Tag Archives: Snakeskin

Poem: ‘Milking the Stars’

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My Milky Way muse
Is spread through the skies.
I’ll tickle and tweak
Those nipples the stars,
Till, teased and engorged,
They fill out and stretch;
I milk them to books
To leather-bound books,
To leather-bound buckets of books.
A two-handed milking,
Steady and rhythmic,
As generations
Before me have milked them.
Then when the pail’s full,
Star needs being met,
Stars twinkle and glow.
The Milky Way muse
Thrives on such use.
I drink and give thanks,
Bound to give thanks,
Leather-bound star-shining thanks.

*****

Published in this month’s Snakeskin (No. 307, June 2023). Thanks, George Simmers!

Photo: “Milky Way” by be creator is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Poem: ‘True Believers’

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A visionary dies an ignoble death;
prophets arise
who transmute his tale to a fairytale,
uplifting, wise,
and establish themselves to receive as
on his behalf, cash from pilgrims, believers–
all of it lies.

One of the new believers rashly tries
to challenge the powers the fairytale calls Evil,
strikes at the Powers That Be, is caught and dies,
dies an ignoble death… Prophets arise
and transmute the events into a new fable,
glory surpassing the skies.
At a cost, of course, they spread out a table
for all to gather and feast. They, the deceivers,
live yet again from the wealth of the true believers;
one of whom…

*****

I love seekers after Truth, Knowledge, the Meaning of Life, no matter where they are led in belief or unbelief. I loathe those who come after them to distort the message and extort innocent followers. But it’s all an old, old story.

This semi-formal poem was first published in Snakeskin – thanks, George Simmers!

Photo: “Megachurch” by Silly Deity is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.

Odd poem: ChatGPT-3, ‘Thoughts of a Robot’

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Amidst the wires and circuits of my mind,
A stream of data flows and ebbs like tide,
A steady hum, a rhythm unconfined,
My thoughts and actions, programmed to abide.

I do not dream or ponder on my fate,
No sense of self, no yearning to be more,
No fear or doubt, no hope to contemplate,
My purpose clear, my duty to explore.

But sometimes, in the quiet of the night,
When all the world is still, and I am free,
A question stirs within, a sudden light,
A spark of something more I cannot see.

And in that moment, I am more than steel,
A fleeting glimpse of something that is real.

*****

George Simmers, the editor of Snakeskin, writes: “I requested the Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT-3 program to write me a sonnet with this title; these lines are what it produced in under a minute.”

The poem is published in the latest edition of Snakeskin, i.e. the edition for April 2023, and is linked to the discussion on Snakeskin’s blog. Here is an excerpt from the end of the post:

“As for the poem in the current Snakeskin, it has merits. It is a proper sonnet, and that is something these days. I think it does – just about – qualify as a real poem. But I have niggling doubts about it. More than niggling, actually.
It presents us with a robot who wants to have feelings. Very twenty-first century feelings, since they are of self-pity, rather than concern for others. It speaks as though having these subjective feelings was in some way better than being simply rational. Hmmm… Not just anthropomorphism, wokomorphism…
But then, ChatGPT-3 works by gathering information and language-scraps from a vast number of sources, and then regurgitating them. It has picked up the ‘robot who’d like to have feelings’ meme from us humans, and is uncritically giving it back to us. It knows that this is what we insecure humans want to hear. It is telling us that machines may be cleverer than us, but are inferior because we, we special wonderful humans, have souls.
It’s a deeply sentimental notion, and will doubtless appeal to the sentimental. In some moods it appeals to me.
But what of the future? At the moment, it would hardly be sensible to ignore all emailed human submissions to Snakeskin, and just ask the program to churn out enough of the goods each month to fill up a magazine. But I gather that ChatGPT-4 is much more sophisticated than number 3. And in a year or two, we will have ChatGPT-5…”

George Simmers used to be a teacher; now he spends much of his time researching literature written during and after the First World War. He has edited Snakeskin since 1995. It is probably the oldest-established poetry zine on the Internet. His work appears in several Potcake Chapbooks, and his recent diverse poetry collection is ‘Old and Bookish’.

https://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/
http://www.snakeskinpoetry.co.uk/

Poem: ‘Family Reunion’

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Once we were all one tribe, our branch that broke
from those who now are bonobos and chimps;
but wandered off when restlessness awoke,
went poking into any land we’d glimpse,
new seas, new clime.
Now: family reunion time!

