Multiple Personality Disorder

oh, take a whole lifetime if you want to.

Take several.

Here is the Monarch Notes version;

She was only thirty two

when she CRASHED into the wall

There was burgundy and red

on the CAR and the wall.

She was CRIMSON and vermillion

like a brilliant bird.

She was not black like the CROW of Najaf.

--------------------

Alliteration: CR 

Onomotopaeia; CRASH, CROW (sound like what they mean..), form and meaning merge.

Effect on the previous flow of the poem; jarring, form and meaning merge; it is the waking up from the timelessness of death.

(which was foreshadowed by the CROSSword puzzles..)

Did I think about any of this? No. Inspiration.

Craft gnerated subconsciously.

Each section is the same as the whole in terms of larger meaning (journey from death to awakening..)

-------------------------

In a nutshell, that's all you need to crow, i mean know.

Now go crash. (as in good-night)

--------------------------

ps No I am not. Natalia has been giving me psychotherapy on a secret thread as I await the return of one faithful goldfish (my last friend here..lol)

The momma bird was laid flat by a speeding car

...on a road that leads to nowhere.  The surviving pair needs several days to recoup, and then read again what is provided for him.

I changed my mind

I like to nowhere it leads.

________________

No, I'm not. Just a handful of stragglers on a buried grotto of a thread writing to me and trying to reassure me that everything will be okay. i guess a few people actually cared about the suicide poem. Go figure.

And so I guess we kind of have a little social club or maybe medical emergency team is more like it, and I'll stick with it for a few days and then it'll all die down (no pun intended). I'm not a good cold turkeyer. it's better this way.

And the funny thing you know is that one of them is just one of my fantailed fish, and the other is Jamshid but for some reason he always posts unverified these days. So the moderator has to screen those posts and there's some kind of grim satisfaction in that, i guess.

__________________________

But that's not why I'm writing here. Those are just kind of "asides" that i thought I'd post first. Or perhaps one of my notorious pre-scripts as opposed to postscripts...

I'm writng to you because I forgot to tell you about alliteration. not to be confused with consonant rhymes, alliteration is simply the repetition of consonant sounds.

My poem vermillion has as a fine examples of alliteration as you will evr find. So I'll use the beginning of that one.

The alliteration is in the "r" sound primarily but also in the "w.'

And the white bathroom walls

were burgundy and cirimson

red red red the white bathroom walls

i never dreamed

it would splatter like a geyser

like the martyrs fountain

of mashad

i saw once

in a book of photos

red red red

the waters of mashad.

*********
You can see how obviously the "r" repeats itself in "red" but it's also in "burgundy" and "crimson" and "dreamed" and "splatter' and geyser" and "martyrs" and "waters'.

Actually the "r" sound is called a semi-consonant (or a semi-vowel, take your pick) meaning it isn't formed by full closure of the speech organs like a consonant, nor with true opening like a vowel.

The "w" sound is also a semi-consonant, which btw another name for semi-consonant is a 'liquid" consonant. And this is very important to our discussion of form and meaning merging.

So you have

white/walls/would/once/waters...

and actually the 'w"s have a certain alliteration with the "r"s because they're so similar. And naturally it all creates a flowing effect, which is intensified by the shortness of the lines, which I do on purpose, I think the visual is a very important part of poetry-how it's laid out on the page.

So this brings us to another "trope" (that's what they're called, the tropes, consonant rhyme, assonant rhyme, etc.)-onomotopaia. It's Greek. It means that the sounds of the words convey the meaning, so once again, convergence of form and meaning.

The most used example of onomotopaiea in English is Lord Tennyson's "the murmur of innumerable bees,'

Alliteration (and for that matter assonance, which is also clear in the Tennyson quote, as well as in splatter.geyser/martyr's...) doesn't necessarily create onomotopeia, but in my poem it almost always does, and that's because I'm naturally gifted and also I've been at it for decades..

well again, the onomotopaeia, the meerging of sound form and meaning is flowing water. 

