poemranker ::Brethren by richa

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Free verse № 93778

Brethren

by richa

Member since 2002 · Posted 9 Mar 2004 · Edited 10 Mar 2004 · 19 comments

The trick of the dandelion clock: To disperse in the wind, grey seeds to interchange like girls, plain as a sugar's beet, that dance, each hiding a Newton.

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19 comments

[9] deleted user 9-Mar-04/10:47 AM Reply
Plain as a sugarbeet,
Yet I know a dandelion's trick,
Clever like Newton.
I like this!
[10] zodiac 9-Mar-04/1:53 PM Reply
'clock:' - with a colon.

I like 'like girls' - without 'the'.

I don't get the punctuation in the last line.
[10] zodiac 10-Mar-04/2:38 PM Reply
Wait - where did the apples go?
[9] Shuushin 10-Mar-04/7:43 PM Reply
my turn to look stupid; I don't unnastand.
[n/a] richa › Shuushin 11-Mar-04/6:42 AM Reply
The kinship of the girls is such that they can interchange like wind pollinated seeds (the trick). To break kinship, to wear a flower, to hold an apple, would ruin this. In each of the girls is this potential (each hiding an [isaac] newton).
[9] Shuushin › richa 11-Mar-04/7:06 AM Reply
but doesn't the word "brethren" indicate brotherhood [with a solemn or religious tone]?

I very much like the sounds this makes, but the logic eludes me. Still not getting the Sir Newton angle.
[n/a] richa › Shuushin 11-Mar-04/7:33 AM Reply
OK then, the girls plain as a sugar's beet are based on the quakers. Newton was just science, the fast unpredictability of progress, the instability, the arms race, the genome race, the nuclear race. The opening of pandoras box.
[9] Shuushin › richa 11-Mar-04/7:39 AM Reply
Okay, then I get the title. But now I'm stuck with the dichotomy between Quakers and science/progress...

They're running out of time? Ultimately these girls will betray themselves and their clan with idividuality and joining the outside world?
[n/a] richa › Shuushin 11-Mar-04/8:13 AM Reply
More the fragility of such an existence. Every one could be a pioneer, set the ball rolling.
[9] Shuushin 11-Mar-04/8:41 AM Reply
sold.
[n/a] richa 11-Mar-04/2:35 PM Reply
The trick of the dandelion clock:
To disperse in the wind, grey seeds
to interchange
like girls, plain as a sugar's beet,
that dance,

a####
#p###
##p##
###l##
####e#
#####s

each hiding a Newton.
[10] zodiac › richa 11-Mar-04/5:08 PM Reply
Go ahead and laugh. There were apples in this poem before. I liked them. You may think the image was a little obvious, but I don't. Or, why not put them in edgewise, like 'apple-cheeked girls,' or 'to bob and interchange,' or something such? And if I'm so out-of-line here, why is everyone stumbling on the Newton, huh? Besides, the line 'that dance' is way too short. It could stand the extra syllables.

I'm on your side here, man.
[n/a] richa › zodiac 12-Mar-04/8:10 AM Reply
It was just an acknowledgement of your previous message. I got it loud and clear (and peculiarly invisible).
[10] zodiac › richa 12-Mar-04/8:57 AM Reply
Yeah whatever, man. You're on thin ice, compadre. Yeah, that's right. You're on my list, mo-fucker - so you better just watch your back. Howya like dem APPLES?!

Etc etc etc etc ad infinitum.
[9] Shuushin › richa 11-Mar-04/8:07 PM Reply
um, is there sposed to be a second "p" in the third line...?
[n/a] richa › Shuushin 12-Mar-04/8:11 AM Reply
do you mean a second #?
[10] zodiac › Shuushin 12-Mar-04/9:00 AM Reply
Isn't there supposed to be a second 's' on the last line? And shouldn't the second 'p' in the third line be moved to the first line? And is 'PAPLESS' really a word - and if so, what does it all mean?
[10] INTRANSIT 16-Mar-04/5:12 AM Reply
Why it is that good stuff like this gets overlooked, I'll nevr know.
[10] zodiac › INTRANSIT 16-Mar-04/5:31 AM Reply
INTRANSIT: to get it, you have to know that in his youth richa often sat under an old twisted sugarbeet tree, trying - o! in vain! - to wrap his youthful brain around the problem of gayness in the world, which he - rightly - felt was key to an understanding of the universe on the quantum level. One day, while deep in meditation, he was struck on the noggin by a falling sugarbeet, in an eerie replication of Newton's encounter with the apple, made more eerie by the fact of a sugarbeet growing on a tree in the first place, which richa had always thought of as an odd figure of speech. Anyway, the blow had the effect of dislodging a jammed synapse and revealing the gayness problem in its beautiful entirety to him. He had to tell people - but how? Most people just can't wrap their brains around something like this. They just want stage-tricks, juggling and APPLES. They're not ready for this stuff.