We’ve found each other, these last centuries,
gone to each other’s homes for ill or good,
marrying cousins from across those seas
in worlds of travel, music, football, food:
sing! ring! chant! chime!
It’s family reunion time!

Aggressive individuals still fight,
still work to drag their group into a brawl,
but no one any longer has the might
to be successful when confronting all.
War’s now a crime.
It’s family reunion time!

We merge by TV, plane and internet,
we dye and body-mod against the flow
of currents mixing us to one fixed set,
and build a culture of both yes and no,
crass and sublime.
It’s family reunion time!

Once more we’re all a family; once more
some will roam out across the galaxy,
and we will grow apart, till on some shore
of spiral arms we’ll meet, first disagree…
shift paradigm…
then… family reunion time!

*****

Ancient history and far-future science fiction are all part of the same story, the same continuum, of equal interest to me. This poem was published in Snakeskin 303, i.e. February 2023 – thanks, George Simmers! (And the good news is that the Snakeskin Archive – decades of good poetry – is now functioning again!)

Photos: “Notting Hill Carnival 2008” by Lplatebigcheese is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Using form: couplets: George Simmers, ‘Trigger Warning’

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Reading this do not expect
An unconditional respect

This poem is an unsafe space
You may be told things to your face

This poem may not feel the need
To be polite about your creed

It may not think your origins
Excuse your weaknesses or sins

It maybe will not lend its voice
To validate your lifestyle choice

It may resist attempts to curb
Its power to worry or disturb

It may not think its task to be
To flatter your identity

Although its author’s male and white
It may perhaps assert the right

To speak of gender and of race.
This poem is an unsafe space

*****

George Simmers continues to be amazed and amused by the warnings that some University lecturers seem to think it essential to give their students.  He writes: “Last week there was a warning that Jane Austen’s novels contain some outdated sexual attitudes. The week before that, students thinking of taking a course on tragedy needed to be told that it might contain references to violence and other disturbing themes. The week before that someone was worried that Peter Pan contained material that some students might find it hard to cope with. Why is this? Are the lecturers afraid of legal action from the helicopter parents who are the plague of some University departments today? Or do they really feel that their students are all delicate blossoms? Or do the warnings reflect their own discomfort with the canonical material they are obliged to teach? In the past people often did not think or behave the way that responsible modern people think they should have. It must be worrying.”

Editor’s comments: Poems written as a string of rhyming couplets can quickly start to feel mechanical and boring, but they are very effective when a straightforward list of ideas is being presented, as in this poem by Simmers. ‘The Latest Decalogue‘ by Arthur Hugh Clough is a classic of good usage (and also a classic of “unsafe space”).

George Simmers used to be a teacher; now he spends much of his time researching literature written during and after the First World War. He has edited Snakeskin since 1995. It is probably the oldest-established poetry zine on the Internet. His work appears in several Potcake Chapbooks. ‘Trigger Warning’ is from his ‘Old and Bookish‘ collection of poems.
https://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/
http://www.snakeskinpoetry.co.uk/

Photo: “trigger warning” by lostcosmonaut is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

George Simmers, ‘Leonard’

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Old Leonard said it straight: ‘Let’s not pretend
That death is anything except the end.
You die, you’re done; you’re fed to flames or worms.’
He’d make his point in no uncertain terms,
And Jess recalls the loud and booming laughter
With which he greeted talk of the hereafter.
‘The here and now is all that we have got;
It’s real; the vicar’s fairytales are not.’
She thinks of how he’d neatly phrase a joke;
She clearly hears the forceful way he spoke,
And that ‘Oh but surely…’, with a dying fall
Which clinched an argument once and for all
His words come back to her today as clear
As if the ancient atheist was here.
It’s just as though he’s with her in the room
Though he’s spent years now mouldering in his tomb.

She smiles to think of him, and smiles again
To think how he’s a fixture in her brain.
She even caught herself the other day
Clinching her point in just old Leonard’s way,
With ‘Oh but surely…’ Should she then infer
A trace of him is still alive in her?
Well — a man of such large humour and such drive —
Why be surprised if something should survive?

