Poems from the Menu Bar #5

Illustrator/Edit

Undo, redo, cut, copy, paste.
Paste in front, paste in back,
Clear, find and replace.

Find next, check spelling,
edit custom dictionary,
define pattern, edit
original, transparency

flattener presets. Print

presets, PDF presets,

color settings, assign

profile, keyboard shortcuts.

The 'Edit' drop down menu in the computer program Illustrator, punctuated. If you like this, try #1 and #2-#4. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Over Vegas

Far above the bored, scuffling, T-Shirt
and cellulite wearing masses flown in
from trailer parks across the nation,
ten-story video signs project
images of dancing chorus lines,
rhinestone-studded; of strippers with plain faces,
their makeup having been ladled on
with a bricklayer’s trowel to distract onlookers
from that fact; and of seemingly never
ending traveling shots of cafeteria
cuisine. These electronic billboards, run
by computer servers filling concrete
catacombs beneath the hotel casinos,
also occasionally announce the LIVE!
ON STAGE! appearance of what look like
knuckle-dragging brutes bumbled in from
the Pleistocene via a time warp.

At gutter level, meticulously
unkempt somebodies lumber in and out
of the darkened mouths of caves, which are
the doorways of momentarily trendy
nightclubs. Nearby, an imitation
volcano erupts. Light from the fake lava
plays on tattoos, once popular among
pier corner whores but which now adorn
the delicate ankles of long-limbed women
with million dollar smiles spread across
dime-store faces. 



Level with the gutter runs
an asphalt Boulevard over which rides
the latest in high technology
metallurgical skill and, after market,
pimped-up shrines to the owners’ vanity
and insecurity. A crystal angel
sparkles as it swings from the rear-view
mirror of one modern convertible,
just stopped at a red light. Chrome-framed mud flaps
shine behind the rear wheels of a pickup truck
as it passes, its retreating back window
plastered with the white decal of a Christian
icon surrounded by a delicate
wreath of roses.

Traveling north, the
Boulevard becomes a Main Street as it turns
into yesterday's downtown. More neon
cascades down the sides of dirty walls, red
and yellow light splashing the windows
of the Greyhound bus station across the street.
Turning east, a crumbling side street shortly
passes first a Bronx modern city hall,
smug and prim in its paternalism;
then, the rotting remains of retail ventures;
paint peeled apartment flophouses; and,
finally, a fence festooned with hubcaps.
Farther on, cracker box houses—their windows
and doors wrought iron barred—traipse down a slovenly
slope, the value of the lots on which they slouch
officiously inflated by the local
property appraiser. A fluorescent glow
haunts the sidewalk outside a corner
Laundromat, in whose ghostly glimmer stand
the emaciated and the bovine.
Expensive headers gracing the butt-end
of automotive wrecks shriek by. The street
soon propagates a rat’s maze of walled-up drives,
lanes and circles. Within those cement bulwarks
erected to a fastidious paranoia
and a paucity of police presence,
lie neighborhoods of tract housing: two thousand
square feet of uniform, building-code-commanded,
Spanish-styled homes sitting on two thousand
one hundred square feet of desert dirt,
goose-stepping off into the darkness.

Welcome to fatuous Las Vegas!

Someone called Steven posted this comment (#203) on The Big Picture photo blog, 12 March 2010, in response to aerial photographs of New York City and Las Vegas. I added a few missing hyphens. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

In the Vegetable Orchestra

Then, let's introduce the vegetable musical
instruments that can have been done this time.

It is a carrot ocarina first.

And, it is an ocarina of a white radish
in Japan that can have done this time.

The broccoli ocarina was made.

A good sound was not heard because only
such a broccoli was obtained this time.

And, a carrot ocarina of the slide type
and this carrot ocarina is different
the sound hole. When the breath is put here,
something is heard. It shaped … so …

The paprika was punctured.
When the breath is put here,
such a sound is heard.
It is an owl.

Similarly asparagus panpipe was made.
However, a good sound is not heard.
It is a trumpet of the cucumber
and the paprika in the end.

There were musical instruments that looked
alike also in the vegetable orchestra.