Which however is broken, interrupted by "splatter" which is itself onomotopoetic. And so it must be because it was a very special kind of flowing. And so it must return to the more normal kind of flow after a couple of lines, because that is the way of water

and that is the way of love

and that i sthe way of blood

and that is the way of the world..  Or, as Rosie T. someone who existed long ago when she was allowed to exist...

"and so the world spins."

I never studied poetry writing, I never took a single craative writing class in my life, except once in high school and it was all fiction writing, you see, but I did take a couple of poetry lit classes in college, and that's how I learned the names of the tropes. But I wouldn't've needed the names. As I keep saying, when you're good, things come naturally...

but anyway I learned them (oh there's metaphor...and..synesthesia, not to be confused with amnesia..or milk of magnesia..and..and..and..)

so I thought I'd leave 'em to you because I'm very disturbed about how impossible it is to leave a legacy in c-space. I have no illusions whatsoever about that.

So I guess I thought I'd leave you the tropes. Your poem has lots of assonance but very little alliteration. But that's okay. It's a kind of haiku. Haikus should be very very...sparse...

ps Isn't it funny how the day after I wrote my final blog my keyboard fixed itself by simply knocking out the left control key, and i still have the right control key, and I'm sure I'll get used to it after a while. I mean after all i am right-handed.

oh, i'm sorry, dear, hologram was the wrong word-

i wasjust riffing, i'd never really articulated this before--you know what i mean--when the parts are somehow the same as the whole-you'll probably know what it's called..

and.. also, thank god. the child got comments after asking for them. so i don't have to do a damn thing. peace and love about to be formerly rosie

i said i need time and so

i said i need time and so do you and this is true but the thing is it doesn't really matter if i start the clock today tomorrow yesterday, the point is i know i have to do it, and the more i try to force it,the harderit will be. i guess i'm like a dog sniffing out the territory i've pissed and so i want to piss on yours right here. that will be part of the ritual and it will help me a lot. so you see, the wway up is the way down (the fragments of herakltus of ephesos). you can't just leave the hotel california without paying your bill...see? i have to leave you with something here, not there.

______________________________________________

so let me first explain to you why this is indeed a good poem and by website standards an excellent one. First of all a poem written by adults should almost never have consonant rhymes especially at the ending of lines close. They are juvenile and sound like kids' writings. You barely have them and this is good. You have assonance. Assonance is subtle and beautiful. Series: on, yard, sod, on, on, momma, gone. Or: cold, snowy, over, over, lonely, etc. Normally quail and pair would be too close and facile but since they're the only ones that end that way they form the pair, and that's what makes it work. Kinda sorta. T

hat is why the current poem posted by Azadeh is horrific. It is based on consonance, a jar of molasses of consonance shoved down your throat and reads exactly like a twelve year old wrote it. Which brings us to another quality of a good poem; form and meaning merge.

 Not message,like our Anahid proposed, but meaning, because a good poem poses questions filled with quintessential meanings which are unanswerable (also known as eternal questions). which brings us to a quality of a very good poem: when form and meaning merge in any section of the poem you choose and embody the meaning of the whole, this I would call hologramatic. S

o what is the essential meaning of this poem? One should be able to express it simply. Well, I would say the loneliness and loss in the struggle of life over death. Obviously what happened to the mother will happen one day to the others. it is also hologrammatic. so I could take the last two lines and the isolation and death are so present--i mean,one snowflake only...-and yet there's this sun and you can't help but remembering that it's the struggle for LIFE. And yet life melts snowflakes and they drip intowater and they flow like a stream of death and this is excellent because this image melts into the ending of the poem, so once again, form and meaning merge. Hologramatically.

Anyone who's a careful reader can choose any meaning they perceive, irrelvant, because ultimately it will be the same. That's just... the way things are.

Now there are so many other qualities or aspects important to a very good poem, I would say off the top of my head resonance or echo (of which word play so-called by the young poet is one part of and which may or may or may not include repetition--because, you know, it's not like a PUN..but it could be..say..), rhythm,yes she's right, but must merge with meaning; ellipsis or allusion over concreteness; open-endedness (which is the exact opposite of our girl's message; and imagery, well she did say imagery,but that's pretty obvious, almost like saying music must have chords.

