Stream of consciousness

[mastermars]

A lot of the things I've heard/read (most noticeably Dylan's Tarantula) is some of my favorite form of poetry.

I've written quite a few, and here's an example...was the first one I saw at random.


Sacred Imaginary Strangers Singing Christmas Carols in August

Riot routines, rival robberies of romantic rogues all in vogue in vague with catchy brogue plagues. Push turns to shove, shovel pounds the deity's dirt, missing the dignity without difficulty. You can call it the end, but it's only the beginning for everyone who's not you roughhousing away with the punchline of an unavailable miserable jab turned to a stab on a Saturday.

Possess protest, gag the poets wicked thoughts before they're written...they never do think. Think for yourself. Pick at the brains of those who aren't yourself. Thanks for the reminder. Runaway privacy, alone with only strangers, gather 'round with Ouija board in hand on the table. Prepare the necrology, start the necromancy if you find it necessary. Hear nothing through all the commotion of emotions in devotion to Athena while under a subpoena. Guilt stricken with a whip by the ringleader. Continue the charade, practice makes perfect, but nothing ever makes practice perfect.

Squander the squadron, collection of children. Wild tides of rhymes spewing from the mouths of the boys transformed into tigers. Blind as a bat, the shape of colors reflect in reverse all but the excuses to recreate Finian's Rainbow. Wrong songs of sing along spouting from the gullets of the girls. Never on key, the way it's meant to be. Recorded for future generations to poke fun of, due to their own sense of lacking credibility.

Possum pigtails, she's reckless heading headless...headline news. No one reads the paper anymore. Technology assassinated print into fabrications of false relics of yesteryear. The stolen souls, reemerging of the remains of William Blake and Buddy Holly. Show 'n' tell, never fade away, out of the path of barking winds. All we feel is who we are; it's not enough.

Summer will come with the bummer of rum on our breath, brief brilliance skipped our minds. Inelegance infestation, smash sensation. Burn the fire with smoke. Words so easily thrown across paved roads flatten ideas of Hygieia healing busted bones and broken eyes. Tangled in deceit, a receipt for games well played. Hangin' around, we don't need to be Harold Lloyd, on this tightrope. Amusement vacant, silent judgment...everyone's a critic.

Envious entrapments, a part of weary skeletons during the picnics, dissecting the bones for a cheap laugh. It's a work or art in progress rattling off on the jukebox, duet of Cab Calloway and Brian Wilson. Gots to make it perfect or else Brian won't get any sleep for weeks, while Cab tells him it'll all work out, people will buy into anything without a first or second thought. We can all be prostitutes, while some just won't hit those streets. Moses was once what he despised, shame he never changed and remained what he was in our fading eyes. Ashtray occupation, worth the pay...butt it's not as pleasant as the addictive make it out to be. Stay at my side, and we'll go for a ride, to the methadone clinics...not get signed up, but for a pamphlet to know what to avoid in our past. And the future will be as it is now.

It's tomorrow we've got to watch out for, without eyes in the back of our heads.

 

[annaswirls]

Good rhythm and sound patterns and some interesting, thoughts but I had a hard time finding a thread through the paragraphs to make it a whole piece. Maybe that is not the point, as it is stream of consciousness...

This seems like it would work better for me broken down into several shorter poems
(but then again, my attention span is shorter than it used to be, especially on screen.)

I am also partial to line breaks. Probably the attention thing.

Thanks for sharing this! Would you mind if I pulled a piece of it and played with the line breaks?

~as

A lot of the things I've heard/read (most noticeably Dylan's Tarantula) is some of my favorite form of poetry.

I've written quite a few, and here's an example...was the first one I saw at random.


Sacred Imaginary Strangers Singing Christmas Carols in August

Riot routines, rival robberies of romantic rogues all in vogue in vague with catchy brogue plagues. Push turns to shove, shovel pounds the deity's dirt, missing the dignity without difficulty. You can call it the end, but it's only the beginning for everyone who's not you roughhousing away with the punchline of an unavailable miserable jab turned to a stab on a Saturday.

Possess protest, gag the poets wicked thoughts before they're written...they never do think. Think for yourself. Pick at the brains of those who aren't yourself. Thanks for the reminder. Runaway privacy, alone with only strangers, gather 'round with Ouija board in hand on the table. Prepare the necrology, start the necromancy if you find it necessary. Hear nothing through all the commotion of emotions in devotion to Athena while under a subpoena. Guilt stricken with a whip by the ringleader. Continue the charade, practice makes perfect, but nothing ever makes practice perfect.

