Haiku Calligraphy
I'm not the first person to say this, but I'll say it anyway: Twitter could be the new poetry. With its maximum of 140 characters it could establish itself as a modern parallel to Haiku. It has brevity, it has pithiness, it can force you to concentrate on the essence of what you want to say. That's a good way of moving towards poetry.
Not every tweet needs to be poetic, of course. But when I log onto my twitter account I do like to find something to uplift - or at least entertain - me. I particularly enjoy the self contained items – the one liner jokes, the quoted wit’n’wisdom, and so on. So I tried a few myself.
Scientific ideas seemed worth a go:
- A photon is not just a particle but a wave. I am not just a body but an aura (hypothesis)
- The Multiverse: hmm, if I spell this wrong another universe opens up where I get it right? (Quick, check the letters – which universe won?)
- Dark matter: I glimpsed a pinhead and saw 137 angels dancing on it. Dark energy: they were doing it very quickly.
Or silly jokes:
- Haiku: Hi Koo, how are you?/ Thoughts are short cos words are few./ Bye Koo, that'll do.
- Spring is in the air, and there's a spring in my step. Oops, I just stepped on Spring. Sorry about that, folks...
- The tweeter lay dying in the dust outside the saloon. “The man who shot me,” he typed, using up his last characters, “was...”
- I held you tight, with all my might, throughout the night – till my arm went dead (the right)... Happy Valentines everybody
I played with the idea of a semi-divine companion:
- Walking along with the Goddess of the Air beside me: then it starts to rain. “So?” she says. “I'm moody.”
- Walking along with the Goddess of the Air: leaves hurtle past us on the ground - she's playing...
- Walking along with the Goddess of the Air: I say “Let's have a lull in the wind” - she says, “How feeble do you want me to be?”
- Walking along with the Goddess of Air: “Fantastic weather,” I say. “Of course,” she replies, “the whole world is a fantasy.”
I returned to the theme of dark matter, tried playing with it:
- Gosh, there's a lot of dark matter in the kitchen today. Can hardly push past it to the fridge...
- Sod it – fridge full of dark matter too. Now is that a bottle of milk or...?
- Will try drinking my tea, but rather suspect that wasn't milk I poured in. Wait a mo, that's not a mug either. Agg where's the usual matter?
- Have retuned my perceptions. Dark matter gone. Kitchen come back. Hmm, why's it upside down?
- Woops, nasty moment just there – I'd actually returned to anti-matter. Everything back to front. Tea started drinking me...
What I enjoyed most, though, were random thoughts on this’n’that:
- Has anyone ever considered insomniac trees? Streetlights on all night – how can they get a decent rest?
- Trees in a forest are tribal, living each other's lives; lone trees are poets, spreading their branches anywhere...
- Birds squeezing out jewels of song, glittering from tree to tree, linked together by streaks of silver...
- Chimney stacks so clear against the sky, punched out by the insistent blue – bang, a gable end pushed out – bang, a chimney pot emerging...
- Bright blue sky: the trees are high, and so am I...
A few more, this time with a switch-off/tune-in theme:
- That's where Paradise is – switch off the Daily Automaton just for the moment and – mm, how good is that...
- The Paradise of Normality – just you, me, everyone – all the same yet suddenly awake – hello, nice to meet you...
- Blue skies, light, expansion – and so the clamp comes off my brain...
- Silence in my heart, silence in my soul – nothing is apart, everything is whole...
Ah, the Way of Twitter. You know, I'm beginning to feel enlightened already...
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May I invite you to make certain purchases? (I may? Why, thank you...)
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(a) The Salamander Stone (by my most excellent and trusty pal, Mrs Me) from one of these outlets:
Direct from the publisher, Burst Books: click here
Amazon UK: click here
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(b) The Two Worlds of Wellesley Tudor Pole (by Mrs Me’s most excellent and trusty pal, Me):
Amazon UK: click here
Amazon.com (US): click here
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(You’ll be getting both of them? Well, that is an admirable choice, if I may say so...)
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