While writing a poem

 

My head drops back
Eyes penetrate the cloudless sky
A word falls out of my brain,
Just misses my mouth,
To splash on the empty page
Spreading as an ink stain
It moves through fields of cornflowers.

Swallows race across the sky,
Open mouthed
Feeding on one colour only.

A group of Scots Pine are deeper tinted in the haze of distance.
And beyond that, far beyond, the sea.

When the dark comes,
Vega rises in the cold
Eastern sky.







Multi and single voice “hidden” messages

In some of my poems I have messages which the reader or listener is intended to get only subliminally. Most people while listening to poems try to “feel” what is going on in a poem. They use their instincts to tune in to the hidden message.  As well as messages that are “hidden” in the normal poetic manner (e.g. using metaphors) I also deliberately lay a trail sometimes. This trail is not meant to be discovered but the listener should “feel” a connection between for example different verses. For instance, my poem, While writing a Poem has a thread that links the verses. If someone were to work at it they would easily discover it. However, I like it when there is only this subliminal message. This is not a gimmick and I feel it does work. I think people feel a link that is not mentioned-between the verses. There are different uses of this technique in different poems.  Most of these messages are visual. These subliminal messages are never the main “theme” of the poem but are intended as a useful adjunct to the other techniques used in the poem.
I should add that there is nothing naughty about these messages. I am not e.g. trying to get the listener to like chocolate by having “hidden” or “ghost” images for chocolate in the poem (or prose piece). Such a technique could easily be done but would be unethical.



Thanks to Jeani Rider for publishing three of my poems in the August 2017 issue of The Horror Zine (this was one of them):
http://www.thehorrorzine.com/