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Norman Crane Sep 2020
They built the rhinoceros because God
foretold of coming war in which they'd need
sanctuary from the evil unthawed
beasts Earth's burning would hellishly unleash.
They built him of steel and electronics,
infused with a human intelligence,
and huddled raw within like unmade bricks
within a kiln, until their God dispensed
His justice: No escape / the heat turned on
They baked / the devil-beasts of *****
Inspired by Vladimir Kush's painting "Trojan Horse" and playing around with traditional sonnet form. This is my attempt at an instasonnet (everything on IG is shorter, right?), reduced from 14 lines (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG) to 10 lines (ABAB CDCD EE).
Norman Crane Sep 2020
You and I canoe down neon waterfalls,
Smelling cinnamon and sinsemilla,
Through sockets cascading melted eyeballs,
Intermixed with honey and vanilla,
We push paddle towards combusting shores,
Cloaked in pellucid smoke and glimmer mist,
Black sky alive with buzzing glowbug spores,
We must inhale to know that we exist,
But what if the hazy vapor-stew's too thick,
Paddles stick: viscosity of time,
When the sporal secretions make us sick,
What will become of the horizon line,
Will it burn to charcoal reality
Or conjure us sublime finality?
  Sep 2020 Norman Crane
Mateuš Conrad
a stupendous undertaking on the fore -
    a lyrical stronghold against the ebb of
forgetting -
       perhaps having exhausted memory
for a fire of arithmetic -
                  better still: a written english
    and a phonetic english...

                          bernard shaw's 1941
complaint: "it may interest you to learn
that your leading article contains 2,761 letters.
as these letters represent only 2,311 sounds,
450 of them are superfluous and could
have been saved had we a british alphabet."

- qestshen or question: qweshchun -
not out of reform but out of curiosity -
perhaps the reforms of
noah webster and american-english
e.g. an ax for an axe
         honor for honour
         theater for theatre:
        a potato for a potato:
       poe-tay-toe: toe-may-t'oh...

that there are already so many idiosyncrasies
in english: a per se rendition of
base and self-evident changes -

yet to have inherited latin and:
quiet frankly - done so little to it...
   after all: where are diacritical marks
in english?
                better still:
                  why bother keeping:
    ȷust so you know - ın that:
      to dıstınguısh from kazakh?

jacobus parcossius (jakub parkoszowic)
was no johannes huss (john huß)

it had to be such a humbling sunday
afternoon -
    that there was something to do
around the house and in the garden:
yet this pagn of historical guilt:
   antithesis of post-colonialism -
more of a lineage:
          god, as a people -
                       we didn't really do very
much -
              perhaps we were late...
inherited christianity in the 10th century
and with it the latin script...

what a large chunk of europe that could
be made into an estonian summary
of - it's sometimes no wonder the russians
and the germans would much prefer
to squeeze either side of this:
                                            ambivalence...
­
exile exile exile...
                that copernicus is still contested
as a german: what little we had we probably
have to have even less -
   overshadowed by galileo and...
the william burroughs mythos invocation
that the ancient egyptians had
a heliocentric model worked out...

   i guess that's appropriate: measuring
ambitions - to build a tomb to compete with
hills and minor mountains -
   unless of course: a man made three dimensional
Δelta was is and forever will be:
                     a life as an architectural necrophilia...

it's even stranger writing this in english
and not in: z wschodu (from the east)...
                                    in this post-colonial dynamics
i cannot share the same frivolity of
anyone moving into the anglophone domain
with writs of ownership -
        after all: how much of this tongue is mine...
and how much: will succumb to
some historical inheritance tax of blame...
or hindering pride -
             it's a question no native will ask -
or member of the commonwealth -
  
   long story short: the polish-lithuanian
commonwealth was sold off -
   a bit like alaska - but by bit...
   but it's not like england will be sold...
   sold to the "cossacks" of mayfair...
                           i have just come
to acknowledge an... irritation that's not:
itchy - a paranoia that's not persuasive:
a fledgling of purpose -

            beside the sadomasochism of
the "elders" and soviet-influenced globetrotters:
i'd appreciate summer holidays in
the highlands - then again:
what's not to like about Cornwall?

what's for me? a return to... glagolitic?
     Ⰸ ⰐⰖⰄⰟⰊ Ⰹ ⰆⰟⰊⰜⰉⰀ
     z nudy i życia
    (from boredom and life)
            
  rummanations in expanding this into
a mixture of cyrillic and greek?
hell! if some of these letters were borrowed
from coptic, hebrew...
                  let's try some armenian!