Suggested by Jason Davies. Composed from the subtitles on a YouTube clip in which a man demonstrates musical instruments made from vegetables. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

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These are recent spam comments, with the authors in parentheses, posted on my content strategy blog SmyWord. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Teatime at Everybody

The cake

which my mama burned
is what is more delicious
than the cake of the store
of the throat in the world.
Therefore, daily teatime enjoys
itself very much and it is!



Text on a Japanese cake wrapper, spotted 11 February 2010. The line arrangement is original – even prompting poetry in the comments under the original post on engrish.com. Submitted by Nathan Lechler.

Hearing Is a Way

Hearing is a way
of touching at a distance
and the intimacy
of the first sense
is fused with sociability
whenever people
gather together
to hear something special.



Read in 'Soundscapes and Earwitnesses' by R Murray Schafer, in Hearing History: A Reader, p.9. Submitted by Kate Guthrie.

A Certain Plant

I have written a monograph on a certain plant.
The plant lies before me;
I am just turning over a folded coloured plate.
A dried specimen of the plant,
as though from a herbarium,
is bound up with every copy.

From Freud's Interpretation of Dreams: 'Dream of a Botanical Monograph'. Submitted by Marika Rose.

Careering path

Intend to work

analytically, confidently

in

an ambitious and self

motivating atmosphere,

which would lead to

overall development

of my personality,

thus serving

the esteemed organization

efficiently, ultimately

paving a path to

a long lasting

and rewarding relationship.

A 'career objective' in the C.V. of an applicant hoping to join my company this week. Submitted by Alan Mitchell.

100 poems

Sex and dirty dishes by Marika is the 100th poem to be published on Verbatim.

Reaching 100 is a tiny milestone, but pleasing nevertheless. The blog is not quite a year old. Most gratifying of all, regardless of timescale, is the variety and quality of poetry sent in by friends and strangers.

Poems have been derived from ceilidh calls, Twitter, gravestones and fudge packets. They have been about murder, bras and emissions (warning – not the carbon kind). One even features a dead Pakistani. They have been submitted by commuters and academics, pinched from 6 year-olds or arrived secretly from anonymous members of the Parachute Regiment.

And for poetry pulled out of ordinary words, they have been remarkably, well, poetic. As well as the haiku and nonet, we have published a prose poem, plenty of free verse, and several verses that rhyme, albeit some hilariously contrived.

So thank you to everyone who has contributed, and to everyone who has enjoyed the poems so far and spread the word. I would love to publish another 100, so please continue to do exactly that: send in your poems from ordinary life, and tell at least one other person about the blog.

Noticing poetry in the ordinary words around us might seem like only a bit of fun. But I can't help thinking that the ability to call beauty out of the mundane is rather more significant than that.

Time will tell. For now let's enjoy another 100.

Gabriel

Sex and dirty dishes

Jana offers the following assessment:
You know, I wouldn't say you
doing the dishes for me
is better than sex...but it's close.

I laugh and laugh.
I understand, I say,
You know,
I bet if we called all your friends tonight
and asked them the question,
'Would you rather have sex
with your husband tonight
or have him wash the dishes?'
that 100% would say
'Wash the dishes.'
She agrees.

But I have a crazy idea.
Let's put this to the test! I say,
Let's call your friends and pose the question.

So Jana starts making calls.
Asking wife after wife the question:
If you could have sex with your husband tonight
or have him do the dishes
what would you choose?

The results rolled in.
Like election night.
And the verdict?
100%

Do the dishes.



From the blog Experimental Theology. Submitted by Marika Rose. This is the 100th poem to be published on Verbatim!

Burglary by Ruse and Escapade

I'm afraid my burning passion overrode my conscience
It may appear selfish, but I felt the books had been abandoned.
They were covered with dust and pigeon droppings,
and I felt no one consulted them anymore.
There was also the thrill of adventure –
I was very scared of being found out.

The words of Stanislas Gosse when convicted of 'burglary by ruse and escapade' for stealing ancient books from Mont Saint-Odile monastery. He climbed the walls at night and entered through a secret door in a cupboard. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Tom Hobson

Tom Hobson suggested
you become
a fan of Tom Hobson.
Tom became
a fan of Tom Hobson
on Facebook
and suggested
you become a fan too.

The subject line and main text from an email I received from Facebook today. Name changed. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.