The only bad line you have is "on a road to nowhere leads" and it's bad because it has this contrived quality like you're trying to squeeze it into pants which are too small, to get the consonant rhyme with seeds,which you shouldn't have anyway; and worst of all it's creating a kind of false Shakesperian quality which is worst seen in Natlia's poems with her nays and thous and almost crying out prithee, but is also seen in the much-loved prose poems of Flying Solo with her nays and such which is one of the reasons why she is still writing "purple prose."

you have two choices: a road that (or which) leads to nowhere; or a road leading to nowhere, depending, in my opinion and it really is only opinion, on whether, in the merging of form and meaning, whether you want to convey a straight road that ends in a jolt, which is what that line sounds like' or you wnt to convey a kind of winding road that is more active and has the potential of leading somewhere.

 I wouldn't worry about it much because the main quality of a great poem in that all the above factors are spontaneously generated by the subconscious without effort, and it is only in the editing when the poet consciously articlutes any of the basic qualities, and if the editing doesn't extend over days, it's not even a good poem. Even if it's very short,shorter than this one. In the case of a novice, the poem will still have some of those qualities generated subconsciously. As does yours. and so these editing details, they'll be a struggle, and you 'll find more of 'em as you go along-that is, if you choose to edit thiis poem, which knowing you you probably won't, you'll just write a new one when you feel inspired--so why worry when you know what lies ahead?

 oh yes, and inspiration-that's a quality for a very good poem. cannot be forced. must come to you, which then leads to the completely subconscious process while using these "qualities" mentioned above--in an excellent, or even a great poem.

_______________________________________________

Well you know what, maybe i'll prune this a bit and leave it for our girl.t just occured to me. Because I would like to leave a legacy, and the most important quality for any poem, even an okay one (as opposed to a good one0 is honesty. And in her poems, she is that. Actually, she's earnest, and that's..too much..but earnesness is almost honesty and she'll get there yet. so maybe i'll leave my legacy to her, why not? after all, whether she's twenty or sixty, she's a very young poet, and legacies are best left to the young...anyway, i'll think about it... loneliness/hope; life/death...dialectic, flip sides..yin/yang... there is oppression in every step we take. there is hope in every breath we breathe. ________________________________________________ which leads me to my last point which has nothing (and everything) to do with poetry. i didn't need allies this past half year. except for you. my battle was complete from the day i came back on new year's eve. i had really one opponent and one ally and one arsenal and one war only with one person only. it ended in a draw because it was a battle that from the get-go no one could win. or lose. no one can fight their own reflection, it's impossible. the battle must be fought within. that's what makes a true warrior. the rest is just..cotton candy that bleeds. time to move on. i just need time. that's all. time and silence. time and...reflection. thanks for everything. one day i'll take that purple turtle and we'll have clam chowder. it was excellent really. you really must try it. oh yes and ps as you probably noticed, my keyboard is better. it's because the left control key fell OFF. apparently it was exerting too much pressure on the connection. too much..control...too little freedom...too little...breath... that's what jung calls synchronicity, but you'll never get that one until you first get it in your dreams..g'luch. -sis

oh btw ps the word is "lay" not "laid"and this is good because now you have the consonance at the end, which is good, because consonance is so...simplistic..that it..works as an ending...and anyway they're far enough apart and one at the beginning one at the end..kind of...a little aside journey from simplicity to simplicity...

oh yes and pee pee s (as in dog mark turf, do you see how word play is not poetic?) i dunno with this "chick"..i really don't want my lord and master to see me post, i know, i'll contact her through her account.. there is a solution for everything.

Re: Literry Critic

Yes, there can be seed to peck on a cold and snowy day.

Did you forget people in the U.S. like to feed the birds?

You can actually find snow fall on a warm sunny day in El Paso, Texas. I experienced it as a child. It is rare but possible.

 Now about your name. Did you mean to spell it the way you did?

Moron

Dear Literary Kritic,

Wrong. You can have warmth and sunglight after it has snown it is one of the most beautiful things. You are a very unhappy person. I'm sorry you can't enjoy things.

