seanfarragher

Poem separated from "The Garden of Earthly Delights" 

-- Ahmed Fouad Negm, Egyptian Poet 5/13/06 

Tribute to the English Movie Star Dorothy Chili Bouchier 1909-1999. She Made 57 films and rejected Hollywood. 

First Draft -- 1 January 2006 

Poem came from exercise by Wenonah Lyon at Zoetrope: Write a flash or poem based on one of these proverbs (or one of your own choosing): "There's more to marriage than four bare legs in a bed." "Many a mickle makes a muckle." "Facts are stubborn things.." "A deaf husband and a blind wife are always a happy couple."  

My mystical mystery child tour (1945 to 1948)  

Hieronymus Bosch and “Ecclesia's Paradise” 

Confessional Poem for Nell's Poetry Seminar Prompt 

What if the laws of physics in the universe changed from place to place and we derived inaccurate probability equations without form? 

FLASH POETRY SUBMIT FOR: "Now I will shine for all the world to see." 

Old Testament & Book of Revelation 

Nostalgia: Hudson River, Jacob Van Ruisdael and Theresa (1963) [Nostalgia: From Greek nostos, a return home]  

Every day the world seems more and more impossible. 

First Draft from a Prompt at Zoetrope written today: Write a poem in any form or style incorporating: rabbit, gun, cradle, couscous, paragon, cheese steak (for my UK friends cheese steak of course is Philadelphia food, but Camden is a city immediately across from Philadelphia. Step on the bridge in Camden, New Jersey and you are immediately in Philadelphia. Camden had horrific schools. I taught there in the 1970s, and from what I hear it is no better today. 

“Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man’s imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices. The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.” Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), French author. Saint-Fond, in [i]L’Histoire de Juliette, ou les Prospérités du Vice, pt. 2 (1797)[/i] 

The Four Seasons by Stravinsky (if he had written the piece) 

"The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion." - GK Chesterton 

“All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word “no.” To “no” there is only one answer and that is “yes.” Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing. Man lives more by affirmation than by bread.” Victor Hugo (1802–85), French poet, dramatist, novelist. Les Misérables, pt. 2, bk. 7, ch. 6 (1862)  

Joel Oppenheimer (1930-1988) 

Adapted from original Diary of Eugene Goodwin (American civil war era diary) 

Traditional Valentine's Day Poem 2-14-05 

Serial murderers (brother and sister) kidsnap late term pregnant women. TxM6 may be the story of one survivor. More at http://taximurders.com 

Fear cripples for life. "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men Couldn't put Humpty together again!" Sections #5 and #6 By Laurie Fallon ("Dirty Little Girl") A Virtual Person  

The Poetry Seminar Group looked at this several months ago. How about Poetry IV. What do you think? Argument Byzantium: As children are abused by adults, terror grows. As horror expands, intellect diminishes and lives are wasted in the pursuit of apparent gods, forgotten nightmares and natural greed. That wound reminded me of my own face when I was beated and raped as a child. In the mirror now I am more blank than before terror was tasted as air failed and sulfuric smoke was rising.  

Argument for the Book of Byzantium: As children are abused by adults, terror grows. As horror expands, intellect diminishes and lives are wasted in the pursuit of apparent gods, forgotten nightmares and natural greed. On 9/11/01 thousands evaporated into dust. That mortal wound reminded me of my own face when I was beaten and raped as a child. In the mirror now I am blank before terror was tasted as air failed and sulfuric smoke rose. (more to come) 

This was the time when New Orleans hurricane spake back to Noah and the US President of Sleaze in Rose Garden Mix and Match Fund Raiser for earthquakes in Pakistan and crickets in Tehran 

A Poem for Rebirth, revival and ecstasy. 

Revised to exclude three stanzas that may not be part of the poem. What do you think? 

Random quotations from the New York Times and Google. The quotation is used as a prompt. 

Flash Dream Cartoons -- Written from prompt: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/endofworld.html  

Poem for my son Ian for his birthday 12-5-1978 

The Perfection of Love 

Prompt for poem .... was beauty or lost beauty 

Poem written for an exercise using the preparation of food as starting point 

Note: I have hesitated to post this poem. It has been brewing inside since a dream where I transformed my mother into a monster or she me, and it became a monster movie. Colors are a natural connection to mood, past, future, and the impossible. I hope the poem upsets and at the same time is art. 