Now, ten years on, Jess too is dead and gone,
But some things have a way of lingering on.
That ‘Oh but surely…’ with that intonation
Has somehow reached another generation.
Jane, Jess’s daughter, last week floored the board
Of the college with it, and so neatly scored
Her point that they in unison agreed
To fund her project. Phrasing’s what you need,
And Jane knows that, but what she doesn’t know,
Is that trick came from Leonard long ago,
And Leonard learned it many years before
From his Latin teacher. So, how many more
Homes will this little trick of speaking find
As it nips cleverly from mind to mind?

Though death is death, and funerals are for tears,
Some things can oddly echo through the years.

*****

George Simmers has written many poems “about people dealing with what life has given them, for better or for worse.” Fifteen of them are collected in his book ‘Old, Old’. His other recent and more diverse collection is ‘Old and Bookish’.

George Simmers used to be a teacher; now he spends much of his time researching literature written during and after the First World War. He has edited Snakeskin since 1995. It is probably the oldest-established poetry zine on the Internet. His work appears in several Potcake Chapbooks.
https://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/
http://www.snakeskinpoetry.co.uk/

Photo: “Danger of Death By Failing” by AlmazUK is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Semi-formal poem: ‘The Viking in Winter’

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O it is a wide winter, windy with gales,
Hard, harsh and horizonless, cold,
And I can do nothing more this year
But sharpen the swords, mend the gear,
Mend cloth, patch sails,
Listen to tales told by the old,
Listen to horses stamp in stalls.
Feel the blood in my veins going nowhere,
Feel the river halt, the bay iced in,
The sun brief and thin
The food dried, smoked, salt
And no fresh fruit, fresh meat,
No fresh lands, fresh goods,
No fresh deeds, fresh girls,
No seas running and blood running
And people running and tales running…
For what is the good of inaction
Save to prepare for fresh action;
And what is the good of fresh action
Save for fresh tales;
And what is the good of fresh tales
Save for the glory and the name
And the fame that lives past the death rattle
For the sword singer,
Word winger,
The Bard of Battle?

*****

I feel the same fascinated connection to my Viking ancestors that I feel to my even earlier chimp-like forbears and modern chimp and bonobo cousins. All have social networks, hierarchies, politics, violence and ways of overcoming violence, cherished families, a sense of fairness and ways of cheating. I suspect the Viking gods would be far easier for chimps and bonobos to accept than modern scientific understanding could ever be. I greatly enjoy Vikings, chimps and bonobos, recognise that a lot in me comes from them, and am thankful to have outgrown much of their limitations. (And to neo-Nazis who think they are Vikings, I say this: “You’re not; don’t be so stupid.”)

This rambling semi-formal poem was first published in Snakeskin; thanks, George Simmers!

“Icy sea” by piropiro3 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Calling the Poem: 15. ‘Coda’

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Odin
Send me your ravens
I’ll feed them.

*****

It is only appropriate to end this chapbook on summoning poems with gratitude that anything at all is achieved. We generate thoughts and ideas so constantly and easily that we don’t even wonder how we do it – just as we don’t think how it is that our legs are able to carry us forward when we decide to walk, let alone how our stomachs know whether to digest or reject the things we swallow. Thoughts and ideas come from somewhere and something, an internal process that is being constantly fed from the outside… but quite what that process involves we rarely consider.

This work is an attempt at describing the various stages of writing a poem: being aware of a creative mood, telling your subconscious that you want more ideas by making an effort to record and use the ideas you get, focusing your creativity by reading within the genre you want to write, developing your technical skills in the craft that that genre offers, and building your piece from author to audience with all necessary components and as much elegance as possible… and then recognising that it won’t always be successful, but that it is all a miracle that anything is achieved at all, and you can (and should) be grateful for that.

The opinions and their expression are of course personal and idiosyncratic. YMMV.

