Tag: Surrealism

Mosaic

So, we’re now onto the last of the songs from my module that I’m going to show you. It’s a version of Blur’s ‘On Your Own’ – or part of it – entitled ‘Mosaic’, although ‘Collage’ might have been a better name. It’s a mish-mash (and that’s a technical term) of phrases and images with no meaning whatsoever. I’d put some degree of thought into each of the preceding three songs, so I wanted to close my assignment with one that made absolutely no sense. Having a completely blank canvas was slightly daunting, as is always the case, but I was looking forward to seeing how absurd my imagery could get and what the limits of my imagination were. These verses are therefore pretty weird, since I wasn’t taking them seriously, but I hope you don’t either. Enjoy!

(Verse 1)

All the lemons stowed away in their chip paper

Embraced by the flowing summer sun

Oh, it’s all in the past, no-one cares now

Little amethyst assassins on the run

Now you’re on the telephone

But you’re talking static

As the big glass door slides shut automatic

And did I leave the gas on in the attic?

Lose myself in the dense yellow mist

Floating on away

 

(Chorus 1)

And now the flies

Keeping a surprise

It’s in their feet

And it’s in their eyes

Just hibernation

Resting at the station

Galactic sleeper

But no Grim Reaper

I’ll ride on home, inflate a dome

Light the stars in airplane fuel

We’ll be starting a blaze in the head

 

It’s food for the soul

For the soul

 

(Verse 2)

And the sky is raining rods in shades of emerald

The grass is growing high around the hogs

Sniffing hungry round the eyeballs

Of a kitty

And eating the bread the man’s thrown onto the lawn

On the emerald lawn

 

Mason

 

 

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Flarf Poetry

I’m now in the midst of my Easter break back at home – although, to all intents and purposes, my first year at university ended just over a week ago. I’m going back anyway, but for the next couple of weeks, I’ll focus on getting the last four assignments for the year done, while looking at what I’ve already accomplished with a great deal of pride. My marks this year have been very consistent (although nothing counts until Year 2) and I have learnt much and grown creatively. Approximately 7,000 words in total lie ahead of me during this break, and I hope can be as pleased with those as I am with what has gone before. Having such confidence in my work is very rare, since the self-doubt almost always kicks in once something is finished!

I’ve now submitted my poetry portfolio, and in time you may well see the whole thing here. For now, though, I just want to show you the poem that concludes it, as an example of flarf poetry. In class, we were told to think of two completely random words and enter them into Google so that we could write something using its search results. I chose “grassy brick”, which meant that I swiftly came across a set of instructions on how to grow grass in an old brick. I adapted these into stanzas – with some artistic licence – and I ended up with a simple and surreal final poem that didn’t take itself too seriously. I wouldn’t have ended the portfolio any other way. It’s called “Gardening For a New Generation”, and it goes like this:

“Gardening for a new generation.

Plant a seed in an urban jungle.

What will you need?

A brick, glazed, strictly non-porous;

Nothing else will do.

 

Blow away the dust and the cobwebs,

The ghost of a hardened hand.

Make it wet, soften the stone to sand,

Eat that pie on the windowsill;

You’ll need the tin tomorrow.

 

Half an inch of water will give new life.

Bless the brick with more,

As it sits in its bakelite bathtub.

Watch the cheap seeds sprout;

You’ll like grass, it’s hardy.”

 

Mason

Blackout Poetry

Two writing worlds collide! As my poetry portfolio of 150 lines is nearing completion, I’d like to show you one of the poems that will feature in it. I wrote it over the weekend, and although it is untitled at the moment, it serves as an example of blackout poetry. This is created through taking a larger piece of text – perhaps a page from a book, or in this case a stand-alone piece of non-fiction – and isolating totally unrelated words and phrases to use in the poem. I used Charles Simic’s “Dinner At Uncle Boris’s” to write this, looking carefully at different parts of the text to see what could form something strangely cohesive and intriguingly surreal. It will appear as the penultimate poem in my portfolio – I hope you like it as much as my workshop group did yesterday!

“The four of us, out of water glasses,

Eating through our second helping of fly.

I’m full of shit, with a bit of fat underneath.

No guts.

 

The old guys are reminiscing about the war.

‘You were very good at it,’ my father assured him.

We are all composite characters.

We survive that somehow, the incredible stupidity of our family.

 

Orgies of self-abuse, our family is a story of endless errors,

Making us all in turn say ‘aaaaaahh’ like a baby doctor.

Of course, we can barely keep our eyes open.

For the moment we have run out of talk.”

 

Mason