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Nycticorax

by James on March 5th, 2009 | 6 Comments

A nycticorax nycticorax brouhahas behind my back,
Monkey swings a question: axes if I’ll take a hack.
Banging fall against my led racks one up for me.
On a wire, freezing fire, spinning tire, unicycle riders flee.
A liar pulls his pants up higher.
Typewriter, scared-of-spiders, aims a little higher:
Could the cold of clouds combine?
Do the roses know the thyme?
This is strange—her thin I thought; you thought it
Too. You know it’s true.

This is for read write prompt #68: meaning is optional. Surprisingly enough, it was fun. I tried to write something that sounded interesting and would be fun to read out loud yet with as little meaning as possible. Despite my initial attitude indicated by the words in bold, it was more difficult than I imagined it would be. It also required more thought than I anticipated. Who knew it would take so much time to write something that doesn’t mean anything?

Nycticorax nycticorax is the Latin name for the Black-crowned Night Heron. The literal translation is “night raven.”

Can you find the line from a Cure song that snuck in here slightly altered?

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6 Comments | Filed under: poetry | Tagged: ,

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6 Responses to “Nycticorax”

  1. I like the way this reads down – A monkey banging etc. And the line: On a wire, freezing fire, spinning tire, unicycle riders flee. sounds like real poetry to me!!!

  2. Sam says:

    I must say this is pretty interesting. Made me wonder what the probably of a monkey banging on a typewriter and coming up with this poem is. Or a human, for that matter. *grin*

  3. angie says:

    This was a hard prompt…takes a lot of thinking to say nothing, I suppose!

    I notice–and I like–that a lot of your word choices SOUND like what they should mean, even though they don’t. Like “brouhahas behind my back” or “swings a question” and “her thin I thought.” Nice wordplaying. ;)

  4. Lirone says:

    It’s fascinating what happens when you take sense away… it seems it really made you play with the sounds of words. I love the “nycticorax nycticorax brouhahas” – the contrast in the sounds between the words and the feel of the repetition really works for me!

    And I do like the idea of a typewriter scared of spiders! No idea why, but I do!

  5. James says:

    angie, I agree. It was much harder than I thought it would be.

    Lirone, I started with nycticorax and brouhaha as those are two of my favorite words in terms of sound.

    Thanks very much, everyone.

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