On my way (unsigned)
Poem and Graphic by Sandshoe
What you need and what you want
(A Personal Poem to uneducated indifference)
…To be spoken as a rhyming riddle…
What you need and what you want
might be two different things
yes the hidden brilliance mocks me
no the moon hangs and threatens
without
there is a fool
waiting to entertain
the jesters wanting nothing.
CBWilson ’94 ©
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
The graphic somehow reminds me of an industrial estate in the northeast of England…
🙂
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That was my first thought asty.
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I like it though, shoe,
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Yeah… me too…
🙂
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The excitement I felt when I identified the graphic felt right to show with the poem was such it is great reward to read what you have to say, asty and algernon. I fell in a sort of love with it in a different way recognising it fitted. Deeper. When I created it I was pleased with its allusion to conformity, uniformity, rigid structures. I had specific structures of my own in mind, but I did recognise an observer will identify it with the structures of their immediate experience, culture, on their way… 🙂
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Thank you. You don’t know what that means to me.
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Was it synchronicity, ‘Shoe, or planning the way the outline of your poem forms a perfect ‘cup’ or goblet… I say ‘cup’ because in the tarot the suit of cups is all about emotion; this serendipitous appropriateness of shape seems like a beautiful ‘zen’ accident…
I was only once fortunate enough to have a similar outcome to a poem I once wrote entitled, “One Last Salute”, which, mocking the futility of war, outlined a shape which looked very much like the silhouette of the atom bomb they named ‘Fat Man’…
🙂
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Awesome, dude.
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astyages, the enquiry you make, is this poem shaped by design is pretty much the same I have conducted on myself since it stirred, stretched, glanced out of the window of the condominium it ought in my opinion to have earned me by now and stood up out of bed…you as a writer can imagine my consternation, only me to discover it was fully clothed and ready to go to work, I couldn’t retract it, mould it differently…what is more, the ‘thes’ in it have evaded interception these years long when I have plucked up courage to visualise one removed.
I even felt embarrassed to consider its potential collapsed … as well as rhythm … without its ‘thes’. 🙂
I suspect design, astyages. The discussion I enjoyed most in Economics when I was a Senior at High School stemmed out of considerations of ‘needs’ and ‘wants’, a philosophical discussion of course, not a presentation of absolutes and 25 years later, the subconscious mind with its accumulation of interpretive tools sculpted this, before I knew it… 🙂
There is a short answer, the recourse of Aussies when they’re a bit stumped. Dunno, mate. 🙂
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sandshoe, I’m hopeless with poetry…I only understand poems like WH Auden’s…I tried to read one by Kinsella in the weekend paper, but had to give up…yours is better, I think I got it 🙂
Love the graphics!
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I’m glad I have taken the poem out of its file and presented it for its drubbing or its acceptance that you have found enjoyment in it. And I think I got it too Helvityni 🙂
It was enjoyable helvi, going through my art work and at each item immediately thinking ‘No, no, no, no, no, yes!…hesitation…yes, definitely, and feeling excitement that there seemed a cross-fertility of ideas about design and an interpretive potential. Thank you that you have expressed this love. I like that graphic too.
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‘Shoe, the shape of the poem makes me want to have a glass of red. But since it’s before lunchtime, I think I’ll need to attend to other wants 🙂 Kind regards, Emm.
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Funny. I only just got this.
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Very true and not a word is wasted.
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Gez, on the score of not wasting words, when I went to the creative writing course run by Shane Moloney, he recommended a book called Reading Like a Writer by a lady with the happy name of Francine Prose. She has a lot of useful things to say about editing one’s sentences and lots of examples of sentences that break all the rules and remain brilliant in their own ways. Like no verb.
You can get a downloadable copy at a good price or order the real thing from just about anywhere online. Highly recommended.
Waste not, want not.
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Is that the same Shane Maloney who was on Jennifer’s Book Club, he seemed like a good bloke, with red socks and a sense humour, he did not like the first book Lighthouse…which Jason, took to be OK, sounded like a silly one..if you ask me…
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How lucky were you. He wasn’t wearing shoes or socks when he led the class ! He is a delightfully funny bloke, H. Dry, dry sense of humour. We got on like houses on fire.
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I will look out for red socks, now. Out with the old insignificant black and the tatty fleck ones… 🙂
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