"Flash Prompt and Exercise for July 10 -- By Caz Ferguson Zoetrope Sunday Afternoon Flash Exercise -- What a week. We need some happiness, so here it is. The prompt is very simple today, folks. Write a poem expressing joy. Write about anything that makes you happy, in any poetic form." --- My Poem, "Moral Man/Immoral Society", asks the general question: is "joy" possible in this imperfect world? 

(A short poem by Request)--- Epigram taken from an older poem. 

POEM THAT USES PROSE FOR DETAILS -- From The Journal of John Colman Mate on Dutch Ship, Little Fox, Murdered By His Crew In 1611 

Poem is part of a book in progress: "My Mother is Marilyn Monroe". The book is an account of my life as a child. 

Why is Life Worth Living? 

A prose-poem reflected With Opitcal Isomerism 

"Grant that we may be one flock and one shepherd!" POPE BENEDICT XVI -- 24 April 2005 ------- From 1984: "He sat back. A sense of complete helplessness had descended upon him. To begin with, he did not know with any certainty that this was 1984. It must be round about that date, since he was fairly sure that his age was thirty-nine, and he believed that he had been born in 1944 or 1945; but it was never possible nowadays to pin down any date within a year or two." --George Orwell, 1984.  

My Self & Soul in 2005. Written after reading Yeats's "Self and Soul." 

There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.”—Henri Matisse 

Diary Inspired by Anais Nin's Fiction 

TV/Radio Exercise by Nell .  

Home has many faces and traumas 

Sarah For Esther Simms (summer 1972) Pubished 1972 Dublin Magazine 

Ritual and Meditation -- The Year is 1957 

"The world only goes round by misunderstanding." - Charles Baudelaire 

Songs for an Agnostic's Easter 

My pessimism grows daily as I read the newspapers and copy in my notebooks the daily art of our disintegration 

vector 1. Mathematics. a. A quantity, such as velocity, completely specified by a magnitude and a direction. b. A one-dimensional array. c. An element of a vector space. 2. Pathology. An organism, such as a mosquito or tick, that carries disease-causing microorganisms from one host to another. 3. Genetics. A bacteriophage, a plasmid, or another agent that transfers genetic material from one location to another. 4. A force or an influence.  

Life, all life seems spiritual and at the same time, a scam. The poem explores, along with that first chapter of Genesis, this hypocrisy. Agnostics have their spiritual havens. Sometimes, Buddhism answers mine, and ironically, the Old Testament) enlightens. Yet, I prefer to live in reality and meditate to attain spiritual calm -- Sean  

Hurlyburly Flash Exercise From Taxi Murders -- Written for the flash challenge 2/18/2005 1178 words 

Geli Raubal (1931) was Adolf's first reported murder. The Reichstag fire (1933)was an early lie of the National Socialists Party. Rodney King (1992)was another lie perpetrated by the LA Police. Laurie Fallon (1992)is one layer of horror, "noir" and history carved as fiction but more truth. "Laurie is real and actual," Peter Jackson Campbell, the Gadfly speaking in his three times weekly column for the Bergen Sentinel, Hackensack, NJ. 

Ten Haiku Poems Connected Theme 

This Unitarian looks at his beliefs and ideology and dances with theology 

Fictional treatment of autobiographical notes 

Exercise for Poetry Seminar. I kept to the visual patern in first draft but then as the poem came together the line breaks changed. 

After reading Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "A Mathematical Problem (A humorous student-days poem on geometry), in a letter to his brother George Coleridge, 1791" and Kubla Khan -- OR, A VISION IN A DREAM. A FRAGMENT. (1798)  

Memory of the Chicago Democratic National Convention August 1968 & Second George W. Bush Inaugural, Washington, DC 

Prompt from Poetry Seminar: not confessional confessional poem based on a line quoted by Nell: "The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth" -- Jean Cocteau 

The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was a magnitude 9.0 undersea earthquake on December 26, 2004 which generated tsunamis that caused one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history. This rare type of earthquake known as a megathrust earthquake struck at 00:58:53 UTC (07:58:53 local time)in the Indian Ocean off the western coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia. It was the largest earthquake on Earth since the 9.2-magnitude Good Friday Earthquake off Alaska in 1964. 

Back Story -- Memories of Vietnam 1968 -- Riding the time line of the Great River now called Hudson or Thames. 

On the Nature of Matter After reading Shakespeare's LIII Sonnet 

After Reading the "Second Coming" of William Butler Yeats. 

for Spring and April to come -- 

Biographical poem (part of a longer work on childhood and adult abuse 1943-1962)