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Nonsense POEM #14687

Member since 2005 · Posted 18 Jun 2005 · 10 comments

Whining elephant stands on a blue Line waiting for government cheese and Crackers to float up out of the swirling mist That obscures the vision of the beaver people climbing out of the primordial mud-huts of the Village Disjunct of the County Inarticulate This is the same dream I had when a Hamburger was eating me! Can I call you Malcontent? Yes you can, it's my name and has been such for so long I can't even remember when it wasn't shifting in and out of phase this laughing cactus wants a hug as the penguin waddles in his tuxedo and top hat towards the anchovy laden Sea port and sees shells on the beach avoiding the live crabs catching at my sand groovin' heels it's a scene, man... a real scene.

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10 comments

[1] Blue Magpie 19-Jun-05/1:13 AM Reply

Nonsense poetry, traditionally has rhyme and rhythm to compensate for the lack of meaning.

[n/a] Bankrupt_Word_Clerk › Blue Magpie 19-Jun-05/2:49 PM Reply

gosh. never heard of traditional nonsense poetry.

[6] deleted user 19-Jun-05/5:41 PM Reply

I should have left it at one stanz, it has a funny ending. Between 'Crackers' and 'Inarticulate' there are too many 'of's.

Hey, but >>the cactus wants a hug<< is quite hilarious! Why don't you just throw out the bleak nonsense, and think up a few more funny lines alike? And do something about the penguins tuxedo; it's so 1880's.

[5] Dovina 19-Jun-05/7:19 PM Reply

As written, it's more story than poem.

[2] Nicholas Jones 20-Jun-05/6:52 AM Reply

Dylan Thomas, even though he attended a famous surrealist convention in London with a teapot full of string offering to pour people a cuppa, always strongly maintained he was not a surrealist, because that involved using images from the subconscious directly without mediating them. He argued that, while he was happy to use such imagery, he had to artistically arrange them and make them fit his own poetic vision - he could not abide the sense of randomness inherent in true surrealism. And basically what you've done is to fall into the trap of bad surrealism, which is just to stick a load of images together without any thought for anything much.

[n/a] Bankrupt_Word_Clerk › Nicholas Jones 20-Jun-05/9:47 AM Reply

you couldn't be more wrong. I thought long and hard over whether it should be an elephant or an orangutan..or a yellow line... and waiting for crepes or waffles...

actually.. I never thought anything. bravo.

[n/a] Bankrupt_Word_Clerk › Nicholas Jones 20-Jun-05/1:02 PM Reply

only people I've ever heard say "cuppa" were from New Zealand.

[2] Nicholas Jones › Bankrupt_Word_Clerk 21-Jun-05/1:37 AM Reply

I always thought cuppa was a quintessentially English word. I'm glad it's used somewhere else in the world.

[n/a] zodiac › Nicholas Jones 21-Jun-05/2:53 AM Reply

I've never heard that definition of surrealism. It strikes me as kind of a misunderstanding on Thomas' part. Anyway, surely most surrealists would have agreed with his idea - that there is a mediating influence. As in the most famous surrealist exercise, the Exquisite Corpse, you always have at least of bit of line showing to guide you. For another example, Lewis Carroll didn't completely randomize his word coinage in "Jabberwocky", he just made up a consistent language that didn't make any sense. If brillig, slithy troves, wabe, borogroves, mome raths, and so on were real English words, the poem would have made perfect sense. As things stand, it only makes dream-sense.

Bankrupt_Word_Clerk, Carroll IS formal nonsense poetry. So are a bunch of others from his time. It was kind of an industry.

[7] Joshua_Tree 20-Jun-05/9:30 AM Reply

Pherengi rule of acquisition #73: You could afford a ship without your government -- If it wasn't for your government.