Glitter-blue, a cartoon star
birthday helium balloon
wrinkled, half-inflated
crosses six busy freeway lanes
low, kitten-played
by unsettled crosswinds.
Mylar abides forever
unbiodegradable;
helium contrives
escape from all confinements.
As between flesh and spirit
meme and material
which is Mylar and which helium?
Flesh escapes, evanesces,
recycles after giving
life its declining lift
but meme and spirit
though they drift and tatter
seeming empty or forgotten
nonetheless endure.
Edit1;
Glitter-blue, a cartoon star
birthday helium balloon
wrinkled, half-inflated
crosses six busy freeway lanes
low, cat-played
by unsettled crosswinds.
Mylar abides forever
unbiodegradable;
helium, like hydrogen
but less so, contrives
escape from all confinements.
As between flesh and spirit
meme and material
which is Mylar and which helium?
Flesh escapes, evanesces,
recycles after giving
life its declining lift
but meme and spirit
though they rest and tatter
seeming empty or forgotten
nonetheless endure.
original version;
Blue five-pointed shiny star
birthday helium balloon
wrinkled, half-inflated
crosses six busy freeway lanes
low, cat-played
by unsettled crosswinds.
Mylar nearly unbiodegradable
can last forever;
helium, like hydrogen
but less so, manages
escape from all confinements.
As between flesh and spirit
material and meme
which is Mylar and which helium?
Flesh escapes, evanesces,
recycles after giving life
its temporary and declining lift
but meme and spirit
though they rest and tatter
seeming empty or forgotten
nonetheless endure.
Blue five-pointed shiny star This sentence feels a little bit bloated due to the amount of adjectives. perhaps omit 'shiny'?
birthday helium balloon
wrinkled, half-inflated
crosses six busy freeway lanes
low, cat-played
by unsettled crosswinds. Lovely sentence
Mylar nearly unbiodegradable
can last forever; "Mylar... ...Forever" feels clunky structurewise. Perhaps swap the word order
helium, like hydrogen (how i would do it: Nearly unbiodegradable Mylar, Everlasting)
but less so, manages
escape from all confinements.
As between flesh and spirit
material and meme Meme as in internetmeme? Or is it a chemical term?
which is Mylar and which helium? I have no clue and googling 'meme' will unlikely yield the results i'm looking for haha
Flesh escapes, evanesces,
recycles after giving life
its temporary and declining lift
but meme and spirit
though they rest and tatter
seeming empty or forgotten
nonetheless endure.
Interesting poem. I would expand more on the thought that the birthday balloon a child gets, eventually will outlast that person. I hope that you will agree with the notes i've listed above. Thanks for sharing, Duke!
Blue five-pointed shiny star. ....absent an article, this sounds like the poem is addressed to the balloon
birthday helium balloon
wrinkled, half-inflated
crosses six busy freeway lanes
low, cat-played
by unsettled crosswinds.
Mylar nearly unbiodegradable
can last forever;
helium, like hydrogen
but less so, manages.....Helium is the flesh but helium doesn't combust, is a noble has, is not radioactive, is what hydrogen turns to during fusion...so the opposite of flesh in fact
escape from all confinements. .....The subtle allusion to liquid helium's superfluidity is clever
As between flesh and spirit
material and meme
which is Mylar and which helium?
Flesh escapes, evanesces,
recycles after giving life
its temporary and declining lift ..... looks like a half finished sentence? The 'but' in the next line doesn't relate to this
but meme and spirit
though they rest and tatter
seeming empty or forgotten
nonetheless endure. ....nice ending. I like the irregular meter used in the poem.
The balloon's shell as spirit and helium as the body is an inversion of what one might expect and to me, is not entirely satisfactory
But otherwise nice one
Glitter-blue, a cartoon star
birthday helium balloon
wrinkled, half-inflated
crosses six busy freeway lanes
low, cat-played
by unsettled crosswinds.
Mylar abides forever
unbiodegradable;
helium, like hydrogen
but less so, contrives
escape from all confinements.
As between flesh and spirit
meme and material
which is Mylar and which helium?
Flesh escapes, evanesces,
recycles after giving
life its declining lift
but meme and spirit
though they rest and tatter
seeming empty or forgotten
nonetheless endure.
Thanks to both critics for good ideas, some of which have been adopted... more or less.
@The Four-Eyed Cat - the idea of the balloon outliving its birthday child is so good it deserves its own poem, IMHO. So I stuck with half-baked philosophy for this one.
@achebe - this is an exploration of sorts: there are no minds, hence no memes, without hardware to run them... but memes (which evolve, degrade, and stuff) can obviously outlive any hardware (so why not spirits?) Yes, material/sprit is reversed from the commonsense solid/gas. Turning things around and over sometimes leads to insights... or not. Thanks for the critique and the read.
Helium is, indeed, a noble and homogeneous gas. A little research on helium production leads in odd directions: there are gas wells which produce 10% helium and most of the rest C02 - needless to say, the stuff doesn't burn. Helium collects under salt domes - it rises right through shale. Where does it come from? Uranium and thorium decay, maybe. Or maybe not. And it gives us funny voices.
(07-04-2017, 03:03 AM)dukealien Wrote: Glitter-blue, a cartoon star "everything´s just a ride" is what I get later from this image - a good line to begin this poem
birthday helium balloon
wrinkled, half-inflated
crosses six busy freeway lanes
low, cat-played I get that being cat-played should show the balloon´s movement (and it does, nicely!), but I still mostly think "boom" in this image.
by unsettled crosswinds.