սկորո տակ...           ի տեն ճաս
skoro tak...        i ten czas
(if so...                and this time)

mesrop mashtots gave the 5th century: ե
how else to imagine time:
when - there was a time one could
add something so profound -
that couldn't possibly be a lightbulb...

so here i am... dragged into the worst
of the use of english: should it become impressively
justifiable: i'm here talking about
letters and elsewhere: backed by year 0
a debate concerning:
cinnamon, paprika, ground cumin,
ground cinnamon,
cacao powder, himalayan salt, etc.

no wonder there's a running theme of
being completely demoralised / dissuaded from
writing...
   i like thinking about post-racial brazil...
not that i'm eager to learn some port-of-geese...

                  ֆակտ: fakt - fact...
                     շկոդա - szkoda - it's a shame...
because it's an ambivalent remark:
            beside a purposive ill deed...
and it's not: wstyd - literally shame designated
a honour presupposition...

once boasting: the clarity of phonetic details -
an orthology of a language since:
there wasn't a time to delve into metaphysical
arguments - the letters were burning bright
and hardly illuminating:
having to apply geological-esque pressures
to the latin script:
   and come out with a caron:
                                unlike in english
                           a subscripted H lingering -
which is almost a very ******
aspect:
                        H|Z - "too many consonants"...
czasem | sometimes...
                    no use writing -
               there are clearly more decisive things
i can do to satisfy myself with today...
unless of course come evening
i'll bring some bourbon and act upon:
shamelessness...
                          perhaps then...

but for now... a preserved mesmerisation...
perhaps out of the fact of simply being born
into these letters:
   they look like they ought to sound...
    that lip reading is possible...
   is probably because R - well the old R
with a trill does look little an omicron
with a leg forward or rolling down a hill...
  P does revel in a mouth with lips that pop...
P does indeed POP...
                  U and YEW...
    and why why I
                                        kept: T's on the tIP
of my tONGUE...
                      G has gloating about goo
and glue... X does mark the 'ks...
                      most certainly fAR Far away...
for F and what if not the threatening philosophy...

****** good luck... a teasing joy
that will Be nonexistent upon the ******
of a full-stop.
  Sep 2020 Norman Crane
Sombro
My poem's salt comes from the sea
Awash with flailing kelp
And absorbed light, hidden and sweet
Like me.

It rakes the gravel with its fingers
Cooly rushing over its skin
Absorbed and intended back again
When the sun blushes ruby red.

Little seals dot the waves
Mirroring the clouds
Chuckling through their whiskers, beckoning
At the dogs on shore, faithful cousins
To these rotund sprites.

The dried up fields are far away
They gasp for the rain that's closing in
With the prettiest grey clouds
Crickets jump from the Terra Cotta
And spill the Summer air, little breaths.

While ores seep into the mass of blue
Rather than be claimed, and turn the bottom muddy
In pinks and oranges dulled by the jealous green.
The fish enriched begin to talk
And their blessings pip pop upwards.

I think it's beautiful that air goes down down deep
and finds the things that need to breathe.
If only I could follow it
And be consumed by some crease
And become the ocean too.
  Sep 2020 Norman Crane
Crystal Fang
let me play you the symphony of grief
with the rhythm of breaths you will never take
and a chorus of your final words
telling me that you love me

let me play you the symphony of grief
your melodic union with gravity,
in harmony with my desperate pleas
begging Him to let me follow you

let me play you the symphony of grief
as they pulled me from your embrace
to the beat of my breaking soul
that our promise could not be kept

let me play you the symphony of grief
hear the echoes of our laughter
matching the tune of the sirens
come to collect your lifeless body

let me play you the symphony of grief
drowned in this deafening silence
made of all the feelings left unguessed
and filled with words still unconfessed
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