[excavated at a villa in the outskirts of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii: Guardian here]
excavated from the
dark depths fled:
escaping Vesuvius
was no mean feat
though it might on
the soul of this master
running away with his
barefoot slave who is
petrified just the same,
fleeing stooped from
all those compressions
in his life then and now,
joined, though not by a
final comforting hand,
still under the other’s
feet, both alike dead
I
Not to choose free verse over, for example, the sonnet,
shows interest in how form is more fashion, an epaulet
as the writer marches and parades ever forward,
always aware of other effects, so nearing toward
this, but somewhere in stride loses sight of the shoulder
upon which the figurative rests, and meaning is a colder
feast to displace the warm-up of this exemplar banquet.
And here is what will be seen as form’s perseverance,
how having begun there is little will for the severance
of mirroring and cleverness of more replication –
though it should be called out for what it is: application
from the rule-book – and in the endeavour again of other
this is one of those lines not to smother
breaking rules, but break all the same from reverence.
II
This form feast called epaulet. The figurative rests in cleverness with lines that choose fashion. Application loses its writer. Perseverance will be one displace from the exemplar. But parades are an endeavour / warm rules of form. Somewhere towards the banquet to feel free in mirroring a little. Smother a sonnet with verse. Here is the break / here is the replication. Toward marches. Somewhere to be aware.
III
somewhere in the
same of form
there is replication
form of same
in the somewhere
is there replication
Actually, as an opening aside, I will admit I have been eating Spam of late, prompted by an extremely clever bit of advertising which is an abundant collection of Spam recipes on their web site. Yes, you have to like this kind of food before being so prompted, and perhaps healthy and/or refined eaters will be instinctively deterred. It would be true to argue there is an element of nostalgia here because I used to be fed spam by the wonderful lady who would babysit for me when I was a child living in Omaha, but it is also a weak justification for the reality of a proclivity to the junk in my eating habits.
However, the spam I am writing about here is the email variety, once tinned in its inbox proliferation when at one time I received vast amounts of remarkably literate spam tomes (the process then, as far as I understand it, to send large amounts of copy and pasted text that would bypass spam filters). I received this gratefully, using it to find a wealth of ‘spam poems’ within the complexities of its language.
Sadly – in one sense – the spam filters I have had for many years now work brilliantly and I rarely get spam of any kind, and certainly little of any interest.
Until yesterday. Whilst still not a patch on the former good kind, and these rather formulaic, I have enjoyed, and post here with the simple question: which is the most likely to be true?!
MY DEAR BELOVED ONE, THIS IS MRS VIVIAN BROWN FROM ESTONIA WRITING FROM HOSPITAL HERE IN BURKINA FASO; THEREFORE THIS EMAIL IS VERY URGENT. I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT I’M DYING HERE IN THIS HOSPITAL RIGHT NOW AND I DON’T KNOW IF I WILL SEE SOME DAYS TO COME ACCORDING TO MY DOCTOR. I WAS INFORMED BY MY DOCTOR THAT I GOT POISONED AND IT AFFECTED MY LIVER AND I CAN ONLY LIVE FOR SOME DAYS. THE REASON WHY I CONTACTED YOU TODAY IS BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY STEP MOTHER WANTED TO KILL ME AND TAKE MY INHERITANCE FROM MY LATE FATHER.
I HAVE A LITTLE ADOPTED CHILD NAMED MARY C. BROWN THAT I ADOPTED IN THIS COUNTRY WHEN MY LATE FATHER WAS ALIVE AND $8.5 MILLION DOLLARS I INHERITED FROM MY LATE FATHER. MY STEP MOTHER AND HER CHILDREN THEY ARE AFTER MARY C. RIGHT NOW BECAUSE THEY FOUND OUT THAT MARY C. WAS AWARE OF THE POISON, AND BECAUSE I HANDED THE DOCUMENTS OF THE FUND OVER TO HER THE DAY MY STEP MOTHER POISONED MY FOOD, FOR THAT REASON THEY DO NOT WANT MARY C. TO EXPOSE THEM, SO THEY ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO KILL HER.
MY BELOVED, PLEASE I WANT YOU TO HELP HER OUT OF THIS COUNTRY WITH THE MONEY, SHE IS THE ONLY ONE TAKING GOOD CARE OF ME HERE IN THIS HOSPITAL RIGHT NOW AND EVEN THIS EMAIL YOU ARE READING NOW SHE IS THE ONE HELPING ME OUT. I WANT YOU TO GET BACK TO ME SO THAT SHE WILL GIVE YOU THE DOCUMENTS OF THE FUND AND SHE WILL DIRECT YOU TO A WELL KNOWN LAWYER THAT I HAVE APPOINTED, THE LAWYER WILL ASSIST YOU TO CHANGE THE DOCUMENTS OF THE FUND TO YOUR NAME TO ENABLE THE BANK TRANSFER THE MONEY TO YOU.
THIS IS THE FAVOR I NEED WHEN YOU HAVE GOTTEN THE FUND:
(1) KEEP 30% OF THE MONEY FOR MARY C. UNTIL HER FINISH HER STUDIES TO BECOME A WOMAN AS SHE HAS BEEN THERE FOR ME AS MY LOVELY DAUGHTER AND I PROMISED TO SUPPORT HER IN LIFE TO BECOME A MEDICAL DOCTOR BECAUSE SHE ALWAYS DESIRE FOR IT WITH THE SCHOLARSHIP SHE HAS WON SO FAR. I WANT YOU TO TAKE HER ALONG WITH YOU TO YOUR COUNTRY AND ESTABLISH HER AS YOUR DAUGHTER.(2) GIVE 20% OF THE MONEY TO HANDICAP PEOPLE AND CHARITY ORGANIZATION. THE REMAINING 50% SHOULD BE YOURS FOR YOUR HELP TO MARY.
NOTE; THIS SHOULD BE A CODE BETWEEN YOU AND MY DAUGHTER MARY ON THIS TRANSACTION “HOSPITAL” ANY MAIL FROM HER, THE LAWYER SHE WILL DIRECT YOU TO, WITHOUT THIS CODE “HOSPITAL” IS NOT FROM THE MARY, THE LAWYER OR MYSELF AS I DON’T KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ME IN THE NEXT FEW HOURS.
FINALLY, WRITE ME BACK SO THAT MARY WILL SEND YOU HER PICTURES TO BE SURE OF WHOM YOU ARE DEALING WITH. MARY IS 14 YEARS OF AGE NOW, THEREFORE GUIDE HER. AND IF I DON’T HEAR FROM YOU I WILL LOOK FOR ANOTHER PERSON OR ANY ORGANIZATION.
MAY ALMIGHTY GOD BLESS YOU AND USE YOU TO ACCOMPLISH MY WISH. PRAY FOR ME ALWAYS.
BEST REGARDS
MRS VIVIAN BROWN
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From the front door
(Yes, ars poetica)
[Guest Post #2]
[image by artist and photographer Nick Dormand]
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