Mylar abides forever
unbiodegradable;
helium, like hydrogen in my opinion the comparison to hydrogen is unnecessary
but less so, contrives
escape from all confinements.
As between flesh and spirit
meme and material
which is Mylar and which helium?
Flesh escapes, evanesces,
recycles after giving
life its declining lift
but meme and spirit
though they rest and tatter
seeming empty or forgotten
nonetheless endure. maybe I get this wrong, but I don´t know if I want my spirit to be eternal if it must endure empty and forgotten.
the gas actually is way longer lasting than any human-made material… its escape does not make it vanish. well it may be changed in nuclear fusion but it´s a long way to the sun.
you said yourself what our bodies are composed of recycles.
our flesh is only held together by the fact that our bodies are alive… but individual life is not eternal (like mylar is not, it´s flammable).
I like your metaphors, though I´m not sure about the spirit part.. I think it´s either somewhere with the helium or not.
Glitter-blue, a cartoon star
birthday helium balloon
wrinkled, half-inflated
crosses six busy freeway lanes
low, kitten-played
by unsettled crosswinds.
Mylar abides forever
unbiodegradable;
helium contrives
escape from all confinements.
As between flesh and spirit
meme and material
which is Mylar and which helium?
Flesh escapes, evanesces,
recycles after giving
life its declining lift
but meme and spirit
though they drift and tatter
seeming empty or forgotten
nonetheless endure.
@vagabond - Thanks for your fine read and critique of this rather light (g) work. This edit addresses your objections, except for the last.
You get the speculation here, and I get that having spirit or meme carry on forever is a disquieting concept ("to sleep, perchance to dream - aye, there's the rub" - W.S.). But, y'know, does spirit really care if you wish it didn't go on forever if it just does?
On the subject of mylar being flammable... under most sublunary circumstances it's not. Aircraft fires (pure oxygen, aluminum, and electricity) will do it sometimes. I also had, at one time, the duty of destroying certain punched mylar tapes with the added proviso that neither I nor the other guy watching, armed, could actually see them at any time for fear we'd somehow photo-memorize the contents. Without going into the mechanics of solving this puzzle, the end result is a very fine ash, some lumps from the container, and an amazingly bad smell which may just be the observer's olfactory tissues breaking down.
On the subject of mylar being flammable... under most sublunary circumstances it's not. Aircraft fires (pure oxygen, aluminum, and electricity) will do it sometimes. I also had, at one time, the duty of destroying certain punched mylar tapes with the added proviso that neither I nor the other guy watching, armed, could actually see them at any time for fear we'd somehow photo-memorize the contents. Without going into the mechanics of solving this puzzle, the end result is a very fine ash, some lumps from the container, and an amazingly bad smell which may just be the observer's olfactory tissues breaking down.
you talk about things being light... when eternity is your topic (maybe the right approach) about the spirit living forever.. I like the idea that spirit is something eternal, leaving our bodies when we die and then rotting itself together in other forms of contained lives again.. and again and so on.
as to mylar, there are probably many different ways to process this material so that it is more or less heat resistant, but the balloons seem to burn easily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zeuv57_0NRQ
the mylar tapes you mentioned seem to have potential for another poem...
Glitter-blue, a cartoon star (i like thinking of glitter as a colour,)
birthday helium balloon
wrinkled, half-inflated
crosses six busy freeway lanes
low, kitten-played
by unsettled crosswinds...................................(everything about this stanza works, perfectly balanced flirtations between positions of movement, observations, natural phenomena, contrapuntally balanced and juxtaposed through a semi-surreal description that exist purely in the poets mind)
Mylar abides forever (this claim is wonderfully bold and intriguing, it paves the way for the concurring claims; the way that the unbiodegradable; vessel is effected by the substance
helium contrives
escape from all confinements.
As between flesh and spirit
meme and material
which is Mylar and which helium?
Flesh escapes, evanesces,
recycles after giving
life its declining lift
but meme and spirit
though they drift and tatter
seeming empty or forgotten
nonetheless endure. (the unlikely turn of the poem in a abstractly moral direction proves that the poet has the uncanny ability to suggest an unlikely comparison, one can just as well search out the enduring aspect of life's drifting (and sometimes, seemingly endless) spirituality and spiritual choices, because the flesh that those choices lead towards, within, through or without is just as mysterious as the spirit which directed and informed the substance, form, material or matter to begin with
Edit1;
Glitter-blue, a cartoon star
birthday helium balloon
wrinkled, half-inflated
crosses six busy freeway lanes
low, cat-played
by unsettled crosswinds.
Mylar abides forever
unbiodegradable;
helium, like hydrogen
but less so, contrives
escape from all confinements.
As between flesh and spirit
meme and material
which is Mylar and which helium?
Flesh escapes, evanesces,
recycles after giving
life its declining lift
but meme and spirit
though they rest and tatter
seeming empty or forgotten
nonetheless endure.
original version;
Blue five-pointed shiny star
birthday helium balloon
wrinkled, half-inflated
crosses six busy freeway lanes
low, cat-played
by unsettled crosswinds.
Mylar nearly unbiodegradable
can last forever;
helium, like hydrogen
but less so, manages
escape from all confinements.
As between flesh and spirit
material and meme
which is Mylar and which helium?
Flesh escapes, evanesces,
recycles after giving life
its temporary and declining lift
but meme and spirit
though they rest and tatter
seeming empty or forgotten
nonetheless endure.
Non-practicing atheist