Squander the squadron, collection of children. Wild tides of rhymes spewing from the mouths of the boys transformed into tigers. Blind as a bat, the shape of colors reflect in reverse all but the excuses to recreate Finian's Rainbow. Wrong songs of sing along spouting from the gullets of the girls. Never on key, the way it's meant to be. Recorded for future generations to poke fun of, due to their own sense of lacking credibility.

Possum pigtails, she's reckless heading headless...headline news. No one reads the paper anymore. Technology assassinated print into fabrications of false relics of yesteryear. The stolen souls, reemerging of the remains of William Blake and Buddy Holly. Show 'n' tell, never fade away, out of the path of barking winds. All we feel is who we are; it's not enough.

Summer will come with the bummer of rum on our breath, brief brilliance skipped our minds. Inelegance infestation, smash sensation. Burn the fire with smoke. Words so easily thrown across paved roads flatten ideas of Hygieia healing busted bones and broken eyes. Tangled in deceit, a receipt for games well played. Hangin' around, we don't need to be Harold Lloyd, on this tightrope. Amusement vacant, silent judgment...everyone's a critic.

Envious entrapments, a part of weary skeletons during the picnics, dissecting the bones for a cheap laugh. It's a work or art in progress rattling off on the jukebox, duet of Cab Calloway and Brian Wilson. Gots to make it perfect or else Brian won't get any sleep for weeks, while Cab tells him it'll all work out, people will buy into anything without a first or second thought. We can all be prostitutes, while some just won't hit those streets. Moses was once what he despised, shame he never changed and remained what he was in our fading eyes. Ashtray occupation, worth the pay...butt it's not as pleasant as the addictive make it out to be. Stay at my side, and we'll go for a ride, to the methadone clinics...not get signed up, but for a pamphlet to know what to avoid in our past. And the future will be as it is now.

It's tomorrow we've got to watch out for, without eyes in the back of our heads.

 

[mastermars]

Good rhythm and sound patterns and some interesting, thoughts but I had a hard time finding a thread through the paragraphs to make it a whole piece. Maybe that is not the point, as it is stream of consciousness...

This seems like it would work better for me broken down into several shorter poems
(but then again, my attention span is shorter than it used to be, especially on screen.)

I am also partial to line breaks. Probably the attention thing.

Thanks for sharing this! Would you mind if I pulled a piece of it and played with the line breaks?

~as

Wouldn't mind that at all.

After I wrote these in one long babble, break it down in the paragraphs as they are, once tried to make one fit between shorter lines and didn't come out as good...so maybe you'd be better at it than I was.

 

[lorencino]

What exactly is stream of consciousness?

This comment begins as a question rather than a criticism. The lines are tantalizing enough to trigger my interest but I don't think it is an example of stream of consciousness.

I found it difficult to keep concentrating on these lines and wonder if it is, perhaps, random disjointed thoughts rather than stream of consciousness. Does anyone actually think like this or does anyone actually have thoughts like these streaming through their head when they are not trying to write a poem.

I think of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury in this regard where one witnesses a range of minds at work in the stream of consciousness technique that Faulkner adopted for this story. From the "tale told by an idiot," Benjy, to both Quentin's highly intelligent and later insane mind, and Jason's extremely practical and mundane mind filled with greed and cruelty, one is convinced that one is inside the minds of the characters. Whether anyone actually thinks like any of these characters is beside the point for it all seems real.

"Sacred Imaginary Strangers Singing Christmas Carols in August" does not bring me into immediate touch with the working of a mind in the same way that Faulkner or Joyce do. This is not to say that the style is any less effective than stream of consciousness, it simply is something other than stream of consciousness as I understand the concept. Here successive images pile one on top of the other. An image seems to have very little to do with the one that it succeeds so one searches for a concept that successive images are seeking to illustrate in a variety of ways. This would be much easier to work out if line-breaks supplied some clues. to how things related to each other.

It is just too much work for the casual reader (the most frequent type encountered) to undertake in order to tease the meaning from the whole. There are some striking images, but this needs work in order to communicate itself more effectively.