Word cloud 30/05/10

[bodkin]

This is a word-cloud exercise. Click the link below to see the word-cloud (you will need Java working in your browser).

Study the cloud and try to find groups of words which inspire you to some sort of poem. You do not need to use every word and you can add as many extra words as you need to build the scaffolding around them.

You can also adjust the words exact forms: run -> ran, train -> trained, horse -> horses etc.

Cloud

There is no end-date for the exercise, I will put another one up in a week or so...

Ian

p.s. spot the source of the words

[BenJohnson]

Sober grey monks shuffle fragments
of meaningless unconnected blocks of prose,
slowly building a bridge to God.

They toil like passionless beasts
connecting words into phrases which arch
like rainbows without a pot of gold.

There is no love, no fire in their task.
Fragments are joined and curve, a dove
alights on the highest point, pauses,
then flies to unimaginable realms.

P.S. Howards End

[Danté]

Untitled Musings

She desperately tried to connect
with my monastic existence,
depicted arched poses, bridged
the gap between lust and love.
With all her might and passion
tore each unconnected fragment
until weakened, our un-sated
fire formed the curve of a rainbow.
As we lay our beast to rest
in a grey, sober building of regret
our poems relinquish their glow,
find their peace in a graveyard of prose.



.

[bodkin]

Only dissect

A sober grey rainbow might span, bridging
two fragments that would otherwise be doomed
to never connect. How high this curve arches
in imagination, so the highest segment
catches the sun, and glows like steel, like slate,
like rain -- until the end descends again
to touch on earth on a distant isle. You can call
this span a cold thing, thinking where one ought to feel;
an image where one should be real, and reach
to touch other real things; but a dove might fly
through such an arch -- a miracle no-less
grey -- and minds may pass that way via bridges
fashioned in the intellect, and find in them
the sole way to connect their passion.

[bodkin]

Hi Ben,

It is Howards End, of course...

I like your final strophe best here, so much so that I unconsciously stole the dove...

--

Danté -- I like your flow here, it carries me along almost breathlessly right to the very end.

You do realise by calling it "Untitled musings" it isn't untitled any more...

--

Ian

[paisley]

The Poet Sentinel

She was on the qui vive for entertainers
who'd alight on sober towns
with stories of illuminated circus wanderings,
who'd arrive after headlight meanderings,
who'd bring the dust of tangled dirt roads.
Every year she'd wait, long legs dangled
over the bricked rainbow arches,
old grey bridge connecting
one side of meaninglessness to the other.
She remembered fragments of the fire monkeys
swinging high in the Big Tent, beasts
born to a bivouacking life, able to fly
yet without the instinctual hoopla of humanity-
they'd never gain the ability to write prose.

[paisley]

It is nice to see a lot action on this cloud thread. Nice poems up there. I find it tempting to read other people's contributions before I post my own but I resist! Now that I have read them all, I am honored to be in such creative company. I like this challenge. Thanks again, Bodkin.

[bodkin]

You are welcome Paisley!

I like the energy of your poem, and I like rhyming wanderings with meanderings.

It's nice there's a bit of a twist at the end too...

Ian