Category Archives: Poetic flux

Tell me your side of it.

Garden of Musical Harlots

Take a harp, go about the city,
You forgotten harlot;
Make sweet melody, sing many songs,
That you may be remembered.
Isaiah 23:16

In the boogie-woogie brothel
The clients enjoy
A devilish syncopation
Wherein ragtime revel
(hops/barley/sugarcane/rye/ginever)
Reveals base barbecue of bestial beats:
Dixieland, jazz blues, doo-wop, tinpan cakewalk,
psychobilly, funkafied filth, the Charleston . . .

Smoke-filled music overflows the saloon;
(tobacco/cannabis/poppy/psilocybin/crystallized coca rock)
brings a sparkle to the eyes
and red laser pointers
to the PowerPoint™ screen
of Lucifer’s marketing and sales division:

murmur murmur how can we market
this damn tree in the middle of the garden, huh?
—what, the Knowledge of Good and Evil?
people don’t need trees like that anymore;
they want extreme trees—
they want thug, they want antisocial . . . 
—yeah but how are we gonna SELL it?
  —well, were there not TWO trees ?
cut one down and sell the other!
murmur murmur murmur 

The marketing minions wrangle
over Satan’s next big thing.
The ebony Tree of Life sits sullen and angry.
Her regal Afrolinguistic foliage be like:

Ima git PAID fo MY hustle—
cuz girls is playaz too.

 


PROMPT #16:  write a poem that imposes a particular song on a place.

Describe the interaction between the place and the music using references to a plant
and, if possible, incorporate a quotation – bonus points for using a piece of everyday, overheard language.

Boom, Baby, Boom

Yeah! Whoooooooo-HOO ! (big drum splash) Detroit— are you ready to ROOOOCK?

How many of you are HIIiiiiiiGH tonite? (drum splash, crowd roars, lighters in air)

Mitch got that mike on (massive feedback squawk) ALL RIGHT !

(speaks to crowd): Mitch and Elon looking for their groupies already… well COME ON Detroit it’s time to get DOWN!

We know you love it cause we came to PARTY tonight. Can I hear you say ‘Yeah’ !?

We’re gonna start off with one from our Orange Oligarchy album,
it’s called Donald TRUUUUUUUUMP ! (crowd goes wild screaming)


PROMPT #15

Your challenge is to write a six-line poem that has these qualities:
repetition, simple language, enthusiasm, then end with a bang.

Come Over My Place

Red rover red rover:
Strange cold people
Dream of dwelling
Among crustaceans
(Code coming in polar)
Crabby submarine signalers
Take watery virtue vacations
In undersea labyrinths…
(Crossed stations?)

So let us reference birdsong,
Just because it’s wrong
And out of place
To chirp and twitter inane verse
And flitter from reef to tree to mountain
Or fly— SMACK!
Into a window (even worse)
Mistaking transparency for space.

Birdsong bubbles from the depths.
The savage tribes of my city:
Divergent creatures of the reef . . .
Mixed metaphors of savannah
And avian ocean.

Sub-adult male primates
Bare fangs to fauna;
Displaying plumage
(marijuana)
In whirlpools, waterspouts and gangs bangs  Gong  bongs 
Hippos blast reefer smoke
Out of fat wide nostrils
(Cuz they roll like that, blubber)

The flora: plastic, smoke and roots
Vape-trees offer their fruits.
Sharks lurk in darkness
Waiting to pounce on wildebeests
Culrling green tendrils of coral
In the sun beside the regal baobabs.

Darwinian futility withers
In protoplasmic seas of youth:
Your own untruth.

Natural phenomena so over.
Just print it out, download it,
Rover.

 

PROMPT #14:

try writing a poem that describes a place,
particularly in terms of the animals, plants or other natural phenomena there.
Sink into the sound of your location, and use a conversational tone.
Incorporate slant rhymes into your poem.
And for an extra challenge –
don’t reference birds
or birdsong!

 

There is a red flag in many new style trends

 

1

There is a red flag in many new style trends;
They represent a confusion of values.
It is like weakness, when they go crazy.
It stems from a basic rejection of the truth, weakness,
When the self-proclaimed wise, who read the New York Times
Fail completely to perceive the signs of the times.

2

Dionysus told his maenads to rip the thing apart.
The goat was thrown into the midst of their trance.
We think we understand them, but we don’t.
They only knew some bleating thing entered their trance.
And they sang something like this: Oooh baby!
We delirious maenads ripped apart our own baby!

3

These weak-ass patriarchs be hatin’.  Let us twerk.
Someday the wokeness shall prevail, and we shall sleep.
The orchard will wither. True poetry shall rise
And twerking be seen as something true and deep.
And all we inflicted upon your culture
Shall be esteemed as truly authentic culture.

 


PROMPT #13: Write a poem of six-line stanzas use lines of eight-twelve syllables, and while they don’t use rhyme, they repeat end words. Specifically, the second and fourth line of each stanza repeat an end-word or syllable; the fifth and sixth lines also repeat their end-word or syllable. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that uses Justice’s invented form.