This is an experiment.  I'm not entirely sure whether it worked or 
not, or even how I would tell.  
As always, all comments are welcome.  

====


ECNALUBMANMOS


Tumble freely!
Endlessly suddenly falling awake.

Dreams are confetti,
Sleep is an ocean, 
A reservoir empty of papier-mache.

If silk can satisfy,
Rubber can ridicule.

Oops!  Flatulence.  Sorry.  

A pair of buckwheat breasts,
Cradle my lovely, silent ears,
Lactating, rustling, taste the sound.
Candy Cotton.  
Candid condom? Hehehe

A man from Nantucket once claimed that a man went into a bar.
He was lying, of course, because Jesus, Bill Gates, and the Dalai Lama
Can't possibly answer a simple question of policy.

Pink.  
No, magenta.  
Ah, look at the...
Look.  Fractals.
The Mandelbrot set is a lousy lecture,
But Rackham is packed.  
The Packers got wrecked.
Batch will get sacked.  

Zydeco rustles.  
Pancake outlaws?  

Stone.  Blank, cold, grey granite, veined with crumbling mortar.
Chinks.  
China's just a brick in the wall.

Oh, now it's purple.  
Now it's.....
Now..

16 responses total.

what the hell?
COlor me confoozeled.

<nods>  Me too.  

Eh, it is a bit out there.  

If you can figure the title out, that may help.

hmm.... are you using certain things like cliche and metaphore and
alliteration and then taking the first letter of each one and making it the
title?
(just a guess)

No.  The capitalization of the title is significant, but not in the way 
you're thinking.  :)  

Oh, I didn't even notice the title before.... I like the title, but I must
say it didn't make the poem any more intelligible to me.  Sorry.

I suppose I should attempt to explain, so one accidentally kills any 
brain cells trying to figure it out...

The thing I was halfheartedly trying to capture was that weird, complex, 
looping train of thought that occurs when you're lying in bed waiting 
for sleep to come.  Things just flow in and out of your mind, lazy 
ideas, which you look at in a way that you can't quite see any other 
time.  They suggest other ideas, which suggest other ideas, in some 
random nonlinear order.  
  Hence, the title:  ECNALUBMANMOS, which is SOMNAMBULANCE backward.  
See, I thought "somnambulance" would be a good title, and as I was 
typing it in, it suddenly occurred to me that on the front of an 
ambulance, the word "ambulance" is painted backwards:  "ecnalumba"  
(well, not really, the letters are reversed, too).  So I reversed 
somnambulance, which besides being oddly interesting, has the effect of 
suggesting somehow that whatever it is you're looking at (i.e. the 
poem), you're looking at it in the wrong way, and you need to adjust 
your paradigm in some way before what you're looking at can make sense. 

The other, probably more honest point of this poem is just verbal 
doodling.  Coming up with words in odd associations that make some kind 
of pleasant rhythm together, without even needing to mean anything, 
necessarily.  

I don't know.  I enjoyed writing this, and thought it was clever, but:
  - I was quite tired when I did write it, and 
  - I actually *know* what all the references and bizarre thought
    twists in it are, so it's a little less incomprehensible to me.  

Yeah.  I agree with that last sentence.  (and ecnalubmanmos is still a cool
title)

uh, ok.  I'm a little creatively fried at the moment.. bizzare, but 
didn't quite catch my fancy.

Eh, it was an experiment.   :)

To tell the truth, a part of me was hoping nobody would like this *too* 
much, because it's such a radical departure from the way I normally 
write, and frankly, I don't think it's all that.  If everyone thought it 
was an improvement, I'd not know what to think.  :) 

Probably true, but hey, there's no harm in playing around in new styles.  The
worst thing that can happen is we'll tell you it stinks <g>

Actually, I find your idea for the poem rather intresting. It almost motivates
me to write my ownwith a similiar theme! :) I would like to see you try the
idea agin, but put a little more of your usual writing style back into it.
Otherwise, I know exactly what you mean about thoughts before sleep..

Actually, I've been reading a lot of Ezra Pound recently (without 
understanding it, as usual), and I think that if I can figure it out, 
his style would be excellent for a piece like this.  

It's a dream, right?

Mmm, not quite.  It's more like the uncontrolled thoughts that float 
around in my mind just *before* I fall asleep.  After I fall asleep, it 
all makes much more sense.  :)

I've noticed that about my own dreams.

I've dreamed I could fly more than once.

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