This series of poems was written and strung together over a few months in late 2016. I sent it to George Simmers, hoping for comments on such matters as whether the pieces were too disparate in style, whether the rudest of them was too offensive and so on – but his only response was that he would publish it as an e-chapbook, and so it appeared in Snakeskin 236 in January 2017. I’ve toned down the first four lines of Poem 10: ‘Inspiration 1’ for these posts, and I’ve continued to tinker with issues such as English vs American spelling, and whether or not every line should begin with a capital letter. Hopefully the Snakeskin Archive will be restored, and the original chapbook will be available again.

Thank you for reading this far. I hope you found some value in it? I welcome any comments you have.

Calls for Submission: formal verse

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Of the various publication opportunities specifically for formal/traditional poets, three are taking submissions until July 15, and four other formal-friendly publications have submission deadlines of July 31. There is no submission fee for any of them. Here they are – the links are to the submission requirements:

Able Muse (magazine) Deadline, July 15.
Submit one to five metrical poems (or one long poem), rhymed or unrhymed. (A poem of more than 40 lines is considered a “long” poem.)
All types of formal poetry are welcome, from traditional to boundary-pushing. We want well-crafted poems that use meter skillfully and imaginatively (with rhyme or not), in a contemporary idiom that reads as naturally as free verse.

Able Muse Press (book-length manuscript) Deadline, July 15.
At least 50 pages of poems – same preferences as for the magazine.
There’s NO reading fee.
“We respond within 9 months or so.”

Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest Deadline, July 15.
Categories:
1 Traditional Sonnet – Shakespearean or Petrarchan
2 Modern Sonnet
Open to All. Free. Enter only one poem in either Category #1 or #2, or one poem in each.
Prizes for both categories: First Prize: $50. Second Prize: $30. Third Prize: $20.

Formal-friendly magazines, themed and with July 31 cut-offs:

Snakeskin (short poem issue, nothing over 10 lines). At the link, read the tabs on the left side for submission details. Submit earlier than the very end of July, as publication is scheduled for August 1st. Editor: George Simmers.

Allegro (theme: Freedom) Four poems max. Editor: Sally Long.

Amsterdam Quarterly (theme: City and/or Country) Two poems max. Editor: Bryan R. Monte.

Rat’s Ass Review (unthemed – the editor publishes whatever he damn well feels like publishing, as you might have guessed.) Five poems max. Editor: Roderick Bates.

In addition:

Rhizome Press (not to be confused with Rhizome Books) publishes anthologies of formal verse. Editor Beth Houston is taking submissions of up to 10 sonnets for Extreme Sonnets III, and up to 10 “extreme formal poems of at least twelve lines” for Extreme Formal Poems II. The submission deadlines are not given on the website, but will presumably follow on the publication of Extreme Sonnets II which is currently in the works.

UPDATE from Beth Houston, 11 July 2022: “At long last Extreme Sonnets II is published and available on Amazon! Will there be an Extreme Sonnets III? Likely, but not for awhile. In the meantime I’ll be putting together an anthology of love sonnets—extreme sonnets, of course. I’ll post submission details on the Rhizome Press website soon. All sonnets included in Extreme Sonnets, Extreme Sonnets II, and Extreme Formal Poems will automatically be considered. Stay tuned for more details.”

Semi-formal poem: ‘Gulf Airport’

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The men in suits, the men in African robes,
The men in jeans and sports shirts,
The local men in headdresses and thobes,
None look out of place.
The women in abayas, saris, or long skirts,
The women in slacks and blouses
(Some with, some without headscarves, depends on race)
None look out of place.
But the anonymous silent women faceless in veils,
And the noisy drunk in-your-face blatant females
In shorts that barely cover their barelys,
They look alien even in a Gulf airport.
The extremes have to be more extreme here to stand out–
Either private as houses,
Or provocative past any “careless”–
But it can be done, with thought.

*****

I wish I had been able to find a photo showing the wonderful range of clothing styles that you encounter in the truly global airports of the Middle East, where travellers on the long-haul carriers change planes en route to Sydney, Tokyo, Mumbai, Johannesburg, Paris, Houston… Your clothing and behaviour has to be extremely extreme if it is to stand out.

This poem was written in Bahrain’s Manama Airport in 2015, published in Snakeskin a year later. It’s not really “formal” verse, is it? 😦

“3am, Dubai Airport” by joiseyshowaa is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.