'flames' of consequence would have been 'Hot' to say the least.

If such use is not permitted, I can construct another description.

J.
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David
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Wed Mar 09, 2011 9:11 pm

Wow. That's quite a gripping description, and I can almost see the point of inventing "de-conflagrate", having read it, but that just didn't come across from reading the poem itself. That's the tricky bit - getting the poem to work, without the explanation after the event. I have trouble with that myself sometimes.

I wouldn't like to say that anything is not permitted, but startling new inventions like this have to justify their existence. This one, at the moment, almost does.
TDF
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Thu Mar 10, 2011 11:35 am

Hi John,

I find this one hard to read, it seems a little disjointed and cropped for my brain. There is some enjoyable uses of language and soforth, but I do have difficulty discerning the picture from the whole.

That said, I also have flu this week, so should probably be reading AA Milne.

Tom
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JohnLott
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Thu Mar 10, 2011 10:43 pm

Hello Tom,

Thanks for the reply.

Don't worry - I thought the game was cryptic and obtuse - a sort of encapsulation of notions, emotions and association into an economy of words:

So man ducks the cttv
waits until the security light goes off
climbs up to a window on his ladder
which is stood on tarmac
leaning against a brick wall
he breaks a window to gain access
he steals a hanging painting
van Gogh's Wheat Field with Cornflowers
takes it out of its frame
rolls it into a cardboard tube
and then he and the tube scarper.

In the words of Mr Meercat - tcchhh Simple

Apparently not.

:(

J.
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David
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Sun Mar 13, 2011 6:13 pm

John, when you say obtuse, do you really mean obscure? Or am I being obscure?
JohnLott wrote:In the words of Mr Meercat - tcchhh Simple

Apparently not.
No. Definitely not. I really can't relate your précis of the poem to the thing itself, which is way too obtuse. Or obscure. Or possibly just oblong, I just don't know any more.

If you're interested, I'd like to see a revision of the poem that starts with the précis and just jazzes that up a bit. What do you reckon?

Cheers

David
JohnLott
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Sun Mar 13, 2011 6:48 pm

I'll see what I can do David,

I must admit I was aiming to err on the side of cryptic (having hidden meaning) and allusion (indirect reference) to see how far I could take it. So, for example, in that context, the ladder is the railway and the train is the burglar, moving as trains do - up and down the line. And why the railway/train? well the ladder resembles a traintrack with rail and sleepers. A railway train carries freight - the painting in its tube. And a tube train is obviously a play on words - so the burglar and the painting go 'underground'.

Anyway I will re-model.

:)

J.
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JohnLott
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Tue May 03, 2011 9:50 pm

V2 to mull over
:)

J.
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