Dear MPD

First the good news:

I am going to let you off the hook, as there are much larger fish (or fishes) on this site than you! So unless you make a terrible mistake, i won't waste my time on you again.

And now the bad news:

"Taught his baby chicks

Out of grassy sods

How to peck for seeds "

There can't be any seed to peck a cold snowy day!!

"Gone as a snow flake

On a warm sunny day"

where on earth can you find snow fall on a warm sunny day?!!!

LC

One other thing about quail

They aren't the only birds who mourn dead mates and children. 

Most birds do! We just don't bother to pay attention. Elephants actually cry and so do cows. We're not really different except we are awful and they aren't.  

Why isn't this featured?

Sorry to drop a stinkbomb, but what's the deal with this? If Tara and Bella the elephant and dog can be featured, this would have been a nice companion piece. 

Another thing I want to say is, your idea of a dead mother made me very sad. Do you know who loves quail hunting? DICK CHENEY. It's how he shot his friend in the face actually.

Anyway, it is beyond me why people hunt and kill like this for "sport". We have butchers and groceries and that is enough. In nature, these creatures are parents, especially in Spring.  

MPD aziz

I rather call you : MTP ( multiple talent person) !!

Way to go!! Lovely poem.

BTW

Where I live;MPD stands for : Metropolitan Police Department!.I see you everyday on police cars!!.

cheers

Ebi aka Haaji

Marge,

You’ve been more than generous. Thank you. As a child I set traps and caught many birds, some of them we ate. I remember how badly I wanted to shoot wild birds with my homemade slingshot, and when I finally did and held that beautiful dead bird in my hand I felt so bad that I never tried it again.

Nazy,

I'm sure someone will eat them soon.

Mother of all gloomy lullabies

Azarin,

What the hell kind of lullaby is joojeh talaaee? This will give children nightmares the rest of their lives, which makes me wonder; was I ever exposed to it as a child?

***

There are many quails who visit my brother’s backyard in Nevada. They usually produces tens of eggs, chicks, at a time. On an unusually cold day a few months ago we noticed all the adult birds were paired except one. A few weeks ago I received a mass email showing a bird grieving over his dead mate on a road. Yesterday I got a poem from a friend comparing life to a fleeing snow flake. This morning I did a Google Image search and I found a picture of a lonely quail with his chicks, and as you say, voila I wrote a poem. I swear I’m not a poet.

Multiple

This is beautiful and sad. What happens to the baby chicks now? Ghosseh khordam.

Nice!

Dear MPD,

I didn't know that one of your personalitues was a poet with a sensitivity that might drive crazy the other persons in you!

Thanks for sharing, Azarin

PS: I remembered a little poem I tried to make out of one of my childhood lullabies...but my writing teacher thought it was too long and gloomy (such a surprise!!!)...

So voila our childhood lullaby "Joojeh Talaaee" with a twisted ending:

My little golden bird, my baby,

tell me, how did you learn to fly?

How did you break your birth shell? My egg,

That place, tight, with no room,

Colored with night, asphyxiating like doom,

Where there’s no one else, no sound, no light,

No up, no down, no left, no right,

You’ve got no beak, no claw, no feather,

No flesh, no heart, no hope, no tear,

But how did you do it? With whom did you fight?

Whom did you kill? What did you break? Why did you despair?

Tell me, I’m so lost,

When did you say I don’t care I’m alone, still I must!

My little golden bird, tell me, tell me,

I saw you soaring in air with no wings, watching the skies, kissing a flower, falling off a tree,

Why did it happen? Why did you choose,  to fly, to be,

but to die free? 

Makes me think of this

Once when I was little and my dad took me to a river to cut off a sick baby chick's head, I cried and I begged him not to. And he said "don't worry. I'm not trying to hurt it. He is sick and hurting." I don't really know what it was and I can't ask my dad to dare remember today, but I remember vividly the eye socket and a large swelling of the eye. 

Even when something beautiful and incredible is destroyed or killed (burned books, cities, animals, people) there is always a renewal or restoration in a later generation. 

I forgot to tell you this was great! Very nice :)